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Chinese-Speaking Hacker Group Targets Human Rights Studies in Middle East

Chinese-Speaking Hacker Group Targets Human Rights Studies in Middle East

Sep 05, 2024 Malware / Human Rights
Unnamed government entities in the Middle East and Malaysia are the target of a persistent cyber campaign orchestrated by a threat actor known as Tropic Trooper since June 2023. "Sighting this group's [Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures] in critical governmental entities in the Middle East, particularly those related to human rights studies, marks a new strategic move for them," Kaspersky security researcher Sherif Magdy said . The Russian cybersecurity vendor said it detected the activity in June 2024 upon discovering a new version of the China Chopper web Shell, a tool shared by many Chinese-speaking threat actors for remote access to compromised servers, on a public web server hosting an open-source content management system (CMS) called Umbraco. The attack chain is designed to deliver a malware implant named Crowdoor , a variant of the SparrowDoor backdoor documented by ESET back in September 2021. The efforts were ultimately unsuccessful. Tropic Trooper, also...
DHS Orders U.S. Federal Agencies to Audit DNS Security for Their Domains

DHS Orders U.S. Federal Agencies to Audit DNS Security for Their Domains

Jan 23, 2019
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...
Want to Grow Vulnerability Management into Exposure Management? Start Here!

Want to Grow Vulnerability Management into Exposure Management? Start Here!

Dec 05, 2024Attack Surface / Exposure Management
Vulnerability Management (VM) has long been a cornerstone of organizational cybersecurity. Nearly as old as the discipline of cybersecurity itself, it aims to help organizations identify and address potential security issues before they become serious problems. Yet, in recent years, the limitations of this approach have become increasingly evident.  At its core, Vulnerability Management processes remain essential for identifying and addressing weaknesses. But as time marches on and attack avenues evolve, this approach is beginning to show its age. In a recent report, How to Grow Vulnerability Management into Exposure Management (Gartner, How to Grow Vulnerability Management Into Exposure Management, 8 November 2024, Mitchell Schneider Et Al.), we believe Gartner® addresses this point precisely and demonstrates how organizations can – and must – shift from a vulnerability-centric strategy to a broader Exposure Management (EM) framework. We feel it's more than a worthwhile read an...
Australia Passes Anti-Encryption Bill—Here's Everything You Need To Know

Australia Passes Anti-Encryption Bill—Here's Everything You Need To Know

Dec 07, 2018
Australia's House of Representatives has finally passed the "Telecommunications Assistance and Access Bill 2018," also known as the Anti-Encryption Bill , on Thursday that would now allow law enforcement to force Google, Facebook, WhatsApp, Signal, and other tech giants to help them access encrypted communications. The Australian government argues the new legislation is important for national security and an essential tool to help law enforcement and security agencies fight serious offenses such as crime, terrorist attacks, drug trafficking, smuggling, and sexual exploitation of children. Since the bill had support from both major parties (the Coalition and Labor), the upper house could vote in support of the Assistance and Access Bill to make it law, which is expected to come into effect immediately during the next session of parliament in early 2019. Although the new legislation does not properly clarify specifics around the potential power that the Assistance ...
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Russia has never extradited anyone and will not extradite Snowden to US

Russia has never extradited anyone and will not extradite Snowden to US

Jul 26, 2013
A spokesman for President Vladimir Putin says, " Russia has never extradited anyone, and will not extradite ,". Moscow security agency FSB is in talks with the FBI over Snowden , but the whistleblower will not be extradited to the US. The Russian immigration ministry granted Snowden a document this week that would allow him to leave the transit area of the Moscow airport, where he has been confined for a month, and live in Russia for up to a year. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that if Snowden releases any more of the materials, Russia will not grant him temporary asylum . " Snowden has information enough to cause more damage to the U.S. government in a single minute than any other person has ever had in the history of the United States ," The Guardian reporter said. Russian President is not handling the case of the former CIA employee Edward Snowden, " Snowden has not filed any requests that would need to be considered by the head of stat...
FISA Court renews NSA surveillance programs exposed by Snowden

FISA Court renews NSA surveillance programs exposed by Snowden

Jul 20, 2013
The secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) gave the green light to the Obama administration by r enewing the government's authority Friday to continue the collection of millions of Americans' telephone records. The order by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has been in place for years but must be renewed every three months and this month it was  expired on July 19.  The Obama administration maintains Congress shouldn't be surprised by the programs. NSA surveillance programs were  exposed in the month of June,  by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden .  He has been charged with espionage and remains in diplomatic limbo at the Moscow airport after seeking temporary asylum. President Barack Obama says the government is not listening in on calls, and  Intelligence officials say they have helped disrupt dozens of terrorist attacks, and target only foreign suspects outside the United Stat...
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will not leave Ecuadorian Embassy in London

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will not leave Ecuadorian Embassy in London

Jun 18, 2013
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says he will not leave the Ecuadorian Embassy after Ecuador's foreign minister has said its embassy in London will continue to provide political asylum to Julian Assange. He was staying in embassy  for the past year to avoid extradition to Sweden. The Australian will be arrested if he steps outside the building, so the jet-set lifestyle has been replaced by a single room and his laptop.  Assange said he fears Sweden would allow him to be extradited to the United States to face potential charges relating to WikiLeaks releases of sensitive diplomatic and defense communications. So as of tomorrow, he decided to spent one year inside the embassy, even if sex charges against him are dropped. " The strong view of my US lawyer is that there is already a sealed indictment which means I would be arrested, unless the British Government gave information or guarantees that would grant me safe passage ," he said. Assange ...
Philippines President's website defaced by Anonymous Hackers

Philippines President's website defaced by Anonymous Hackers

Mar 14, 2013
Philippines-Malaysia Cyber war over Sabah land dispute take another turn, when Philippines hackers deface their own President  Benigno Aquino III   website early Thursday, and criticized how the President has been handling the conflict in Sabah. The hacker group left a message to the president on the defaced Web site and links to Facebook profiles of the hackers, as shown in screenshot taken. Hacker managed to direct hack into other government websites also including: https://www.gdelpilar.gov.ph https://www.calasiao.gov.ph https://bolinao.gov.ph https://mauban.gov.ph https://apayao.gov.ph https://www.mauban.gov.ph https://www.drd.pnp.gov.ph Complete message from Anonymous Philippines reads: Greetings, President Aquino! We have watched how you signed into law a bill that endangers and tramples upon the citizenship  freedom of speech and expression. Now, we are silent witnesses as to how you are mishandling the Sabah issue. We did not engage the Malay...
Chinese Government targets Uyghur group by malware attack

Chinese Government targets Uyghur group by malware attack

Feb 14, 2013
An old vulnerability in Word for OS X is being used in increasing levels of attacks,  probably government-sponsored hacking programs  against Uyghur group, including Tibetans, NGOs and human rights organizations. A number of attacks have been seen directed at the World Uyghur Congress, a Munich-based organization that promotes human rights. Potential victims are often tricked by so-called spear phishing attacks, the targets receive an e-mail with a subject relevant to their interests, and a Word document attached.  When they open the document, TinySHell exploits a vulnerability and then infects the computer. Exploit allows long-term monitoring or even control of the compromised system though a backdoor it installs. The malware is configured to connect to command and control servers that have been used for years in APT attacks. All the attacks use exploits for the CVE-2009-0563 (Microsoft Office) vulnerability and The backdoor also includes hard...
Former military adviser urged Obama to pardon Gary McKinnon

Former military adviser urged Obama to pardon Gary McKinnon

Feb 06, 2013
John Arquilla, a professor at the U.S. Naval Academy and former military adviser has urged President Barack Obama to pardon the British computer hacker Gary McKinnon and to recruit master hackers to US Cyber Command. Gary McKinnon faced extradition for hacking into Pentagon and Nasa systems, and but they believe that he could encourage other hackers to become government cyber warriors. ' If the notion of trying to attract master hackers to our cause is ever to take hold, this might be just the right case in which President Obama should consider using his power to pardon, ' says Arquilla. China is widely thought to employ hackers, so the Pentagon aims to expand its cyber security personnel from 900 to 4,900 in the next few years and Hackers are frequently employed by security firms after serving sentences and Arquilla suggest Obama to do so. ' Today's masters of cyberspace are not unlike the German rocket scientists who, after World War II, were so...
UK Intelligence recruiting brilliant minds for eavesdropping social networks

UK Intelligence recruiting brilliant minds for eavesdropping social networks

Nov 02, 2012
Government eavesdropping and security agency GCHQ is developing new tools to sift through them for nuggets of useful data from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest. All of these are the source of valuable intelligence that the UK's intelligence agencies want to know about. During a visit to Bletchley Park, UK foreign secretary William Hague launched a 'spy drive' to recruit staff for GCHQ and other intelligence agencies, a National Cipher Challenge for schools, and a £480,000 grant to the home of WW2 code-breaking. " The work involves devising algorithms, testing them and general problem solving in the broad field of language and text processing. This pioneering research work is open to specialist in mathematical/statistics, computational linguists (eg speech recognition and/or language processing) and language engineering ." Job Description explains . " Using data-mining techniques, you will help us to find meaningful patterns and relationships in large ...
Hacker leaks source code of NASA website belongs to US Government computer

Hacker leaks source code of NASA website belongs to US Government computer

Oct 26, 2012
A Hacker going by name - " LegitHacker97 " claiming that he successfully access a NASA subdomain website , that actually belongs to a US Government computer, as mentioned on homepage. ***** WARNING ***** This is a US Government computer Hacker also dump a  82.51 MB (compressed or 337 MB uncompressed) Archive five days ago on internet, includes the complete source code of the website (in ASP). After watching the pastebin note , we tried to contact the hacker for collecting more information about the hack. Hacker describe The Hacker News via mail that," This was hacked by a major LFI vulnerability which allowed me to upload my own shell (backdoor to the site) and I took advantage of it by downloading all off the website ! ". He add ," But now vulnerability is fixed ". I download the dump from the link posetd by hacker in pastebin note and tried to match the files with NASA website and subdomains, and found that these file actually belo...
CBI Website Hacked by Pakistani Cyber Army, NIC Security Questioned

CBI Website Hacked by Pakistani Cyber Army, NIC Security Questioned

Dec 06, 2010
The recent hacking of the Central Bureau of Investigation's (CBI) website by a group called the 'Pakistani Cyber Army' has raised concerns about the security measures of servers maintained by the National Informatics Centre (NIC). The NIC is responsible for government server maintenance. While the NIC remains silent on the issue, sources in the security establishment suggest that the NIC's safety mechanisms were inadequate. Several reminders had been sent to NIC, urging them to upgrade their hardware. The CBI's official website was hacked on the night of December 3rd to 4th. The CBI has registered a case against unknown individuals in connection with the hacking. A report titled "Shadows in the Cloud" by a Canadian think-tank, comprising the "Information Warfare Monitor" and "Shadows Server," earlier this year indicated evidence of a cyber-espionage network. This network compromised government, business, and academic computer systems ...
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