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Anti-Encryption Bill Released, would Kill your Privacy and Security

Anti-Encryption Bill Released, would Kill your Privacy and Security
Apr 14, 2016
The United States anti-encryption bill will kill your Privacy. In the wake of the Apple vs. FBI case, two leading Intelligence Committee Senators have introduced an anti-encryption bill that would effectively ban strong encryption. Senators Richard Burr (R-NC) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) released the official version of their bill today in response to concerns that criminals and terrorists are increasingly using encrypted devices to hide their plans and plots from authorities. As its name suggests, the Compliance with Court Orders Act of 2016 [ PDF ] would require people and technology firms like Apple and Google to comply with court orders to decrypt phones and its data. The draft copy of the Burr-Feinstein proposal was leaked last week, which has already faced heavy criticism from both the technology and legislative communities. Even the White House has declined to support the bill. The official version of the anti-encryption bill seems to be even wors

Hacking Smartphones Running on MediaTek Processors

Hacking Smartphones Running on MediaTek Processors
Feb 01, 2016
A dangerous backdoor has been discovered in the MediaTek processor that could be exploited to hack Android devices remotely. MediaTek is a Taiwan-based hardware company that manufacture hardware chips and processor used in the smartphones and tablets. The backdoor was discovered by security researcher Justin Case , who already informed MediaTek about the security issue via Twitter, as the chipset manufacturer had no proper vulnerability reporting mechanism in place. The vulnerability is apparently due to a debug tool that was opened up for carriers to test the device on their networks, but unfortunately, it was left open in the shipped devices, thus leaving the serious backdoor open to hackers. If exploited, the debug feature could allow hackers to compromise personal data of an Android device, including user's private contacts, messages, photos, videos and other private data. MediaTek acknowledged the issue, saying "We are aware of this issue, and it has bee

Making Sense of Operational Technology Attacks: The Past, Present, and Future

Making Sense of Operational Technology Attacks: The Past, Present, and Future
Mar 21, 2024Operational Technology / SCADA Security
When you read reports about cyber-attacks affecting operational technology (OT), it's easy to get caught up in the hype and assume every single one is sophisticated. But are OT environments all over the world really besieged by a constant barrage of complex cyber-attacks? Answering that would require breaking down the different types of OT cyber-attacks and then looking back on all the historical attacks to see how those types compare.  The Types of OT Cyber-Attacks Over the past few decades, there has been a growing awareness of the need for improved cybersecurity practices in IT's lesser-known counterpart, OT. In fact, the lines of what constitutes a cyber-attack on OT have never been well defined, and if anything, they have further blurred over time. Therefore, we'd like to begin this post with a discussion around the ways in which cyber-attacks can either target or just simply impact OT, and why it might be important for us to make the distinction going forward. Figure 1 The Pu

Someone Just Leaked Hard-Coded Password Backdoor for Fortinet Firewalls

Someone Just Leaked Hard-Coded Password Backdoor for Fortinet Firewalls
Jan 13, 2016
Are millions of enterprise users, who rely on the next-generation firewalls for protection, actually protected from hackers? Probably Not. Just less than a month after an unauthorized backdoor found in Juniper Networks firewalls, an anonymous security researcher has discovered highly suspicious code in FortiOS firewalls from enterprise security vendor Fortinet. According to the leaked information, FortiOS operating system, deployed on Fortinet's FortiGate firewall networking equipment, includes an SSH backdoor that can be used to access its firewall equipment. Anyone can Access FortiOS SSH Backdoor Anyone with " Fortimanager_Access " username and a hashed version of the " FGTAbc11*xy+Qqz27 " password string, which is hard coded into the firewall, can login into Fortinet's FortiGate firewall networking equipment. However, according to the company's product details, this SSH user is created for challenge-and-response authenti

Automated remediation solutions are crucial for security

cyber security
websiteWing SecurityShadow IT / SaaS Security
Especially when it comes to securing employees' SaaS usage, don't settle for a longer to-do list. Auto-remediation is key to achieving SaaS security.

China Demands Tech Companies to give them Backdoor and Encryption Keys

China Demands Tech Companies to give them Backdoor and Encryption Keys
Feb 03, 2015
A number of western companies are doing big business in China, but now they may have to pay a huge value for to do so. China has introduced strict new banking cyber security regulations on western companies selling technology to Chinese banks. The Chinese government wants backdoors installed in all technologies that imports into the Middle Kingdom for the benefit of Chinese security services. The latest rules also state that western companies must hand over the Encryption Keys and secret source code as well. The requirements are so absurd that it would be impossible for companies like Apple to comply, which could harm American businesses. " The Chinese government has adopted new regulations requiring companies that sell computer equipment to Chinese banks to turn over secret source code, submit to invasive audits and build so-called back doors into hardware and software, according to a copy of the rules obtained by foreign technology companies that do billions of do

Built-In Backdoor Found in Popular Chinese Android Smartphones

Built-In Backdoor Found in Popular Chinese Android Smartphones
Dec 18, 2014
Chinese smartphone manufacturers have been criticized many times for suspected backdoors in its products, the popular Chinese smartphone brands, Xiaomi and Star N9500 smartphones are the top examples. Now, the China's third-largest mobile and world's sixth-largest phone manufacturer 'Coolpad' , has joined the list. Millions of Android smartphones sold by Chinese smartphone maker Coolpad Group Ltd. may contain an extensive "backdoor" from its manufacturer that is being able to track users, push unwanted pop-up advertisements and install unauthorized apps onto users' phones without their knowledge, alleged a U.S. security firm. OVER 10 MILLION USERS AT RISK Researchers from Silicon Valley online security firm Palo Alto Networks discovered the backdoor, dubbed " CoolReaper ," pre-installed on two dozens of Coolpad Android handset models, including high-end devices, sold exclusively in China and Taiwan. The backdoor can let attacke

CryptoPHP Backdoor Hijacks Servers with Malicious Plugins & Themes

CryptoPHP Backdoor Hijacks Servers with Malicious Plugins & Themes
Nov 24, 2014
Security researchers have discovered thousands of backdoored plugins and themes for the popular content management systems (CMS) that could be used by attackers to compromise web servers on a large scale. The Netherlands-based security firm Fox-IT has published a whitepaper revealing a new Backdoor named "CryptoPHP . " Security researchers have uncovered malicious plugins and themes for WordPress, Joomla and Drupal . However, there is a slight relief for Drupal users, as only themes are found to be infected from CryptoPHP backdoor. In order to victimize site administrators, miscreants makes use of a simple social engineering trick. They often lured site admins to download pirated versions of commercial CMS plugins and themes for free. Once downloaded, the malicious theme or plugin included backdoor installed on the admins' server. "By publishing pirated themes and plug-ins free for anyone to use instead of having to pay for them, the CryptoPHP actor is

SEANux — Syrian Electronic Army To Release its Own Linux-based Distribution

SEANux — Syrian Electronic Army To Release its Own Linux-based Distribution
Oct 13, 2014
Lots of Linux distributions are offered free of cost on the Internet by a number of companies, non-commercial organizations and by many individuals as well, and now, the notorious Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) has announced their own Linux distribution known as SEANux . A Linux distribution is a coordinated collection of software consisting of a customized version of the kernel together with hundreds of open source (i.e., free) utilities, installers, programming languages and application programs. Some of the most popular distributions are Fedora (formerly Red Hat), SuSE, Debian, Ubuntu, Kali Linux, Tails OS and Mint Linux. SEA (Syrian Electronic Army) is the same group of hackers who made the headlines in past year by launching advance phishing attacks against media organisations, usually Western media outlets. The group is reportedly aligned with president Bashar al-Assad and had purposely targeted social media accounts of a number of high-profile media outlets inclu

Over 17000 Mac Machines Affected by 'iWorm' Botnet Malware

Over 17000 Mac Machines Affected by 'iWorm' Botnet Malware
Oct 06, 2014
A newly discovered zombie network that exclusively targets Apple computers running Mac OS X across the globe has compromised roughly 17,000 machines so far, giving hackers backdoor access to infected computers, researchers at Russian antivirus firm Dr.Web warned. According to a survey of traffic conducted in September by researchers at Dr. Web, over 17,000 Macs globally are part of the Mac.BackDoor.iWorm botnet , which creates a backdoor on machines running OS X. Researchers say almost a quarter of iWorm botnet are located in the US. The most interesting thing to notice about this botnet is that it uses a special method of spreading via a search service of Reddit posts to a Minecraft server list subreddit to collect the IP addresses for its command and control (CnC) network. The user who had posted that subreddit data has now been shut down though the malware creators are likely to form another server list. " It is worth mentioning that in order to acquire a control server add

NSA Accidentally Took Down Syria's Internet While Infiltrating Central Router System

NSA Accidentally Took Down Syria's Internet While Infiltrating Central Router System
Aug 14, 2014
Before proceeding towards the story, let's first go back two years to figure out what was wrong when Syria was completely blackout - sudden disconnect from the Internet - which lasted for the period of three days in 2012. Is that the Syrian government behind the blackout ? The outage took place during a period of intense fighting in the country's still-ongoing civil war. So, it was supposed that may it be the government's fault. But, the Syrian Minister of Information said that the government didn't disable the Internet, instead the outage was caused by a cable being cut by some terrorists. When investigated, it was unlikely to be the case. So, Who was actually behind Syria Blackout ? NSA? Yup! It was the same NSA who was behind a number of major happenings. National Security Agency ( NSA ) – the God-like powered agency that had ruled over the privacy of the entire world from countries to individuals, the one with master access to read anyone's data, intruded into larg

Undocumented iOS Features left Hidden Backdoors Open in 600 Million Apple Devices

Undocumented iOS Features left Hidden Backdoors Open in 600 Million Apple Devices
Jul 22, 2014
A well known iPhone hacker and forensic scientist has unearthed a range of undocumented and hidden functions in Apple iOS mobile operating system that make it possible for a hacker to completely bypass the backup encryption on iOS devices and can steal large amounts of users' personal data without entering passwords or personal identification numbers. Data forensics expert named Jonathan Zdziarski has posted the slides ( PDF ) titled " Identifying Backdoors, Attack Points, and Surveillance Mechanisms in iOS Devices " showing his findings, from his talk at the Hackers On Planet Earth (HOPE X) conference held in New York on Friday. Jonathan Zdziarski, better identified as the hacker " NerveGas " in the iPhone development community, worked as dev-team member on many of the early iOS jailbreaks and is also the author of five iOS-related O'Reilly books including " Hacking and Securing iOS Applications ." The results of his overall research on the iOS

China Bans Microsoft Windows 8 for Government Computers

China Bans Microsoft Windows 8 for Government Computers
May 20, 2014
While US government is always prohibiting the purchase of Huawei products due to suspected backdoors from the Chinese government, China also keep itself totally apart from the US productions. China is a bit famous for using its own operating systems, smartphone application services and lots more, rather than using the US developed Operating Systems, and now China has reportedly banned the installation of Microsoft Corporation's latest operating system, Windows 8 on any of its government computers. The Central Government Procurement Center issued a notice that was posted on its website last week prohibiting the use of Microsoft's latest operating system and the reason behind it is to support the use of energy-saving products, the report said. But the state news agency ' Xinhua ' pointed out a different reason for the ban saying the country wants to avoid any further losing of the support for an operating system like it did recently by pulling out its support from t

NSA Reportedly Intercepts US-made Internet Routers to Install Spyware

NSA Reportedly Intercepts US-made Internet Routers to Install Spyware
May 13, 2014
The US Intelligence Agency, NSA has been reportedly intercepting and accessing routers, servers, and other computer networking hardware to plant data gathering " backdoors " and other spywares before they are exported and delivered to the international customers, reported by the Guardian. Yesterday in a published excerpt of his forthcoming book, " No Place to Hide ", Journalist Glenn Greenwald underlines the interest of National Security Agency in planting backdoors in U.S. suppliers' routers and other networking devices in order to carry out its massive surveillance program. " A June 2010 report from the head of the NSA's Access and Target Development department is shockingly explicit ," Greenwald said. " The NSA routinely receives — or intercepts — routers, servers and other computer network devices being exported from the US before they are delivered. " While US government is always prohibiting the purchase of Huawei products due to suspected

Routers TCP 32764 Backdoor Vulnerability Secretly Re-Activated Again

Routers TCP 32764 Backdoor Vulnerability Secretly Re-Activated Again
Apr 20, 2014
At the beginning of this year, we reported about the secret backdoor 'TCP 32764' discovered in several routers including, Linksys, Netgear, Cisco and Diamond that allowed an attacker to send commands to the vulnerable routers at TCP port 32764 from a command-line shell without being authenticated as the administrator. The Reverse-engineer from France Eloi Vanderbeken , who discovered this backdoor has found that although the flaw has been patched in the latest firmware release, but SerComm has added the same backdoor again in another way. To verify the released patch, recently he downloaded the patched firmware version 1.1.0.55 of Netgear DGN1000 and unpacked it using binwalk tool. He found that the file 'scfgmgr' which contains the backdoor is still present there with a new option " -l ", that limits it only for a local socket interprocess communication (Unix domain socket), or only for the processes running on the same device. On further investigation via reverse en

Satellite Communication (SATCOM) Devices Vulnerable to Hackers

Satellite Communication (SATCOM) Devices Vulnerable to Hackers
Apr 18, 2014
The growing threat of cyber-attacks and network hacking has reached the satellite-space sector, posing a growing challenge to the satellite operators. Because the satellite system are the critical components for the Nation to a modern military, they have become an attractive target of cyber attacks . A security firm uncovered a number of critical vulnerabilities, including hardcoded credentials, undocumented and insecure protocols, and backdoors in the widely used satellite communications (SATCOM) terminals, which are often used by the military , government and industrial sectors. By exploiting these vulnerabilities an attacker could intercept, manipulate, block communications, and in some circumstances, could remotely take control of the physical devices used in the mission-critical satellite communication (SATCOM). Once the attacker gained the access of the physical devices used to communicate with satellites orbiting in space, he can completely disrupt military ope

Operation Windigo: Linux malware campaign that infected 500,000 Computers Worldwide

Operation Windigo: Linux malware campaign that infected 500,000 Computers Worldwide
Mar 18, 2014
In late 2013, Security Researchers identified thousands of Linux systems around the world infected with the OpenSSH b ackdoor trojan and  credential stealer  named Linux/Ebury ,  that allows  unauthorized access of an affected computer to the remote attackers. Antivirus Firm ESET's Reseacher team has been tracking and  investigating the operation behind Linux/Ebury and today team  uncovers the details [ Report PDF ] of a massive,  sophisticated and organized  malware campaign called ' Operation Windigo ', infected more than 500,000 computers and 25,000 dedicated servers. ' We discovered an infrastructure used for malicious activities that is all hosted on compromised servers. We were also able to find a link between different malware components such as Linux/Cdorked, Perl/Calfbot and Win32/Glupteba.M and realized they are all operated by the same group. '  ESET reported. Malware used in Operation Windigo: Linux/Ebury –  an OpenSSH backdoor use

Backdoor found in Samsung Galaxy Devices, allows Hackers to remotely access/modify Data

Backdoor found in Samsung Galaxy Devices, allows Hackers to remotely access/modify Data
Mar 13, 2014
Google's Android operating system may be open source, but the version of Android that runs on most phones, tablets, and other devices includes proprietary, closed-source components. Phone makers, including Samsung ships its Smartphones with a modified version of Android, with some pre-installed proprietary software and because of lack in independent code review of those closed-source apps, it is complex to authenticate its integrity and to identify the existence of backdoors . Paul Kocialkowski , the developers of the  Replicant OS  has uncovered a backdoor pre-installed on Samsung Galaxy devices and the Nexus S, that provides remote access to all the data in the device. Replicant OS is an open source operating system based on the Android mobile platform, which aims to replace all proprietary Android components with their free software counterparts. In a blog post , He explained that Samrtphones come with two separate processors, one for general-purpose application

Microsoft launching 'Transparency Center' for Source code integrity Check

Microsoft launching 'Transparency Center' for Source code integrity Check
Feb 03, 2014
Last Friday at the 50th Munich Security Conference , Microsoft announced to launch ' Transparency centers ' around the World, where government customers will be able to verify the source code of Microsoft's products and can confirm that there are no backdoors. The recent chain of scandals over US global snooping has seriously damaged the trust in U.S. Government and top U.S. Tech companies, that could cost them billions of dollars over the next several years if international clients take their business elsewhere. German Chancellor Angela Merkel , whose private mobile phone was also allegedly bugged by the NSA , warned earlier that U.S. Spying operations are unacceptable. In an effort to re-gain the trust of its customers and Governments around the world, Microsoft has announced that it will expand encryption across its services, reinforce legal protections for customers' data and will also enhance the transparency of its software code. Encryption proced
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