The Hacker News — Cyber Security, Hacking, Technology News

OurMine is in headlines once again—this time for defacing WikiLeaks website.

The notorious hacking group, OurMine, is known for breaching into high-profile figures and companies' social media accounts, including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, HBO, Game of Thrones and Sony's PlayStation Network (PSN).

According to screenshots circulating on Twitter, the official website of WikiLeaks has reportedly been defaced by the OurMine hacking group, who left a message on the site, as shown above.

WikiLeaks is a whistleblowing website that since March, has been revealing top CIA hacking secrets under Vault 7, including the agency's ability to break into different mobile and desktop platforms, security camera live video streams, air-gap computers and many more.

There is no indication of WikiLeaks servers and website been compromised, instead it seems their website has been redirected to a hacker-controlled server using DNS poisoning attack.

In DNS poisoning attack, also known as DNS spoofing, an attacker gets control of the DNS server and changes a value of name-servers in order to divert Internet traffic to a malicious IP address.

Shortly after the defacement, the site administrators regained access to their DNS server and at the time of writing, the WikiLeaks website is back online from its official legitimate servers.

OurMine is a Saudi Arabian group of hackers which claims to be a "white hat" security firm.

The group markets itself by taking over social media accounts of high-profile targets and then encourages them to contact the hacking group to buy its IT security service in an effort to protect themselves from future cyber attacks.

Can you believe that it's been 6 years since we first launched The Hacker News?

Yes, The Hacker News is celebrating its sixth anniversary today on 1st November.

We started this site on this same day back in 2010 with the purpose of providing a dedicated platform to deliver latest infosec news and threat updates for Hackers, Security researchers, technologists, and nerds.

Times flies when you are having fun!

The Hacker News has become one of the World's popular and trusted Hacking News channel that went from ~100,000 readers to more than 10 million monthly readers — all because of THN readers high enthusiasm.

In this short span of time, The Hacker News has achieved a series of milestone:

• The Hacker News Facebook page is going to hit 1.5 Million Followers,
• More than 1.6 Million followers on Google Plus+,
• Over 200,000 Email Subscribers,
• And around 307,000 Twitter Followers.

What's more? The Twitter Account of The Hacker News became officially verified (yes, that blue tick) by Twitter.

We don't cover everything, never did, never could, we just cover the things that are important to our readers and impact a large audience. That's the actual difference between The Hacker News and a full-fledged News Outlet.

Most importantly, The Hacker News thanks all of its readers for the support and trust, as it continues to grow and serve this community.

Regardless of how frequent you visit our site, whether you are a regular reader who reads every since article or just occasionally comes, whether you support our site by sharing articles, or being a silent reader, THN would not be there and probably have never achieved these milestones, if you were not there.

THN Deals Store Launched

In the special occasion of this year's Anniversary, The Hacker News also launched THN Deals Store last week, which is packed with great deals on everything from Online Cyber Security and Hacking Courses to gear and gadgets, downloadable Security Products, privacy services, IT Certification Preparation Courses, programming courses and even drones.

So, if you are searching for a great deal for anything you need, The Hacker News welcomes you to THN Deals Store where you can get incredible discounts on anything you need.

• Deal 1 — You can save 96% on a Computer Hacker Professional Certification Package, which offers you the content of over 60 hours to help pass any of five professional hacker certifications, including CEH, CISSP, CHFI, CISM and CISA.
• Deal 2 — Another such great deal is Lifetime subscription for Windscribe VPN. You can now protect your online privacy, unblock unwanted websites, hide your identity, and access geo-blocked content from anywhere. THN Deals offers our readers 1-year Pro subscription of Windscribe VPN at 82% discount and Windscribe VPN Lifetime Pro Subscription at a massive 94% discount.

What Next?

We at THN are working on a new platform that will completely transform the way we report and deliver Hacking and Cyber Security updates today.

As things are changing so quickly on the Internet, THN's new platform will provide not only hacking and cyber security updates but also technology news, and knowledgeable content to our readers.

This is just the beginning, as there are many, many more exciting years ahead!

1. Quantum Teleportation — Scientists Teleported Quantum Data over 60 Miles

2. Pirate Bay co-founder Gottfrid Svartholm is a Free Man Again

3. Microsoft Responds by Not Addressing Windows 10 Spying

4. Microsoft's Love for Open Source

5. Unpatched WinRAR Flaw Affects 500 Million Users

6. TrueCrypt Encryption Software Affected by Two Critical Flaws

• CVE-2015-7358: Allows attackers to gain access to a running process and get full administrative privileges.
• CVE-2015-7359: Allows attackers to impersonate as an authenticated user.

7. One Billion Android Users are at Risk of Stagefright Bug 2.0

8. Amazon Employee bought 'Google.com' Just for $12

9. Data Breach Week

• Telecommunication giant T-Mobile – Over 15 Million Users Affected
• Crowdfunding website Patreon – Over 2.3 Million Users Affected
• US brokerage firm Scottrade – Nearly 5 Million Users Affected

10. Design Flaws Make Drones Vulnerable to Cyber-Attacks

11. AdBlock Extension has been Sold to an 'Unknown Buyer'

Good news, we bring an amazing deal of this month for our readers, where you can get hacking courses for as little as you want to pay and if you beat the average price you will receive the fully upgraded hacking bundle!

1. Microsoft Developed its Own Linux Operating System

2. D-Link Publishes its Private Code-Signing Keys on the Internet

3. Unhackable Bug-Free MicroKernel – SeL4

4. AVG Antivirus Plans to Collect & Sell Your Personal Data to Advertisers

5. Aw, Snap! This 16-Character String can Crash Your Google Chrome

6. WIN $1 Million Bounty For Hacking the New iOS 9 iPhone

7. 4000 Malicious iOS Store Apps Linked to CIA?

8. Here's How Facebook 'Dislike or Empathy Button' Would Look Like

9. How to Access Private Photos and Contacts in iOS Device Without a Passcode

10. Fingerprints of 5.6 Million Federal Employees Stolen in OPM Hack

11. Lenovo Caught Pre-Installing Spyware on its Laptops

12.China developed a Linux OS that totally Looks Like Windows XP

13. The World's First $9 Computer has Started Shipping

14. North America Runs Completely Out of IPv4 Internet Addresses

Log Out All Your Accounts in Just One Click

• Usually visit Internet Cafes for surfing Internet
• Surf the Internet using public Wi-Fi
• Use computers in office, libraries or PCs other than their own
• Have an odd habit of logging out of all their online accounts at the end of each day

Here's the List of Online Services Super Logout Logs Out  

• Amazon
• Google
• GitHub
• Gmail
• YouTube
• DropBox
• WordPress
• Skype
• Dozons more…

#5 Car Hacking

#6 Data Breach at US Government Office of Personnel Management

#7 Anthem Data Breach

#1 "Hacking Team" Data Breach

• Executive Emails
• Source codes for Hacking and Spyware Tools
• Zero-day exploits, including for Flash, Internet Explorer
• Government client list with date of purchase and amount paid

#2 Ashley Madison Data Breach

#3 The Sony Pictures Hack

#4 'Fappening' and 'Snappening'

Not even a Single Smartwatch Found to be 100 percent Safe

"As the adoption of Smartwatches accelerates, the platform will become vastly more attractive to those who would abuse that access, making it critical that we take precautions when transmitting personal data or connecting Smartwatches into corporate networks," Jason Schmitt, general manager at HP's Security Fortify said in a statement.

The study [PDF], no doubt, had included Smart watches by Apple, Pebble, Samsung and Sony, as it claims to have picked top 10 smartwatches.

Here's the list of issues reported by HP:

Here's How the Scam Works:

• Send another text message containing an unlock code to the registered phone.
• The victim receives the code with a text something like this: "This is Google. There has been unauthorized activity on your account. Please reply with your verification code."

• As soon as victim responds with the verification code, the email address is forfeited, and the attacker can log into victim’s Gmail account without detection.

This social engineering trick sounds so easy and requires almost no technical skills to get into anyone’s email account.

Most of us reply to the unknown phone calls and messages thinking it is from the company, as receiving messages and phone calls from companies is not something uncommon.

Always be Defensive to such Scams

CompTIA, a global provider of vendor-neutral IT certifications, offers a wide range of popular certifications such as A+, Network+, Cloud+, Linux+, and Security+ certifications [...]

"The builder Rakabulle application will create a stub and inject in its resource the target files to extract and execute. The stub is the little generate part of the program which is designed to extract from its resource the target files to a temporary location and execute. In our application the stub also got a part to inject in Explorer or Internet Explorer process and load custom made plugins.

• File binder, auto file extractor and executor.
• REM (Remote Code Execution), Execute code (Plugins) in target process (Explorer or Internet Explorer)
• Support 32 and 64 Process.
• The application is a 32bit Application (Soon we will compile the 64bit version)
• Support UPX compression for the stub (Without compression stub size is about 38KiB using pure Windows API no extra libraries; with compression stub size is approximately 16KiB) The UPX compression doesn’t change the way the application work only the final size.
• Support Windows startup.
• Doesn’t require administrative privileges.
• Plugins and File list support drag and drop.
• Support plugins with an open source example.
• The stub and the builder are coded using Unicode encoding.

THN Deals Store this week brings you the Cybersecurity Certification Mega Bundle, which will walk you through the skills and concepts you need to master three elite cybersecurity certification exams: CISA, CISM, and CISSP [...]

There's an extraordinary malware making rock-n-roll over the Internet and if you are one of the unlucky folks to cross its path, then it could make your computer unusable and you have to pay a few hundred Dollars to retrieve your important data back.

We have warned our readers in many previous articles about a nasty piece of Ransomware malware called 'CryptoLocker', which is targeting computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system.

The CryptoLocker Ransomware encrypts the files on a victim’s computer and issues an ultimatum - Pay up or lose your data. Users who are getting infected with CryptoLocker can see a message informing them that their computer is locked up and their files encrypted. It then asks them to make a ransom payment, which typically ranges between $100 and $700 or 2 Bitcoins, to get their files back.

Just yesterday I noticed on a forum that the criminals behind the CryptoLocker malware has recently launched a dedicated CryptoLocker decryption service website that allows victims to purchase the decryption key for their infected encrypted files.

Interestingly, Malware inside the system is asking for only 2 Bitcoins ($450 USD) for the decryption keys, whereas the newly launched service price has been significantly increased 10 Bitcoins i.e. Approx $2,100 USD.

Service is available on the website http://yocmvpiarwmfgyg.net/ or http://93.189.44.187/ (Russia based hosting server) and also accessible through the Tor network http://f2d2v7soksbskekh.onion/

Why Hackers has launched the Decryption Service ?

Currently almost all antivirus companies are on Red alert about CryptoLocker malware and they have released updates for their users, that can detect and remove the infection or the registry keys from the system which is actually required to pay the ransom and decryption process. So if malware will get deleted, neither victim will get the decryption keys ever, neither criminal will get paid for it.

So the criminal actors behind the CryptoLocker malware has launched the decryption service website, which is designed to look like a customer support site for victims.

How the Decryption Service works ?

The victim can upload one of its encrypted files on the service website, which will generate an order number. After uploading, a further order status page will display the date-time of infection and victim's public key.

It will then prompt the user to purchase the private key by paying 10 Bitcoins or approximately $2,200 USD. Once a payment is made, just after the confirmation, the website will allow the user to download a decryption private key and a decrypter tool. Which can be used to decrypt all CryptoLocker encrypted files on the system.

Another interesting fact about the service website is that, if the user has already paid the ransom amount, they will provide the private key and decrypter free of cost.

CryptoLocker Ransomware, A Global threat
CryptoLocker infections were found across different regions, including Europe Middle East, North America and Asia Pacific. Almost 64% victims are from the US.

There are different ways an individual or an organization can handle the CryptoLocker threat. Unfortunately, there is no known tool to decrypt the files encrypted by CryptoLocker, so always take Backup of important Files. Always ensure your system softwares and Antivirus product is up-to-date.

Antivirus firm Bitdefender has just released a tool to protect your files from CryptoLocker. You can Download Anti-CryptoLocker here.