JavaScript | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

A cybersecurity researcher today disclosed technical details of multiple high severity vulnerabilities he discovered in WhatsApp, which, if exploited, could have allowed remote attackers to compromise the security of billions of users in different ways. When combined together, the reported issues could have even enabled hackers to remotely steal files from the Windows or Mac computer of a victim using the WhatsApp desktop app by merely sending a specially crafted message. Discovered by PerimeterX researcher Gal Weizman and tracked as CVE-2019-18426 , the flaws specifically resided in WhatsApp Web, a browser version of the world's most popular messaging application that also powers its Electron-based cross-platform apps for desktop operating systems. In a blog post published today, Weizman revealed that WhatsApp Web was vulnerable to a potentially dangerous open-redirect flaw that led to persistent cross-site scripting attacks, which could have been triggered by sending a s

In an effort to mitigate a large class of potential cross-site scripting issues in Firefox, Mozilla has blocked execution of all inline scripts and potentially dangerous eval-like functions for built-in "about: pages" that are the gateway to sensitive preferences, settings, and statics of the browser. Firefox browser has 45 such internal locally-hosted about pages , some of which are listed below that you might have noticed or used at some point: about:config — panel to modify Firefox preferences and critical settings. about:downloads — your recent downloads done within Firefox. about:memory — shows the memory usage of Firefox. about:newtab — the default new tab page. about:plugins — lists all your plugins as well as other useful information. about:privatebrowsing — open a new private window. about:networking — displays networking information. To be noted, these changes do not affect how websites from the Internet work on the Firefox browser, but going forwar

Imagine a world where the software that powers your favorite apps, secures your online transactions, and keeps your digital life could be outsmarted and taken over by a cleverly disguised piece of code. This isn't a plot from the latest cyber-thriller; it's actually been a reality for years now. How this will change – in a positive or negative direction – as artificial intelligence (AI) takes on a larger role in software development is one of the big uncertainties related to this brave new world. In an era where AI promises to revolutionize how we live and work, the conversation about its security implications cannot be sidelined. As we increasingly rely on AI for tasks ranging from mundane to mission-critical, the question is no longer just, "Can AI  boost cybersecurity ?" (sure!), but also "Can AI  be hacked? " (yes!), "Can one use AI  to hack? " (of course!), and "Will AI  produce secure software ?" (well…). This thought leadership article is about the latter. Cydrill  (a

Are you using Komodo's Agama Wallet to store your KMD and BTC cryptocurrencies? Were your funds also unauthorisedly transferred overnight to a new address? If yes, don't worry, it's probably safe, and if you are lucky, you will get your funds back. Here's what exactly happened… Komodo, a cryptocurrency project and developer of Agama wallet, adopted a surprisingly unique way to protect its customers' funds. The company hacked its customers and unauthorisedly transferred nearly 8 million KMD and 96 Bitcoins from their cryptocurrency wallets to a new address owned by the company. Why? To secure funds of its customers from hackers. This may sound weird, but it's true. Komodo recently learned about a malicious open source, third-party JavaScript library that the company was using in its Agama Wallet app. The library, named "electron-native-notify," two months ago received a update from its anonymous author who included a secret backdoo

Shortly after Microsoft announced support for custom JavaScript functions in Excel, someone demonstrated what could possibly go wrong if this feature is abused for malicious purposes. As promised last year at Microsoft's Ignite 2017 conference, the company has now brought custom JavaScript functions to Excel to extend its capabilities for better work with data. Functions are written in JavaScript for Excel spreadsheets currently runs on various platforms, including Windows, macOS, and Excel Online, allowing developers to create their own powerful formulae. But we saw it coming: Security researcher Charles Dardaman leveraged this feature to show how easy it is to embed the infamous in-browser cryptocurrency mining script from CoinHive inside an MS Excel spreadsheet and run it in the background when opened. "In order to run Coinhive in Excel, I followed Microsoft's official documentation and just added my own function," Dardaman said . Here is an official doc

The world's popular torrent download website, The Pirate Bay , has again been in a new controversy—this time over secretly planting an in-browser cryptocurrency miner on its website that utilizes its visitors' CPU processing power in order to mine digital currencies. The Pirate Bay is the most popular and most visited file-sharing website predominantly used to share copyrighted material free of charge. The site has usually been in the news for copyright infringement by movie studios, music producers and software creators. The Pirate Bay has recently been caught generating revenue by secretly utilizing CPU power of its millions of visitors to mine a Bitcoin alternative called Monero without their knowledge. The modern Internet depends on advertising revenue to survive, which apparently sometimes spoils users' experience. But The Pirate Bay is trying to choose a different approach. Visitors to the Pirate Bay recently discovered a JavaScript-based cryptocurrency mine

Here's New Year's first Ransomware: Ransom32 . A new Ransomware-as-a-service, dubbed Ransom32 , has been spotted that for the first time uses a ransomware written in JavaScript to infect Mac, Windows as well as Linux machines. Ransom32 allows its operators to deploy the malware very quickly and easily. It has a dashboard that enables operators to designate their Bitcoin addresses to which the ransom can be sent. The dashboard also shows stats about how much Bitcoins they have made. In short, this new ransomware-as-a-service is so simple, and efficient at the same time, that anyone can download and distribute his/her own copy of the ransomware executable as long as he/she have a Bitcoin address. The copy of Ransom32 was first analysed by Emsisoft, which found that the new ransomware family, which embedded in a self-extracting WinRAR archive, is using the NW.js platform for infiltrating the victims' computers, and then holding their files by encrypting the

Open Source is the Future of the computer science world! On Wednesday, the popular coding website GitHub shared a graph that gives a closer look at the popularity of different programming languages used on its code sharing website that lets anyone edit, store, and collaborate on software code. Since its launch in 2008, GitHub saw various programming languages picking up momentum, as shown in the graph below. An insight into what GitHub is… GitHub is a web-based repository that operates on the functionality of a 'Git,' which is strictly a command-line tool. With 10 Million users as of today, the platform has become the primary source of housing open source software that is free of cost available to the world at large. A look at the picture of programming trends on GitHub over recent years is actually a look at how the computer world is evolving. Top 10 Programming Languages Here are the Top 10 Programming Languages on GitHub today: JavaS

Trusteer researcher Tanya Shafir   has recently identified an active configuration of TorRAT targeting Twitter users. Other than  spreading ideas on the most popular social networks, now cyber criminals are spreading  malware . The malware launches a Man-in-the-Browser (MitB) attack through the browser of infected PCs, gaining access to the victim's Twitter account to create malicious tweets.  Because the malware creates malicious tweets and sends them through a compromised account of a trusted person or organization being followed, the tweets seem to be genuine. Those tweets contain malicious links and they read : " Our new King William will earn even more than Beatrix. Check his salary" or "Beyonce falls during the Super Bowl concert, very funny!!!! " At this time the attack is targeting the Dutch market. The malware spreading via the online social networking service, used as a financial malware to gain access to user credentials and target their financial transactions. The a

Once again Google Security Team Shoot itself in the foot. Ansuman Samantaray , an Indian penetration tester discovered a small, but creative Security flaw in Google drive that poses phishing threat to million of Google users was ignored  by Google Security team by replying that," It is just a mare phishing attempt,not a bug in Google ". According to Ansuman , he reported a JavaScript Script Execution vulnerability in Google Drive Files on 20th December 2012 to Google Security Team and but Google rejected the report on 21st December. Ability to execute malicious script through Google drive files poses security threats, not just phishing attack, but an attacker able to extends the attack to malware spreading, etc. The flaw exist in the way Google Drive preview the documents in the browser. Online preview of the files executing code written in doc files as HTML/JavaScript just by changing the value of a parameter called " export " in the URL. ie.  

Mozilla's Firefox OS, the mobile operating system from the company that makes the Firefox browser build entirely on open web standards and having ability to beat Android or iOS.  Firefox OS is Mozilla's ambitious attempt to build an operating system that brings more openness to the walled gardens of Apple's iOS and Google's Android. New Operating Systems for Smartphones Its a new mobile operating system built entirely using open web standards and with codename  Boot to Gecko , means a Linux distro that automatically loads Gecko or in more simple words apps for Firefox OS are basically just websites written in HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. The Web is the Platform, which means not only taking down barriers, but also a lighter system that makes your apps run smoothly and an optimal battery life. Firefox OS written with basic HTML, CSS, and JavaScript Mozilla has also added some extra hooks to Firefox OS that allow developers to access a phone's hardware via HTML