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The Geneva-based encrypted email service ProtonMail was forced to pay a  Ransom of almost $6,000 to stop sustained Denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that have knocked its service offline since Tuesday. ProtonMail – a full, end-to-end encrypted email service that launched last year – has been dealing with, what it called, the extremely powerful DDoS attack, and is still unavailable at the time of writing. ProtonMail Paid $6,000 to Stop DDoS In an official statement posted on a WordPress blog Thursday, officials of ProtonMail said the powerful DDoS attack by an unknown group of hackers forced them to pay 15 Bitcoins (about $5,850) in exchange for them halting the assault. However, even after paying the ransom amount, the crippling DDoS attacks continued to the ProtonMail service. DDoS Attack Continues Even After Paying Ransom ProtonMail officials said, "We hoped that by paying [ransom], we could spare other companies impacted by the [DDoS] attack again

A network of compromised Linux servers has grown so powerful that it can blow large websites off the Internet by launching crippling Distributed Denial-of-service (DDoS ) attacks of over 150 gigabits per second (Gbps). The distributed denial-of-service network, dubbed XOR DDoS Botnet , targets over 20 websites per day , according to an advisory published by content delivery firm Akamai Technologies. Over 90 percent of the XOR DDoS targets are located in Asia, and the most frequent targets are the gaming sector and educational institutions. XOR creator is supposed to be from China, citing the fact that the IP addresses of all Command and Control (C&C) servers of XOR are located in Asia, where most of the infected Linux machines also reside. How XOR DDoS Botnet infects Linux System? Unlike other DDoS botnets , the XOR DDoS botnet infects Linux machines via embedded devices such as network routers and then brute forces a machine's SSH service to gain ro

In today's digital world, where connectivity is rules all, endpoints serve as the gateway to a business's digital kingdom. And because of this, endpoints are one of hackers' favorite targets.  According to the IDC,  70% of successful breaches start at the endpoint . Unprotected endpoints provide vulnerable entry points to launch devastating cyberattacks. With IT teams needing to protect more endpoints—and more kinds of endpoints—than ever before, that perimeter has become more challenging to defend. You need to improve your endpoint security, but where do you start? That's where this guide comes in.  We've curated the top 10 must-know endpoint security tips that every IT and security professional should have in their arsenal. From identifying entry points to implementing EDR solutions, we'll dive into the insights you need to defend your endpoints with confidence.  1. Know Thy Endpoints: Identifying and Understanding Your Entry Points Understanding your network's

Two weeks ago, we reported how a serious flaw in the popular peer-to-peer BitTorrent file sharing protocols could be exploited to carry out a devastating distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, allowing lone hackers with limited resources to take down large websites. Good news is that the developers of BitTorrent have fixed the security issue in its service that is being used by hundreds of Millions of users worldwide. In a blog post published Thursday, BitTorrent announced that the flaw was resided in a reference implementation of the Micro Transport Protocol (uTP) called libuTP , which is used by many widely used BitTorrent clients such as μTorrent , Vuze and Mainline . The San Francisco company also announced that it has rolled out a patch for its libuTP software that will stop miscreants from abusing the p2p protocol to conduct Distributed Reflective Denial-of-Service (DRDoS) attacks. DRDoS attack is a more sophisticated form of conventional DDoS att

A flaw discovered in several widely used BitTorrent applications, including uTorrent, Vuze and Mainline , could be used to carry out a devastating distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack that makes it very easy for a single undetectable hacker to bring down large sites. A new research by Florian Adamsky of the City University London shows that open BitTorrent protocol can be exploited to carry out Distributed Reflective Denial of Service (DRDoS) attacks . The bitTorrent protocol is a file-sharing protocol used by Millions of active online users at any given point in the day to exchange files over the Internet. DRDoS attack is a more sophisticated form of conventional DDoS attack where open and misconfigured DNS (Domain Name System) can be used by anyone to launch high-bandwidth DDoS attacks on target websites. In a paper , titled " P2P File-Sharing in Hell: Exploiting BitTorrent Vulnerabilities to Launch Distributed Reflective DoS Attacks ," the resea

Small office and home office (SOHO) routers are an increasingly common target for cybercriminals, not because of any vulnerability, but because most routers are loosely managed and often deployed with default administrator credentials. A new report suggests that hackers are using large botnet of tens of thousands of insecure home and office-based routers to launch Distributed Denial-of-Service ( DDoS ) attacks . Security researchers from DDoS protection firm Incapsula uncovered a router-based botnet, still largely active while investigating a series of DDoS attacks against its customers that have been underway since at least last December, 2014. Over the past four months, researchers have recorded malicious traffic targeting 60 of its clients came from some 40,269 IP addresses belonging to 1,600 ISPs around the world. Almost all of the infected routers that were part of the botnet appear to be ARM-based models from a California-based networking company Ubiquiti Net

The official website of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has been allegedly hacked just hours after the site exposed more than 1 Million email addresses of users who spoke in support of Net Neutrality. A hackers collective, calls itself AnonOpsIndia , has claimed responsibility for the distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack against the TRAI official website and bringing the site down. Few hours ago, a Twitter account linked to AnonOpsIndia tweeted about the took down of the trai.gov.in website through DDoS attack. Over a month ago, TRAI released a consultation paper with 20 questions to be answered by citizens of India via an e-mail by April 24, in order to hear their opinion on Net Neutrality. TRAI was planning to allow telecom operators like Vodafone and Airtel to block websites and applications just to extort more money from businesses as well as consumers, which is nothing but an extreme violation of Net Neutrality . However, when eve

China has something very impressive that we are not aware of. The country has a powerful and previously unknown weapon that its government is using to bolster their cyber attack capabilities: Dubbed " The Great Cannon. " INTERNET CENSORSHIP IN CHINA When I talk about Internet censorship, it is incomplete if I don't mention China. China is famous for its Great Wall of China and Great Firewall of China . The censoring of Internet access and blocking an individual website in China by its government, known as the Great Firewall of China. But, why the Chinese government does that? The answer is very simple: The Chinese government restricts those contents it deems sensitive for its country's so-called democracy. It illegalize certain online speech and activities, block selected websites, and filter keywords out of searches initiated from computers located in Mainland China. The worse: Those Chinese citizens who offend authorities against Int

Security researchers have uncovered an active cyber attack campaign that has successfully stolen more than $1 Million from a variety of targeted enterprise organizations using spear phishing emails, malware and social engineering tricks. The campaign, dubbed " The Dyre Wolf " by researchers from IBM's Security Intelligence division, targets businesses and organizations that use wire transfers to transfer large sums of money, even if the transaction is protected by 2-factor authentication. A MIXTURE OF MALWARE, SOCIAL ENGINEERING & DDoS Nowadays, cybercriminals not only rely on banking Trojans to harvest financial credentials, but also using sophisticated social engineering tactics to attack big corporations that frequently conduct wire transfers to move large sums. " An experienced and resource-backed [cyber criminal] gang operates Dyre ," John Kuhn, Senior Threat Researcher at IBM Managed Security Service, wrote in a blog post published Th

Github – a popular coding website used by programmers to collaborate on software development – was hit by a large-scale distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack for more than 24 hours late Thursday night. It seems like when users from outside countries visit different websites on the Internet that serve advertisements and tracking code from Chinese Internet giant Baidu , the assailants on Chinese border quietly inject malicious JavaScript code into the pages of those websites. The code instructs browsers of visitors to those websites to rapidly connect to GitHub.com every two seconds in a way that visitors couldn't smell, creating "an extremely large amount of traffic," according to a researcher who goes by the name A nthr@x . "A certain device at the border of China's inner network and the Internet has hijacked the HTTP connections went into China, replaced some JavaScript files from Baidu with malicious ones," A nthr@x wrote at Insight La

New Generations usually bring new base technologies, more network capacity for more data per user, and high speed Internet service, for which Internet service providers usually advertise. However, it is believed that the fifth generation (5G Technology) of mobile network will be beyond our thoughts. 1TBPS OVER 5G Security researchers from the University of Surrey have just achieved Record-Breaking data speeds during a recent test of 5G wireless data connections, achieving an incredible One Terabit per second (1Tbps) speed – many thousands of times faster than the existing 4G connections. After 4G, 5G is the next generation of mobile communication technology that aims at offering far greater capacity and be faster, more energy-efficient and more cost-effective than anything that has seen before. The boffins say 5G will be different – very different. The 5G test was conducted at the university's 5G Innovation Centre ( 5GIC ), which was founded by a host of telecoms

The hacktivist group Anonymous has launched a massive cyber attack against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) — the radical Islamic terrorist group who were  responsible for the terrorist attack against the Paris offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo . With huge social media presence, ISIS is the most active terror group on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram accounts. But unluckily, over dozens of Facebook and Twitter accounts linked to ISIS has recently been taken by the Anonymous group. In a video appeared on Youtube, Anonymous group and RedCult announced the operation  #OpISIS  and claimed to have carried out cyber attack against hundreds of Twitter and Facebook accounts used by ISIS for its own propaganda and to recruit new members. According to the video, Operation  #OpISIS  is coordinated by "Muslims, Christians, Jews"  alike and a masked individual discusses the aim of the campaign. They are " hackers, crackers, Hacktivist, phi

A sad reality for gamers all around the world who enjoy playing the very popular game Minecraft on their PCs. If you are one of them, you'll want to pay attention here. A plain text file containing over 1,800 Minecraft account usernames and passwords has just been leaked online, German media reports . The details available in the leak has been posted to Pastebin, which would allow anyone to log into a legitimate user's account in order to play online and download the full version of the game to their own computers. However, the more serious implication of the leaked credentials would be for those affected users who had used the same username and password combination for other online services, like shopping site, banking site, email service or for any social networking site. Minecraft is an incredibly popular online game bought by Microsoft just few months back for $2.5 billion. The game has more than 100 million registered accounts for its PC version alone, and

A UK man linked to the notorious hacking group, Lizard Squad , that claimed responsibility for knocking Sony's PlayStation Network and Microsoft's Xbox Live offline on Christmas Day has been arrested by the United Kingdom police. Lizard Squad launched simultaneous Distributed Denial-of-Service ( DDoS ) attacks against the largest online gaming networks, Xbox Live and PlayStation Network, on Dec. 25, 2014. Then offered to sell its own Lizard-branded DDoS-for-hire tool called Lizard Stresser . SECOND ARREST As part of an investigation, the UK Regional Organised Crime Unit, in collaboration with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), have arrested an 18 year old teenager in Southport, near Liverpool, UK on Friday morning, and seized his electronic and digital devices as well. So far, this is the second arrest made in connection to the attack after Thames Valley Police arrested a 22-year old , named Vinnie Omari , also believed to have been an alleged member of Liz

Just a week ago on Christmas, the massive Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack from the notorious hacking group Lizard Squad knocked Sony's PlayStation Network and Microsoft's Xbox Live offline, but as if it wasn't the end of disaster for Microsoft. This time it isn't a case of services being taken down — instead, the software development kit (SDK) for the Xbox Live is being freely circulated over the Internet. Another group calling itself H4LT has apparently managed to leak the Microsoft's official Xbox One developer SDK , potentially opening the door for homemade applications and allowing unapproved developers to create unofficial software for the system. The group announced the Xbox One leak via its official Twitter account, and also provided some screenshots of the November's release of the Durango XDK (Xbox Development Kit) files, including the accompanying development tools, device firmware and its documentation. H4LT group states noble reasons f

A 22-year-old man linked to the notorious hacking group, Lizard Squad, that claimed responsibility for knocking Sony's PlayStation Network and Microsoft's Xbox Live offline on Christmas Day was arrested by the United Kingdom police on Monday. Lizard Squad launched simultaneous Distributed Denial-of-Service ( DDoS ) attacks against the largest online gaming networks, Xbox Live and PlayStation Network, on Dec. 25. Then offered to sell its own Lizard-branded DDoS-for-hire tool called Lizard Stresser. Vinnie Omari , an alleged member of Lizard Squad, arrested by the police investigating PayPal thefts and cyber-fraud offences occurred in 2013-14 while raiding his London home. Law enforcement officials reportedly seized phones, laptops and an Xbox from his home. "The arrest is in connection with an ongoing investigation into cyber-fraud offences which took place between 2013 and August 2014 during which victims reported funds being stolen from their PayPal accounts,"

It was the sad Christmas day for gamers all around the world!! A lot of people get new PlayStations and Xboxes on Christmas, but this Christmas they bought the game, popped it into the console for online gaming, and what they found? Oh Crap! I can't log on . It was the notorious hacker group " Lizard Squad " who claimed the responsibility for taking down PlayStation Network, saying it has made unavailable both networks with apparent Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks — intentionally overloading servers by sending a flood of bogus web traffic, which made logging into the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live difficult for most users. Now Anonymous has declared war against Lizard Group, warning that " now you are all going down. " Recently, in response to Lizard Squad launching DDoS attacks on the Tor network , the international activist group Anonymous has leaked the personal details of one of the group's alleged members, warning the hacke