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Chinese hackers broke into the computer systems of United States government agency that keeps the personal information of all federal employees, according to the paper published in the New York Times. The attack occurred on the Office of Personnel Management and Senior American officials believe that the attackers successfully gained access to some of the agency's databases in March before the federal authorities detected the threat and blocked them from the network. The hackers targeted the files of tens of thousands of federal employees who have applied for top-secret security clearances, the newspaper reported. " The intrusion at the Office of Personnel Management was particularly disturbing because it oversees a system called e-QIP, in which federal employees applying for security clearances enter their most personal information, including financial data. Federal employees who have had security clearances for some time are often required to update their personal inf

Gone are the days when cyber criminals focuses only on PCs to spread malwares and target people, whether it's ordinary or a high profile person. Nowadays, organizations in the energy sector have become an interesting target for cyber minds. Few days ago, security researchers uncovered a Stuxnet-like malware, " Havex ", which was also programmed to infect industrial control system software of SCADA systems , with the capability to possibly disable hydroelectric dams, overload nuclear power plants, and even shut down a country's power grid with a single keystroke. RUSSIAN HACKERS HIT 1000 ENERGY FIRMS Recently, a Russian group of hackers known as ' Energetic Bear ' has compromised over 1,000 European and North American energy firms with a sophisticated cyber weapon, similar to Stuxnet, that gave hackers access to power plant control systems, said a security firm. The group of hackers also known as ' Dragonfly ', an eastern European collective that has been active since

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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,

The Iranian hackers may have spent years in running a creative and most dedicated cyber espionage campaign to steal government credentials with the help of Social Media including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, YouTube and Blogger. A Dallas-based computer-security firm, iSIGHT Partners, has exposed today a three-year old cyber espionage campaign which they believe to have originated in Iran, targeting a number of military and political leaders in the United States, Israel and other countries by creating false social networking accounts and a fake news website. The security firm dubbed the cyber espionage operation as ' Newscaster ', under which the iranian hackers are using more than a dozen social-media accounts of fake personas on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn and targeted at least 2,000 people. Since 2011, the Iranian hackers group has targeted current and former senior U.S. military officials, including a four-star U.S. Navy ad

The United States has filed criminal charges against Chinese military officials for hacking and cyber espionage against several American companies. This case is first of its own kind in which the prosecutors have formally accused members of a foreign government with economic espionage charges. Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI are expected to reveal the new indictment later this afternoon, in which five officials of China's People's Liberation Army will be named, who are believed to be the current members of Beijing's military establishment. Accused chinese officials allegedly worked for the People's Liberation Army and have spied on U.S companies and stolen trade secrets. The alleged hackers are said to work for the PLA's Unit 61398 in Shanghai. Among the trade secrets, they are also accused for stealing information about a nuclear power plant design and a solar panel company's cost and pricing data, " They used military and intelligence faci

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 CHI

Year back, one of the largest " Advanced Persistent Threat " ( APT ) hacking groups received widespread attention from the media and from the U.S. government. APT Groups are China's cyber espionage units and they won't stop their espionage operation, despite being exposed last year. Yes, APT hacking groups, APT1 and APT12 , are again making headlines. Without bothering that the world knows about its cyber hacking activities, the two of its major hacking groups have became once again active and have resumed their espionage operation, reports the security firm Mandiant . A timeline of APT1 economic espionage conducted since 2006 and has systematically stolen confidential data from at least 141 organizations across multiple industries. Mandiant, the FireEye owned company, announced in its M-Trend report that over the past year the firm has a close eye on the APT1 group , which it first exposed in February 2013. It's also been monitoring the second Chinese hackers group, APT12 that

The Continuous Growth of spyware, their existence, and the criminals who produce & spread them are increasing tremendously. It's difficult to recognize spyware as it is becoming more complex and sophisticated with time, so is spreading most rapidly as an Internet threat. Recently, The security researchers have unearthed a very complex and sophisticated piece of malware that was designed to steal confidential data and has ability able to capture network traffic. The Researchers at the German security company G Data Software , refer the malware as Uroburos , named after an ancient symbol depicting a serpent or dragon eating its own tail, and in correspondence with a string ( Ur0bUr()sGotyOu# ) lurking deep in the malware's code.  The researchers claimed that the malware may have been active for as long as three years before being discovered and appears to have been created by Russian developers. Uroburos is a rootkit designed to steal data from secure facilit

Adobe is recommending that users update their Flash Players immediately. The company has published an emergency security bulletin today, that addresses vulnerabilities the Flash Player and released a patch to fix a vulnerability which is currently being exploited in a sophisticated cyber espionage campaign. " Adobe is aware of reports that an exploit for this vulnerability exists in the wild, and recommends users apply the updates referenced in the security bulletin. " The vulnerability ( CVE-2014-0497 ), allows an attacker to remotely take control of the targeted system hosting Flash. " These updates address a critical vulnerability that could potentially allow an attacker to remotely take control of the affected system " advisory said. The security hole affects the version 12.0.0.43 and earlier for both Windows and Mac OSs and Adobe Flash Player 11.2.202.335 and earlier versions for Linux. The vulnerability was discovered by two researchers

As the year draws to a close, we have seen the number of emerging threats like advance phishing attacks from the Syrian Electronic Army , financial malware and exploit kits, Cryptolocker ransomware infections, massive  Bitcoin theft, extensive privacy breach from NSA and many more. The financial malware's were the most popular threat this year. Money is always a perfect motivation for attackers and cyber criminals who are continually targeting financial institutions. On Tuesday, Antivirus firm Symantec has released a Threat report, called " The State of Financial Trojans: 2013 ", which revealed that over 1,400 financial institutions have been targeted and compromised millions of computers around the globe and the most targeted banks are in the US with 71.5% of all analyzed Trojans. Financial institutions have been fighting against malware for the last ten years to protect their customers and online transactions from threat. Over the time the attackers adapted to these counter

Security experts at Mandiant intelligence firm have discovered a new intrusion into the network of The Washington Post , it is the third time in the last three years. In time I'm writing it is still not clear the extension of the attack neither an estimation of the losses. Mandiant reported the incident to The Washington Post this week, confirming that exposed data include employees' credentials hash. " Hackers broke into The Washington Post's servers and gained access to employee user names and passwords, marking at least the third intrusion over the past three years, company officials said Wednesday. " a post of the news agency said. Early 2013 the New York Times has announced that during the previous months it was a victim of cyber espionage coordinated by Chinese hacker s, similar attacks was conducted against principal Americans news agencies. The hackers have tried to compromise the email account of journalists to steal sensitive information, they tried

Security firm FireEye has released a new report  detailing cyber espionage attacks on European Ministries of Foreign Affairs (MFA) during recent G20 meetings by Chinese Hackers . According to FireEye's researcher Nart Villeneuve , hackers infiltrated the computer networks of five European foreign ministries by sending emails containing malware files to staff and gained access to their systems to steal credentials and high-value information. "We believe that the Ke3chang attackers are operating out of China and have been active since at least 2010," The cyber espionage campaign named as " Operation Ke3chang " and if the victim will download & open the malware file which disguised itself as files detailing a possible intervention in Syria ( US_military_options_in_Syria . pdf . zip ), it gets installed on the victim's computer with a backdoor. " They have also leveraged a Java zero-day vulnerability (CVE-2012-4681), as well as older, reliable exploits for Mi

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

We have a lot of information on Stuxnet virus, a powerful malware that for the first time has shown to governments the capabilities and efficiency of a cyber weapon. Eugene Kaspersky, CEO of Kasperky security firm revealed that Stuxnet had badly infected the internal network of a Russian nuclear plant, according to the information he obtained from an unnamed staffer at the Nuclear Plant. " So unfortunately these people who were responsible for offensive technologies, they recognize cyber weapons as an opportunity ." Kaspersky said. During a presentation given at the Canberra Press Club, Kaspersky provided an excellent overview on the security of cyberspace, in particular highlighting the effect of the activities of state-sponsored espionage and cyber crime. " All the data is stolen, " Kaspersky said. " At least twice ." The malware Stuxnet is widely considered to have been developed by the US Government in a joint work with Israel c

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 e

Finnish commercial broadcaster MTV3 reports that the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affair networks has been targeted in a four-year-long cyber espionage operation. Finland's foreign minister said, " I can confirm there has been a severe and large hacking in the ministry's data network ," A large scale spying attack   targeted the communications between Finland and the European Union using  a malware , similar to, and more sophisticated than Red October . The breach was uncovered during the early part of this year. MTV3 also mentioned that the breach was not discovered by the Finns themselves, but from a foreign tip-off reported to CERT.FI. Further the Finnish authorities kept the information under wraps for continuing the forensics. There are indications that information with the lowest level security classification has been compromised, he said. In January, 2013, we had reported about Red October Cyber-espionage operation that targeted th