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I am sure that you all have been familiar with the above shown annoying Window Operating System error messages that many times pop ups on your screen while working on the system in case of process failure i.e. " The system has recovered from a serious error. A log of this error has been created. Please tell Microsoft about this problem " The message that prompts ask the user to report the problem to Microsoft followed by the options to Send an error report or Not send . Most of the time Gentle users like you and me used to submit these error reports to aware the Microsoft about the problem. But What if these crash reports can be abused to identify the vulnerabilities of your system for Spying? NSA is intercepting wide range of Internet Traffic including many Encrypted connections and naturally unencrypted also and surprisingly, by default Microsoft encrypts its reports, but the messages are transmitted unencrypted or over standard HTTP connections to watson.microsoft.c...

Microsoft has  released  11 Security Patch this Tuesday, including one for CVE-2013-5065  zero-day vulnerability, recently discovered Local privilege escalation vulnerability that could allow a hacker to launch an attack using corrupted TIFF images to take over victims' computers. FireEye researchers said they found the exploit in the wild being used alongside a PDF-based exploit against a patched Adobe Reader vulnerability. December's Patch Tuesday update bundle brings five bulletins ranked critical, including a patch for a vulnerability that could allow remote code execution in Internet Explorer and another remote code execution vulnerability in Office and Microsoft Server is also addressed. Other patches addressing remote code execution vulnerabilities in Lync, all versions of Office and Microsoft Exchange. All supported versions of Windows, from XP to RT and 8.1, are affected by at least one of the critical vulnerabilities. The Six S...

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 wil...

NSS Labs issued the report titled " The Known Unknowns " to explain the dynamics behind the market of zero-day exploits. Last week I discussed about the necessity to define a model for " cyber conflict " to qualify the principal issues related to the use of cyber tools and cyber weapons in an Information Warfare context, today I decided to give more info to the readers on cyber arsenals of governments. Governments consider the use of cyber weapons as a coadiuvant to conventional weapons, these malicious application could be used for sabotage or for cyber espionage, they could be used to hit a specifically designed software (e.g. SCADA within a critical infrastructure ) or they could be used for large scale operations infecting thousand of machines exploiting zero-day in common application ( e.g. Java platform, Adobe software ). The zero-day flaw are the most important component for the design of an efficient cyber weapon, governments have recently created dedic...

Researchers at FireEye have discovered a new privilege escalation vulnerability  in Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. CVE-2013-5065, Local privilege escalation vulnerability is used in-the-wild in conjunction with an Adobe Reader exploit ( CVE-2013-3346 ) that appears to target a patched vulnerability. Microsoft has issued an advisory and warned that discovered bug in Windows XP's  NDPROXY.SYS driver could allow hackers to run code in the system's kernel from a standard user account. The exploit could allow a standard user account to execute code in the kernel, which may allow an attacker to gain privileges that would enable him to do various activities, including deleting or viewing data, installing programs, or creating accounts with administrative privileges. "Our investigation of this vulnerability has verified that it does not affect customers who are using operating systems newer than Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 ," Microsoft advised. Last Apri...

Takashi Katsuki, a researcher at Antivirus firm Symantec has discovered a new cyber attack ongoing in the wild, targeting an open-source Web server application server Apache Tomcat with a cross platform Java based backdoor that can be used to attack other machines. The malware, dubbed as " Java.Tomdep " differs from other server malware and is not written in the PHP scripting language. It is basically a Java based backdoor act as Java Servlet that gives Apache Tomcat platforms malicious capabilities. Because Java is a cross platform language, the affected platforms include Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris, and most supported versions of Windows. The malware was detected less than a month ago and so far the number of infected machines appears to be low. You may think that this type of attack only targets personal computers, such as desktops and laptops, but unfortunately that isn’t true. Servers can also be attacked. They are quite valuable targets, since they are usu...

Cyber security of many organizations being attacked at an extremely high rate this month, well another alarming cyber crime report become public today. A widely unpatched and two years old critical vulnerability in JBoss Application Server (AS) that enable an attacker to remotely get a shell on a vulnerable web server. JBoss Application Server is an open-source Java EE-based application server very popular, it was designed by JBoss, now a division of Red Hat. In late 2012, JBoss AS was named as " wildFly ", since disclosure of the exploit code many products running the affected JBoss Application Server have been impacted, including some security software. Tens of thousands of enterprise data center servers are vulnerable to this attack, with at least 500 actively compromised, according to the Imperva report. Many systems administrators have yet to properly configure their servers to mitigate the threat, and the number of potential targets has increased over...

A Mysterious Hacker who goes by the " Pinkie Pie " handle is rewarded with $50,000 USD for hacking into the Google Chrome browser for Nexus 4 and Samsung Galaxy S4 . At Information Security Conference PacSec 2013 in Tokyo, during the HP's Pwn2Own contest, a zero-day exploit  showcased by " Pinkie Pie ", that took advantage of two vulnerabilities: An integer overflow that affects Chrome. Chrome vulnerability that resulted in a full sandbox escape. For successful exploitation, you have to get your victim to visit a malicious website e.g. clicking a link in an email, or an SMS or on another web page. He demonstrated this zero-day attack with remote code execution vulnerability on the affected devices. It is not known whether other Android phones are also vulnerable to same flaw or not. Vulnerability has been disclosed to Google by the Contest organizers and the company is working to address the issue as soon as possible. Researchers from...

Adobe released critical security patches for its ColdFusion web application server and  Adobe Flash Player for Mac, Windows and Linux. Adobe AIR and the AIR SDK and Compiler are also being updated. These updates address vulnerabilities that could cause a crash and potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system, dubbed as CVE-2013-5329, CVE-2013-5330. The following software versions are affected and should be updated as soon as possible: Adobe Flash Player 11.9.900.117 and earlier versions for Mac and Windows Adobe Flash Player 11.2.202.310 and earlier versions for Linux Adobe AIR 3.9.0.1030 and earlier versions for Windows and Macintosh Adobe has also released a security hotfix for ColdFusion versions 10, 9.0.2, 9.0.1 and 9.0 for Windows, Macintosh and Linux, addresses two vulnerabilities: Cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability (CVE-2013-5326) Allow unauthorized remote read access (CVE-2013-5328) Both products have be...

Security researchers at FireEye have detected a new series of drive-by attacks based on a new Internet Explorer zero-day vulnerability. The attackers breached a website based in the US to deploy the exploit code to conduct a classic watering hole attack. The discovery was announced just a few days after Microsoft revealed the Microsoft Zero-day CVE-2013-3906 , a Zero-day vulnerability in Microsoft graphics component that is actively exploited in targeted attacks using crafted Word documents sent by email. Microsoft graphics component zero-day vulnerability allows attackers to install a malware via infected Word documents and target Microsoft Office users running on Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. Recently reported new Internet Explorer zero-day vulnerability detected by FireEye affects the English versions of IE 7 and 8 in Windows XP and IE 8 on Windows 7, but according the experts it can be easily changed to leverage other languages. Experts at FireEye ...

Microsoft has issued a temporary fix for a 0day vulnerability that can be exploited to install malware via infected Word documents. A Zero-day Remote code execution flaw, which has been dubbed CVE-2013-3906 , exploits a vulnerability in a Microsoft graphics component, to target Microsoft Office users running Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. " The vulnerability is a remote code execution vulnerability that exists in the way affected components handle specially crafted TIFF images ," it said in the post .  Vulnerability was reported to Microsoft by McAfee Labs senior security researcher Haifei Li. A successful infection can give an attacker complete control over a system. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights. Currently the company is only aware of targeted attacks mostly in the Middle East and South Asia, with attackers sending unsuspecting v...

We have discussed many times in our stories the network of Intelligent devices , their capabilities and the possibilities that cyber criminals could exploit them for illegal activities. Hidden chips are used by cyber criminals and state-sponsored hackers to infiltrate company networks and organizations for various purposes, to send out spam or for cyber espionage . The fact has happened in Russia, the State-owned channel Rossiya 24 has showed the images of an electric iron included in a batch of Chinese imports where the operators find a chip used for spying the environment surround. China is planting Microchips practically in every electrical device, as recently it has been discovered that the  electric iron  and kettles were modified with this technique to launch spam attacks. The Microchips were equipped with a little microphone and according to the correspondent the component were mostly being used to serve malware and the chips in fact are abl...

Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) is a term referring to targeted attacks on enterprises and other organizations and recently referred to what appeared to be nation-state intelligence agencies using cyber assaults for both conventional espionage and industrial espionage. Advanced threats have targeted control systems in the past and these attacks use commercially available and custom-made advanced malware to steal information or perpetrate fraud. Terminator RAT has been used against Tibetan and Uyghur activists before and while tracking attack against entities in Taiwan, the Cyber Security company FireEye Labs recently analyzed some new samples of ' Terminator RAT ' (Remote Access Tool) that was sent via spear-phishing emails to targets in Taiwan. A word document as an attachment was sent to victims, exploited a vulnerability in Microsoft Office ( CVE-2012-0158 ), which subsequently drops a malware installer named “ DW20.exe ”. Sometimes the simplest techniques...

If you are today trying to visit the php.net website, an official website of the PHP scripting language, you will likely see the above shown result, instead of the original website. Chrome and Firefox is currently flagging the site as " suspicious " and contains malware that can harm your computer. According to Google's Webmaster Tools, the script at https://static.php.net/www.php.net/userprefs.js  was included as suspicious, and Google's Safe Browsing diagnostics  for php.net do suggest that malware has been present on the site in the last 90 days: " Of the 1513 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 4 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. " " Malicious software includes 4 trojan(s). Malicious software is hosted on 4 domain(s), including cobbcountybankruptcylawyer.com/, stephaniemari.com/, northgadui.com/ . 3 domain(s) appear to be functioning as intermediaries for ...

A Security researcher discovered a critical privacy vulnerability on Verizon Wireless’s Web-based customer portal that allows anyone to download user’s SMS History and Numbers of other users he communicated with. Back in August, researcher ' Cody Collier ' found that a simple URL exploit could allow any subscriber to extract data using ' Download to SpreadSheet' function. To exploit, an attacker only needs to modify the subscriber’s phone number in the URL and this would give an attacker access to the SMS history to the targeted account. https://wbillpay.verizonwireless.com/vzw/accountholder/unbilledusage/UnbilledMessaging.action?d-455677-e=2&1548506v4671=1&mtn= 999999999 Where variable ' mtn ' within the URL defines the mobile number and an attacker just need to modify this. " Message details consist of: Date, Time, To, From, and Direction an SMS or MMS took place. With no user interaction, all that was required was a subscriber's phone nu...

Address space layout randomization (ASLR) is a security technique involved in protection from buffer overflow attacks. Many recent APT (Advanced Persistent Threat) attacks have utilized many different ASLR bypass techniques during the past year, according to Researchers at  FireEye . Many exploits and malware attacks rely on the ability of the programmer to accurately identify where specific processes or system functions reside in memory. In order for an attacker to exploit or leverage a function, they must first be able to tell their code where to find the function or process to exploit.  The goal of ASLR  is to introduce randomness into addresses used by a given task. It involves randomly arranging the positions of key data areas of a program, including the base of the executable and the positions of the stack, heap, and libraries, in a process's address space.  Today a lot of attention is brought to client side exploits especially inside web brows...

A serious vulnerability in WhatsApp allows anyone who is able to eavesdrop on WhatsApp connection to decrypt users' messages. Whatsapp , the mobile application for instant messaging platform has become one of the main communication tools of the present day and its popularity makes it attractive for security researchers and hackers . This time it is debated in the protection of the messages exchanged through the application, thanks to a vulnerability in the crypto implementation they can be intercepted by an attacker. Thijs Alkemade is a computer science student at Utrecht University in The Netherlands who works on the open source Adium instant messaging project, during its research activity he disclosed a serious issue in the encryption used to secure WhatsApp messages. In the post titled " Piercing Through WhatsApp’s Encryption " Alkemade remarked that Whatsapp has been plagued by numerous security issues recently, easily stolen passwords, unencr...

According to a Security Analyst ' Maarten Boone ' working  at Fox-IT company, the Developer of notorious Blackhole Exploit Kit  developer ' Paunch ' and his partners were arrested in Russia recently. Blackhole Exploit Kit  which is responsible for the majority of web attacks today, is a crimeware that makes it simple for just about anyone to build a botnet . This Malware kit was developed by a hacker who uses the nickname “Paunch” and his Team, has gained wide adoption and is currently one of the most common exploit frameworks used for Web-based malware delivery. The Blackhole exploit kit is a framework for delivering exploits via compromised or third-party websites, serve up a range of old and new exploits for Oracle's Java, Adobe's Flash and other popular software to take control of victim's machines. It the point of writing No Police Authority or Press has confirmed the claim made by Maarten about the arrest of Malware author. Plea...