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We are quite aware of the Android malware scanner Google's Bouncer that tests the apps by running them in a virtualized environment i.e. a simulated phone created in software which automatically scans the apps to watch its real behaviour on users' devices, before approving them to the Play Store market. To protect its users and their devices from harm, Google launched this apps scanning software tool, two year ago. Bouncer is a security feature for the Android Play store Market that is designed to protect the Android users to not to be a victim of any malicious Android malware app. But does the security tool go far enough? Despite having protective shield factor, we have seen Google play store market is surrounded by many malicious apps which easily by-passes the Bouncer scan test and targets Android users. Security Research from Columbia University have exploited weaknesses in Google's Bouncer service to sneak malicious apps on to the Android market. They publish

About a week back we reported about a popular paid Antivirus application on the Google Play Store which was actually a scam, dubbed as ' Virus Shield '. This First paid fake app managed to become one of the most popular anti-virus app in less than a week, and apparently more than 10,000 Smartphones users purchased it in $3.99 from Google Play Store and hence scammed more than $40,000. The Virus Shield Android App claimed to protect users' personal information from harmful viruses, malware and spyware, but in actual app doesn't scan anything and was removed from the store once the fraud had been uncovered. If you were one that had downloaded the Virus Shield Antivirus app , then don't worry, just check your email inbox, because Google cares about you and reaching out all those affected android users who purchased the app, in order to refund their money in full. REFUND WITH $5 BONUS CREDIT According to Android Police , Google has decided to refund $3.99 back to us

It comes as no surprise that today's cyber threats are orders of magnitude more complex than those of the past. And the ever-evolving tactics that attackers use demand the adoption of better, more holistic and consolidated ways to meet this non-stop challenge. Security teams constantly look for ways to reduce risk while improving security posture, but many approaches offer piecemeal solutions – zeroing in on one particular element of the evolving threat landscape challenge – missing the forest for the trees.  In the last few years, Exposure Management has become known as a comprehensive way of reigning in the chaos, giving organizations a true fighting chance to reduce risk and improve posture. In this article I'll cover what Exposure Management is, how it stacks up against some alternative approaches and why building an Exposure Management program should be on  your 2024 to-do list. What is Exposure Management?  Exposure Management is the systematic identification, evaluation,

When it comes to Android apps, even the simplest app could greatly compromise your privacy and security. Injecting malicious JavaScript into Android applications has drawn an increased attention from the hacking community as its market share spikes. According to security researcher Jeremy S. from Singapore, a critical vulnerability in the Feedly app left millions of android app users vulnerable to the JavaScript infections. Feedly is a very popular app available for iOS and Android devices, also integrated into hundreds of other third party apps, which offers its users to browse the content of their favourite blogs, magazines, websites and more at one place via RSS feed subscriptions. According to Google Play Store, more than 5 Million users have installed Feedly app into their Android devices. In a blogpost , the researcher reported that Feedly is vulnerable to JavaScript injection attack, which is originally referred as 'cross-site scripting' or XSS vulnerability, allows

iBanking is nothing but a mobile banking Trojan app which impersonates itself as a so-called ' Security App ' for Android devices and distributed through HTML injection attacks on banking sites, in order to deceive its victims. Recently, its source code has been leaked online through an underground forum that gave the opportunities to a larger number of cyber criminals to launch attacks using this kind of ready-made mobile malware. The malicious iBanking app installed on victims' phone has capabilities to spy on user's communications. The bot allows an attacker to spoof SMS, redirect calls to any pre-defined phone number, capture audio using the device's microphone and steal other confidential data like call history log and the phone book contacts. According to new report from ESET security researchers, now this iBanking Trojan ( Android/Spy.Agent.AF ) is targeting Facebook users by tricking them to download a malware application. The malware uses

If you're one of the 400 million Android users out there who have installed Adobe Reader app that helps you to view PDF documents on mobile devices, then you should immediately update your app from Google Play Store. Adobe has released an updated Adobe Reader 11.2.0 version to addresses an important vulnerability that could be exploited to gain 'remote code execution' ability on the affected system. According to the Adobe  advisory , vulnerability ( CVE-2014-0514 ) resides in the implementation of JavaScript APIs on Adobe Reader 11.2 that could be exploited to execute arbitrary code within Adobe Reader. Adobe vulnerability discovered by security researcher  Yorick Koster of Securify BV , claimed that an attacker can create a specially crafted PDF file containing malicious JavaScript code that triggers when the victim will try to open it using affected Adobe Reader for Android Operating System. Multiple attack vectors are available to deploy a malicio

Heartbleed – I think now it's not a new name for you, as every informational website, Media and Security researchers are talking about probably the biggest Internet vulnerability in recent history. It is a critical bug in the OpenSSL's implementation of the TLS/DTLS heartbeat extension that allows attackers to read portions of the affected server's memory, potentially revealing users data, that the server did not intend to reveal. After the story broke online, websites around the world flooded with the heartbleed articles, explaining how it works, how to protect, and exactly what it is. Yet many didn't get it right. So based on the queries of Internet users, we answered some frequently asked questions about the bug. 1.) IS HEARTBLEED A VIRUS? Absolutely NO, It's not a virus. As described in our previous article , The Heartbleed bug is a vulnerability resided in TLS heartbeat mechanism built into certain versions of the popular open source encryption standard Open

Heartbleed has left a worst impression worldwide affecting millions of websites and is also supposed to put millions of Smartphones and tablets users at a great risk. Heartbleed is a critical bug ( CVE-2014-0160 ) in the popular OpenSSL cryptographic software library, that actually resides in the OpenSSL's implementation of the TLS/DTLS heartbeat extension, which allows attackers to read portions of the affected server's memory, potentially revealing users data such as usernames, passwords, and credit card numbers, that the server did not intend to reveal. OpenSSL is a widely-used cryptographic library which implements the SSL and TLS protocol and protects communications on the Internet, and mostly every websites use either SSL or TLS, even the Apache web server that powers almost half of the websites over internet utilizes OpenSSL. But to assume that the users using desktop browsers to visit websites are vulnerable to the Heartbleed bug, will be wrong. Despite 40

Well, we all are very conscious, when it comes to the security of our personal information, security of our financial data and security of everything related to us. In the world of Smart devices where our Smartphones knows more than we know ourselves. To keep our device protected from harmful viruses, malware or spyware, we totally depend on various security products such as antivirus, firewall and privacy guard apps, that we typically install from some trusted sources, Google Play Store. Most Antivirus apps are available to download for free, but some of them are paid with extra premium features like advance firewall protection, anti theft, App Locker or Cloud Backup etc. But do you believe that just because you're downloading an application from an official app store and also if its a premium paid version, you're safe from malicious software? Think twice. PAID, BUT FAKE ANTIVIRUS APP In Past, Mobile Security Researchers had spotted numerous fake mobile anti

Tomorrow, 8th April could be a sad day for all those who are still using Windows XP, as it is an official assassination day of it, but there is also a good news that Microsoft is going to stop charging for its Windows Operating System on on the devices with screens smaller than nine inches. Yes, Free a Windows OS for the  Internet of Things (IoTs) ,  such as Mobile Devices, Smart thermostats, Smart TVs, wearable devices etc., that was announced by Microsoft at Build 2014 conference on Wednesday. " To accelerate the creation of great mobile devices running Windows and grow our number of users, we announced today that Windows will be available for $0 to hardware partners for Windows Phones and tablets smaller than 9" in size, " said Terry Myerson, executive vice president, OS Group at Microsoft and he also added that it will include a one-year subscription to Office 365. FREE, BUT NOT OPEN SOURCE Free Windows , means the manufacturers of small tablets, phones and any o

Hardly two month ago we reported about the first widely spread Android Bootkit malware , dubbed as ' Oldboot.A ', which infected more than 500,000 Smartphone users worldwide with Android operating system in last eight months, especially in China. Oldboot is a piece of Android malware that's designed to re-infect Mobile devices even after a thorough cleanup. It resides in the memory of infected devices;  It modify the devices' boot partition and booting script file to launch system service and extract malicious application during the early stage of system's booting. Yet another alarming report about Oldboot malware has been released by the Chinese Security Researchers from ' 360 Mobile Security '. They have discovered a new variant of the Oldboot family, dubbed as ' Oldboot.B ', designed exactly as Oldboot.A, but new variant has advance stealth techniques. Especially, the defense against with antivirus software, malware analyzer, and automatic a

We are already aware about the fact that most probably every mobile app is collecting our data in one or the other form. Thanks to Edward Snowden, who provided the secret documents that revealed that the world's most popular Smartphone applications, including gaming apps such as Angry Birds , are telling the government intelligence agencies (NSA) everything about us. We  reported earlier  that how the government intelligence agencies, such as British intelligence agency GCHQ and U.S. intelligence firm NSA, use popular games to collect users' personal data including their GPS location. Yes, the popular game Angry Bird , which is the top-selling paid mobile application in the United States and Europe for the iPhones, Android and has been downloaded more than a billion times by the devoted game players worldwide, who often spend hours squawking and playing the game.  In fact earlier this month,  CBS 60 Minutes  shows that how Rovio shares users' locations. Recently, t

Cyber criminals are more business-minded than you might expect. As the business has moved to greater use of mobile and non-Windows computers, so cyber criminals have adapted techniques monetize their efforts. Security researchers at Lookout Mobile Security discovered that various apps uploaded to Google Play Store containing hidden Coinkrypt android malware, that can turn your mobile device into crypto-currency miners. As we know, coin mining is the key component for digital currencies, so the malware uses a botnet of infected Android Smartphones to mine for currency. Such malware does not steal data. Instead, they are capable of mining Bitcoin , Litecoin and Dogecoin using the victim's device. " Mining can be incredibly resource-intensive and, if allowed to run without any limits, could potentially damage hardware by causing it to overheat and even burn out. " researchers said. The Antivirus firm Trend Micro also spotted two apps named - ' Song

The devices are becoming smarter, therefore the chances to abuse them have increased. As the share of Android has become 87% in the global Smartphone market, so the Android is by far an elementary target of the mobile malware developers. The number of malware variants has increased rapidly and today 99 out of 100 mobile viruses are targeting Android Devices. Most of the sophisticated malware has the capability to steal keylogs , send text messages to the premium numbers, steal personal data without requesting permission from the device user, also have the caliber to modify SMS and MMS messages and contacts.  Mobile Malware can modify or steal the content stored on your device's SD card and some advance botnet  malware even can give complete remote control of your device to an attacker. DENDROID Beginning this month, we warned our readers from one such sophisticated android malware toolkit discovered by the Symantec researchers that dubbed as ' Dendroid ', which runs on HTTP prot