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Security researchers have uncovered a new Stuxnet like malware, named as " Havex ", which was used in a number of previous cyber attacks against organizations in the energy sector. Just like Famous Stuxnet Worm , which was specially designed to sabotage the Iranian nuclear project, the new trojan Havex is also programmed to infect industrial control system softwares of SCADA and ICS systems, with the capability to possibly disable hydroelectric dams, overload nuclear power plants, and even can shut down a country's power grid with a single keystroke. According to security firm F-Secure who first discovered it as Backdoor:W32/Havex.A. , it is a generic remote access Trojan ( RAT ) and has recently been used to carry out industrial espionage against a number of companies in Europe that use or develop industrial applications and machines. SMARTY PANTS, TROJANIZED INSTALLERS To accomplish this, besides traditional infection methods such as exploit kits and spam emails,

A cyber campaign that was targeting iPhone and iPad owners with a sophisticated Ransomware in Australia and New Zealand last month, drawn special attention of online media and security analysts. Russian Authorities have arrested two young hackers from Moscow for their alleged involvement in compromising Apple ID accounts and then using ' Apple's Find My iPhone ' service to hold iOS devices for ransom. A Russian man aged 23 and a teenager aged 17 had been taken into custody in the Southern Administrative District of Moscow for their part in " blocking of Apple devices to extort funds ," claims the press release on the Russian Interior Ministry's website on Tuesday. According to the authorities, one of the suspects used phishing websites to trick victims into giving up their Apple ID username and password. The second suspect's activities are exactly same of the ' Oleg Pliss attack '. " The first involved gaining access to the victim's Apple ID by means of the c

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

A Russian Hacker who was arrested in year 2012 by the authorities of the Netherlands and accused for allegedly hacking into the computer networks of more than a dozen major American corporations and stole over 160 million Credit and Debit Card Numbers. Earlier we reported , 33-year-old Russian hacker Vladimir Drinkman is wanted in U.S and Russia for various cyber crime charges, and the Netherlands Court ruled simultaneous requests from the U.S. & Russia for the extradition were admissible. But now it's up to the Dutch Minister of Justice to decide, whether to which country he would be extradited. However, Hacker Vladimir Drinkman does not want to face charges in US and appealed to the Supreme Court of the Netherlands, Country's highest court, to avoid his extradition to the US, Bloomberg reported. In the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey , the U.S. prosecutor plead that he was involved in the theft of more than 160 million credit and debit-

In the mid of last year a Group of Russian Hackers were accused for allegedly infiltrating the computer networks of more than a dozen major American and international corporations and stole 160 million credit card and debit card numbers over the course of seven years, which were then resold to third parties buyers. WANTED IN U.S AND RUSSIA A Rotterdam court in Netherlands ruled that simultaneous requests from the U.S. and Russia for the extradition of the Russian hacker  Vladimir Drinkman  were admissible,  who is accused of being involved to lead the largest data theft case ever prosecuted in the U.S history, Bloomberg report . But it's not yet clear why Russia demands Drinkman 's extradition, "It's now up to the minister of justice to decide on the extradition, and to decide which country." court ruled. The investigators identified that the defendants have been infiltrating computer networks across the globe since at least 2007, including firms in New Jer

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 &a

27-year-old Infamous Moroccan-Russian hacker arrested by Thailand's Department of Special Investigation (DSI)  in Bangkok, accused of cracking Switzerland Bank Computers and websites. Farid Essebar , went by the online screen name " Diabl0 ", has been wanted from last three years, and finally arrested on Tuesday with the joint operation of Thai and Swiss authorities and will be extradited to Switzerland soon. In 2011, He allegedly duplicated the Bank website pages to dupe more than 1,000 people and responsible for damage of $4 Billion and subject to an 'International' arrest warrant for forgery and piracy of financial institutions. '' We arrested the suspect at a condominium on Rama IV Road. Next Thailand will send him to Switzerland within 90 days in accordance with the extradition agreement, '' Police Colonel Songsak Raksaksakul of the Department of Special Investigation said. In 2005, 18-year-old Farid Essebar was arrested b

' Russia Today ', Moscow based Russia's biggest news channel website ( RT.com ) has been hacked and defaced by an unknown group of hackers. Hackers have replaced " Russia " or " Russians " with " Nazi " or " Nazis "  word from the headlines, as shown. " RT website has been hacked, we are working to resolve the problem, "  Russia Today tweeted from  the official Twitter account. Modified headline, i.e. i.e.   Russian Senators Vote To Use Stabilizing Nazi Forces on Ukrainian territory. Another modified headline stated: " Up to 143,000 Nazis requested asylum in Russia in two weeks ,"   The changes to the ' Russia Today '  website remained in place for nearly 30 minutes and  at the time of reporting, the hack was restored.  " Hackers deface https://RT.com website, crack admin access, place "Nazi" in every headline. Back to normal now. "  RT acknowledged the issue. Recently the   Anonymous group has also announced '

A Russian man has pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges in a federal court in Atlanta on Tuesday for developing and distributing a malicious banking malware ' SpyEye ' that infected more than 1.4 million computers worldwide since 2009. Aleksandr Andreevich Panin , a 24 year old programmer, also known as Gribodemon and Harderman , was the main author of ' SpyEye ', a sophisticated malware designed to steal people's identities and financial information, including online banking credentials, credit card information, user names, passwords and PINs from their bank accounts without their knowledge. The SpyEye secretly infects the victim's computer and gives the remote control to the cybercriminals who remotely access the infected computer through command and control servers and steal victims' personal and financial information through a variety of techniques, including web injects, keystroke loggers, and credit card grabbers without authorization. Between 2009 and

In the previous reports of Cyber Intelligence firm ' IntelCrawler ' named Sergey Tarasov , a 17-year-old teenager behind the nickname " ree[4] ", as the developer of BlackPOS malware. BlackPOS also known as "reedum" or 'Kaptoxa' is an effective crimeware kit, used in the massive heist of possibly 110 million consumers' Credit-Debit cards, and personal information from the TARGET . Later Researchers's investigation revealed that the original coder of BlackPOS Malware was actually a 23-year-old young hacker named Rinat Shabayev and the teen, Sergey Taraspov is the incharge for the technical support department. In an interview with Russian channel ' LifeNews ', Rinat Shabayev admitted that he had developed the BlackPOS crimeware kit. He clarified that the program developed by him was not meant for any kind of data theft, instead the program was written for the security testing. He developed the malware with the he

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 brea

The Holiday data breach at TARGET appeared to be part of a broad and highly sophisticated international hacking campaign against multiple retailers, involving the heist of possibly 110 million Credit-Debit cards, and personal information. Target confirmed last weekend that a malicious software was embedded in point-of-sale (POS) equipment at its checkout counters to collect secure data as the credit cards were swiped during transactions. The Malware called ' BlackPOS ' also known as " reedum " or ' Kaptoxa ' is an effective crimeware  kit, that was created in March 2013 and available in underground sites for $1800-$2000. Investigators from IntelCrawler found a 17-years old hacker who actually developed the BlackPOS crimeware kit. His nickname is ' ree4 ' and original name: ' Sergey Taraspov ' from  St . Petersburg  and  Nizhniy Novgorod ( Russian Federation). IntelCrawler's sources mentioned that the BlackPOS malware was created i

The Publicized Hacks, Cyber attacks and Data breaches continue to increase, and the majority of attacks are from outsiders. Recently, Some unknown Russian hackers have reportedly stolen Personal details of nearly 54 million Turkish citizens, about 70% of the whole Turkish population. According to a report published by ' Hurriyet News ', Researchers from  KONDA  Security firm revealed that the hackers have stolen data from a political party's  vulnerable  system that include Name, ID numbers and address of 54 million voters across the Nation. Researchers claimed that the hacked system (being used for Database and website Management) did not have any antivirus product installed and voter information was also uploaded online on a vulnerable website. This was really a bad idea, and they mentioned that " in two hours hackers downloaded all the information. " In another statement, they mentioned that some government institutions share citizen's personal data online with o

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 $2.1

We have discussed many times in our stories the network of Intelligent devices , their capabilities and the possibilities that cyber criminals could exploit them for illegal activities. Hidden chips are used by cyber criminals and state-sponsored hackers to infiltrate company networks and organizations for various purposes, to send out spam or for cyber espionage . The fact has happened in Russia, the State-owned channel Rossiya 24 has showed the images of an electric iron included in a batch of Chinese imports where the operators find a chip used for spying the environment surround. China is planting Microchips practically in every electrical device, as recently it has been discovered that the  electric iron  and kettles were modified with this technique to launch spam attacks. The Microchips were equipped with a little microphone and according to the correspondent the component were mostly being used to serve malware and the chips in fact are able to connect any co

According to a Security Analyst ' Maarten Boone ' working  at Fox-IT company, the Developer of notorious Blackhole Exploit Kit  developer ' Paunch ' and his partners were arrested in Russia recently. Blackhole Exploit Kit  which is responsible for the majority of web attacks today, is a crimeware that makes it simple for just about anyone to build a botnet . This Malware kit was developed by a hacker who uses the nickname "Paunch" and his Team, has gained wide adoption and is currently one of the most common exploit frameworks used for Web-based malware delivery. The Blackhole exploit kit is a framework for delivering exploits via compromised or third-party websites, serve up a range of old and new exploits for Oracle's Java, Adobe's Flash and other popular software to take control of victim's machines. It the point of writing No Police Authority or Press has confirmed the claim made by Maarten about the arrest of Malware author. Plea

A Russian Exploit writer and underground Hacker who goes by the handle " fil9 " put up an Android Firefox Zero-Day Exploit for Sale in an open Exploit Market. Author claims a Zero Day vulnerability in Firefox for Android, which works on Firefox versions 23/24/26 (Nightly). The advertisement was spotted by Joshua, Malware Intelligence Analyst at Malwarebytes. Hacker Selling exploit with a starting price of $460 only. According to the proof of concept video uploaded by the Hacker, the exploit forces the mobile Firefox browser to download and execute a malicious app, on just visiting a malicious link only. What's worrisome is that many major websites are compromised frequently and a large number of visitors of those hacked sites can fall victim to this attack. " The biggest problem in this situation is that Firefox automatically executes certain known files once they're downloaded, and doesn't give users an option to disable this. Without some sort of

Underground sites more commonly offer access to networks of compromised machines or stolen credit card information. Webroot has uncovered a criminal underground store dedicated to selling access to more than tens of thousands of hacked legitimate websites. Their customers can buy an administrator account or shell access in a hacked website, at cheap price i.e. $0.5 to $10 and then allows to perpetrate criminal activities from it, distribute malware, install a botnet  command & control infrastructure, upload illegal content, send spam, and so on. In Screenshots Researchers shows an underground market proposition, whose inventory is currently listing over 6000 compromised/hacked shells internationally. Sites are listed based on the price, page rank, age of the domain, Alexa ranking, language, and number of pages indexed by Google. The site promised access to any number of the compromised websites and the store seems to be quite profitable. The website found to be

A Group of Hackers, Four Russians and a Ukrainian allegedly broke computer networks of more than a dozen major American and international corporations and stole 160 million credit card numbers over the course of seven years, the largest data theft case ever prosecuted in the U.S.  They are accused of stealing usernames and passwords, personal identification information, and credit and debit card numbers. After stealing data, they sold it to resellers, who then sold it through online forums or to individuals and organizations. Since at least 2007, officials said the hackers have been infiltrating computer networks across the globe, including firms in New Jersey, where the first breach was detected. The group would then allegedly install " sniffers " within the networks to automatically obtain electronic data from tens of thousands of credit cards. The network allegedly charged $10 for American credit card information, $50 for European information and $15 for Canadian data.  The defen

The infamous Zeus malware has once again resurfaced as per Symantec and is capable of draining your bank accounts. Zeus propagates through phishing messages that originate from an account that has been phished. Such a phished account will then start automatically sending messages to friends with links to ads telling them to check out a video or product.  Of course, you should not click as doing so will get your account phished as well. The program is sophisticated enough that it can replace a bank's Web site with a mimicked page of its very own. The fake page can then ask for social security number information and other data that is then sold on the black market.  According to Trend Micro the pages are being hosted by the Russian criminal gang known as the Russian Business Network. Zeus was first detected in 2007 and it is spreading online. If you click on the Zeus virus, it is designed to steal your password and drain your bank account. Facebook is aware of the rising issue, but

A Russian hacker who goes by the handle " Barabus " on the GameDev.ru forums illegally crack Xbox Live Arcade game The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile , developed by Ska Studios and port it on PC. He claimed that he was justified in illegal cracking: " This is not piracy, this is restoration of justice. The authors are not very nice to publish the game exclusively for the Xbox 360, making it impossible for PC gamers to play in such a great game ."  The port is currently in beta and has no permissions from Ska Studios to even exist. But this isn't a problem, according to the developer, as they say they're not stealing anything from Ska Studios. In the same forum post, the game's creator Ska Studios founder James Silva said: " I guess you could say my reaction is mixed. I'm flattered that there's this much interest in Vampire Smile on PC. I'm not mad about the crack itself, in fact, I'm actually pretty impressed. But I'm bewildered by the cracker's attempt to jus