hacking computers | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Can Hackers turn a remote computer into a bomb and explode it to kill someone, just like they do in hacker movies? Wait, wait! Before answering that, Let me tell you an interesting story about Killer USB drive: A man walking in the subway stole a USB flash drive from the outer pocket of someone else's bag. The pendrive had "128" written on it. After coming home, he inserted the pendrive into his laptop and instead discovering any useful data, he burnt half of his laptop down. The man then took out the USB pendrive, replaced the text "128" with "129" and put it in the outer pocket of his bag… Amen! I'm sure, you would really not imagine yourself being the 130th victim of this Killer perdrive, neither I. This above story was told to a Russian researcher, nicknamed Dark Purple, who found the concept very interesting and developed his own computer-frying USB Killer pendrive. He is working with electronic manufacturing company from where

It's a bad day for Sony yesterday!! Sony appears to be hacked once again by hackers, but this time not its PlayStation , instead its Sony Pictures Entertainment – the company's motion picture, television production and distribution unit. According to multiple reports, the corporate computers of Sony Picture employees in New York and around the world were infiltrated by a hacker, displaying a weird skeleton, a series of URL addresses, and a threatening message that reads: "Hacked By #GOP Warning: We've already warned you, and this is just a beginning. We continue till our request be met. We've obtained all your internal data, including your secrets and top secrets. If you don't obey us, we'll release data shown below to the world. Determine what will you do till November the 24th, 11:00 PM (GMT)." News broke after a user, who claimed to be a former Sony staff, posted allegations of the security breach with the defacement image on Reddit . Hack

The  ransomware industry surged in 2023  as it saw an alarming 55.5% increase in victims worldwide, reaching a staggering 5,070.  But 2024 is starting off showing a very different picture.  While the numbers skyrocketed in Q4 2023 with 1309 cases, in Q1 2024, the ransomware industry was down to 1,048 cases. This is a 22% decrease in ransomware attacks compared to Q4 2023. Figure 1: Victims per quarter There could be several reasons for this significant drop.  Reason 1: The Law Enforcement Intervention Firstly, law enforcement has upped the ante in 2024 with actions against both LockBit and ALPHV. The LockBit Arrests In February, an international operation named "Operation Cronos" culminated in the arrest of at least three associates of the infamous LockBit ransomware syndicate in Poland and Ukraine.  Law enforcement from multiple countries collaborated to take down LockBit's infrastructure. This included seizing their dark web domains and gaining access to their backend sys

In order to secure sensitive information such as Finance, many companies and government agencies generally use totally secure computer systems by making sure it aren't connected to any network at all. But the most secure systems aren't safe anymore. Security researchers at the Cyber Security Labs at Ben Gurion University in Israel have found a way to snoop on a personal computer even with no network connection. STEALING DATA USING RADIO SIGNALS Researchers have developed a proof-of-concept malware that can infiltrate a closed network to lift data from a machine that has been kept completely isolated from the internet or any Wi-Fi connection by using little more than a mobile phone's FM radio signals. Researcher Mordechai Guri , along with Professor Yuval Elovici of Ben Gurion University, presented the research on Thursday in the 9th IEEE International Conference on Malicious and Unwanted Software ( MALCON 2014 ) held at Denver. This new technology is kno

A newly discovered zombie network that exclusively targets Apple computers running Mac OS X across the globe has compromised roughly 17,000 machines so far, giving hackers backdoor access to infected computers, researchers at Russian antivirus firm Dr.Web warned. According to a survey of traffic conducted in September by researchers at Dr. Web, over 17,000 Macs globally are part of the Mac.BackDoor.iWorm botnet , which creates a backdoor on machines running OS X. Researchers say almost a quarter of iWorm botnet are located in the US. The most interesting thing to notice about this botnet is that it uses a special method of spreading via a search service of Reddit posts to a Minecraft server list subreddit to collect the IP addresses for its command and control (CnC) network. The user who had posted that subreddit data has now been shut down though the malware creators are likely to form another server list. " It is worth mentioning that in order to acquire a control server add

The US Justice Department (DOJ) is seeking a transition in the criminal rules that would make the authorities to have more leeway to secretly hack into the suspected criminals' computer during criminal investigations at any times in bunches. The proposed [ PDF ] change in the rules would make FBI to easily obtain warrants to secretly access suspects' computers for the evidence when the physical location of the computer is not known to them. The problem FBI and government agents increasingly face as more and more crime carried out is online, and with the help of online tools, it is easy to conceal identity of the criminal. " This proposal ensures that courts can be asked to review warrant applications in situations where it is currently unclear what judge has that authority ," Justice Department spokesman Peter Carr told Bloomberg . " The proposal makes explicit that it does not change the traditional rules governing probable cause and notice. " This new U.S. proposal

An alleged member of the famous amorphous Hacktivist group Anonymous is now facing a total of 44 charges after the filing of the latest superseding Indictment of cyber assaults charges against him with the collective to hack Computer systems of a County Government, a school district and a Newspaper organization in Texas, federal investigators announced on Tuesday. 27-year-old Fidel Salinas of Donna, Texas, charged with several counts of cyber stalking, attempted computer hacking and with intent to harass and intimidate a female victim, making it altogether 44 counts of cyber assaults that could lead him up to 440 years in Jail. Salinas intentionally tried to hack into the computer system of Hidalgo County practically two years earlier, for which he was charged with one count of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act after a grand jury in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas found him guilty, last October. It looked like, Salinas wou

Besides collecting metadata and inserting backdoor to the devices and softwares, the US National Security Agency (NSA) has an eye on each post, picture, message you have ever sent on Facebook. I know you won't be feeling free considering your privacy, but, this is what the NSA is doing to you. The new revelation from the Glenn Greenwald 's desk remove the mask from one more secret surveillance operation carried out by the US intelligence agency NSA, the extensive program dubbed as ' TURBINE ', according to the classified files provided previously by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden . Yes, the NSA, who has been working with its dedicated hacking unit, Tailored Access Operations (TAO) from the past several years on enlarging its caliber to infect devices with spyware and creating its own command-and-control servers to manage millions of infected systems at a time. The secret documents presented by The Intercept  website shows that the NSA with its British counterpart G

Image Credit: The guardian  If I say that  NSA (National Security Agency) will never stop spying on us then it won't be wrong. After the exposure of the large number of surveillance scandals including PRISM, DROPOUTJEEP, XKeyscore and many many more which are now publicly known as well as unknown, Will NSA ever stop Privacy  breach? Obviously ' NO' . That I can predict from another Snowden leak published by the Washington Post news website recently i.e. US National Security Agency (NSA) is trying to develop a futuristic super computer called ' Quantum computer'  that could be capable of breaking almost every kind of encryption on the computer used to protect banks, medical, business including top-secret information held by government around the world. The Project is specified as " Penetrating Hard Targets " in the document and is a part of $79.7 million research program. The Washington Post says that the research is being done at the University of Maryland

CryptoLocker is an especially insidious form of Ransomeware malware that was first detected in the wild in September 2013, restricts access to infected computers and requires victims to pay a ransom in order to regain full access. What makes CryptoLocker so bad is the way it encrypts the user data on your hard drive using a strong encryption method. This makes it literally impossible to access your own data without paying the ransom amount to the criminals between $100 and $300 or two  Bitcoins , even now more. Once affected you will be locked out of your computer and unless you pay the ransom amount in 72 hours , the virus will delete the decryption key to decrypt all the files on your PC . The malware lands on PCs the same way other malware does and a few sensible precautions will help minimize the chances of a CrytoLocker attack. Yesterday, we reported that - UK's National Crime Agency has given out an urgent national alert that a mass spamming event target