Phishing | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Having SSL Certification doesn't mean that the website you are visiting is not a bogus website. SSL certificates protect web users in two ways, it encrypts sensitive information such as usernames, passwords, or credit card numbers and also verify the identity of websites. But today hackers and cyber criminals are using every tantrum to steal your credentials by injecting fake SSL certificates to the bogus websites impersonating Social media, e-commerce, and even bank website. Netcraft Security Researchers have discovered dozens of fake SSL Certificates being used to enact financial institutions, e-commerce site vendors, Internet Service Providers and social networking sites, which allegedly allows an attacker to carry out man-in-the-middle attacks. When you will visit a bogus website from any popular web browser; having self signed fake SSL Certificate, you will see a foreboding warning in the web browser, but the traffic originates from apps and other non-browser software fail

Valentine's Day   - a day of hearts, Chocolates, Flowers and Celebrations when people express their emotions to their loved ones and most of us send E-cards, purchase special gifts with the help of various Online Shop Sites and many other tantrums making them feel special. While you are busy in Googling ideal gifts for your loved ones, the Cyber thieves are also busy in taking advantage of such events by spreading various malware , phishing campaigns and fraud schemes as these days come out to be a goldmine for the cyber criminals. Online Shopping Scams are popular among Cyber criminals as it is the easiest way for hackers to steal money in easy and untraceable ways. Security Researchers at Anti virus firm - Trend Micro discovered various Valentine's Day threats which are common at such occasion i.e. A flower-delivery service and it appears to be a normal promotional e-mail, but the links actually lead to various survey scams. The Malware threats also arr

In past months, we have reported about critical vulnerabilities in many wireless Routers including Netgear, Linksys,  TP-LINK, Cisco, ASUS, TENDA and more vendors, installed by millions of home users worldwide. Polish Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT Polska) recently noticed a large scale cyber attack ongoing campaign aimed at Polish e-banking users. Cyber criminals are using known router vulnerability which allow attackers to change the router's DNS configuration remotely so they can lure users to fake bank websites or can perform Man-in-the-Middle attack. ' After DNS servers settings are changed on a router, all queries from inside the network are forwarded to rogue servers. Obviously the platform of a client device is not an issue, as there is no need for the attackers to install any malicious software at all. ' CERT Polska researchers said. That DNS Hijacking trick is not new, neither most of the router vulnerabilities are, but still millions of r

There's a natural human desire to avoid threatening scenarios. The irony, of course, is if you hope to attain any semblance of security, you've got to remain prepared to confront those very same threats. As a decision-maker for your organization, you know this well. But no matter how many experts or trusted cybersecurity tools your organization has a standing guard, you're only as secure as your weakest link. There's still one group that can inadvertently open the gates to unwanted threat actors—your own people. Security must be second nature for your first line of defense For your organization to thrive, you need capable employees. After all, they're your source for great ideas, innovation, and ingenuity. However, they're also human. And humans are fallible. Hackers understand no one is perfect, and that's precisely what they seek to exploit. This is why your people must become your first line of defense against cyber threats. But to do so, they need to learn how to defend thems

One of the world's largest mobile operator ' Orange ' has been hit by data breach. The French multinational telecommunication company announced recently, it was targeted by unknown hackers on 16th January 2014, who allegedly gained access to the accounts of up to 800,000 customers of Orange website. According to a report published on the PC INpact website, the company warned their customers in an email that their Client Area website orange.fr was hacked and personal data of 3% customers have been stolen, but the passwords are not affected. The hacker has successfully stolen customers' names, mailing address, email, landline and mobile phone numbers. The company warned, with the information lost in this attack, hackers can perform phishing attacks, allowing them to steal personal data, including bank account details and passwords by sending emails that look as if they have come from official sources. Orange has confirmed the data breach, and afte

A location based Social Networking platform with 45 million users,' Foursquare ' was vulnerable to the primary email address disclosed.  Foursquare is a Smartphone application that gives you details of nearby cafes, bars, shops, parks using GPS location and also tells about your friends nearby. According to a Penetration tester and hacker ' Jamal Eddin e ',  an attacker can extract email addresses of all 45 million users just by using a few lines of scripting tool. Basically the flaw exists in the Invitation system of the Foursquare app. While testing the app, he found that invitation received on the recipient's end actually disclosing the sender's email address, as shown above. Invitation URL:  https://foursquare.com/mehdi?action=acceptFriendship&expires=1378920415&src=wtbfe& uid = 64761059 &sig=mmlx96RwGrQ2fJAg4OWZhAWnDvc%3D Where 'uid' parameter represents the sender's profile ID.  Hacker noticed th

A well-known pro-Syrian hacker group known as Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) , aligned with President Bashar al- Assad, who successfully attacked The New York Times, Huffington Post, and Twitter, BBC, National Public Radio, Al-Jazeera, Microsoft, Xbox, Skype and responsible for cyber-attacks against various other U.S media companies in the past. Last evening, the Group claimed the responsibility for hacking another big media outlet " CNN ", compromised their Twitter, Facebook account and the website. CNN's twitter profile with 11.6 million followers saw a number of fake tweets from hackers, including allegations that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is behind the Al-Qaida network. Hackers Tweeted, " Tonight, the #SEA decided to retaliate against #CNN's viciously lying reporting aimed at prolonging the suffering in #Syria. "   Following fake tweets were posted: " Syrian Electronic Army Was Here … Stop lying … All your reports are fake! "  " Obama Bin Laden

A New day begins with a Cup of Coffee and with new massive Data Breach News. This time in Germany, the Digital identities of about 16 million online users had been stolen, and posing a risk to their accounts linked to social media and other services. Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) discovered a security breach after running an analysis of the botnet network of computers infected with malware . The compromised accounts have email addresses as their username and also the passwords were stolen, that could also be sold to spammers and people looking to " phish " account holders. Until now it hasn't been known that how and when the analysis was carried out and who exactly were involved behind this massive data breach, as the BSI refused to give details on the source of the information. Authorities have set up a German-language website which allows users to enter their email address and check whether their email accounts are compromised or not.

Yesterday Night Microsoft has faced another targeted attack by the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA), a group supposed to be aligned with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad . The SEA group is popular for its advance phishing attack and using the same technique they also hacked into the Official Twitter account of Microsoft News, Xbox Support, Skype and also defaced the Microsoft, Skype Official Blog pages in the past few weeks. Yesterday, Just after the Microsoft uploaded the newly designed website of it ' Microsoft Office ' blog, the Syrian Electronic Army gang again compromised it successfully. SEA uploaded the hacked blog screenshots on their twitter account, with a defacement article titled " Hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army ", as shown. Before, they also taunted Microsoft that " changing the CMS will not help you if your employees are hacked and they don't know about that ." The Group kept their promise to continue their attacks

More than 15.2% of the Algerian population use Internet service which is provided by around 30 Internet Service Providers and one of the largest shares is served by Algerie Telecom .  Algerie Telecom provides  TP-LINK TD-W8951ND  Router to most of their home customers who Opt-In for Internet services and each of which has ZYXEL embedded firmware installed in it. ABDELLI Nassereddine, penetration tester and Algerian Computer Science Student has reported highly critical unauthorized access and password disclosure vulnerabilities in the Routers provided by Algerie Telecom. He told ' The Hacker News ' that the vulnerabilities can be exploited by any remote hacker just by exploiting a very simple loophole in the firmware. First, he found that an unauthorized access is available to ' Firmware/Romfile Upgrade'  Section on the Router's panel that can be accessed without any login password i.e. https://IP//rpFWUpload.html This page actually allows a user to upgrade

LinkedIn's iOS application is prone to a vulnerability that may permit remote attackers to execute arbitrary code. Security Researcher Zouheir Abdallah  has disclosed HTML parsing vulnerability in LinkedIn iOS an app, that can be used to phish for credentials or be escalated into a full blown attack. LinkedIn's vulnerability occurs when the messaging feature of LinkedIn's mobile app parses invalid HTML and an attacker can exploit this vulnerability remotely from his/her account, which could have serious impact on LinkedIn's users.  He created Proof of concept of the flaw and submitted it to the LinkedIn Security team in September 2013. Later in October 2013, the vulnerable application was patched. One of the possible attack vector is that, using this vulnerability attacker can easily phish LinkedIn user on iOS app. As shown in the screenshot, POC message says: Hey, Can you please view my LinkedIn profile and endorse me! Thanks! I appreciate it! The iOS app will d

Security Researcher Dan Melamed discovered an Open URL redirection vulnerability in Facebook that allowed him to have a facebook.com link redirect to any website without restrictions. An open URL Redirection flaw is generally used to convince a user to click on a trusted link which is specially crafted to take them to an arbitrary website, the target website could be used to serve a malware or for a phishing attack . An Open URL Redirection url flaw in Facebook platform and third party applications also exposes the user's access token at risk if that link is entered as the final destination in an Oauth dialog . The Facebook Open URL Redirection vulnerability exists at landing.php  page with " url " parameter, i.e. https://facebook.com/campaign/landing.php?url=https://yahoo.com This URL will always redirects user to the Facebook 's homepage, but it is sufficient to manipulate the "url" parameter assigning a random string: https://facebo

A phishing attack is a complex combination of technology and psychology. There are numerous ways in which people are being made fools and they can be conned by hitting on unsecured website links. Sophos experts detected this week an intriguing case of phishing against the Italian postal service Poste Italiane , the scheme attracted the researcher's attention due the reuse of an old social engineering trick. The brand Poste Italiane includes postal, Financial and payment services in its product portfolio and was considered top brand victims by recent F-Secure Threat report. The number of attacks against Poste Italiane is remarkable, the purpose is always to induce its customers into unwittingly submitting their credentials to fake login sites. In the recent attack criminals sent the classic email containing an HTML attachment which the recipient is enticed into opening. " To activate the "Security web Postepay " you need to : - Downlo

A new Mac OS Malware has been discovered called OSX/Leverage . A , which appears to be yet another targeted command-and-control Trojan horse, that creates a backdoor on an affected user's machine. The Trojan named ' Leverage ' because the Trojan horse is distributed as an application disguised as a picture of two people kissing, possibly a scene from the television show " Leverage ". The attack launched via a Java applet from a compromised website and which drops a Java archive with the backdoor to the visitor's computer and launches it without a user intercation. To perform the attack, Malware uses two recently disclosed Java vulnerabilies  known as CVE-2013-2465 and CVE-2013-2471. Once it's installed, the Trojan connects to the C&C server on port 7777. Security vendor Intego said that Malware linked to Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) , because after installation Malware attempt to download an image associated with the Syrian Electronic A

A Russian Exploit writer and underground Hacker who goes by the handle " fil9 " put up an Android Firefox Zero-Day Exploit for Sale in an open Exploit Market. Author claims a Zero Day vulnerability in Firefox for Android, which works on Firefox versions 23/24/26 (Nightly). The advertisement was spotted by Joshua, Malware Intelligence Analyst at Malwarebytes. Hacker Selling exploit with a starting price of $460 only. According to the proof of concept video uploaded by the Hacker, the exploit forces the mobile Firefox browser to download and execute a malicious app, on just visiting a malicious link only. What's worrisome is that many major websites are compromised frequently and a large number of visitors of those hacked sites can fall victim to this attack. " The biggest problem in this situation is that Firefox automatically executes certain known files once they're downloaded, and doesn't give users an option to disable this. Without some sort of

The Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) , a pro-regime hacker group that emerged during Syrian anti-government protests in 2011, and involved in cyber attacks against western media organizations are now in the FBI's wanted list. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has issued an alert warning of cyber attacks by the Syrian Electronic Army and finally put them on its radar. " The SEA'S primary capabilities include spear-phishing, web defacements, and hijacking social media accounts to spread propaganda. " they said. The FBI also has increased its surveillance of Syrians living in the US. According to some anti-Assad activists, the group was founded by former intelligence agents and hardcore Assad supporters. SEA had compromised social media profiles for Western news organizations by sending fake email messages to news staff in an attempt to gain access to login credentials. Most recently, the group grabbed international attention after commandeering the webs

Security firm ESET has discovered  a new and effective banking trojan , targeting online banking users and designed to beat the mobile multi-factor authentication systems. Hesperbot detected as Win32/Spy.Hesperbot is very identical to the infamous Zeus and SpyEye Banking Malwares and infects users in Turkey, the Czech Republic, Portugal, and the United Kingdom. Trojan has functionalities such as keystroke logging , creation of screenshots and video capture, and setting up a remote proxy. The attackers aim to obtain login credentials giving them access to the victim's bank account and getting them to install a mobile component of the malware on their Symbian, Blackberry or Android phone. Some other advanced tricks are also included in this banking Trojan, such as creating a hidden VNC server on the infected system and can do network traffic interception with HTML injection capabilities. So far, the Trojan hasn't spread too far. The campaign was first detec

Last week, we exclusively reported that the popular messenger Viber was hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army, and Support page was defaced with the message, " The Israeli-based - Viber is spying and tracking you. " Today we found that Viber's Apple App Store description has been defaced as well. The new modified description read " We created this app to spy on you, PLEASE DOWNLOAD IT! ", It's not clear at this point if this new hack is also performed by  Syrian Electronic Army or not, but it is possible that the hackers have gained access to the other various developer-facing functions. Viber later responded after a previous attack that one of its employee's fell victim to a phishing attach and attackers could gain access to a customer support panel and support administration system, insisting that no sensitive user data was exposed. Last week, SEA was able to access the Popular messaging app Tango's website and also a World's biggest

There's a scam spreading through Twitter Direct messages (DMs) and fake emails, appealing users to visit a fake twitter phishing site i.e " twittler.com ". Scam uses a hijacked Twitter account to send out direct messages that appear completely legitimate. Security blogger, Janne Ahlberg blogged about this new phishing scam, " This is a nasty trick especially when the sender is someone you know and trust. If you receive a suspicious DM or email from a person you know and trust, just warn him/her – the account is most likely hijacked and controlled by the attackers. " The webpage resembles a Twitter login page and is trying to obtain your Twitter login credentials with a domain name looks very similar to original Twitter.com , with two extra word "LL" in it.   To play it safe, double-check your browser address bar to make sure that's where you are on orginal website  twitter.com before logging in. If you enter your Twitter usern

Serious security vulnerability was recently discovered on the Samsung flagship Galaxy S4 device, claiming that attackers can use it to silently send text messages. Qihoo 360 Technology, an antivirus company based in China, said that this particular vulnerability is related to the " cloud backup " feature of Galaxy S4, which is not properly protected and can be abused. This vulnerability was first discovered on June 17 and already reported the issue to Samsung and the company is already in the process of developing an official update to fix the vulnerability. A rogue mobile application could contain code exploiting the vulnerability to send fraudulent scam text messages ordering premium-rate services, the firm said. By exploiting the vulnerable cloud backup feature, malware could pretend to be the identity of any contact, friend, relative, or organization when faking phishing SMS messages. When these phishing SMS messages are received, users may be tricked i

Skype … once upon a time a VOIP application considered very secure and wiretap-proof, it was the common belief that no one could intercept such communications due a complex mechanism for the management of audio / video and text streams. One day, Microsoft decided to buy the product, according to many to catch a significant portion of users fond of Skype, but according many experts the company of Redmond wasn't interested only to acquire new market share. The architecture of the popular VOIP infrastructure was improved according Microsoft, in reality it is common thought that it was implemented the possibility to intercept every conversation, as requested by US government to major service providers. The claim is that Law enforcement and intelligence agencies are today able to access the communications exchanged by Skype users and Microsoft has still not been adequately answered to various question on the matter. The German associates to H security magazine at heise Security have be