hacking news | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

An iOS hacker and cybersecurity researcher today publicly released what he claimed to be a "permanent unpatchable bootrom exploit," in other words, an epic jailbreak that works on all iOS devices ranging from iPhone 4s (A5 chip) to iPhone 8 and iPhone X (A11 chip). Dubbed Checkm8, the exploit leverages unpatchable security weaknesses in Apple's Bootrom (SecureROM), the first significant code that runs on an iPhone while booting, which, if exploited, provides greater system-level access. "EPIC JAILBREAK: Introducing checkm8 (read "checkmate"), a permanent unpatchable bootrom exploit for hundreds of millions of iOS devices," said axi0mX while announcing the publicly release of the exploit on Twitter. The new exploit came exactly a month after Apple released an emergency patch for another critical jailbreak vulnerability that works on Apple devices including the iPhone XS, XS Max, and XR and the 2019 iPad Mini and iPad Air, running iOS 12.4 and i

Watch out Windows users! There's a new strain of malware making rounds on the Internet that has already infected thousands of computers worldwide and most likely, your antivirus program would not be able to detect it. Why? That's because, first, it's an advanced fileless malware and second, it leverages only legitimate built-in system utilities and third-party tools to extend its functionality and compromise computers, rather than using any malicious piece of code. The technique of bringing its own legitimate tools is effective and has rarely been spotted in the wild, helping attackers to blend in their malicious activities with regular network activity or system administration tasks while leaving fewer footprints. Independently discovered by cybersecurity researchers at Microsoft and Cisco Talos, the malware — dubbed " Nodersok " and " Divergent " — is primarily being distributed via malicious online advertisements and infecting users using

It comes as no surprise that today's cyber threats are orders of magnitude more complex than those of the past. And the ever-evolving tactics that attackers use demand the adoption of better, more holistic and consolidated ways to meet this non-stop challenge. Security teams constantly look for ways to reduce risk while improving security posture, but many approaches offer piecemeal solutions – zeroing in on one particular element of the evolving threat landscape challenge – missing the forest for the trees.  In the last few years, Exposure Management has become known as a comprehensive way of reigning in the chaos, giving organizations a true fighting chance to reduce risk and improve posture. In this article I'll cover what Exposure Management is, how it stacks up against some alternative approaches and why building an Exposure Management program should be on  your 2024 to-do list. What is Exposure Management?  Exposure Management is the systematic identification, evaluation,

Following the release of iOS 13 and iPadOS earlier this week, Apple has issued an advisory warning iPhone and iPad users of an unpatched security bug impacting third-party keyboard apps. On iOS, third-party keyboard extensions can run entirely standalone without access to external services and thus, are forbidden from storing what you type unless you grant "full access" permissions to enable some additional features through network access. However, in the brief security advisory , Apple says that an unpatched issue in iOS 13 and iPadOS could allow third-party keyboard apps to grant themselves "full access" permission to access what you are typing—even if you deny this permission request in the first place. It should be noted that the iOS 13 bug doesn't affect Apple's built-in keyboards or third-party keyboards that don't make use of full access. Instead, the bug only impacts users who have third-party keyboard apps—such as popular Gboard, Grammarl

An anonymous hacker today publicly revealed details and proof-of-concept exploit code for an unpatched, critical zero-day remote code execution vulnerability in vBulletin—one of the widely used internet forum software, The Hacker News has learned. One of the reasons why the vulnerability should be viewed as a severe issue is not just because it is remotely exploitable, but also doesn't require authentication. Written in PHP, vBulletin is a widely used proprietary Internet forum software package that powers more than 100,000 websites on the Internet, including Fortune 500 and Alexa Top 1 million companies websites and forums. According to details published on the Full Disclosure mailing list, the hacker claims to have found a remote code execution vulnerability that appears to affect vBulletin versions 5.0.0 till the latest 5.5.4. The Hacker News has independently verified that the flaw works, as described, and affects the latest version of vBulletin software, which even

A team of Canadian cybersecurity researchers has uncovered a sophisticated and targeted mobile hacking campaign that is targeting high-profile members of various Tibetan groups with one-click exploits for iOS and Android devices. Dubbed Poison Carp by University of Toronto's Citizen Lab, the hacking group behind this campaign sent tailored malicious web links to its targets over WhatsApp, which, when opened, exploited web browser and privilege escalation vulnerabilities to install spyware on iOS and Android devices stealthily. "Between November 2018 and May 2019, senior members of Tibetan groups received malicious links in individually tailored WhatsApp text exchanges with operators posing as NGO workers, journalists, and other fake personas," the researchers say . What's more? The researchers said they found "technical overlaps" of Poison Carp with two recently discovered campaigns against the Uyghur community in China—the iPhone hacking campaign

It's not a Patch Tuesday, but Microsoft is rolling out emergency out-of-band security patches for two new vulnerabilities, one of which is a critical Internet Explorer zero-day that cyber criminals are actively exploiting in the wild. Discovered by Clément Lecigne of Google's Threat Analysis Group and tracked as CVE-2019-1367, the IE zero-day is a remote code execution vulnerability in the way Microsoft's scripting engine handles objects in memory in Internet Explorer. The vulnerability is a memory-corruption issue that could allow a remote attacker to hijack a Windows PC just by convincing the user into viewing a specially crafted, booby-trapped web-page hosted online, when using Internet Explorer. "An attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerability could gain the same user rights as the current user. If the current user is logged on with administrative user rights, an attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerability could take control of an affec

Ecuador officials have arrested the general manager of IT consulting firm Novaestrat after the personal details of almost the entire population of the Republic of Ecuador left exposed online in what seems to be the most significant data breach in the country's history. Personal records of more than 20 million adults and children, both dead and alive, were found publicly exposed on an unsecured Elasticsearch server by security firm vpnMentor, which made the discovery during its large-scale mapping project. For a country with a population of over 16 million people, the breach exposed details of almost every Ecuadorian citizen, including President Lenín Moreno as well as WikiLeaks CEO Julian Assange , who was given political asylum in the country in 2012. The unsecured Elasticsearch server, which was based in Miami and owned by Ecuadorian company Novaestrat, contained 18GB cache of data appeared to have come from a variety of sources including government registries, an automot

Insecure Internet-connected devices have aided different types of cybercrime for years, most common being DDoS and spam campaigns. But cybercriminals have now shifted toward a profitable scheme where botnets do not just launch DDoS or spam—they mine cryptocurrencies as well. Smominru, an infamous cryptocurrency-mining and credential-stealing botnet, has become one of the rapidly spreading computer viruses that is now infecting over 90,000 machines each month around the world. Though the campaigns that are hacking computers with the Smominru botnet have not been designed to go after targets with any specific interest, the latest report from Guardicore Labs researchers shed light on the nature of the victims and the attack infrastructure. According to the researchers, just last month, more than 4,900 networks were infected by the worm without any discrimination, and many of these networks had dozens of internal machines infected. Infected networks include US-based higher-educ

A cybersecurity researcher recently published details and proof-of-concept for an unpatched zero-day vulnerability in phpMyAdmin—one of the most popular applications for managing the MySQL and MariaDB databases. phpMyAdmin is a free and open source administration tool for MySQL and MariaDB that's widely used to manage the database for websites created with WordPress, Joomla, and many other content management platforms. Discovered by security researcher and pentester Manuel Garcia Cardenas , the vulnerability claims to be a cross-site request forgery (CSRF) flaw, also known as XSRF, a well-known attack wherein attackers trick authenticated users into executing an unwanted action. Identified as CVE-2019-12922 , the flaw has been given a medium rating because of its limited scope that only allows an attacker to delete any server configured in the setup page of a phpMyAdmin panel on a victim's server. To be noted, it's not something you should not be much worried abo

"Warning — Making your calendar public will make all events visible to the world, including via Google search. Are you sure?" Remember this security warning? No? If you have ever shared your Google Calendars, or maybe inadvertently, with someone that should not be publicly accessible anymore, you should immediately go back to your Google settings and check if you're exposing all your events and business activities on the Internet accessible to anyone. At the time of writing, there are over 8000 publicly accessible Google Calendars, searchable using Google engine itself, that allow anyone to not only access sensitive details saved to them but also add new events with maliciously crafted information or links, security researcher Avinash Jain told The Hacker News. Avinash Jain , a security researcher from India working in an e-commerce company, Grofers, who previously found vulnerabilities in other platforms like NASA, Google, Jira, and Yahoo. "I was able

The massive data breach at Capital One – America's seventh-largest bank, according to revenue – has challenged many common assumptions about cloud computing for the first time. Ironically, the incident, which exposed some 106 million Capital One customers' accounts , has only reinforced the belief that the cloud remains the safest way to store sensitive data. "You have to compare [the cloud] not against 'perfect' but against 'on-premises.'" Ed Amoroso, a former chief security officer at AT&T, told Fortune magazine this week. He wasn't the only voice defending cloud computing in the wake of a hack attack. In an article titled "Don't Doubt the Cloud," Fortune columnist Robert Hackett , wrote: "The cloud is undeniably convenient and, more importantly, better in terms of security than what the majority of companies can achieve alone." The problem, experts said, was not cloud computing but rather the tendency for

Good news... next week, on September 19, Apple will roll out iOS 13, the latest version of its mobile operating system. Yes, we're excited about, but here comes the bad news... iOS 13 contains a vulnerability that could allow anyone to bypass the lockscreen protection on your iPhone and access some sensitive information. Jose Rodriguez , a Spanish security researcher, contacted The Hacker News and revealed that he discovered a lockscreen bypass bug in iOS 13 that allowed him to access the full list of Contacts on his iPhone—and every piece of information saved on them. Rodriguez told The Hacker News that he discovered the new lockscreen bypass bug on his iPhone running iOS 13 beta version and reported it to Apple on July 17. However, unfortunately, Apple failed to patch the bug even after being informed months ago, and the bypass is still working on the Gold Master (GM) version of iOS 13, the final version of the software that will be rolled out to everyone on Septembe

Cybersecurity researchers today revealed the existence of a new and previously undetected critical vulnerability in SIM cards that could allow remote attackers to compromise targeted mobile phones and spy on victims just by sending an SMS. Dubbed " SimJacker ," the vulnerability resides in a particular piece of software, called the S@T Browser (a dynamic SIM toolkit), embedded on most SIM cards that is widely being used by mobile operators in at least 30 countries and can be exploited regardless of which handsets victims are using. What's worrisome? A specific private company that works with governments is actively exploiting the SimJacker vulnerability from at least the last two years to conduct targeted surveillance on mobile phone users across several countries. S@T Browser , short for SIMalliance Toolbox Browser, is an application that comes installed on a variety of SIM cards, including eSIM, as part of SIM Tool Kit (STK) and has been designed to let mobile

Hello Ladies, let's talk about periods, privacy, and Facebook. Are you using an app on your smartphone to keep tracks on your periods? Well, it's worrying, because it might be sharing your extremely sensitive information like menstrual cycle and sexual activities with Facebook. A new investigative report from UK-based advocacy group Privacy International revealed how some most popular period tracker apps used by millions of women share their most private health information—including monthly period cycles, contraception use, sexual life, symptoms, like swelling and cramps, and more—directly with Facebook. These period-tracking apps, listed below, transfer your data to Facebook the moment you open them, regardless of the fact that you have a Facebook account or not, and whether you are logged into the social network platform or not. Period-tracking apps are used by women to keep tracks on their monthly period cycles, but mostly they are being used by those who want t

What could be worse than your router leaking its administrative login credentials in plaintext? Cybersecurity researchers from Trustwave's SpiderLabs have discovered multiple security vulnerabilities in some router models from two popular manufacturers—D-Link and Comba Telecom—that involve insecure storage of credentials, potentially affecting every user and system on that network. Researcher Simon Kenin told The Hacker News that he discovered a total of five vulnerabilities—two in a D-Link DSL modem typically installed to connect a home network to an ISP, and three in multiple Comba Telecom WiFi devices. These flaws could potentially allow attackers to change your device settings, extract sensitive information, perform MitM attacks, redirect you to phishing or malicious sites and launch many more types of attacks. "Since your router is the gateway in and out of your entire network it can potentially affect every user and system on that network. An attacker-controlled

What if the tech intended to ensure that your kids, senior citizens, and pets are safe even when they're out of sight inadvertently expose them to stalkers? An estimated 600,000 GPS tracking devices for sale on Amazon and other large online merchants for $25–$50 have been found vulnerable to a handful of dangerous vulnerabilities that may have exposed user's real-time locations, security researchers have claimed. Cybersecurity researchers from Avast discovered that 29 models of GPS trackers made by Chinese technology company Shenzhen i365 for keeping tabs on young children, elderly relatives, and pets contain a number of security vulnerabilities. Moreover, all over half a million tracking devices were shipped with the same default password of "123456," leaving an opportunity for attackers to easily access tracking information for those who never changed the default password. Vulnerabilities in GPS Tracking Devices The reported GPS tracking device vulnerabili