phishing attack | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

How do you check if a website asking for your credentials is fake or legit to log in? By checking if the URL is correct? By checking if the website address is not a homograph? By checking if the site is using HTTPS? Or using software or browser extensions that detect phishing domains? Well, if you, like most Internet users, are also relying on above basic security practices to spot if that " Facebook.com " or " Google.com " you have been served with is fake or not, you may still fall victim to a newly discovered creative phishing attack and end up in giving away your passwords to hackers. Antoine Vincent Jebara , co-founder and CEO of password managing software Myki , told The Hacker News that his team recently spotted a new phishing attack campaign "that even the most vigilant users could fall for." Vincent found that cybercriminals are distributing links to blogs and services that prompt visitors to first " login using Facebook acco

Security researchers have been warning about a simple technique that cybercriminals and email scammers are already being using in the wild to bypass security features of Microsoft Office 365, including Safe Links, which are originally designed to protect users from malware and phishing attacks. Safe Links has been included by Microsoft in Office 365 as part of its ATP (Advanced Threat Protection) solution that works by replacing all URLs in an incoming email with Microsoft-owned secure URLs. Therefore, every time users click on a link provided in an email, Safe Links first sends them to a Microsoft owned domain, where it immediately checks the original link for anything suspicious. If Microsoft's security scanners detect any malicious element, it then warns the users about it, and if not, it redirects them to the original link. However, researchers at the cloud security company Avanan have revealed how attackers have been bypassing both Office 365's URL reputation check a

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Chinese cybersecurity researchers have uncovered a widespread, ongoing malware campaign that has already hijacked over 100,000 home routers and modified their DNS settings to hack users with malicious web pages—especially if they visit banking sites—and steal their login credentials. Dubbed GhostDNS , the campaign has many similarities with the infamous DNSChanger malware that works by changing DNS server settings on an infected device, allowing attackers to route the users' internet traffic through malicious servers and steal sensitive data. According to a new report from cybersecurity firm Qihoo 360's NetLab, just like the regular DNSChanger campaign, GhostDNS scans for the IP addresses for routers that use weak or no password at all, accesses the routers' settings, and then changes the router's default DNS address to the one controlled by the attackers. GhostDNS System: List of Modules and Sub-Modules The GhostDNS system mainly includes four modules:

George Garofano (left) The fourth celebrity hacker—who was charged earlier this year with hacking into over 250 Apple iCloud accounts belonged to Jennifer Lawrence and other Hollywood celebrities—has been sentenced to eight months in prison. Earlier this year, George Garofano, 26, of North Branford, admitted to illegally obtaining credentials of his victims' iCloud accounts using a phishing scheme, carried out from April 2013 to October 2014, in which he posed as a member of Apple's security team and tricked victims into revealing their iCloud credentials. Using stolen credentials, Garofano then managed to steal victims' personal information, including their sensitive and intimate photographs and videos, from their iCloud accounts, and then leaked them on online forums, like 4Chan. Among the victims were Jennifer Lawrence, Kim Kardashian , Kirsten Dunst, Kate Upton, American Olympic gold medallist Misty May Treanor and actors Alexandra Chando, Kelli Garner and

Microsoft claims to have uncovered another new Russian hacking attempts targeting United States' Senate and conservative think tanks ahead of the 2018 midterm elections. The tech giant said Tuesday that the APT28 hacking group—also known as Strontium, Fancy Bear , Sofacy, Sednit, and Pawn Storm, which is believed to be tied to the Russian government—created at least six fake websites related to US Senate and conservative organizations to trick its visitors and hack into their computers. Three fake web domains were intended to look as if they belonged to the U.S. Senate, while one non-political website spoofed Microsoft's own online products. The two other phony websites were designed to mimic two U.S. conservative organizations: The Hudson Institute — a conservative Washington think tank hosting extended discussions on topics including cybersecurity, among other important activities. The International Republican Institute (IRI) — a nonprofit group that promotes

Phishing works no matter how hard a company tries to protect its customers or employees. Security researchers have been warning of a new phishing attack that cybercriminals and email scammers are using in the wild to bypass the Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) mechanism implemented by widely used email services like Microsoft Office 365. Microsoft Office 365 is an all-in-solution for users that offers several different online services, including Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Lync Online and other Office Web Apps, like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote. On the top of these services, Microsoft also offers an artificial intelligence and machine learning powered security protection to help defend against potential phishing and other threats by going one level deep to scan the links in the email bodies to look for any blacklisted or suspicious domain. But as I said, phishers always find a way to bypass security protections in order to victimize users. Just over

Microsoft said it detected and helped the US government to block Russian hacking attempts against at least three congressional candidates this year, a Microsoft executive revealed speaking at the Aspen Security Forum today. Although the company refused to name the targets but said, the three candidates were "people who, because of their positions, might have been interesting targets from an espionage standpoint as well as an election disruption standpoint." According to the company, the Russian hackers targeted the candidates' staffers with phishing attacks, redirecting them to a fake Microsoft website, in an attempt to steal their credentials. "Earlier this year, we did discover that a fake Microsoft domain had been established as the landing page for phishing attacks," said Tom Burt, Microsoft's vice president for customer security. "And we saw metadata that suggested those phishing attacks were being directed at three candidates who are all sta

Security researchers revealed a way around that some hacking groups have been found using in the wild to bypass a security feature of Microsoft Office 365, which is originally designed to protect users from malware and phishing attacks. Dubbed Safe Links, the feature has been included in Office 365 software as part of Microsoft's Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) solution that works by replacing all URLs in an incoming email with Microsoft-owned secure URLs. So, every time a user clicks on a link provided in an email, it first sends the user to a Microsoft owned domain, where the company immediately checks the original URL for anything suspicious. If Microsoft's scanners detect any malicious element, it then warns users about it, and if not, it redirects the user to the original link. However, researchers at cloud security company Avanan have revealed how attackers have been bypassing the Safe Links feature by using a technique called, " baseStriker attack ."

Two Romanian hackers have been extradited to the United States to face 31 criminal charges including computer fraud and abuse, wire fraud conspiracy, wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft. Described as "international computer hackers" by the United States Department of Justice, Teodor Laurentiu Costea , 41, and Robert Codrut Dumitrescu , 40, allegedly rob Americans of more than $18 million in an elaborate phishing scheme. Costea and Dumitrescu were named in the 31-count federal grand jury indictment on August 16 last year and were accused last week in the Northern District of Georgia following their extradition. Another co-defendant, Cosmin Draghici, 28, remains in custody in Romania awaiting his extradition to the United States. "These extraditions send a strong warning to cybercriminals and fraudsters worldwide, that we, along with our law-enforcement partners, will work tirelessly to bring you to justice," said U. S. Attorney Byung J. "BJay&q

If you receive a message from any of your Facebook Friends asking for urgent help to recover their Facebook account, since they've added you as one of their ' Trusted Contacts '—just don't blindly believe it. Researchers have detected a new Facebook phishing scam that can even trick an experienced technical user into falling victim to the scam, helping an attacker gain access to your Facebook account. This latest social media scam is abusing "Trusted Contact"—a Facebook account recovery feature that sends secret access codes to a few of your close friends in order to help you regain access to your Facebook account in case you forget your password or lost access to your account. According to a public security alert published by AccessNow, the attack initiates by an already compromised account of one of your friends, asking for urgent help to get back into his/her Facebook account. The attacker explains that you are listed as one of his/her Trusted Conta

Phishing — is an older style of cyber-attack but remains one of the most common and efficient attack vectors for attackers, as a majority of banking malware and various ransomware attacks begin with a user clicking on a malicious link or opening a dangerous attachment in an email. Phishing has evolved than ever before in the past few years – which is why it remains one of those threats that we have been combating for many years. We have seen phishing campaigns that are so convincing and effective that even tech-savvy people can be tricked into giving away their credentials to hackers. And some that are " almost impossible to detect " and used to trick even the most careful users on the Internet. To help combat this issue, Google has introduced a security defence for it's over a billion users that will help users weed out phishing emails from their Gmail inbox. Google has rolled out new anti-phishing security checks for its Gmail app for iPhone users that will

From past few years, spammers and cyber criminals were buying web extensions from their developers and then updating them without informing their users to inject bulk advertisements into every website user visits in order to generate large revenue. But now they have shifted their business model—instead of investing, spammers have started a new wave of phishing attacks aimed at hijacking popular browser extensions. Just two days ago, we reported how cyber criminals managed to compromise the Chrome Web Store account of a German developer team and hijacked Copyfish extension , and then modified it with ad-injection capabilities to distribute spam correspondence to users. Now just yesterday, another popular Chrome extension ' Web Developer ' was hijacked by some unknown attackers, who updated the software to directly inject advertisements into the web browser of over its 1 million users. Chris Pederick , the creator of Web Developer Chrome extension that offers various w

Phishers have recently hacked an extension for Google Chrome after compromising the Chrome Web Store account of German developer team a9t9 software and abused to distribute spam messages to unsuspecting users. Dubbed Copyfish, the extension allows users to extract text from images, PDF documents and video, and has more than 37,500 users. Unfortunately, the Chrome extension of Copyfish has been hijacked and compromised by some unknown attacker, who equipped the extension with advertisement injection capabilities. However, its Firefox counterpart was not affected by the attack. The attackers even moved the extension to their developer account, preventing its developers from removing the infected extension from the store, even after being spotted that the extension has been compromised. "So far, the update looks like standard adware hack, but, as we still have no control over Copyfish, the thieves might update the extension another time… until we get it back," the de

Cybercrime has continued to evolve and today exists in a highly organised form. Cybercrime has increasingly been commercialised, and itself become big business by renting out an expanded range of hacking tools and technologies, from exploit kits to ransomware, to help anyone build threats and launch attacks. In past few years, we have witnessed the increase in the popularity of malware-as-a-service (MaaS), which is today a prosperous business on the underground black market that offers an array of services, including ransomware-as-a-service , DDoS-as-a-service , phishing-as-a-service, and much more. Two such services have recently been spotted by two separate group of researchers, which we have detailed in this article. Ovidiy Stealer — $7 Password-Stealing Malware For Everyone A new credential stealing malware that targets primarily web browsers is being marketed at Russian-speaking web forums for as cheap as $7, allowing anyone with even little technical knowledge to h

We came across so many revelations of sensitive government and corporate data on the Internet these days, but what's the accuracy of that information leaked by unknown actors? Security researchers have discovered new evidence of one such sophisticated global espionage and disinformation campaign with suspected ties to the Russian government that's been aimed to discredit enemies of the state. Although there is no definitive proof of Russian government's involvement in the campaign, there is "overlap" with previously reported cyber espionage activities tied to a Russia-backed hacking group well known as APT28 . APT28 — also known as Fancy Bear, Sofacy, Sednit, and Pawn Storm — is the same group which was responsible for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) breach. The group has been operating since at least 2007 and has alleged tied to the Russian government. A new report, titled Tainted Leaks , published this week by the Citizen Lab at the Univers

While we all were busy in the WannaCry ransomware menace, two separate data breaches have been reported, one in DocuSign, a major provider of electronic signature technology, and another in BELL , Canada's largest telecommunications company. In a notice on its website on Tuesday, DocuSign confirmed a breach at one of its email systems when investigating the cause of an increase in DocuSign-impersonating phishing emails. "A malicious third party had gained temporary access to a separate, non-core system that allows us to communicate service-related announcements to users via email," DocuSign said in the announcement. What Happened? An unknown hacker or group of hackers managed to breach one of the electronic signature technology provider's email systems and steal a database containing the email addresses of DocuSign customers. The attackers then used the stolen data to conduct an extensive phishing campaign to target the DocuSign's users over the past w

Did someone just share a random Google Doc with you? First of all — Do not click on that Google Doc link you might have just received in your email and delete it immediately — even if it's from someone you know. I, my colleagues at The Hacker News, and even people all around the Internet, especially journalists, are receiving a very convincing OAuth phishing email, which says that the person [sender] " has shared a document on Google Docs with you. " Once you clicked the link, you will be redirected to a page which says, " Google Docs would like to read, send and delete emails, as well access to your contacts, " asking your permission to "allow" access. If you allow the access, the hackers would immediately get permission to manage your Gmail account with access to all your emails and contacts, without requiring your Gmail password. Beware! New GoogleDocs Phishing Email Scam Spreading Across the World — Here's Everything You Need to K

A Chinese infosec researcher has reported about an "almost impossible to detect" phishing attack that can be used to trick even the most careful users on the Internet. He warned, hackers can use a known vulnerability in the Chrome, Firefox and Opera web browsers to display their fake domain names as the websites of legitimate services, like Apple, Google, or Amazon to steal login or financial credentials and other sensitive information from users. What is the best defence against phishing attack? Generally, checking the address bar after the page has loaded and if it is being served over a valid HTTPS connection. Right? Okay, then before going to the in-depth details, first have a look at this demo web page  ( note: you may experience downtime due to high traffic on demo server ), set up by Chinese security researcher Xudong Zheng, who discovered the attack. " It becomes impossible to identify the site as fraudulent without carefully inspecting the site's URL o