Chinese Hackers | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

More than half of South Korea's 50 million population aged between 15 and 65 have been affected in a massive data breach, compromising their personal information. The data breach came to light when 16 individual were arrested following the theft of about 220 million stolen records from a number of online game, ringtone storefronts and movie ticket sites that contains personally identifiable information related to 27 million victims. The stolen records included actual name, account name, password and resident registration number of the victims, According to the English version of a Seoul-based daily newspaper, the Korea Joongang Daily . Among 16 perpetrators, the South Jeolla Provincial Police Agency arrested a 24-year-old man named 'Kim' , for allegedly obtaining and selling all 220 million personal information including names, registration numbers, account names, and passwords , from a Chinese hacker he met through an online game in 2011. Police estimated the

Chinese telecoms equipment suppliers have previously been criticized by some countries due to suspected backdoors in its products, and if United States has banned its several major government departments, including NASA, Justice and Commerce Departments, from purchasing Chinese products and computer technology, then they are not wrong at all. In the latest claim against Chinese smartphone manufacturers is the allegation that the popular Chinese smartphone brand, Xiaomi has been suspected of "secretly" stealing users' information — including SMS messages and photos —from the device without the user's permissions and sending it back to a server in Beijing, despite of turning off the data backup functions, according to Apple Insider . Security Researchers from  F-Secure Antivirus firm  has shown that the Xiaomi phones (RedMi 1S handset) send quite a lot of personal and sensitive data to " api.account.xiaomi.com "  server located in China, including following information

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

Chinese hackers infiltrated the databases of three Israeli defense contractors and stole plans for Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system, according to an investigation by a Maryland-based cyber security firm ' Cyber Engineering Services Inc. (CyberESI) '. Not just this, the hackers were also able to nab plans regarding other missile interceptors, including Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, ballistic rockets and the Arrow III missile interceptor which was designed by Boeing and other U.S.-based companies. The intrusions were thought to be executed by Beijing's infamous " Comment Crew " hacking group – a group of cyber warriors linked to the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) – into the corporate networks of top Israeli defense technology companies, including Elisra Group, Israel Aerospace Industries, and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, between 10 October 2011 and 13 August 2012. The three Israeli defense technology companies were responsible for the developmen

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

Hackers and cyber attacks are getting evil and worst nightmare for companies day-by-day. Just last week a group of hackers ruined the code-hosting and software collaboration platform, ' Code Spaces ' by destroying their Amazon cloud server, complete data and its backup files too. Recently, the largest ever and most severe Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks in the history of the Internet has been recorded that hit the online democracy poll promoting opinion on the upcoming Hong Kong elections. PopVote , an online mock election operated by The University of Hong Kong's Public Opinion Program, by Saturday recorded more than half a million votes in less than 30 hours in the unofficial referendum that provided permanent residents of Hong Kong to choose their preferred political representatives, that is suppose to be continued until June 29. However, the Chief Executive is officially chosen by a 1,200-member Election Committee under the current political system and drawn largel

Criminals will not let any way to cheat an ATM machine out of its cash, as it's one of the easiest way for them to get the hands on cash. ATM skimmers have now discovered a new and high-tech approach to target cash machines directly by inserting a physical notorious device into it instead. According to the Chinese press , two Ukrainian men arrested in Macau for reportedly planting the malicious software program in the seven Macau bank ATMs. This could came out as the quickest method to hack the cash machines. HACKING ATM MACHINES The two accused were arrested this week by the authorities in Macau, a Chinese territory approximately west of Hong Kong, but the two are from Ukraine and had successfully stolen almost $100,000 by corrupting more than seven ATMs with a computer virus. According to the authorities, the men allegedly used a green object device ( as shown in the image ) to carry out the money fraud. They first connected the device to a laptop and then inserted

After Whatsapp, The Chinese WeChat is the second most popular messaging application and currently being targeted by cybercriminals to spread a new Banking Trojan in order to steal the financial information from its users. WeChat is a famous mobile instant messaging app developed by Chinese company Tencent, with more than 355 million users across the world. The app offers people to chit-chat with their friends and relatives, and also allows users to make payments for goods and services on WeChat. The Payment feature of the app requires users' bank account details to their messenger account and this is what tempting cybercriminals to develop new and more sophisticated banking Trojans and malwares. The security researchers at Kaspersky Lab have uncovered such banking Trojan, dubbed as Banker.AndroidOS.Basti.a, which looks exactly like the legitimate WeChat application for Android devices. While installation, it also requires the same permissions such as to access the Int

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

After Heartbleed bug , a security flaw in widely used open-source software OpenSSL that puts countless websites at risk, another vulnerability has been found in popular authentication software OpenID and authorization software OAuth. Wang Jing , a Chinese mathematics Ph.D student at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, found that the OAuth and OpenID open source login tools are vulnerable to the " Covert Redirect " exploit. The login tools ' OAuth ' and 'OpenID' protocols are the commonly used open standard for authorization. OAuth designed as a way for users to sign in or sign up for other services using an existing identity of a site such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft or Twitter, whereas OpenID is a decentralized authentication system for the Internet that allows users to log in at websites across the internet with same digital identity. The Covert Redirect vulnerability could affect those who use 'OAuth' and 'OpenID' protocols to 'login' to the websites

A new piece of malicious malware infection targeting jailbroken Apple iOS devices in an attempt to steal users' credentials, has been discovered by Reddit users. The Reddit Jailbreak community discovered the malicious infection dubbed as ' Unflod Baby Panda ', on some jailbroken Apple iOS devices on Thursday while a user noticed an unusual activity that the file was causing apps such as Snapchat and Google Hangouts to crash constantly on his jailbroken iPhone. CHINA WANTS YOUR APPLE ID & PASSWORDS Soon after the jailbroken developer uncovered the mysteries ' Unfold.dylib ' file and found that the infection targets jailbroken iOS handsets to captures Apple IDs and passwords from Internet sessions that use Secure Socket Layer (SSL) to encrypt communications and is believed to be spreading through the Chinese iOS software sites, according to the researchers at German security firm SektionEins . The researchers found that the captured login information is been sent

The Keen Team – a mysterious group of Chinese hackers who hacked Apple's Safari Mac OS X Mavericks system in just 20 seconds and Windows 8.1. Adobe Flash in only 15 seconds during Pwn2Own Hacking Competition this year, are no more mysterious as the team revealed its members identity. In an interview with a Chinese newspaper on this 13 April, the key member of the Keen team and co-founder as well as chief operating officer of the team's Shanghai-based parent company, Lv Yiping said half of his team members are the top scoring students in the national college entrance examination, half of them are majored in mathematics, and half are from Microsoft. He also added that the team's eight core members are the top hackers in the country. The Kean team is the first Chinese hackers group to have won the prestigious title at the world hacking contest held in Vancouver this year in March. Back in 2013, they also took part in the Mobile Pwn2Own contest held in Tokyo and succe

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 Mysterious Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 , a Boeing 777-200 aircraft that has gone missing by the time it flew from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. The Malaysian Prime Minister had also confirmed that the Malaysia Airlines plane had crashed in a remote part of the southern Indian Ocean. Cyber Criminals are known to take advantage of major news stories or events where there is a high level of public interest and now Scammers are also targeting tragedy of MH370 to trap innocent Internet users. Just a few days before we warned you about a Facebook malware campaign claimed that the missing Malaysian Airlines ' MH370 has been spotted in the Bermuda Triangle ' with its passengers still alive and invites users to click a link to view breaking news video footage. This week, Security researchers at FireEye have revealed about various ongoing spear phishing and malware attacks by some advanced persistent threat (APT) attackers. According to the researchers, the Chines

The US Government was publicly accusing Chinese electronics manufacturer Huawei of espionage from the past few years. Ironically, it has now been revealed that the  National Security Agency conducted a major offensive cyber operations against the  Chinese government and networking company Huawei,  in early 2009. According to reports based on classified documents leaked by Edward Snowden   and viewed by The Times and Der Spiegel , NSA has infiltrated servers in the headquarters of Chinese telecommunications and hacked into the email servers of Huawei five years ago. Code-named as " Operation Shotgiant " was conducted with the involvement of the CIA, White House intelligence coordinator and the FBI; aimed to find a link between  Huawei  and China's People's Liberation Army. NSA accessed the emails of many Huawei employees' for this purpose. NSA STOLE SOURCE CODES NSA also aimed to conduct surveillance through computer and telephone networks Huawei sold

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

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