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Spain's National Court ruled on Tuesday to extradite a 36-year-old Russian computer programmer, accused by American authorities of malicious hacking offences, to the United States, according to a court document. Peter Yuryevich Levashov , also known as Peter Severa, was arrested in April this year when he was travelling with his family to Barcelona, Spain from his home in Russia—a country without an extradition treaty with the United States—for his role in a huge computer botnet. However, since Levashov has previously worked with for Vladimir Putin's United Russia Party for ten years, he fears that the US authorities would torture him for information about his political work if sent there to face the charges against him. " If I go to the U.S., I will die in a year. They want to get information of a military nature and about the United Russia party ," RIA news agency quoted Levashov as saying. " I will be tortured, within a year I will be killed, or I wil

Mining cryptocurrencies can be a costly investment as it takes a monstrous amount of computing power, and thus hackers have started using malware that steals computing resources of computers it hijacks to make lots of dollars in digital currency. Security researchers at security firm ESET have spotted one such malware that infected hundreds of Windows web servers with a malicious cryptocurrency miner and helped cybercriminals made more than $63,000 worth of Monero (XMR) in just three months. According to a report published by ESET today, cybercriminals only made modifications to legitimate open source Monero mining software and exploited a known vulnerability in Microsoft IIS 6.0 to secretly install the miner on unpatched Windows servers. Although ESET's investigation does not identify the attackers, it reports that the attackers have been infecting unpatched Windows web servers with the cryptocurrency miner since at least May 2017 to mine 'Monero,' a Bitcoin-like

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

Nearly a year after the disclosure of the Dirty COW vulnerability that affected the Linux kernel, cybercriminals have started exploiting the vulnerability against Android users, researchers have warned. Publicly disclosed last year in October, Dirty COW was present in a section of the Linux kernel—a part of virtually every Linux distribution, including Red Hat, Debian, and Ubuntu—for years and was actively exploited in the wild. The vulnerability allows an unprivileged local attacker to gain root access through a race condition issue, gain access to read-only root-owned executable files, and permit remote attacks. However, security researchers from Trend Micro published a blog post on Monday disclosing that the privilege escalation vulnerability (CVE-2016-5195), known as Dirty COW, has now been actively exploited by a malware sample of ZNIU, detected as AndroidOS_ZNIU. This is the first time we have seen a malware sample to contain an exploit for the vulnerability designed

Are you sure the version of WhatsApp, or Skype, or VLC Player installed on your device is legitimate? Security researchers have discovered that legitimate downloads of several popular applications including WhatsApp, Skype, VLC Player and WinRAR have reportedly been compromised at the ISP level to distribute the infamous FinFisher spyware also known as FinSpy. FinSpy is a highly secret surveillance tool that has previously been associated with British company Gamma Group, a company that legally sells surveillance and espionage software to government agencies across the world. The spyware has extensive spying capabilities on an infected computer, including secretly conducting live surveillance by turning ON its webcams and microphones, recording everything the victim types with a keylogger, intercepting Skype calls, and exfiltration of files. In order to get into a target's machine, FinFisher usually uses various attack vectors, including spear phishing, manual installat

The group of unknown hackers who hijacked CCleaner's download server to distribute a malicious version of the popular system optimization software targeted at least 20 major international technology companies with a second-stage payload. Earlier this week, when the CCleaner hack was reported , researchers assured users that there's no second stage malware used in the massive attack and affected users can simply update their version in order to get rid of the malicious software. However, during the analysis of the hackers' command-and-control (C2) server to which the malicious CCleaner versions connected, security researchers from Cisco's Talos Group found evidence of a second payload (GeeSetup_x86.dll, a lightweight backdoor module) that was delivered to a specific list of computers based on local domain names. Affected Technology Firms  According to a predefined list mentioned in the configuration of the C2 server, the attack was designed to find computer

Security researchers have recently uncovered a cyber espionage group targeting aerospace, defence and energy organisations in the United States, Saudi Arabia and South Korea. According to the latest research published Wednesday by US security firm FireEye, an Iranian hacking group that it calls Advanced Persistent Threat 33 (or APT33) has been targeting critical infrastructure, energy and military sectors since at least 2013 as part of a massive cyber-espionage operation to gather intelligence and steal trade secrets. The security firm also says it has evidence that APT33 works on behalf of Iran's government. FireEye researchers have spotted cyber attacks aimed by APT33 since at least May 2016 and found that the group has successfully targeted aviation sector—both military and commercial—as well as organisations in the energy sector with a link to petrochemical. The APT33 victims include a U.S. firm in the aerospace sector, a Saudi Arabian business conglomerate with avi

Air-gapped computers that are isolated from the Internet and physically separated from local networks are believed to be the most secure computers which are difficult to infiltrate. However, these networks have been a regular target in recent years for researchers, who have been trying to demonstrate every possible attack scenarios that could compromise the security of such isolated networks. Security researchers from Ben-Gurion University in Israel have previously demonstrated several ways to extract sensitive information from air-gapped computers. Now, the same University researchers have discovered another way to steal confidential information from air-gapped computers – this time with the help of infrared-equipped CCTV cameras that are used for night vision. Researchers have developed a new attack scenario, dubbed aIR-Jumper, which includes an infected air-gapped computer (from which data needs to be stolen) and an infected CCTV network (that has at least one CCTV insta

The Recent discoveries of dangerous variants of the Android banking Trojan families, including Faketoken , Svpeng , and BankBot , present a significant threat to online users who may have their login credentials and valuable personal data stolen. Security researchers from SfyLabs have now discovered a new Android banking Trojan that is being rented on many dark websites for $500 per month, SfyLabs' researcher Han Sahin told The Hacker News. Dubbed Red Alert 2.0 , the Android banking malware has been fully written from scratch, unlike other banking trojans, such as BankBot and ExoBot, which were evolved from the leaked source code of older trojans. The Red Alert banking malware has been distributed via many online hacking forums since last few months, and its creators have continuously been updating the malware to add new functionalities in an effort to make it a dangerous threat to potential victims. Malware Blocks Incoming Calls from Banks Like most other Android b

If you have downloaded or updated CCleaner application on your computer between August 15 and September 12 of this year from its official website, then pay attention—your computer has been compromised. CCleaner is a popular application with over 2 billion downloads, created by Piriform and recently acquired by Avast, that allows users to clean up their system to optimize and enhance performance. Security researchers from Cisco Talos discovered that the download servers used by Avast to let users download the application were compromised by some unknown hackers, who replaced the original version of the software with the malicious one and distributed it to millions of users for around a month. This incident is yet another example of supply chain attack. Earlier this year, update servers of a Ukrainian company called MeDoc were also compromised in the same way to distribute the Petya ransomware , which wreaked havoc worldwide. Avast and Piriform have both confirmed that the W

A 17-year-old programming error has been discovered in Microsoft's Windows kernel that could prevent some security software from detecting malware at runtime when loaded into system memory. The security issue, described by enSilo security researcher Omri Misgav, resides in the kernel routine "PsSetLoadImageNotifyRoutine," which apparently impacts all versions of Windows operating systems since Windows 2000. Windows has a built-in API, called PsSetLoadImageNotifyRoutine, that helps programs monitor if any new module has been loaded into memory. Once registered, the program receives notification each time a module is loaded into memory. This notification includes the path to the module on disk. However, Misgav found that due to "caching behaviour, along with the way the file-system driver maintains the file name and a severe coding error," the function doesn't always return the correct path of the loaded modules. What's bad? It seems like Micro

Even after so many efforts by Google, malicious apps somehow managed to fool its Play Store's anti-malware protections and infect people with malicious software. The same happened once again when at least 50 apps managed to make its way onto Google Play Store and were successfully downloaded as many as 4.2 million times—one of the biggest malware outbreaks. Security firm Check Point on Thursday published a blog post revealing at least 50 Android apps that were free to download on official Play Store and were downloaded between 1 million and 4.2 million times before Google removed them. These Android apps come with hidden malware payload that secretly registers victims for paid online services, sends fraudulent premium text messages from victims' smartphones and leaves them to pay the bill—all without the knowledge or permission of users. Dubbed ExpensiveWall by Check Point researchers because it was found in the Lovely Wallpaper app, the malware comes hidden in fre

Microsoft has been expressing its love for Linux for almost three years now, and this love costs Microsoft an arm and a leg. Last year, Microsoft surprised everyone by announcing the arrival of Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) in Windows 10, which brings the Linux command-line shell to Windows , allowing users to run native Linux applications on Windows system without virtualization. However, security researchers from security firm Check Point Software Technologies have discovered a potential security issue with the WSL feature that could allow malware families designed for Linux target Windows computers—undetected by all current security software. The researchers devised a new attack technique, dubbed Bashware , that takes advantage of Windows' built-in WSL feature, which is now out of beta and is set to arrive in the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update in October 2017. Bashware Attack Undetectable by All Anti-Virus & Security Solutions According to CheckPoint rese

If you are using a Bluetooth enabled device, be it a smartphone, laptop, smart TV or any other IoT device, you are at risk of malware attacks that can carry out remotely to take over your device even without requiring any interaction from your side. Security researchers have just discovered total 8 zero-day vulnerabilities in Bluetooth protocol that impact more than 5.3 Billion devices—from Android, iOS, Windows and Linux to the Internet of things (IoT) devices—using the short-range wireless communication technology. Using these vulnerabilities, security researchers at IoT security firm Armis have devised an attack, dubbed BlueBorne , which could allow attackers to completely take over Bluetooth-enabled devices, spread malware, or even establish a "man-in-the-middle" connection to gain access to devices' critical data and networks without requiring any victim interaction. All an attacker need is for the victim's device to have Bluetooth turned on and obvious

The Shadow Brokers , a notorious hacking group that leaked several hacking tools from the NSA, is once again making headlines for releasing another NSA exploit—but only to its "monthly dump service" subscribers. Dubbed UNITEDRAKE , the implant is a "fully extensible remote collection system" that comes with a number of "plug-ins," enabling attackers to remotely take full control over targeted Windows computers. In its latest post, the hacking group announced a few changes to its monthly dump service and released encrypted files from the previous months as well. Notably, the September dump also includes an unencrypted PDF file, which is a user manual for the UNITEDRAKE (United Rake) exploit developed by the NSA. According to the leaked user manual, UNITEDRAKE is a customizable modular malware with the ability to capture webcam and microphone output, log keystrokes, access external drives and more in order to spy on its targets. The tool c

A team of hackers at the CIA, the Central Intelligence Agency, allegedly used a Windows hacking tool against its targets to gain persistent remote access. As part of its Vault 7 leaks , WikiLeaks today revealed details about a new implant developed by the CIA, dubbed AngelFire , to target computers running Windows operating system. AngelFire framework implants a persistent backdoor on the target Windows computers by modifying their partition boot sector. AngelFire framework consists five following components: 1. Solartime — it modifies the partition boot sector to load and execute the Wolfcreek (kernel code) every time the system boots up. 2. Wolfcreek — a self-loading driver (kernel code that Solartime executes) that loads other drivers and user-mode applications 3. Keystone — a component that utilizes DLL injection technique to execute the malicious user applications directly into system memory without dropping them into the file system. 4. BadMFS — a covert file

Security researchers at ESET have discovered a new malware campaign targeting consulates, ministries and embassies worldwide to spy on governments and diplomats. Active since 2016, the malware campaign is leveraging a new backdoor, dubbed Gazer , and is believed to be carried out by Turla advanced persistent threat (APT) hacking group that's been previously linked to Russian intelligence. Gazer, written in C++, the backdoor delivers via spear phishing emails and hijacks targeted computers in two steps—first, the malware drops Skipper backdoor, which has previously been linked to Turla and then installs Gazer components. In previous cyber espionage campaigns, the Turla hacking group used Carbon and Kazuar backdoors as its second-stage malware, which also has many similarities with Gazer, according to research [ PDF ] published by ESET. Gazer receives encrypted commands from a remote command-and-control server and evades detection by using compromised, legitimate website

If you're an engineer and use LabVIEW software to design machines or industrial equipments, you should be very suspicious while opening any VI (virtual instrument) file. LabVIEW, developed by American company National Instruments, is a visual programming language and powerful system-design tool that is being used worldwide in hundreds of fields and provides engineers with a simple environment to build measurement or control systems Security researchers from Cisco's Talos Security Intelligence have discovered a critical vulnerability in LabVIEW software that could allow attackers to execute malicious code on a target computer, giving them full control of the system. Identified as CVE-2017-2779 , the code execution vulnerability could be triggered by opening a specially crafted VI file, a proprietary file format used by LabVIEW. The vulnerability originates because of memory corruption issue in the RSRC segment parsing functionality of LabVIEW. Modulating the values