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Microsoft's love for Linux continues… Microsoft has released its command-line shell and scripting language PowerShell Core for Linux operating system as a Snap package, making it easier for Linux users to install Microsoft PowerShell on their system. Yes, you heard me right. Microsoft has made PowerShell Core available to the Ubuntu Snap Store as a Snap application. PowerShell Core is a cross-platform version of Windows PowerShell that is already available for Windows, macOS, and Linux OS and has been designed for sysadmins who manage assets in hybrid clouds and heterogeneous environments. Snap is a universal Linux packaging system, built by Canonical for the Ubuntu operating system, which makes an application compatible for all major Linux distributions without requiring any modification. A Snap package is basically an application compressed together with its dependencies and also includes instructions on how to run and interact with other software on various Linu...

It is no secret that cybercriminals are becoming dramatically more adept, innovative, and stealthy with each passing day. While new forms of cybercrime are on the rise, traditional activities seem to be shifting towards more clandestine techniques that involve the exploitation of standard system tools and protocols, which are not always monitored. The latest example of such attack is DNSMessenger – a new Remote Access Trojan (RAT) that uses DNS queries to conduct malicious PowerShell commands on compromised computers – a technique that makes the RAT difficult to detect onto targeted systems. The Trojan came to the attention of Cisco's Talos threat research group by a security researcher named Simpo, who highlighted a tweet that encoded text in a PowerShell script that said 'SourceFireSux.' SourceFire is one of Cisco's corporate security products. DNSMessenger Attack Is Completely Fileless Further analysis of the malware ultimately led Talos researchers to...

'Microsoft loves Linux' and this has never been so true than now. Microsoft today made its PowerShell scripting language and command-line shell available to the open source developer community on GitHub under the permissive MIT license. The company has also launched alpha versions of PowerShell for Linux (specifically Red Hat, Ubuntu, and CentOS) and Mac OS X, in addition, of course, to Windows. Now, people can download binaries of the software, as well as access source code of the app from the new PowerShell GitHub page. "Users across Windows and Linux, current and new PowerShell users, even application developers can experience a rich interactive scripting language as well as a heterogeneous automation and configuration management that works well with your existing tools," Microsoft says in its blog post . "Your PowerShell skills are now even more marketable, and your Windows and Linux teams, who may have had to work separately, can now work toge...

Ransomware is one of the most blatant and obvious money making schemes for cybercriminals and it was most likely to be known when last year Cryptolocker ransomware targeted millions of computers worldwide. Recently, security researchers at the Antivirus firm TrendLabs have unearthed another sophisticated variant of the ransomware malware which is employing  Windows PowerShell  in an effort to encrypt files on the victims' computer. The firm detected the variant as TROJ_POSHCODER.A . Windows PowerShell is a task automation and configuration management framework from Microsoft, consisting of a command-line shell and associated scripting language. It provides full access to COM and WMI, enabling administrators to perform administrative tasks on both local and remote Windows systems as well as WS-Management and CIM enabling management of remote Linux systems and network devices. It is believed that cybercriminals have used this feature of Windows just in order...