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Flappy Bird , developed by a 29-year old, Dong Nguyen , was one of the top free gaming apps of the last month, but now officially unavailable for users. After achieving income of $50,000 per day in advertising revenue, Dong Nguyen pulled out Flappy Bird gaming app from all the web app stores and now it's permanently dead. " Flappy Bird was designed to play in a few minutes when you are relaxed ," says Dong Nguyen, in an exclusive interview with Forbes. " But it happened to become an addictive product. I think it has become a problem. To solve that problem, it's best to take down Flappy Bird. It's gone forever. " Till now the reason is not clear from Dong's statement that why exactly he quit the app, but it's clear that his decision have given opportunity for hackers for creating a malicious version of this app and the app's popularity will help them to gain success in spreading Smartphone  malware to mass and hence, the malicious apps are available in play stores with

Snapchat , a Smartphone application that lets users share snapshots with friends is catching fire among teenagers. It was first hacked in December when 4.6 million Snapchat users were exposed in a database breach. Later, the denial-of-service attack and CAPTCHA Security bypass were discovered by other researchers within last two-three weeks. Snapchat has no Vulnerability Reward Program, but still many penetration testers are working hard and free of cost to make the application more secure by disclosing flaws. Interestingly, this is not the end of vulnerabilities, Mohamed Ramadan , a security researcher with Attack-Secure from Egypt, has spotted a new vulnerability on Snapchat that allow an attacker to brute-force login credentials of the users. Brute-force is a process of trying multiple passwords against a username until you get a correct password. " This vulnerability allows anyone who knows your SnapChat email to brute force your account's password without any

In today's digital world, where connectivity is rules all, endpoints serve as the gateway to a business's digital kingdom. And because of this, endpoints are one of hackers' favorite targets.  According to the IDC,  70% of successful breaches start at the endpoint . Unprotected endpoints provide vulnerable entry points to launch devastating cyberattacks. With IT teams needing to protect more endpoints—and more kinds of endpoints—than ever before, that perimeter has become more challenging to defend. You need to improve your endpoint security, but where do you start? That's where this guide comes in.  We've curated the top 10 must-know endpoint security tips that every IT and security professional should have in their arsenal. From identifying entry points to implementing EDR solutions, we'll dive into the insights you need to defend your endpoints with confidence.  1. Know Thy Endpoints: Identifying and Understanding Your Entry Points Understanding your network's

Valentine's Day   - a day of hearts, Chocolates, Flowers and Celebrations when people express their emotions to their loved ones and most of us send E-cards, purchase special gifts with the help of various Online Shop Sites and many other tantrums making them feel special. While you are busy in Googling ideal gifts for your loved ones, the Cyber thieves are also busy in taking advantage of such events by spreading various malware , phishing campaigns and fraud schemes as these days come out to be a goldmine for the cyber criminals. Online Shopping Scams are popular among Cyber criminals as it is the easiest way for hackers to steal money in easy and untraceable ways. Security Researchers at Anti virus firm - Trend Micro discovered various Valentine's Day threats which are common at such occasion i.e. A flower-delivery service and it appears to be a normal promotional e-mail, but the links actually lead to various survey scams. The Malware threats also arr

Last October, the social network ' LinkedIn ' launched a controversial Smartphone app called ' Intro ' that intercepts and route all of your emails through LinkedIn servers to inject LinkedIn profiles of the sender directly into the mails. The app was released for Android , as well as iOS devices. Why Controversial? The app puts the security and privacy of your data entirely in the company's hands, and at that time everyone criticized and reacted negatively, but LinkedIn defended Intro, claiming that all information was fully encrypted and deleted from LinkedIn's servers immediately. Just two days back, I got an e-mail from LinkedIn with the subject line " We're retiring LinkedIn Intro. " i.e. LinkedIn is giving up so quickly just four months of the launch! In a blog post today, LinkedIn SVP of products Deep Mishar explained, " We are shutting down LinkedIn Intro as of March 7, 2014. The intro was launched last year to bring the power of LinkedIn to your emai

SNAPCHAT , photo sharing app is the majority choice for variety of users. Recently, the company has faced data breach and Captcha bypass vulnerability, and just yesterday a new denial-of-service attack has been revealed which can crash an iPhone . Jamie Sanchez , a security researcher has found the app vulnerable, which can enable a hacker to launch a denial-of-service attacks , resulting prompt the user to reset the mobile device. The flaw into the Snapchat app allows someone to flood a user with thousands of messages in a measure of seconds, " By reusing old tokens, hackers can send massive amounts of messages using powerful computers. This method could be used by spammers to send messages in mass quantities to numerous users, or it could be used to launch a cyber attack on specific individuals " he said. He demonstrated the vulnerability to LA Times reporter, bombarded his handset with thousands of messages within five seconds in a denial-of-service

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 th

Turn your face in any direction, someone is always trying to spy on you; doesn't matter who and what you are? Just yesterday we reported that Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) in Canada and NSA are together, running a spying program called ' game-changer '. It was revealed that the agencies are tracking all the travelers who passed through the airport terminal, and could be tracked throughout the country by referencing it with the intercepted information from Wi-Fi in cafes, libraries and other public places. Today XDA Senior Recognized Developer ' Chainfire ' has released a new Android app called Pry-Fi , that allow a user to disable Wi-Fi completely, including the background network scanning.  Pry-Fi will prevent your device from announcing all the networks it knows to the outside world, but it will still allow background scanning and automatically connecting to Wi-Fi networks. ' Retailers, crooks, the government, and other

A team of Researchers at Rutgers University has developed an Android application which will notify you every time, whenever an app installed on your Smartphone accesses the GPS functionality. Smartphone is a multipurpose device, having features of both a mobile phone and a computer, allowing us to talk, text, access personal and official e-mail, browse the Internet, make purchases, manage bank accounts, and take pictures. Smartphone also help you to find the way to your destination using GPS (Global Positioning System) technology. Unlike many of our computers, our Smartphones are always with us and many of us rarely turn them off, that means your Smartphone even can be abused to track your real time location on the map. There are many legitimate applications which need your location in order to function properly and to enhance the app features, for example- Zomato app can give the list of all restaurants near you, WeChat like social messaging apps allows you to get

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 ha

In the last quarter of 2013, sale of a Smartphone with ANDROID operating system has increased and every second person you see is a DROID user. A Russian security firm ' Doctor Web' identified the first mass distributed Android bootkit malware called ' Android.Oldboot ', a piece of malware that's designed to re-infect devices after reboot, even if you delete all working components of it. The bootkit Android.Oldboot has infected more than 350,000 android users in China, Spain, Italy, Germany, Russia, Brazil, the USA and some Southeast Asian countries. China seems to a mass victim of this kind of malware having a 92 % share. A Bootkit is a rootkit malware variant which infects the device at start-up and may encrypt disk or steal data, remove the application, open connection for Command and controller. A very unique technique is being used to inject this Trojan into an Android system where an attacker places a component of it into the boot

Are you fond of playing games on your Smartphone like Angry Birds or Subway Surfer ?? You should now stop wasting your time, because NSA is utilizing your gaming energy in the best possible way. According to the latest documents leaked by former U.S. Government contractor Edward Snowden , Some of the world's most popular Smartphone applications are telling British (GCHQ) and American intelligence agencies ( NSA ) everything about you. NSA is tapping communication across the Internet of all " leaky " apps ( Unencrypted app, without SSL connection ) to peek into the tremendous amounts of very personal data, including your age, location, sex and even sexual preferences. This is really unacceptable! The Guardian claims that the NSA and its UK counterpart GCHQ have been developing capabilities to take advantage of these 'leaky' apps, collecting most sensitive information such as sexual orientation and " even sends specific sexual preferences such a

The year 2014 starts with the formation of new mobile malware like ' Android . HeHe ', with the ability to steal text messages, intercept phone calls, and other malware such as ' XXXX . apk ' uses WiFi networks or hotspots to steal information, infected more than 24,000 Devices. But it should not be forgotten by us that 2014 marks the 10th Anniversary of the World's First mobile malware . FortiGuard Labs has published a whitepaper  that briefly explains the major mobile threats from 'Cabir' to 'FakeDefend' over the last decade. The world's first mobile malware was ' Cabir ', detected in 2004 when mobiles were not so popular among all of us. It was developed by the group of hackers known as 29A , designed to infect the Nokia Series 60 , the most popular Smartphone platform with tens of millions users worldwide at that time. The name " Caribe " appears on the screen of the infected phones and the worm spreads itself by seeking other devices such as

Snapchat suffered a massive data breach back in December in which 4.6 million usernames and phone numbers were compromised. Earlier this month, the company launched an update to its iOS and Android apps, added a new security measure to ensure that new users aren't spambots or a robot. While signing up for the first time, it now displays nine images and then ask you to pick which images have a " ghost ". Within 24 hours of Snapchat releasing an improved security feature, a developer has written a computer program capable of cracking it. Another hacker, ' Steven Hickson ' took only 30 minutes to write a script that can crack this new security feature. In this CAPTCHA feature, basically have you choose from amongst a bunch of images, identifying the ones that have the Snapchat ghost to prove you are a person. " The problem with this is that the Snapchat ghost is very particular. You could even call it a template. For those of you familiar with template m

Hey Android users! I am quite sure that you must be syncing your Smartphone with your PCs for transferring files and generating backup of your device.  If your system is running a windows operating system, then it's a bad news for you. Researchers have discovered a new piece of windows malware that attempts to install mobile banking malware on Android devices while syncing. Last year in the month of February, Kaspersky Lab revealed an Android malware that could infect your computer when connected to Smartphone or tablets.   Recently, Researchers at Symantec antivirus firm discovered another interesting windows malware called ' Trojan . Droidpak ', that drops a malicious DLL in the computer system and then downloads a configuration file from the following remote server: https://xia2.dy[REMOVED]s-web.com/iconfig.txt The Windows Trojan then parses this configuration file and download a malicious APK (an Android application) from the following location on the

China has always tried to support its homegrown tech industry and even the security concerns over U.S. secret surveillance which gives Chinese Government another reasons to trust domestic vendors.Many other countries are also in favor to develop their own technology industries to reduce their dependence on U.S. The Government of China is not too fond of foreign mobile operating systems and therefore are trying to break the monopoly of Microsoft, Apple and Google in the country. This week at an event in  Beijing,  China has unveiled its own Linux-based mobile platform, dubbed China Operating System (COS) , developed as a joint effort between a company ' Shanghai Liantong ', ISCAS ( Institute of Software at the Chinese Academy of Sciences ) and the Chinese Government. According to  COS website , it is designed for PCs, Smartphones, tablets, TVs, set-top boxes and other smart appliances. It runs Java applications, supports HTML5 and can run over 100,000 apps. At

Mobile security may not be secure as you think. In September we have reported that the National Security Agency has the ability to access data on iOS, Android and even BlackBerry devices. Everyday a new revelation of NSA Surveillance Program makes Security and Privacy a major concern for all of us. Today we feel the need of highly secured Networks and Encrypted Devices to safeguard our privacy from Cyber Criminals as well as Government. Phil Zimmerman , Inventor of the email encryption tool PGP and Silent Circle's Co-founder (company specializes in mobile privacy and peer-to-peer encryption ) has announced ' BLACKPHONE ', a Smartphone that's been designed to enable secure, encrypted communications, private browsing and secure file-sharing. The company will launch BLACKPHONE in the ' Mobile World Congress ', Spain next month, offers ' PrivatOS ', an Android based operating system which will allow users to make and receive secure phone calls, exchange secure te

Last year Samsung launched a security feature called ' KNOX ' for high-end enterprise mobile devices. It's a nice security addition and free with new Samsung handsets such as the Galaxy Note 3 and Samsung Galaxy S4. Samsung Knox is an application that creates a virtual partition (container) within the normal Android operating system that allows a user to run two different Android systems on a same device, so that you can securely separate your personal and professional activities. KNOX based virtual operating system of your phone requires a password to be accessed and helps you to securely store data that they're especially concerned about, such as personal pictures and video, in protected containers that would be resistant to hacking attempts on stolen devices. You can switch between Knox mode and personal mode using shortcuts in the app tray and notification tray. All the data and applications stored in the KNOX container system are completely isolated from the rest

When you visit a website, it stores some information on your system through a web browser for later use i.e. Login information, so you do not have to re-login to your website every time you visit the same website on the same browser. Cookies are usually stored as plain text or in the database by the browser and if a computer is accessed by multiple people, one person might scan another's cookie folder and look for things like passwords or long-life session IDs. If an attacker has the physical access to your system, can steal all your cookies easily to hijack accounts. There are many tools available on the Internet that can make it quicker and easier for an attacker to export all your cookies from the browser. The Google Chrome web browser also saves cookies to a SQLite database file in the user's data folder. One can import that file to SQL Editor software to read all cookies in plain text format. Google's open source project Chromium browser now have a new feature that en

Android platform is a primary target for malware attacks from few years and during 2013, more than 79% of mobile operating malware threats are taking place on Android OS. I have been working on Android Malware architectures since last two years and created 100's of sample of most sophisticated malware for demo purpose. Till now we have seen the majority of Android malware apps that earn money for their creators by sending SMS messages to premium rate numbers from infected devices. Security researchers at Lookout identified an interesting monetized Android Malware labeled as ' Mouabad ', that allow a remote attacker to make phone calls to premium-rate numbers without user interaction from C&C servers by sending commands to the malware. The technique is not new, but infection from such app notified first time in the wild. The variant dubbed MouaBad . p. , is particularly sneaky and to avoid detection it waits to make its calls until a period of time after the scree