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Rovio's latest game, Bad Piggies, is now available via Google Play and the App Store, and as a PC and Mac download, but it has not yet made its way to the Chrome Web Store. These pigs can indeed fly - "Bad Piggies," the spinoff to the monster hit game "Angry Birds," set a new record by soaring to the top of the charts just three hours after release. Scammers have quickly taken advantage of this, introducing bogus versions of Bad Piggies into the Chrome Web Store that exist primarily to serve up in-browser advertisements thanks to a few plug-in permissions.  Barracuda Networks' lab today discovered a knock-off of the new and wildly popular "Bad Piggies" game which includes a phishing plug-in that may have injected an aggressive adware program into more than 82,000 Chrome browsers. The lack of a free online version for Bad Piggies left space for others to capitalize on the instant success of the game. Just days after the game launched, Jason Ding, a research sc...

A Dallas man linked to the worldwide hacking group Anonymous is accused of threatening to ruin an FBI agent's life in online postings. Barrett Lancaster Brown , 31, of Dallas, was indicted on one count of making an Internet threat, one count of conspiring to make restricted personal information of an employee of the United States publicly available, and one count of retaliation against a federal law enforcement officer. Serious charges, but not totally unexpected. Authorities raided Brown's apartment and arrested him last month while he was chatting online with Anonymous folks, but authorities wouldn't say why he was being detained until Thursday, when the U.S. attorney's office announced a three-count indictment against him. Brown's attorney, Jay Leiderman, has said he believes some of the charges stem from a YouTube video in which Brown rails against law enforcement. The indictment lists several tweets in which Brown talks about having a " plan ...

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...

At Black Hat security conference this year Cody Brocious demonstrated that How a simple Dry erase marker allows him to open an Onity hotel room door lock with an Arduino, which is totally James Bond. This is just kind of scary on multiple levels, the least being that dry erase markers are one of the most ordinary, non-suspicious objects we can think of. Watch the video below and be afraid – be very afraid. It has been refined to such a state where there are no dangling bits that come out of the marker, with a tip that looks totally normal sans any wires. All you need to do is touch the tip of the market to the door port, and you would have gained entry without mentioning a secret password. The story didn't stop there with Onity, the electronic door specialist in question, stepping in to introduce several measures to secure the doors. Brocious created a proof-of-concept device to show to security experts and press, but it was a bit crude. In order to build and ...

A group of hackers identifying itself as " Ghost Shell " said that he has leaked some 120,000 pieces of information from 100 universities across the globe including Harvard University and the University of Cambridge.  Today reports says that Servers at the University of Tokyo and four other major universities in Japan have apparently been attacked by hackers, and same hacker release IDs and passwords from databases. Officials at the University of Tokyo confirmed that the e-mail addresses, names and telephone numbers of people who appear to be students and professors were leaked. The information was stored on four computer servers at the university. The university has closed the sites from which the information was stolen. Officials at Kyoto and Tohoku universities said they had not confirmed whether personal information had been leaked. The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology has launched an investigation into the domestic cases following consul...

IRAN state official has said that Cyber attackers have targeted Iranian infrastructure and communications companies, disrupting the Internet across the country. " Yesterday we had a heavy attack against the country's infrastructure and communications companies which has forced us to limit the Internet ," Iran the world's no. 5 oil exporter, has tightened cyber security since its uranium enrichment centrifuges were hit in 2010 by the Stuxnet computer worm, which Tehran believes was planted by arch-adversaries Israel or the United States. Last week, the Islamic republic cut citizens' access to Gmail and the secure version of Google Search. Gmail has since been restored. Since sites such as Youtube and Facebook were used to organise mass anti-government protests against the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad back in 2009, the Iranian government has maintained one of the world's largest internet filters, blocking access to thousands of sites and IP address...

A new group of hackers, known as Bangladesh Hackers group called " 3xp1r3 cyber army "  has emerged from a collection of Arab countries and it looks like their call to cyber arms is based upon the controversial Nakoula Basseley film, Innocence of Muslims. They deface more than 1000 websites to show their protest against the movie. Hackers write message on deface page," Islam means Peace. We, the Muslims want peace all over the world. But you don't want to be stay in peace. Don't think us weak. We are more more and more stronger than you that you cannot imagine. By creating this video you have just insulted our "Islam" and our beloved Prophet Muhammad(s.a.w.) and break the peace between you and us. Now we are in your cyber space to destroy it. We will hit you until you stop hitting us and want marcy for your did. " Recently the six major American banks suffered denial-of-service attacks, in which  " Mrt. Izz ad-Din alQasssam Cyber Fighters  ...

" Warning: We believe state-sponsored attackers may be attempting to compromise your account or computer ." From last 3 months Google users were surprised to see this unusual notification at the top of their Gmail inbox, Google home page or Chrome browser. These warnings are not being shown because Google's internal systems have been compromised or because of a particular attack. " The company said that since it started alerting users to malicious probably state-sponsored activity on their computers in June, it has picked up thousands more instances of cyberattacks than it anticipated. "  NYtimes said. Google will now start sending out these messages to tens of thousands more people, as its methods for detecting suspicious activity have improved. Mike Wiacek, a manager on Google's information security team, said that since then, Google has improved its knowledge on attack methods and the groups behind them, and has started pushing out new alerts on Tuesday - ...

Blue Coat systems has undertaken detailed research into the use of 'malnets' by criminals to help support their various attacks in order to uncover the best ways to take down these systems. Botnet infections are commonly spread though compromised websites seeded with malicious scripts and promoted via black hat SEO tactics such as link farms. These malware networks, or malnets, pose a growing threat, The company said the number of malnets now stands at more than 1,500, an increase of 300% in the past six months, and it expects they will be, "responsible for two-thirds of all malicious cyberattacks in 2012." According to Blue Coat, the largest known malnet is Shnakule, which has used up to 5,005 malicious hosts or servers at any given time, depending on the capabilities needed at any given moment by its operators. Blue Coat believes that Shnakule is controlled by a single gang, and it's been used to serve up just about every type of known attack, including ...

More than 4.5 million DSL modems have been compromised as part of a sustained hacking campaign in Brazil, with the devices spreading malware and malicious web address redirects. According to the malware analyst at Kaspersky Lab in Brazil, Fabio Assolini. The vulnerability exploited by attackers allowed the use of a script to steal passwords and remotely access the configuration of modems. The attacks was described as " One firmware vulnerability, two malicious scripts, three hardware manufacturers, 35 malicious DNS servers, thousands of compromised ADSL modems, millions of victims. " According to Kaspersky, the Brazilian attackers sought to steal users' banking credentials by redirecting users to false versions of popular sites like Facebook or Google and prompting them to install malware. Some 40 DNS servers were set up outside Brazil too in order to serve forged requests for domain names belonging to Brazilian banks. Nakedsecurity writes,-- The first thing users ma...

I talked with Marius Corici Co-founder and CEO for Hack a Server project about Hackademy – eLearning Platform . What is HackAdemy? It is a free, eLearning platform specializing in InfoSec courses. HackAdemy is a place where people can learn and teach eachother about online security using principles of Open Knowledge . On HackAdemy all courses will respect three criteria: Free of charge, Free to distribute and Hands on only . Security can be learned Hands on only. Why did we do this? There are two major reasons that made me do this: Searching the internet I realized that there is no such product; a free eLearning platform focused on security industry. That struck me, and from there it wasn't hard to think of and implement an eLearning platform dedicated to InfoSec industry free to everybody. Second, The Internet grows faster than the World's capacity to provide well trained system administrators as well as well-trained coders/programmers regarding securit...

According to reports, some of the United States biggest financial institutions  including Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, and Bancorp were hit by a series of cyber attacks last week, by a group claiming Middle Eastern ties, that caused Internet blackouts and delays in online banking. The banks suffered denial-of-service attacks, in which hackers barrage a website with traffic until it is overwhelmed and shuts down. Such attacks, while a nuisance, are not technically sophisticated and do not affect a company's computer network or, in this case, funds or customer bank accounts. Hacktivists, calling themselves " Mrt. Izz ad-Din alQasssam Cyber Fighters ," attacked Wells Fargo and posted on Pastebin that U.S. Bancorp and PNC Financial Services Group are next. The group said it had attacked the banks in retaliation for an anti-Islam video that mocks the Prophet Muhammad. It also pledged to continue to attack American credit and financial in...

A ban on the use of pen drives has not been able to safeguard cyber security as it has now been labeled as a major threat in defence forces, the Army officials said. The use of pen drives as an easy-to-carry storage device has increased in the recent past and internal reports have confirmed that over 70 percent cyber security breaches in the armed forces are due to their unauthorised use " These pen drives, which are mostly manufactured in China, have emerged as a big threat to our cyber security systems ," they said. Generally it is found that officials use pen drive to store official data for use at their personal computers but from there, it is transmitted from their IP addresses to hackers from the 'malware' present in the pen drives. About a couple of years ago, a Major posted in Andaman and Nicobar Islands was apprehended as it was found that sensitive data was being transferred from his computer.  However, it later emerged that his system had been hacked and...

It's a fact that as smartphones get more capable, the possibilities for their misuse also increase. They're already exploited by crooks to swipe personal information, but a new Android app created by the U.S. Navy is on another level entirely. It's a scary piece of malware called " PlaceRaider " that was developed by the US Naval Surface Warfare center and for now it is being viewed as just a proof of concept. According to the MIT Technology Review, researchers at Indiana University and the Naval Surface Warfare Center have developed a new form of malware designed to record and reconstruct a victim's environment. They has just worked out how to infect a mobile phone with a Trojan that can take photos without you knowing anything about it and send sensor data back to a server. The data are used to construct a 3D model which can be used not only to perform the reconnaissance necessary to break in, but also to steal confidential information such as bank details. O...

Raphael Mudge (Creator of Cobalt Strike ) announced Another Advance Payload for Cobalt Strike called " Beacon ". In a conversation with The Hacker News  Raphael said " A big gap in the penetration tester's toolbox are covert command and control options, especially for long engagements. Beacon is a new feature in Cobalt Strike to remedy this problem ." Cobalt Strikes's graphical user interface offers direct control of the 700+ exploits and advanced features in the open source Metasploit Framework. Beacon is a Cobalt Strike payload for long-term asynchronous command and control of compromised hosts. It works like other Metasploit Framework payloads. You may embed it into an executable, add it to a document, or deliver it with a client-side exploit. Beacon downloads tasks using HTTP requests. You may configure Beacon to connect to multiple domains. For extra stealth, Beacon may use DNS requests to check if a task is available. This limits the comm...

Researchers at Security Explorations disclosed a new vulnerability in Java that could provide an attacker with control of a victim's computer. The researchers have confirmed that Java SE 5 – Update 22, Java SE 6 – Update 35, and Java SE 7 Update 7 running on fully patched Windows 7 32-bit operating systems are susceptible to the attack. This Flaw allowing a malicious hackers to gain complete control of a victim's machine through a rigged website. The affected web browsers are Safari 5.1.7, Opera 12.02, Chrome 21.0.1180.89, Firefox 15.0.1, and Internet Explorer 9.0.8112.16421. Though Oracle released a fix for the most critical vulnerabilities reported by Security Explorations on August 30th, the security firm quickly found another flaw in that fix that would allow a hacker to bypass the patch. That bug in Oracle's patch still hasn't been patched, leaving users vulnerable to both the new flaw and the previous attack. " We hope that news about one billion users of Oracle Java SE so...

The founders over at FixMeStick sent us a pair of their latest devices to check out. The FixMeStick is, in short, a malware removal device for dummies . The FixMeStick is a bootable USB device running Lubuntu and integrates three separate anti-virus scanners from Kaspersky Labs, Sophos, and GFI. While our readers will probably never need it for themselves, we may all wish we had something like this for our non-technical friends and family, or the 9 million PCs infected with ZeroAccess botnet . The FixMeStick does a lot of things that nobody else does on a bootable USB, and let's be real, removing rootkits is never pleasant or easy. Why I Want it For My Parents Linux: the FixMeStick is a Linux-based device that runs before Windows boots enabling it to remove infections without the infection getting stealthy or playing war with my parent's anti-virus software. N-Scanner architecture: contains an integrated multi-scanner composed of three engines: Kaspersky Labs, Sophos, and GFI's VI...

Microsoft has confirmed reports that a zero-day vulnerability in its Internet Explorer browser is being actively attacked in the wild. Four active exploits of a zero-day vulnerability in the browser exists. Microsoft will push out an out-of-cycle Windows patch to temporarily fix the critical Internet Explorer flaw. Security researcher Eric Romang identified the exploit code on a server used by the "Nitro" hacking group, believed to have exploited the Java zero-day vulnerability reported last month.  Security firm Rapid7 advises that Internet users try a different Web browser. The malware may be linked to an ongoing attack on companies that has been dubbed "Nitro", and was first discovered in October by Symantec. The zero-day in IE 6-9 is a use-after-free memory corruption vulnerability , similar to a buffer overflow, that would enable an attacker to remotely execute code on a compromised machine. The original exploit payload dropped the PoisonIvy remote access Trojan (R...

Hey faithful readers and people interested in Internet Security! Enjoy our - The Hacker News Magazine  September 2012 Edition , Issue #14 packed full of computer security issues and a great interview with a young hacker who defines the world of hacking and the future. Let us know what you think and many thanks for following our website!

An electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack is a threat few Americans are familiar with, yet one which could easily destroy their lives. What would you do if your electricity suddenly went out and didn't come back on for months or even years? How long would you last with the food in your pantry, the bottled water you have shelved, and your net worth reduced to the cash in your pocket? These are the factual consequences of EMP attack. A single EMP attack could disable all modern electronics in the United States, eliminating communications, food, water, transportation, medicine distribution, and our financial system. Experts from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the US Department of Defense (DOD) have told a House Homeland Security subcommittee that Defense systems that depend on the commercial electric grid are vulnerable to electromagnetic pulse attacks and solar storms that could seriously damage the nation's infrastructure. U.S. power grids and other civilian infrastruc...

According to release announcement on Pastebin by unknown developers in a Russian-language BlackHole Exploit Kit 2.0 released with more latest Exploits. BlackHole is one of the most dominant exploit toolkits currently available in the underground market. It enables attackers to exploit security holes in order to install malicious software on victim's systems. The new variant doesn't rely on plugindetect to determine the Java version that's installed, thus speeding up the malware download process. Old exploits that were causing browsers to crash and "scary visual effects" have been removed. The exploit kit is offered both as a "licensed" software product for the intrepid malware server operator and as malware-as-a-service by the author off his own server. Some interesting claims by developer about new version: prevent direct download of executable payloads only load exploit contents when client is considered vulnerable drop use of PluginDetect library (performanc...