hacking skype account | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

A serious vulnerability has been discovered in Microsoft-owned most popular free web messaging and voice calling service Skype that could potentially allow attackers to gain full control of the host machine by granting system-level privileges to a local, unprivileged user. The worst part is that this vulnerability will not be patched by Microsoft anytime soon. It's not because the flaw is unpatchable, but because fixing the vulnerability requires a significant software rewrite, which indicates that the company will need to issue an all-new version of Skype rather than just a patch. The vulnerability has been discovered and reported to Microsoft by security researcher Stefan Kanthak and resides in Skype's update installer, which is susceptible to Dynamic Link Libraries (DLL) hijacking. According to the researcher, a potential attacker could exploit the "functionality of the Windows DLL loader where the process loading the DLL searches for the DLL to be loaded fi...

Are you sure the version of WhatsApp, or Skype, or VLC Player installed on your device is legitimate? Security researchers have discovered that legitimate downloads of several popular applications including WhatsApp, Skype, VLC Player and WinRAR have reportedly been compromised at the ISP level to distribute the infamous FinFisher spyware also known as FinSpy. FinSpy is a highly secret surveillance tool that has previously been associated with British company Gamma Group, a company that legally sells surveillance and espionage software to government agencies across the world. The spyware has extensive spying capabilities on an infected computer, including secretly conducting live surveillance by turning ON its webcams and microphones, recording everything the victim types with a keylogger, intercepting Skype calls, and exfiltration of files. In order to get into a target's machine, FinFisher usually uses various attack vectors, including spear phishing, manual installat...

Vulnerability Management (VM) has long been a cornerstone of organizational cybersecurity. Nearly as old as the discipline of cybersecurity itself, it aims to help organizations identify and address potential security issues before they become serious problems. Yet, in recent years, the limitations of this approach have become increasingly evident.  At its core, Vulnerability Management processes remain essential for identifying and addressing weaknesses. But as time marches on and attack avenues evolve, this approach is beginning to show its age. In a recent report, How to Grow Vulnerability Management into Exposure Management (Gartner, How to Grow Vulnerability Management Into Exposure Management, 8 November 2024, Mitchell Schneider Et Al.), we believe Gartner® addresses this point precisely and demonstrates how organizations can – and must – shift from a vulnerability-centric strategy to a broader Exposure Management (EM) framework. We feel it's more than a worthwhile read an...

Just last week iPhone and iPad users were dealing with an iOS text bug that caused the app to crash and iPhones to reboot , now a similar bug has been found that takes out Skype — the popular video chat and messaging service. Yes, Microsoft-owned Skype VoIP client is also affected by a bug that crashes almost every single version of the Skype client on both desktops and mobile phones with a single message containing just eight characters. Also: The impacts are so bad that it requires a re-install in order to get things working hitch-free again. Just Send 'https://:' and Crash Skype If a user receives a message during a conversation on Skype containing the text string " https://: " (without the quotes), it reportedly crashes Skype when running on Windows, Android, or iOS operating system, according to reports on Skype forums . However, Skype app for Mac and the modern touch-optimized version of Skype app for Windows 8.1 are reportedly unaffecte...

An application should always encrypt users' sensitive data, either it is local or stored on company servers, but still many popular services failed to provide fully secured solutions to their users. Cristian Dinu (DrOptix) and Dragoş Gaftoneanu , Romanian programmers at Hackyard Security Group , a private community dedicated to IT security research approaches ' The Hacker News ' editorial and claimed that the Microsoft owned most popular free voice calling service Skype leaves its local database unencrypted, that puts users' sensitive information at risk. All Skype-to-Skype voice, video, file transfers and instant messages are encrypted. Though, Skype's local database is also supposed to be encrypted because it is sensitive enough, but  Dragoş  found that Skype leaves users' full name, birthday, phone numbers, country, city and even full chat conversations unencrypted on the systems' hard drive in a known location without any encryption or password....

Happy 2014.. We are back with first hacking story of the year - SKYPE " Stop Spying " . Yes Skype Got hacked last night by an infamous hacker group called the Syrian Electronic Army , a group that supports Syria's president and typically they publish pro-Syrian government messages, but its first time they are taking about PRIVACY . Syrian Hackers posted some messages on Skype's Twitter account i.e. " Stop Spying on People! via Syrian Electronic Army ," Next tweet reads, " Don't use Microsoft emails (hotmail, outlook), They are monitoring your accounts and selling it to the governments. " Syrian Electronic Army hackers also compromised Skype's Facebook page and a company blog hosted on Skype's website. A blog post published on the official Skype blog featured the headline, " Hacked by Syrian Electronic Army.. Stop Spying! ", which now has been deleted by Microsoft. Now it appeared that Skype regained the access to their accounts and dele...