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Spanish Police has arrested the alleged leader of an organised Russian cybercrime gang behind the Carbanak and Cobalt malware attacks, which stole over a billion euros from banks worldwide since 2013. In a coordinated operation with law enforcement agencies across the globe, including the FBI and Europol, Police detained the suspected leader of Carbanak hacking group in Alicante, Spain. Carbanak hacking group started its activities almost five years ago by launching a series of malware attack campaigns such as Anunak and Carbanak to compromise banks and ATM networks, from which they swiped millions of credit card details from US-based retailers. According to the Europol, the group later developed a sophisticated heist-ready banking malware known as Cobalt, based on the Cobalt Strike penetration testing software, which was in use until 2016. "The magnitude of the losses is significant: the Cobalt malware alone allowed criminals to steal up to EUR 10 million per heist,

The United States Department of Justice has announced criminal charges and sanctions against 9 Iranians involved in hacking universities, tech companies, and government organisations worldwide to steal scientific research resources and academic papers. According to the FBI officials, the individuals are connected to the Mabna Institute , an Iran-based company created in 2013 whose members were allegedly hired by the Iranian government for gathering intelligence. Though the content of the papers is not yet known, investigators believe it might have helped Iranian scientists to develop nuclear weapons. In past four years, the state-sponsored hacking group has allegedly infiltrated more than 320 universities in 22 countries—144 of which were in the United States—and stolen over 30 terabytes of academic data and intellectual property. The group used spear-phishing attacks to target more than 100,000 e-mail accounts and computer systems of the professors around the world, and suc

Super Low RPO with Continuous Data Protection: Dial Back to Just Seconds Before an Attack Zerto , a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, can help you detect and recover from ransomware in near real-time. This solution leverages continuous data protection (CDP) to ensure all workloads have the lowest recovery point objective (RPO) possible. The most valuable thing about CDP is that it does not use snapshots, agents, or any other periodic data protection methodology. Zerto has no impact on production workloads and can achieve RPOs in the region of 5-15 seconds across thousands of virtual machines simultaneously. For example, the environment in the image below has nearly 1,000 VMs being protected with an average RPO of just six seconds! Application-Centric Protection: Group Your VMs to Gain Application-Level Control   You can protect your VMs with the Zerto application-centric approach using Virtual Protection Groups (VPGs). This logical grouping of VMs ensures that your whole applica

AMD has finally acknowledged 13 critical vulnerabilities, and exploitable backdoors in its Ryzen and EPYC processors disclosed earlier this month by Israel-based CTS Labs and promised to roll out firmware patches for millions of affected devices 'in the coming weeks.' According to CTS-Labs researchers, critical vulnerabilities ( RyzenFall, MasterKey, Fallout, and Chimera ) that affect AMD's Platform Security Processor (PSP) could allow attackers to access sensitive data, install persistent malware inside the chip, and gain full access to the compromised systems. Although exploiting AMD vulnerabilities require admin access, it could help attackers defeat important security features like Windows Credential Guard, TPMs, and virtualization that are responsible for preventing access to the sensitive data from even an admin or root account. In a press release published by AMD on Tuesday, the company downplays the threat by saying that, "any attacker gaining unauthorised ad

You have always been warned not to share remote access to your computer with untrusted people for any reason—it's a basic cybersecurity advice, and common sense, right? But what if, I say you should not even trust anyone who invites or offer you full remote access to their computers. A critical vulnerability has been discovered in Microsoft's Windows Remote Assistanc e (Quick Assist) feature that affects all versions of Windows to date, including Windows 10, 8.1, RT 8.1, and 7, and allows remote attackers to steal sensitive files on the targeted machine. Windows Remote Assistance is a built-in tool that allows someone you trust to take over your PC (or you to take remote control of others) so they can help you fix a problem from anywhere around the world. The feature relies on the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) to establish a secure connection with the person in need. However, Nabeel Ahmed of Trend Micro Zero Day Initiative discovered and reported an information di

If you are unaware, the security standard HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) can be abused as a 'supercookie' to surreptitiously track users of almost every modern web browser online without their knowledge even when they use "private browsing." Apple has now added mitigations to its open-source browser infrastructure WebKit that underpins its Safari web browser to prevent HSTS abuse after discovering that theoretical attacks demonstrated in 2015 were recently deployed in the wild against Safari users. HSTS—HTTP Strict Transport Security—is a great feature that allows websites to automatically redirects user's web traffic to secure page connections over HTTPS if the user accidentally opens an insecure URL and then remembers to route that user to the secure connection always. Since HSTS does not allow websites to store any information/value on users web browser except remembering the redirect information about turning it on/off for future use, using

Adrian Lamo, the hacker who tipped off the FBI about Wikileaks whistleblower Chelsea Manning, dies at the age of 37, according to a Facebook post by his father Mario Lamo-Jiménez. "With great sadness and a broken heart I have to let know all of Adrian's friends and acquaintances that he is dead. A bright mind and compassionate soul is gone, he was my beloved son..."  he posted. At this moment the cause of death is unknown, though reportedly Adrian was diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome in July 2010 and briefly hospitalized. Adrian was a former hacker, threat analyst, and writer, who had previously been behind several high-profile security breaches but gained headlines after breaking into The New York Times computer systems in 2002. Adrian was given the appellation " Homeless Hacker " by the media because once when he was unemployed he wandered the country by Greyhound bus and hacked corporations from inside abandoned buildings. He spent almost six mont

Security researchers have discovered a massive continuously growing malware campaign that has already infected nearly 5 million mobile devices worldwide. Dubbed RottenSys , the malware that disguised as a 'System Wi-Fi service' app came pre-installed on millions of brand new smartphones manufactured by Honor, Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, Vivo, Samsung and GIONEE—added somewhere along the supply chain. All these affected devices were shipped through Tian Pai, a Hangzhou-based mobile phone distributor, but researchers are not sure if the company has direct involvement in this campaign. According to Check Point Mobile Security Team, who uncovered this campaign, RottenSys is an advanced piece of malware that doesn't provide any secure Wi-Fi related service but takes almost all sensitive Android permissions to enable its malicious activities. "According to our findings, the RottenSys malware began propagating in September 2016. By March 12, 2018, 4,964,460 devices were

Researchers found critical vulnerabilities in three popular VPN services that could leak users' real IP addresses and other sensitive data. VPN, or Virtual Private Network , is a great way to protect your daily online activities that work by encrypting your data and boosting security, as well as useful to obscure your actual IP address. While some choose VPN services for online anonymity and data security, one major reason many people use VPN is to hide their real IP addresses to bypass online censorship and access websites that are blocked by their ISPs. But what if when the VPN you thought is protecting your privacy is actually leaking your sensitive data and real location? A team of three ethical hackers hired by privacy advocate firm VPN Mentor revealed that three popular VPN service providers—HotSpot Shield, PureVPN, and Zenmate—with millions of customers worldwide were found vulnerable to flaws that could compromise user's privacy. The team includes applicat

A massive malware outbreak that last week infected nearly half a million computers with cryptocurrency mining malware in just a few hours was caused by a backdoored version of popular BitTorrent client called MediaGet . Dubbed Dofoil (also known as Smoke Loader), the malware was found dropping a cryptocurrency miner program as payload on infected Windows computers that mine Electroneum digital coins for attackers using victims' CPU cycles. Dofoil campaign that hit PCs in Russia, Turkey, and Ukraine on 6th March was discovered by Microsoft Windows Defender research department and blocked the attack before it could have done any severe damages. At the time when Windows Defender researchers detected this attack, they did not mention how the malware was delivered to such a massive audience in just 12 hours. However, after investigation Microsoft today revealed that the attackers targeted the update mechanism of MediaGet BitTorrent software to push its trojanized version (m

Security researchers claimed to have discovered 13 critical Spectre/Meltdown -like vulnerabilities throughout AMD's Ryzen and EPYC lines of processors that could allow attackers to access sensitive data, install persistent malware inside the chip, and gain full access to the compromised systems. All these vulnerabilities reside in the secure part of the AMD's Zen architecture processors and chipsets—typically where device stores sensitive information such as passwords and encryption keys and makes sure nothing malicious is running when you start your PC. The alleged vulnerabilities are categorized into four classes—RYZENFALL, FALLOUT, CHIMERA, and MASTERKEY—and threaten wide-range of servers, workstations, and laptops running vulnerable AMD Ryzen, Ryzen Pro, Ryzen Mobile or EPYC processors. Discovered by a team of researchers at Israel-based CTS-Labs, newly disclosed  unpatched vulnerabilities defeat AMD's Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV) technology and could

Samba maintainers have just released new versions of their networking software to patch two critical vulnerabilities that could allow unprivileged remote attackers to launch DoS attacks against servers and change any other users' passwords, including admin's. Samba is open-source software (re-implementation of SMB networking protocol) that runs on the majority of operating systems available today, including Windows, Linux, UNIX, IBM System 390, and OpenVMS. Samba allows non-Windows operating systems, like GNU/Linux or Mac OS X, to share network shared folders, files, and printers with Windows operating system. The denial of service vulnerability, assigned CVE-2018-1050 , affects all versions of Samba from 4.0.0 onwards and could be exploited "when the RPC spoolss service is configured to be run as an external daemon." "Missing input sanitization checks on some of the input parameters to spoolss RPC calls could cause the print spooler service to crash.

The team of security researchers—who last month demonstrated how attackers could steal data from air-gapped computers protected inside a Faraday cage—are back with its new research showing how two (or more) air-gapped PCs placed in the same room can covertly exchange data via ultrasonic waves. Air-gapped computers are believed to be the most secure setup wherein the systems remain isolated from the Internet and local networks, requiring physical access to access data via a USB flash drive or other removable media. Dubbed MOSQUITO , the new technique, discovered by a team of researchers at Israel's Ben Gurion University, works by reversing connected speakers (passive speakers, headphones, or earphones) into microphones by exploiting a specific audio chip feature. Two years ago, the same team of researchers demonstrated how attackers could covertly listen to private conversations in your room just by reversing your headphones (connected to the infected computer) into a micr

Security researchers at Kaspersky have identified a sophisticated APT hacking group that has been operating since at least 2012 without being noticed due to their complex and clever hacking techniques. The hacking group used a piece of advanced malware—dubbed Slingshot —to infect hundreds of thousands of victims in the Middle East and Africa by hacking into their routers. According to a 25-page report published [ PDF ] by Kaspersky Labs, the group exploited unknown vulnerabilities in routers from a Latvian network hardware provider Mikrotik as its first-stage infection vector in order to covertly plant its spyware into victims' computers. Although it is unclear how the group managed to compromise the routers at the first place, Kaspersky pointed towards WikiLeaks Vault 7 CIA Leaks , which revealed the ChimayRed exploit , now available on GitHub , to compromise Mikrotik routers. Once the router is compromised, the attackers replace one of its DDL (dynamic link libraries)

Governments in Turkey and Syria have been caught hijacking local internet users' connections to secretly inject surveillance malware, while the same mass interception technology has been found secretly injecting browser-based cryptocurrency mining scripts into users' web traffic in Egypt. Governments, or agencies linked to it, and ISPs in the three countries are using Deep Packet Inspection technology from Sandvine (which merged with Procera Networks last year), to intercept and alter Internet users' web traffic. Deep packet inspection technology allows ISPs to prioritize, degrade, block, inject, and log various types of Internet traffic, in other words, they can analyze each packet in order to see what you are doing online. According to a new report by Citizen Lab, Turkey's Telecom network was using Sandvine PacketLogic devices to redirect hundreds of targeted users (journalists, lawyers, and human rights defenders) to malicious versions of legitimate progra

Memcached reflections that recently fueled two most largest amplification DDoS attacks in the history have also helped other cybercriminals launch nearly 15,000 cyber attacks against 7,131 unique targets in last ten days, a new report revealed. Chinese Qihoo 360's Netlab, whose global DDoS monitoring service ' DDosMon ' initially spotted the Memcached-based DDoS attacks, has published a blog post detailing some new statistics about the victims and sources of these attacks. The list of famous online services and websites which were hit by massive DDoS attacks since 24th February includes Google, Amazon, QQ.com, 360.com, PlayStation, OVH Hosting, VirusTotal, Comodo, GitHub ( 1.35 Tbps attack ), Royal Bank, Minecraft and RockStar games, Avast, Kaspersky, PornHub, Epoch Times newspaper, and Pinterest. Overall, the victims are mainly based in the United States, China, Hong Kong, South Korea, Brazil, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the Netherlands.

A medium yet critical vulnerability has been discovered in Cisco Prime Collaboration Provisioning software that could allow a local attacker to elevate privileges to root and take full control of a system. Cisco Prime Collaboration Provisioning (PCP) application allows administrators to remotely control the installation and management of Cisco communication devices (integrated IP telephony, video, voicemail) deployed in the company and services for its subscribers. The vulnerability (CVE-2018-0141) is due to a hard-coded password for Secure Shell (SSH), which could be exploited by a local attacker to connect to the PCP's Linux operating system and gain low-level privileges. Cisco PCP Hard-Coded Password Flaw According to an advisory released by Cisco, with low-level privileges, an attacker could then elevate its privileges to root and take full control of the affected devices. Although this vulnerability has been given a Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) bas

Security researchers have discovered a "kill switch" that could help companies protect their websites under massive DDoS attack launched using vulnerable Memcached servers. Massive Memcached reflection DDoS attacks with an unprecedented amplification factor of 50,000 recently resulted in some of the largest DDoS attacks in history . To make matter even worse, someone released proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit code for Memcached amplification attack yesterday, making it easier for even script kiddies to launch massive cyber attacks. Despite multiple warnings, more than 12,000 vulnerable Memcached servers with UDP support enabled are still accessible on the Internet, which could fuel more cyber attacks soon. However, the good news is that researchers from Corero Network Security found a technique using which DDoS victims can send back a simple command, i.e., "shutdown\r\n", or "flush_all\r\n", in a loop to the attacking Memcached servers in order

Two separate proofs-of-concept (PoC) exploit code for Memcached amplification attack have been released online that could allow even script-kiddies to launch massive DDoS attacks using UDP reflections easily. The first DDoS tool is written in C programming language and works with a pre-compiled list of vulnerable Memcached servers. Bonus—its description already includes a list of nearly 17,000 potential vulnerable Memcached servers left exposed on the Internet. Whereas, the second Memcached DDoS attack tool is written in Python that uses Shodan search engine API to obtain a fresh list of vulnerable Memcached servers and then sends spoofed source UDP packets to each server. Last week we saw two record-breaking DDoS attacks— 1.35 Tbps hit Github and 1.7 Tbps attack against an unnamed US-based company—which were carried out using a technique called amplification/reflection attack. For those unaware, Memcached-based amplification/reflection attack amplifies bandwidth of th