Iranian CERT | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Pokémon GO has become the world's most popular mobile game since its launch in July, but not everyone loves it. Pokémon GO has officially been banned in Iran. The Iranian High Council of Virtual Spaces – the country's official body that oversees online activity – has prohibited the use of the Pokémon GO app within the country due to unspecified " security concerns, " BBC reports . The Iranian council did not detail why the country has actually banned its citizen from playing the wildly popular game. Although many countries, including Russia and China, have expressed security concerns over the smash hit augmented reality game, Iran has become the first country to introduce an official ban of Pokémon GO. Since its launch, Pokémon GO has officially been released in more than 35 countries so far with over 100 Million downloads and continues to make an estimated $10 Million in daily revenue. Despite strict Internet restrictions in Iran, Pokémon fans have still

Last year, Iran blocked Telegram and many other social networks after their founders refused to help Iranian authorities to spy on their citizens. Now it looks like Iranian government wants tighter controls on all foreign messaging and social media apps operating in the country that will give the authorities a wider ability to monitor and censor its people. All foreign messaging and social media apps operating in Iran have one year to move 'data and activity' associated with Iranian citizens onto servers in Iran, Reuters reported . In order to comply with the new regulations, the companies would need to set up data centers in Iran within one year, but apps may lose a larger number of users by moving data onto Iranian servers. However, transferring data to Iran servers might not be enough, as some of the most popular messaging services like WhatsApp , Apple iMessage , and Telegram are offering end-to-end encrypted communication i.e. nobody in between, not even Whats

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Iranian CERT is sounding the alarm over another bit of data-deleting malware it's discovered on PCs in the country. Dubbed Batchwiper , the malware systematically wipes any drive partitions starting with the letters D through I Drive, along with any files stored on the Windows desktop of the user who is logged in when it's executed Why naming Batchwiper ?  The name was chosen because the malware is packed in a batch file. The malware initiates its data wiping routine on certain dates, the next one being Jan. 21 2013. However, the dates of Oct. 12, Nov. 12 and Dec. 12, 2012, were also found in the malware's configuration, suggesting that it may have been in distribution for at least two months. GrooveMonitor.exe is the original dropper, which is a self-extracting RAR file, once executed it extracts the following files: -- \WINDOWS\system32\SLEEP.EXE, md5: ea7ed6b50a9f7b31caeea372a327bd37 -- \WINDOWS\system32\jucheck.exe, md5: c4cd216112cbc5b8c046934843c579f6 -- \WIND