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Privacy is "workings of your mind". We share our personal moments captured in images, credit card details, thoughts that are personal or professional with a person or a certain group at different instances of time and want it to be safe and secure. We use an electronic gadget to share something trusting blindly the service provider company which may have to obey some unveiled laws of that country to which it belong and our data might be at risk. The surveillance programs can force these companies to store the information and share it with the Government and can even sniff all the data passing through the channels i.e. Wire or Air, and hence compromise our privacy. Though surveillance programs were in existence before Snowden's leaks, but after the revelation of NSA's surveillance programs, we need to think twice when it comes to our privacy. 28% of all Internet users, i.e. 415 Million people say that they use some sort of privacy tool for their Internet browsing sessio

Today is January 11, 2014 and the last year on the same day a 26-year-old, young hacker, Reddit cofounder and the digital Activist, Aaron H. Swartz committed suicide. He found dead in his Brooklyn, New York apartment, where he had hanged himself. Swartz was indicted by a federal grand jury in July 2011, accused of hacking the MIT JSTOR database and stealing over four million documents with the intent to distribute them. He could have prison for 50 years and $4 million in fines by the Court, but before that he committed suicide in fear. Swartz's father, Robert, later blamed the MIT and the judiciary system for his son's death. On the first Anniversary of Aaron Swartz , today the Anonymous group of hackers defaced the sub-domain of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) website ( https://cogen.mit.edu/ ) for about an hour as part of #OPLASTRESORT. Defacement page was titled ' THE DAY WE FIGHT BACK '. The message posted on it, " Remember The Day We Fight Back,

Imagine a world where the software that powers your favorite apps, secures your online transactions, and keeps your digital life could be outsmarted and taken over by a cleverly disguised piece of code. This isn't a plot from the latest cyber-thriller; it's actually been a reality for years now. How this will change – in a positive or negative direction – as artificial intelligence (AI) takes on a larger role in software development is one of the big uncertainties related to this brave new world. In an era where AI promises to revolutionize how we live and work, the conversation about its security implications cannot be sidelined. As we increasingly rely on AI for tasks ranging from mundane to mission-critical, the question is no longer just, "Can AI  boost cybersecurity ?" (sure!), but also "Can AI  be hacked? " (yes!), "Can one use AI  to hack? " (of course!), and "Will AI  produce secure software ?" (well…). This thought leadership article is about the latter. Cydrill  (a

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 secu

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 ")  , 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

Sheep Marketplace , one of the leading anonymous websites, after Silk Road 's closure by U.S. Prosecutors, allegedly selling drugs, has gone offline claiming it was robbed of $6 million worth of Bitcoins . Like Silk Road , Sheep Marketplace was a Deep Web site accessible via the Tor network and quickly grew into a replacement of other popular underground Bazaars. Weeks ago, the Administrator of the Sheep Marketplace announced that withdrawals  from online Wallet would be closed for a few hours as a new feature was being implemented, however deposits were still allowed. Recently, The market's administration left a short message for users, which reads: We are sorry to say, but we were robbed on Saturday 11/21/2013 by vendor EBOOK101. This vendor found a bug in the system and stole 5400 BTC – your money, our provisions, all was stolen. We were trying to resolve this problem, but we were not successful. We are sorry for your problems and inconvenience, all of the current BTC will be di

Researchers at Trusteer   spotted a new banking malware program on the underground Russian cybercrime market , that communicates with attackers over the I2P anonymity network is for sale on underground Russian cybercrime forums. Dubbed ' i2Ninja ', malware has most of the features found in other financial malware including the ability to perform HTML injections and form grabbing in Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome. i2Ninja can also steal FTP and e-mail credentials. It also has a PokerGrabber module feature that targets poker sites. The traffic between the malware and the command server cannot be easily blocked by intrusion prevention systems or firewalls because it's encrypted and transmitting over the Invisible Internet Project (I2P). Everything from delivering configuration updates to receiving stolen data and sending commands is done via the encrypted I2P channels. I2P communication can make it much harder for security researchers to find and take

The FBI is warning that members of the hacktivist group Anonymous hacking collective have secretly accessed US Government computers and stolen sensitive information in a campaign that began almost a year ago. The Hacktivists have exploited a flaw in Adobe applications to compromise the target systems and install software backdoors to maintain the control of the victims computers over the time, the facts dated back to last December, according to a Reuters report. The hacking campaign affected the U.S. Army, Department of Energy , Department of Health and Human Services, and other government agencies,  FBI reveals.  The Federal Bureau of Investigation memo called the hacking campaign " a widespread problem that should be addressed. " and provided useful information for system administrators that how to determine if their networks were compromised. Government investigators are investigating the scope of the hacking, believed that hackers are still operatin

A Singaporean hacker calling himself the " The Messiah " was arrested in Kuala Lumpur last Monday for hacking into a Singaporean government website over two weeks ago - from a Kuala Lumpur apartment. James Raj (35) charged with hacking of  Ang Mo Kio town council  website and posting a symbol associated with international hacker group Anonymous. He was charged under the Computer Misuse and Cybersecurity Act. If found guilty, he could be jailed for up to three years and fined S$10 , 000. Police said Raj was also linked to a series of hacking incidents, including penetrating the website of a charity group related to the ruling People's Action Party. Police declined to give details but suggested that Raj was not responsible for defacing the prime minister's office and presidential palace websites on November 7 and 8. Five other local men are being held for allegedly hacking the websites of Singapore's president and prime minister websites i.e.  Muhammad

Last week we noticed a rise in cyber attacks particularly - website Defacement attacks on many governments and organizations of different countries by the hackers around the world. Targeted countries include Singapore, Mexico, Philippines, Australia, Egypt, United States, Syria and many more. Out of all these targets, most controversial were Philippines and Australia, hacked by Activist group Anonymous. Last Sunday, Anonymous hackers from Indonesia defaced hundreds of websites belonging to the Australian Government , saying the action was in response to reports of spying by Australia. The websites, defaced with a message reading " Stop Spying on Indonesia ". We have shared the list of all targeted website on a pastebin note . In a separate incident, Anonymous hackers defaced more than 38 Philippine Government websites, and called on the public to support an anti-corruption protest " Million Mask March " at the Batasang Pambansa on November 5. " The government,

12-year-old Canadian has pleaded guilty to breaking into multiple major government and police websites in the name of the hacker collective Anonymous . Surprisingly, this Fifth Grade student wreaked computer havoc during the Quebec student uprising in 2012, traded pirated information to Anonymous for video games. He had not just participated in  DDoS attacks , but also stole information belonging to users and administrators. The court estimates he did $60,000 worth of damage by attacking major government websites included those of Montreal police, the Quebec Institute of Public Health, the Chilean government and some non-public sites. His lawyer also described in the Court that buy saw it as a challenge, he was only 12 years old and was no political purpose. According to Montreal police, the boy also taught others how to hack. The 12 year old was among the several hackers arrested over the Anonymous protest. While others have been arrested in connection with t

LeaseWeb , one of the World's largest hosting provider has been defaced by Palestinian hackers, named as KDMS Team . LeaseWeb was also hosting provider for one of the biggest file-sharing website Megaupload in the past. Later Megaupload Founder, Kim Dotcom claimed that  Leaseweb had deleted all Megaupload user data from 690 servers without warning. The hacker group replaced the Homepage of the website for just a few hours with an Anonymous Palestine , homepage titled " You Got Pwned " and the defacement message says: Hello Lease Web Who Are You ? Who is but the form following the function of what and what are you is a hosting company with no security KDMS Team : Well ,, We Can See That :P We noticed that Attacker has just changed the DNS server to point the Domain to another server at 67.23.254.6, owned by the attacker. At the time of writing, Leaseweb team resolved the issue and get their Domain back to the original server . But because the hac

Yesterday a new classified NSA document was leaked by Edward Snowden - titled ' Tor Stinks ' in which ideas were being kicked around for identifying Tor users or degrading the user experience to dissuade people from using the Tor browser. The NSA had a very hard time while tracking down all Tor  users and monitoring their traffic, especially since Tor servers are all over the world, but they make tracking easier by adopting  the following techniques: By running their own hostile Tor nodes Using zero-day vulnerability of Firefox browser By tracking user' browser Cookies Tor access node tracking is not new and the Document says that both the NSA and GCHQ run Tor nodes themselves. In order to trace traffic back to a particular Tor user the NSA needs to know the ' entry, relay and exit ' nodes in the anonymizer cloud between the user and the destination website. So for tracking purpose they used self-hosted nodes, that is able to trace a very small number of To

The world of mobile search is about to get a bit more anonymous. Thanks to the fears over government surveillance and corporate tracking, Anonymous Search Engine DuckDuckGo continues to break its own search records. DuckDuckGo Search & Stories - Android app deliver the same functionality as traditional services such as Google but with the added promise that your IP address and identity will not be recorded.  In June, Anonymous search engine  DuckDuckGo  had launched its app for  iOS  and Android and during recent update, DuckDuckGo's application for Android also integrated the Tor support. " Privacy is perhaps more important on mobile than on the web, and we haven't had many private alternatives ," DuckDuckGo founder Gabriel Weinberg said. To enable Tor with DuckDuckGo android app, user need to Check " Enable Tor " from setting. It will prompt the user to install about application to anonymize the Mobile data communication. As a search

The FBI had seized a website called ' Silk Road ', that was considered one of the most popular Underground places on the Internet for buying drugs and other illicit goods and services. They arrested the site's alleged founder,  Ross William Ulbricht, known as " Dread Pirate Roberts ," in San Francisco, who reportedly had  26,000 Bitcoins worth $3.6 million. The FBI used information from Comcast in the investigation and collaborated with US Customs and Border Patrol, the Internal Revenue Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Department of Homeland Security. Ross Ulbricht Ross William Ulbricht, a 29-year-old graduate of the University of Pennsylvania School of Materials Science and Engineering  charged with one count each of narcotics trafficking conspiracy, computer hacking conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy, according to the filing. ' Silk Road '  website, which had operated since early 2011, also offered tut

Sentencing for former LulzSec leader Hector Xavier Monsegur , better known as " Sabu " , has again been delayed. Monsegur pleaded guilty to a dozen criminal counts two years prior and stands to face more a maximum sentence of more than 124 years. Another Lulzsec Hacker Jeremy Hammond has claimed that the FBI used Sabu to coordinate attacks against foreign governments, by  Anonymous hackers and Others. The delays indicate that the FBI is not extracting information from Monsegur and this could mean that the hacker may be helping FBI with other covert operations as Jeremy Hammond claims. Jeremy Hammond, released a statement on Thursday accusing the US government of asking Monsegur to encourage fellow hacktivists to infiltrate foreign government entities. " What many do not know is that Sabu was also used by his handlers to facilitate the hacking of the targets of the government's choosing including numerous websites belonging to foreign governments" , Ham

There are so many ways to move money anonymously on the Internet and US Justice Department has declared war on currencies widely used by cyber criminals . Just after the Law Enforcement in 17 countries shuts down ' Liberty Reserve ', a $6 billion digital money laundering operation, now the criminals is switching to another online currency called " Perfect Money ".  Perfect Money, another private digital currency that has emerged to meet the demand of Criminals and hackers, those buying and selling kit anonymously and being used by people selling stolen credit cards in Internet hacker forums recently. Fraudsters are rapidly migrating to Perfect Money and  it allows users to transfer money anonymously by purchasing and exchanging the proprietary currency for dollars, euros and gold. These virtual currencies are often linked to bitcoin because it has also been used by criminals. It was thought Bitcoin would be a handy replacement for Liberty Reser

No matter how much effort an ISP puts in or the government does, censorship always gets a backdoor . One of the biggest Controversial File Sharing site ' The Pirate Bay ' is censored in various capacities in some countries around the world, but Pirate Bay is celebrating its 10th birthday in Stockholm sponsored by an energy drinks maker. On their 10th anniversary the site is releasing its " Pirate Browser ," a custom Firefox browser that skirts Internet censorship and lets you access the Pirate Bay from anywhere.  However, Its founders recently served jail time for their activities, with one of the founders going back to prison in an unrelated Swedish hacking case. PirateBrowser is meant to focus more on unrestricted access to the Internet than it is about being able to download new episode of Breaking Bad without paying for them, but one tends to be a function of the other. According to the Pirate Browser website, It's a customized Firefox 23 and inclu