Cyber Attack | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Over 130,000 Finnish citizens have had their credentials compromised in what appears to be third largest data breach ever faced by the country, local media reports . Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority (FICORA) is warning users of a large-scale data breach in a website maintained by the New Business Center in Helsinki ("Helsingin Uusyrityskeskus"), a company that provides business advice to entrepreneurs and help them create right business plans. Unknown attackers managed to hack the website ( https://liiketoimintasuunnitelma.com ) and stole over 130,000 users' login usernames and passwords, which were stored on the site in plain-text without using any cryptographic hash. Right after knowing of the breach on 3rd April, the company took down the affected website, which is currently showing "under maintenance" notice with a press release about the incident on its homepage. "We are very sorry for all the people who have been subjected to crime a

Security researchers at Embedi have disclosed a critical vulnerability in Cisco IOS Software and Cisco IOS XE Software that could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to execute arbitrary code, take full control over the vulnerable network equipment and intercept traffic. The stack-based buffer overflow vulnerability (CVE-2018-0171) resides due to improper validation of packet data in Smart Install Client, a plug-and-play configuration and image-management feature that helps administrators to deploy (client) network switches easily. Embedi has published technical details and Proof-of-Concept (PoC) code after Cisco today released patch updates to address this remote code execution vulnerability, which has been given a base Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) score of 9.8 (critical). Researchers found a total of 8.5 million devices with the vulnerable port open on the Internet, leaving approximately 250,000 unpatched devices open to hackers. To exploit this vulner

Super Low RPO with Continuous Data Protection: Dial Back to Just Seconds Before an Attack Zerto , a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, can help you detect and recover from ransomware in near real-time. This solution leverages continuous data protection (CDP) to ensure all workloads have the lowest recovery point objective (RPO) possible. The most valuable thing about CDP is that it does not use snapshots, agents, or any other periodic data protection methodology. Zerto has no impact on production workloads and can achieve RPOs in the region of 5-15 seconds across thousands of virtual machines simultaneously. For example, the environment in the image below has nearly 1,000 VMs being protected with an average RPO of just six seconds! Application-Centric Protection: Group Your VMs to Gain Application-Level Control   You can protect your VMs with the Zerto application-centric approach using Virtual Protection Groups (VPGs). This logical grouping of VMs ensures that your whole applica

Security researchers at Cisco Talos have uncovered variants of a new Android Trojan that are being distributed in the wild disguising as a fake anti-virus application, dubbed "Naver Defender." Dubbed KevDroid , the malware is a remote administration tool (RAT) designed to steal sensitive information from compromised Android devices, as well as capable of recording phone calls. Talos researchers published Monday technical details about two recent variants of KevDroid detected in the wild, following the initial discovery of the Trojan by South Korean cybersecurity firm ESTsecurity two weeks ago. Though researchers haven't attributed the malware to any hacking or state-sponsored group, South Korean media have linked KevDroid with North Korea state-sponsored cyber espionage hacking group " Group 123 ," primarily known for targeting South Korean targets. The most recent variant of KevDroid malware, detected in March this year, has the following capabilit

The United States Department of Justice has announced criminal charges and sanctions against 9 Iranians involved in hacking universities, tech companies, and government organisations worldwide to steal scientific research resources and academic papers. According to the FBI officials, the individuals are connected to the Mabna Institute , an Iran-based company created in 2013 whose members were allegedly hired by the Iranian government for gathering intelligence. Though the content of the papers is not yet known, investigators believe it might have helped Iranian scientists to develop nuclear weapons. In past four years, the state-sponsored hacking group has allegedly infiltrated more than 320 universities in 22 countries—144 of which were in the United States—and stolen over 30 terabytes of academic data and intellectual property. The group used spear-phishing attacks to target more than 100,000 e-mail accounts and computer systems of the professors around the world, and suc

You have always been warned not to share remote access to your computer with untrusted people for any reason—it's a basic cybersecurity advice, and common sense, right? But what if, I say you should not even trust anyone who invites or offer you full remote access to their computers. A critical vulnerability has been discovered in Microsoft's Windows Remote Assistanc e (Quick Assist) feature that affects all versions of Windows to date, including Windows 10, 8.1, RT 8.1, and 7, and allows remote attackers to steal sensitive files on the targeted machine. Windows Remote Assistance is a built-in tool that allows someone you trust to take over your PC (or you to take remote control of others) so they can help you fix a problem from anywhere around the world. The feature relies on the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) to establish a secure connection with the person in need. However, Nabeel Ahmed of Trend Micro Zero Day Initiative discovered and reported an information di

A massive malware outbreak that last week infected nearly half a million computers with cryptocurrency mining malware in just a few hours was caused by a backdoored version of popular BitTorrent client called MediaGet . Dubbed Dofoil (also known as Smoke Loader), the malware was found dropping a cryptocurrency miner program as payload on infected Windows computers that mine Electroneum digital coins for attackers using victims' CPU cycles. Dofoil campaign that hit PCs in Russia, Turkey, and Ukraine on 6th March was discovered by Microsoft Windows Defender research department and blocked the attack before it could have done any severe damages. At the time when Windows Defender researchers detected this attack, they did not mention how the malware was delivered to such a massive audience in just 12 hours. However, after investigation Microsoft today revealed that the attackers targeted the update mechanism of MediaGet BitTorrent software to push its trojanized version (m

A critical vulnerability has been discovered in Credential Security Support Provider protocol (CredSSP) that affects all versions of Windows to date and could allow remote attackers to exploit RDP and WinRM to steal data and run malicious code. CredSSP protocol has been designed to be used by RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) and Windows Remote Management (WinRM) that takes care of securely forwarding credentials encrypted from the Windows client to the target servers for remote authentication. Discovered by researchers at Cybersecurity firm Preempt Security, the issue (CVE-2018-0886) is a logical cryptographic flaw in CredSSP that can be exploited by a man-in-the-middle attacker with Wi-Fi or physical access to the network to steal session authentication data and perform a Remote Procedure Call attack. When a client and server authenticate over RDP and WinRM connection protocols, a man-in-the-middle attacker can execute remote commands to compromise enterprise networks. "A

Security researchers at Kaspersky have identified a sophisticated APT hacking group that has been operating since at least 2012 without being noticed due to their complex and clever hacking techniques. The hacking group used a piece of advanced malware—dubbed Slingshot —to infect hundreds of thousands of victims in the Middle East and Africa by hacking into their routers. According to a 25-page report published [ PDF ] by Kaspersky Labs, the group exploited unknown vulnerabilities in routers from a Latvian network hardware provider Mikrotik as its first-stage infection vector in order to covertly plant its spyware into victims' computers. Although it is unclear how the group managed to compromise the routers at the first place, Kaspersky pointed towards WikiLeaks Vault 7 CIA Leaks , which revealed the ChimayRed exploit , now available on GitHub , to compromise Mikrotik routers. Once the router is compromised, the attackers replace one of its DDL (dynamic link libraries)

Governments in Turkey and Syria have been caught hijacking local internet users' connections to secretly inject surveillance malware, while the same mass interception technology has been found secretly injecting browser-based cryptocurrency mining scripts into users' web traffic in Egypt. Governments, or agencies linked to it, and ISPs in the three countries are using Deep Packet Inspection technology from Sandvine (which merged with Procera Networks last year), to intercept and alter Internet users' web traffic. Deep packet inspection technology allows ISPs to prioritize, degrade, block, inject, and log various types of Internet traffic, in other words, they can analyze each packet in order to see what you are doing online. According to a new report by Citizen Lab, Turkey's Telecom network was using Sandvine PacketLogic devices to redirect hundreds of targeted users (journalists, lawyers, and human rights defenders) to malicious versions of legitimate progra

Memcached reflections that recently fueled two most largest amplification DDoS attacks in the history have also helped other cybercriminals launch nearly 15,000 cyber attacks against 7,131 unique targets in last ten days, a new report revealed. Chinese Qihoo 360's Netlab, whose global DDoS monitoring service ' DDosMon ' initially spotted the Memcached-based DDoS attacks, has published a blog post detailing some new statistics about the victims and sources of these attacks. The list of famous online services and websites which were hit by massive DDoS attacks since 24th February includes Google, Amazon, QQ.com, 360.com, PlayStation, OVH Hosting, VirusTotal, Comodo, GitHub ( 1.35 Tbps attack ), Royal Bank, Minecraft and RockStar games, Avast, Kaspersky, PornHub, Epoch Times newspaper, and Pinterest. Overall, the victims are mainly based in the United States, China, Hong Kong, South Korea, Brazil, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the Netherlands.

Two days ago, Microsoft encountered a rapidly spreading cryptocurrency-mining malware that infected almost 500,000 computers within just 12 hours and successfully blocked it to a large extent. Dubbed Dofoil , aka Smoke Loader , the malware was found dropping a cryptocurrency miner program as payload on infected Windows computers that mines Electroneum coins, yet another cryptocurrency, for attackers using victims' CPUs. On March 6, Windows Defender suddenly detected more than 80,000 instances of several variants of Dofoil that raised the alarm at Microsoft Windows Defender research department, and within the next 12 hours, over 400,000 instances were recorded. The research team found that all these instances, rapidly spreading across Russia, Turkey, and Ukraine, were carrying a digital coin-mining payload, which masqueraded as a legitimate Windows binary to evade detection. However, Microsoft has not mentioned how these instances were delivered to such a massive audienc

Two separate proofs-of-concept (PoC) exploit code for Memcached amplification attack have been released online that could allow even script-kiddies to launch massive DDoS attacks using UDP reflections easily. The first DDoS tool is written in C programming language and works with a pre-compiled list of vulnerable Memcached servers. Bonus—its description already includes a list of nearly 17,000 potential vulnerable Memcached servers left exposed on the Internet. Whereas, the second Memcached DDoS attack tool is written in Python that uses Shodan search engine API to obtain a fresh list of vulnerable Memcached servers and then sends spoofed source UDP packets to each server. Last week we saw two record-breaking DDoS attacks— 1.35 Tbps hit Github and 1.7 Tbps attack against an unnamed US-based company—which were carried out using a technique called amplification/reflection attack. For those unaware, Memcached-based amplification/reflection attack amplifies bandwidth of th

The bar has been raised. As more amplified attacks were expected following the record-breaking 1.35 Tbps Github DDoS attack , someone has just set a new record after only four days — 1.7 Tbps DDoS attack. Network security and monitoring company Arbor Networks claims that its ATLAS global traffic and DDoS threat data system have recorded a 1.7Tbps reflection/amplification attack against one of its unnamed US-based customer's website. Similar to the last week's DDoS attack on GitHub, the massive bandwidth of the latest attack was amplified by a factor of 51,000 using thousands of misconfigured Memcached servers exposed on the Internet. Memcached, a popular open source distributed memory caching system, came into news earlier last week when researchers detailed how attackers could abuse it to launch amplification DDoS attack by sending a forged request to the targeted Memcached server on port 11211 using a spoofed IP address that matches the victim's IP. A few b

Security researchers have discovered a set of severe vulnerabilities in 4G LTE protocol that could be exploited to spy on user phone calls and text messages, send fake emergency alerts, spoof location of the device and even knock devices entirely offline. A new research paper [ PDF ] recently published by researchers at Purdue University and the University of Iowa details 10 new cyber attacks against the 4G LTE wireless data communications technology for mobile devices and data terminals. The attacks exploit design weaknesses in three key protocol procedures of the 4G LTE network known as attach, detach, and paging. Unlike many previous research, these aren't just theoretical attacks. The researchers employed a systematic model-based adversarial testing approach, which they called LTEInspector , and were able to test 8 of the 10 attacks in a real testbed using SIM cards from four large US carriers. Authentication Synchronization Failure Attack Traceability Attack Nu

On Wednesday, February 28, 2018, GitHub's code hosting website hit with the largest-ever distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack that peaked at record 1.35 Tbps. Interestingly, attackers did not use any botnet network, instead weaponized misconfigured Memcached servers to amplify the DDoS attack. Earlier this week we published a report detailing how attackers could abuse Memcached, popular open-source and easily deployable distributed caching system, to launch over 51,000 times powerful DDoS attack than its original strength. Dubbed Memcrashed , the amplification DDoS attack works by sending a forged request to the targeted Memcrashed server on port 11211 using a spoofed IP address that matches the victim's IP. A few bytes of the request sent to the vulnerable server trigger tens of thousands of times bigger response against the targeted IP address. "This attack was the largest attack seen to date by Akamai, more than twice the size of the September 2016

A hacker who was arrested and pleaded guilty last year—not because he hacked someone, but for creating and selling a remote access trojan that helped cyber criminals—has finally been sentenced to serve almost three years in prison. Taylor Huddleston, 26, of Hot Springs, Arkansas, pleaded guilty in July 2017 to one charge of aiding and abetting computer intrusions by building and intentionally selling a remote access trojan (RAT), called NanoCore , to hackers for $25. Huddleston was arrested in March, almost two months before the FBI raided his house in Hot Springs, Arkansas and left with his computers after 90 minutes, only to return eight weeks later with handcuffs. This case is a rare example of the US Department of Justice (DOJ) charging someone not for actively using malware to hack victims' computers, but for developing and selling it to other cybercriminals. Huddleston admitted to the court that he created his software knowing it would be used by other cybercrimi

A zero-day vulnerability has been discovered in the desktop version for end-to-end encrypted Telegram messaging app that was being exploited in the wild in order to spread malware that mines cryptocurrencies such as Monero and ZCash. The Telegram vulnerability was uncovered by security researcher Alexey Firsh from Kaspersky Lab last October and affects only the Windows client of Telegram messaging software. The flaw has actively been exploited in the wild since at least March 2017 by attackers who tricked victims into downloading malicious software onto their PCs that used their CPU power to mine cryptocurrencies or serve as a backdoor for attackers to remotely control the affected machine, according to a blogpost on Securelist. Here's How Telegram Vulnerability Works The vulnerability resides in the way Telegram Windows client handles the RLO (right-to-left override) Unicode character (U+202E), which is used for coding languages that are written from right to left, li

The Pyeongchang Winter Olympics taking place in South Korea was disrupted over the weekend following a malware attack before and during the opening ceremony on Friday. The cyber attack coincided with 12 hours of downtime on the official website for the Winter Games, the collapse of Wi-Fi in the Pyeongchang Olympic stadium and the failure of televisions and internet at the main press center, leaving attendees unable to print their tickets for events or get venue information. The Pyeongchang Winter Olympics organizing committee confirmed Sunday that a cyber attack hit its network helping run the event during the opening ceremony, which was fully restored on 8 am local time on Saturday—that's full 12 hours after the attack began. Multiple cybersecurity firms published reports on Monday, suggesting that the cause of the disruption was "destructive" wiper malware that had been spread throughout the Winter Games' official network using stolen credentials. Dubbed

Two days ago when infosec bods claimed to have uncovered what's believed to be the first case of a SCADA network (a water utility) infected with cryptocurrency-mining malware, a batch of journalists accused other authors of making fear-mongering headlines, taunting that the next headline could be about cryptocurrency-miner detected in a nuclear plant. It seems that now they have to run a story themselves with such headlines on their website because Russian Interfax News Agency yesterday reported that several scientists at Russia's top nuclear research facility had been arrested for mining cryptocurrency with "office computing resources." The suspects work as engineers at the Russian Federation Nuclear Center facility—also known as the All-Russian Research Institute of Experimental Physics—which works on developing nuclear weapons. The center is located in Sarov, Sarov is still a restricted area with high security. It is also the birthplace of the Soviet Uni