The Hacker News — Cyber Security and Hacking News Website: Cyber Attack

Matrix—the organization behind an open source project that offers a protocol for secure and decentralized real-time communication—has suffered a massive cyber attack after unknown attackers gained access to the servers hosting its official website and data. Hackers defaced Matrix's website, and also stole unencrypted private messages, password hashes, access tokens, as well as GPG keys the project maintainers used for signing packages. The cyber attack eventually forced the organization to shut down its entire production infrastructure for several hours and log all users out of Matrix.org. So, if you have an account with Matrix.org service and do not have backups of your encryption keys or were not using server-side encryption key backup, unfortunately, you will not be able to read your entire encrypted conversation history. Matrix is an open source end-to-end encrypted messaging protocol that allows anyone to self-host a messaging service on their own servers, powering

If you have downloaded the VSDC multimedia editing software between late February to late March this year, there are high chances that your computer has been infected with a banking trojan and an information stealer. The official website of the VSDC software — one of the most popular, free video editing and converting app with over 1.3 million monthly visitors — was hacked, unfortunately once again. According to a new report Dr. Web published today and shared with The Hacker News, hackers hijacked the VSDC website and replaced its software download links leading to malware versions, tricking visitors into installing dangerous Win32.Bolik.2 banking trojan and KPOT stealer. Even more ironic is that despite being so popular among the multimedia editors, the VSDC website is running and offering software downloads over an insecure HTTP connection. Though it's unclear how hackers this time managed to hijack the website, researchers revealed that the breach was reportedly ne

Cybersecurity researchers yesterday unveiled the existence of a highly sophisticated spyware framework that has been in operation for at least last 5 years—but remained undetected until recently. Dubbed TajMahal by researchers at Kaspersky Lab, the APT framework is a high-tech modular-based malware toolkit that not only supports a vast number of malicious plugins for distinct espionage operations, but also comprises never-before-seen and obscure tricks. Kaspersky named the framework after Taj Mahal, one of the Seven Wonders of the World located in India, not because it found any connection between the malware and the country, but because the stolen data was transferred to the attackers' C&C server in an XML file named TajMahal. TajMahal toolkit was first discovered by security researchers late last year when hackers used it to spy on the computers of a diplomatic organization belonging to a Central Asian country whose nationality and location have not been disclosed

EXCLUSIVE — While revealing details of a massive supply chain cyber attack against ASUS customers, Russian security firm Kaspersky last week didn't release the full list all MAC addresses that hackers hardcoded into their malware to surgically target a specific pool of users. Instead, Kaspersky released a dedicated offline tool and launched an online web page where ASUS PC users can search for their MAC addresses to check whether they were in the hit list. However, many believe it is not a convenient way for large enterprises with hundreds of thousands of systems to know if they were targeted or not. List of MAC Addresses Targeted in ASUS Supply Chain Attack To solve this and help other cybersecurity experts continue their hunt for related hacking campaigns, Australian security firm Skylight's CTO Shahar Zini contacted The Hacker News and provided the full list of nearly 583 MAC addresses targeted in the ASUS breach. "If information regarding targets exi

Remember the CCleaner hack ? CCleaner hack was one of the largest supply chain attacks that infected more than 2.3 million users with a backdoored version of the software in September 2017. Security researchers today revealed another massive supply chain attack that compromised over 1 million computers manufactured by Taiwan-based tech giant ASUS. A group of state-sponsored hackers last year managed to hijack ASUS Live automatic software update server between June and November 2018 and pushed malicious updates to install backdoors on over one million Windows computers worldwide. According to cybersecurity researchers from Russian firm Kaspersky Lab , who discovered the attack and dubbed it Operation ShadowHammer , Asus was informed about the ongoing supply chain attack on Jan 31, 2019. After analyzing over 200 samples of the malicious updates, researchers learned that hackers did not want to target all users, instead only a specific list of users identified by their uniq

Security researchers have uncovered a new variant of the infamous Mirai Internet of Things botnet , this time targeting embedded devices intended for use within business environments in an attempt to gain control over larger bandwidth to carry out devastating DDoS attacks . Although the original creators of Mirai botnet have already been arrested and jailed , variants of the infamous IoT malware, including Satori and Okiru , keep emerging due to the availability of its source code on the Internet since 2016. First emerged in 2016, Mirai is well known IoT botnet malware that has the ability to infect routers, and security cameras, DVRs, and other smart devices—which typically use default credentials and run outdated versions of Linux—and enslaves the compromised devices to form a botnet, which is then used to conduct DDoS attacks . New Mirai Variant Targets Enterprise IoT Devices Now, Palo Alto Network Unit 42 researchers have spotted the newest variant of Mirai that'

A cybersecurity researcher who last month warned of a creative phishing campaign has now shared details of a new but similar attack campaign with The Hacker News that has specifically been designed to target mobile users. Just like the previous campaign, the new phishing attack is also based on the idea that a malicious web page could mimic look and feel of the browser window to trick even the most vigilant users into giving away their login credentials to attackers. Antoine Vincent Jebara , co-founder and CEO of password managing software Myki , shared a new video with The Hacker News, demonstrating how attackers can reproduce native iOS behavior, browser URL bar and tab switching animation effects of Safari in a very realistic manner on a web-page to present fake login pages, without actually opening or redirecting users to a new tab. New Phishing Attack Mimics Mobile Browser Animation and Design As you can see in the video, a malicious website that looks like Airbnb pro

Security researchers have finally, with "high confidence," linked a previously discovered global cyber espionage campaign targeting critical infrastructure around the world to a North Korean APT hacking group. Thanks to the new evidence collected by researchers after analyzing a command-and-control (C2) server involved in the espionage campaign and seized by law enforcement. Dubbed Operation Sharpshooter , the cyber espionage campaign targeting government, defense, nuclear, energy, and financial organizations around the world was initially uncovered in December 2018 by security researchers at McAfee. At that time, even after finding numerous technical links to the North Korean Lazarus hacking group , researchers were not able to immediately attribute the campaign due to a potential for false flags. Researchers Analysed Sharpshooter's Command Server Now, according to a press release shared with The Hacker News, a recent analysis of the seized code and command

How do you check if a website asking for your credentials is fake or legit to log in? By checking if the URL is correct? By checking if the website address is not a homograph? By checking if the site is using HTTPS? Or using software or browser extensions that detect phishing domains? Well, if you, like most Internet users, are also relying on above basic security practices to spot if that " Facebook.com " or " Google.com " you have been served with is fake or not, you may still fall victim to a newly discovered creative phishing attack and end up in giving away your passwords to hackers. Antoine Vincent Jebara , co-founder and CEO of password managing software Myki , told The Hacker News that his team recently spotted a new phishing attack campaign "that even the most vigilant users could fall for." Vincent found that cybercriminals are distributing links to blogs and services that prompt visitors to first " login using Facebook acco

What could be more frightening than a service informing you that all your data is gone—every file and every backup servers are entirely wiped out? The worst nightmare of its kind. Right? But that's precisely what just happened this week with VFEmail.net, a US-based secure email provider that lost all data and backup files for its users after unknown hackers destroyed its entire U.S. infrastructure, wiping out almost two decades' worth of data and backups in a matter of few hours for no apparent reason. Started in 2001 by Rick Romero, VFEmail provides secure, private email services to companies and end users, both free and paid-for. Describing the attack as "catastrophic," the privacy-focused email service provider revealed that the attack took place on February 11 and that "all data" on their US servers—both the primary and the backup systems—has been completely wiped out, and it's seemingly beyond recovery. "Yes, @VFEmail is effectivel

A 20-year-old college student who stole cryptocurrency worth more than $5 million by hijacking victims' phone numbers has pleaded guilty and accepted a sentence of 10 years in prison. Ortiz was arrested last year on charges of siphoning millions of dollars in cryptocurrency from around 40 victims using a method commonly known as " SIM swapping ," which typically involves fraudulently porting of the same number to a new SIM card belonging to the attacker. In SIM swapping, attackers social engineer a victim's mobile phone provider by making a phony call posing as their target and claiming that their SIM card has been lost and that they would like to request a SIM swap. The attackers attempt to convince the target's telecommunications company that they are the actual owner of the phone number they want to swap by providing required personal information on the target, like their SSNs and addresses, eventually tricking the telecoms to port the target's pho

Mac users need to beware of a newly discovered piece of malware that steals their web browser cookies and credentials in an attempt to withdraw funds from their cryptocurrency exchange accounts. Dubbed CookieMiner due to its capability of stealing cookies-related to cryptocurrency exchanges, the malware has specifically been designed to target Mac users and is believed to be based on DarthMiner, another Mac malware that was detected in December last year. Uncovered by Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42 security research team, CookieMiner also covertly installs coin mining software onto the infected Mac machines to secretly mine for additional cryptocurrency by consuming the targeted Mac's system resources. In the case of CookieMiner, the software is apparently geared toward mining "Koto," a lesser-known, privacy-oriented cryptocurrency which is mostly used in Japan. However, the most interesting capabilities of the new Mac malware is to steal: Both Google Chro

European airplane maker Airbus admitted yesterday a data breach of its "Commercial Aircraft business" information systems that allowed intruders to gain access to some of its employees' personal information. Though the company did not elaborate on the nature of the hack, it claimed that the security breach did not affect its commercial operations. So, there's no impact on aircraft production. Airbus confirmed that the attackers unauthorized accessed some data earlier this month, which the plane manufacturer claimed was "mostly professional contact and IT identification details of some Airbus employees in Europe." "Investigations are ongoing to understand if any specific data was targeted; however we do know some personal data was accessed," Airbus said in its press release published on Wednesday. After detecting the security breach, the plan manufacturer started an investigation to determine the origin of the hack and to understand the f

The United States Department of Justice (DoJ) announced Wednesday its effort to "map and further disrupt" a botnet tied to North Korea that has infected numerous Microsoft Windows computers across the globe over the last decade. Dubbed Joanap , the botnet is believed to be part of " Hidden Cobra "—an Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) actors' group often known as Lazarus Group and Guardians of Peace and backed by the North Korean government. Hidden Cobra is the same hacking group that has been allegedly associated with the WannaCry ransomware menace in 2016, the SWIFT Banking attack in 2016, as well as Sony Motion Pictures hack in 2014. Dates back to 2009, Joanap is a remote access tool (RAT) that lands on a victim's system with the help an SMB worm called Brambul , which crawls from one computer to another by brute-forcing Windows Server Message Block (SMB) file-sharing services using a list of common passwords. Once there, Brambul downloads Jo

If you were a buyer of any online DDoS-for-hire service, you might be in trouble. After taking down and arresting the operators of the world's biggest DDoS-for-hire service last year, the authorities are now in hunt for customers who bought the service that helped cyber criminals launch millions of attacks against several banks, government institutions, and gaming industry. Europol has announced that British police are conducting a number of live operations worldwide to track down the users of the infamous Webstresser.org service that the authorities dismantled in April 2018. Launched in 2015, Webstresser let its customers rent the service for about £10 to launch Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks against their targets with little to no technical knowledge, which resulted in more than 4 million DDoS attacks. According to the Europol announcement published on Monday, the agency gained access to the accounts of over 151,000 registered Webstresser users last yea

Security researchers have discovered two separate malware campaigns, one of which is distributing the Ursnif data-stealing trojan and the GandCrab ransomware in the wild, whereas the second one is only infecting victims with Ursnif malware. Though both malware campaigns appear to be a work of two separate cybercriminal groups, we find many similarities in them. Both attacks start from phishing emails containing an attached Microsoft Word document embedded with malicious macros and then uses Powershell to deliver fileless malware. Ursnif is a data-stealing malware that typically steals sensitive information from compromised computers with an ability to harvest banking credentials, browsing activities, collect keystrokes, system and process information, and deploy additional backdoors. Discovered earlier last year, GandCrab is a widespread ransomware threat that, like every other ransomware in the market, encrypts files on an infected system and insists victims to pay a ransom

Beware! If you have downloaded PHP PEAR package manager from its official website in past 6 months, we are sorry to say that your server might have been compromised. Last week, the maintainers at PEAR took down the official website of the PEAR ( pear-php.net ) after they found that someone has replaced original PHP PEAR package manager (go-pear.phar) with a modified version in the core PEAR file system. Though the PEAR developers are still in the process of analyzing the malicious package, a security announcement published on January 19, 2019, confirmed that the allegedly hacked website had been serving the installation file contaminated with the malicious code to download for at least half a year. The PHP Extension and Application Repository (PEAR) is a community-driven framework and distribution system that offers anyone to search and download free libraries written in PHP programming language. These open-source libraries (better known as packages) allows developers to ea

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has today issued an "emergency directive" to all federal agencies ordering IT staff to audit DNS records for their respective website domains, or other agency-managed domains, within next 10 business days. The emergency security alert came in the wake of a series of recent incidents involving DNS hijacking , which security researchers with "moderate confidence" believe originated from Iran. Domain Name System (DNS) is a key function of the Internet that works as an Internet's directory where your device looks up for the server IP addresses after you enter a human-readable web address (e.g., thehackernews.com). What is DNS Hijacking Attack? DNS hijacking involves changing DNS settings of a domain, redirecting victims to an entirely different attacker-controlled server with a fake version of the websites they are trying to visit, often with an objective to steal users' data. "The attacker alter

Since most security tools also keep an eye on the network traffic to detect malicious IP addresses, attackers are increasingly adopting infrastructure of legitimate services in their attacks to hide their malicious activities. Cybersecurity researchers have now spotted a new malware attack campaign linked to the notorious DarkHydrus APT group that uses Google Drive as its command-and-control (C2) server. DarkHydrus first came to light in August last year when the APT group was leveraging the open-source Phishery tool to carry out credential-harvesting campaign against government entities and educational institutions in the Middle East. The latest malicious campaign conducted by the DarkHydrus APT group was also observed against targets in the Middle East, according to reports published by the 360 Threat Intelligence Center ( 360TIC ) and Palo Alto Networks. This time the advanced threat attackers are using a new variant of their backdoor Trojan, called RogueRobin , which i

Ukrainian Police have this week busted out two separate groups of hackers involved in carrying out DDoS attacks against news agencies and stealing money from Ukrainian citizens, respectively. According to the authorities, the four suspected hackers they arrested last week , all aged from 26 to 30 years, stole more than 5 million Hryvnia (around 178,380 USD) from the bank accounts of Ukrainian citizens by hacking into their computers. The suspects carried out their attacks by scanning vulnerable computers on the Internet and infecting them with a custom Trojan malware to take full remote control of the systems. The group then apparently enabled key-logging on the infected computers in an attempt to capture banking credentials of victims when the owners of those infected computers fill in that information on any banking site or their digital currency wallet. Once getting a hold on the victims banking and financial data, the attackers logged into their online banking accounts