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Do you deal with MS Word files on the daily basis? If yes, then are you aware that even opening a simple doc file could compromise your system? It is a matter to think that the virus does not directly affect you, but it is you who let the virus carry out the attack by enabling deadly "Macros" to view the doc contents that are generally on eye-catching subjects like bank invoice. How Macros are Crippling your System? The concept of Macros dates back to 1990s. You must be familiar with this message: " Warning: This document contains macros. " A Macro is a series of commands and actions that help to automate some tasks. Microsoft Office programs support Macros written in Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), but they can also be used for malicious activities like installing malware. Hackers are cleverly using this technique on the shade of social engineering by sending the malicious Macros through doc file or spreadsheet with an eye-catching subject in t

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 portab

Identities now transcend human boundaries. Within each line of code and every API call lies a non-human identity. These entities act as programmatic access keys, enabling authentication and facilitating interactions among systems and services, which are essential for every API call, database query, or storage account access. As we depend on multi-factor authentication and passwords to safeguard human identities, a pressing question arises: How do we guarantee the security and integrity of these non-human counterparts? How do we authenticate, authorize, and regulate access for entities devoid of life but crucial for the functioning of critical systems? Let's break it down. The challenge Imagine a cloud-native application as a bustling metropolis of tiny neighborhoods known as microservices, all neatly packed into containers. These microservices function akin to diligent worker bees, each diligently performing its designated task, be it processing data, verifying credentials, or

Hackers are always in search for an elite method to create loopholes in the cyberspace to implement the dark rules in the form of vulnerability exploitation. Top Trustworthy sites such as The New York Times , BBC , MSN , AOL and many more are on the verge of losing their face value as a malwertized advertisement campaign are looming around the websites, according to SpiderLabs. Here's what Happens to Users when Clicking Ads on these Big Brand Sites: The advertisements on the legit sites trick users into clicking on it, making them believe that these circulated ads come from a trusted networks. Once clicked, the malicious Ad redirects the user to a malicious website that hosts Angler Exploit Kit (AEK) to infect visitors by installing malware and ransomware on their computer. Angler Exploit Kit includes many malicious hacking tools and zero-day exploits that let hackers execute drive-by attacks on visitors' computers. In this case, the Angler kit scan

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

The recent cyber attack on Bangladesh's central bank that let hackers stole over $80 Million from the institutes' Federal Reserve bank account was reportedly caused due to the Malware installed on the Bank's computer systems. Few days ago, reports emerged of a group of unknown hackers that broke into Bangladesh's central bank, obtained credentials needed for payment transfers from Federal Reserve Bank of New York and then transferred large sums to fraudulent accounts based in the Philippines and Sri Lanka. The criminal group was able to steal a total value of about $81 Million from the Federal Reserve's Bangladesh account through a series of fraudulent transactions, but a typo in some transaction prevented a further $850 Million Heist . However, the question was still there: How the Hackers managed to transfer $80 Million without leaving any Trace? Security researchers from FireEye's Mandiant forensics are helping the Dhaka investigat

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

China has gained a considerable global attention when it comes to their Internet policies in the past years; whether it's introducing its own search engine dubbed " Baidu ," Great Firewall of China , its homebrew China Operating System (COP) and many more. Along with the developments, China has long been criticized for suspected backdoors in its products: Xiaomi and Star N9500 smartphones are top examples. Now, Chinese Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have been caught red-handed for injecting Advertisements as well as Malware through their network traffic. Three Israeli researchers uncovered that the major Chinese-based ISPs named China Telecom and China Unicom , two of Asia's largest network operators, have been engaged in an illegal practice of content injection in network traffic. Chinese ISPs had set up many proxy servers to pollute the client's network traffic not only with insignificant advertisements but also malware links, in s

The source code of a recently discovered Android banking Trojan that has the capability to gain administrator access on your smartphone and completely erase your phone's storage has been LEAKED online. The banking Trojan family is known by several names; Security researchers from FireEye dubbed it SlemBunk, Symantec dubbed it Bankosy, and last week when Heimdal Security uncovered it, they dubbed it MazarBot . All the above wave of Android banking Trojans originated from a common threat family, dubbed GM Bot, which IBM has been tracking since 2014. GM Bot emerged on the Russian cybercrime underground forums, sold for $500 / €450, but it appears someone who bought the code leaked it on a forum in December 2015, the IBM X-Force team reported. What is GM Bot and Why Should You Worry about it? The recent version of GM Bot ( dubbed MazarBOT ) has the capability to display phishing pages on the top of mobile banking applications in an effort to trick Android users

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, s

If you receive a mail masquerading as a company's invoice and containing a Microsoft Word file, think twice before clicking on it. Doing so could cripple your system and could lead to a catastrophic destruction. Hackers are believed to be carrying out social engineering hoaxes by adopting eye-catching subjects in the spam emails and compromised websites to lure the victims into installing a deadly ransomware, dubbed " Locky ," into their systems. So if you find .locky extension files on your network shares, Congratulations! You are infected and left with just two solutions: Rebuild your PC from scratch or Pay the ransom. Locky ransomware is spreading at the rate of 4000 new infections per hour , which means approximately 100,000 new infections per day . Microsoft MACROS are Back It is hard to digest the fact that, in this 2016, even a single MS Word document could compromise your system by enabling ' Macros .' This is where the poin

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. "T

A new Android malware has been making waves recently that have the capability to gain root access on your smartphone and completely erase your phone's storag e. Dubbed Mazar BOT , the serious malware program is loaded with so many hidden capabilities that security researchers are calling it a dangerous malware that can turn your smartphone into a zombie inside hacker's botnet. Mazar BOT was discovered by Heimdal Security while the researchers at the firm were analyzing an SMS message sent to random mobile numbers and locations. How Mazar BOT Works Despite other Android malware that distributes itself by tricking users into installing an app from third-party app stores, Mazar spreads via a spam SMS or MMS messages that carry a link to a malicious APK (Android app file). Once the user clicks the given link, he/she'll be ending up downloading the APK file on their Android devices, which when run, prompts the user to install a new application. This

Over the last few years, we have seen several types of Ransomware malware that demand a whopping amount of money from users for the retrieval of their locked, compromised sensitive files. We have also witnessed the birth of decryption solution for some of the Ransomware like Cryptolocker (partial), Coinvault , Rescue Kit . One more solution has recently been released for decryption of newly emerging ransomware, dubbed as Hydracrypt and Umbrecrypt that are propagated through Angler Exploit Kit. Both of the malware belong to CrypBoss ransomware family. The source code of CrypBoss Ransomware was leaked last year on Pastebin, which was later analyzed by Fabian Wosar, a security researcher at Emsisoft. With the help of CrypBoss Source code, Wosar was successfully able to crack the encryption algorithm of the ransomware and quickly made the decryption tool for CrypBoss and its variants ( Hydracrypt and Umbrecrypt ). It is found that both Hydracrypt and Umbrec

The same "Vigilante-style Hacker," who previously hacked more than 10,000 routers to make them more secure, has once again made headlines by compromising more than 70,000 home routers and apparently forcing their owners to make them secure against flaws and weak passwords. Just like the infamous hacking group Lizard Squad , the group of white hat hackers, dubbed the White Team , is building up a sizeable botnet consisting of hundreds of thousands of home routers, but for a good purpose. Lizard Squad , the same group responsible for Sony PlayStation Network and Microsoft Xbox Live outages , uses their botnets to launch DDoS ( Distributed Denial of Service ) attacks against target websites to flood them with traffic and knock them offline. Hacking Routers to Make them More Secure Challenged by Lizard Squad's maliocus work, the White Team of vigilante hackers built their own peer-to-peer botnet that infects routers to close off vulnerabilities , such