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The TorRAT malware was first appeared in 2012 as spying tool only. But from August 2012, Bitcoin Mining feature was added and it became a powerful hacking tool that was commonly associated with attacks on Financial institutions. ab This year TorRat Malware targeted two out of three major Banks in the Netherlands and the  criminals stole over Million Dollars from user' Banking Accounts. The Dutch  police has arrested four men from Alkmaar, Haarlem, Woubrugge and Roden on last Monday, who are suspected of involvement in the large scale digital fraud and money laundering case using TorRat Malware. Using Spear Phishing techniques, gang  targeted the victims to access their computers and the Financial accounts. The gang used anonymous VPN services, Bitcoins, TorMail and the Tor network itself to remain anonymous. Malware is also capable of manipulating the information during online banking , can secretly add new payment orders and also able to modify existing

Yesterday a new classified NSA document was leaked by Edward Snowden - titled ' Tor Stinks ' in which ideas were being kicked around for identifying Tor users or degrading the user experience to dissuade people from using the Tor browser. The NSA had a very hard time while tracking down all Tor  users and monitoring their traffic, especially since Tor servers are all over the world, but they make tracking easier by adopting  the following techniques: By running their own hostile Tor nodes Using zero-day vulnerability of Firefox browser By tracking user' browser Cookies Tor access node tracking is not new and the Document says that both the NSA and GCHQ run Tor nodes themselves. In order to trace traffic back to a particular Tor user the NSA needs to know the ' entry, relay and exit ' nodes in the anonymizer cloud between the user and the destination website. So for tracking purpose they used self-hosted nodes, that is able to trace a very small number of To

The introduction of Open AI's ChatGPT was a defining moment for the software industry, touching off a GenAI race with its November 2022 release. SaaS vendors are now rushing to upgrade tools with enhanced productivity capabilities that are driven by generative AI. Among a wide range of uses, GenAI tools make it easier for developers to build software, assist sales teams in mundane email writing, help marketers produce unique content at low cost, and enable teams and creatives to brainstorm new ideas.  Recent significant GenAI product launches include Microsoft 365 Copilot, GitHub Copilot, and Salesforce Einstein GPT. Notably, these GenAI tools from leading SaaS providers are paid enhancements, a clear sign that no SaaS provider will want to miss out on cashing in on the GenAI transformation. Google will soon launch its SGE "Search Generative Experience" platform for premium AI-generated summaries rather than a list of websites.  At this pace, it's just a matter of a short time befo

The FBI had seized a website called ' Silk Road ', that was considered one of the most popular Underground places on the Internet for buying drugs and other illicit goods and services. They arrested the site's alleged founder,  Ross William Ulbricht, known as " Dread Pirate Roberts ," in San Francisco, who reportedly had  26,000 Bitcoins worth $3.6 million. The FBI used information from Comcast in the investigation and collaborated with US Customs and Border Patrol, the Internal Revenue Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Department of Homeland Security. Ross Ulbricht Ross William Ulbricht, a 29-year-old graduate of the University of Pennsylvania School of Materials Science and Engineering  charged with one count each of narcotics trafficking conspiracy, computer hacking conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy, according to the filing. ' Silk Road '  website, which had operated since early 2011, also offered tut

A few days before the servers of the largest provider of Ultra Anonymous hosting were found to be serving custom malware designed to identify visitors who were using the Tor service to hide their identity online. The javascript code exploited a security vulnerability in the open-source version of Firefox that the Tor network is based on. In an Irish court, FBI agent admitted publicly that the agency had control of Freedom Hosting , a Tor hidden service operator company, in an effort to arrest a suspect behind the largest child porn facilitator on the planet. Eric Eoin Marques, a 28-year-old Irishman, is now awaiting extradition to the US where he could face 100 years in prison on child pornography charges. Marques is the owner and operator of Freedom Hosting , one of the largest web hosts for the Tor network., Hosting many of the darkest hidden services on the Darknet, including criminal hacking site HackBB, money laundering services, and responsible for hosting chi

Recently, Tor Project Director - Roger Dingledine described a sudden increase in Tor users on the Tor Network after the events related to disclosure of the PRISM surveillance program, Since August 19, 2013, there has been an impressive growth in the number of Tor users. At first, No one knew who or what is responsible for this spontaneous growth of Tor users, but Security researchers at Fox-IT firm found evidence that the spike in Tor traffic is caused by a Mevade Botnet, that hides its Command-and-Control server in the anonymizing network. The security firm documented the presence of the Mevade malware architecture based on the anonymizing network, " The malware uses a command and control connectivity via Tor .Onion links using HTTP. While some bots continue to operate using the standard HTTP connectivity, some versions of the malware use a peer-to-peer network to communicate (KAD based). " " Typically, it is fairly clear what the purpose of malw

The spy agencies' activities have gone on for more than a decade. Now we have enough details about how the NSA eavesdrops on the internet, another explosive news has emerged yesterday from the Snowden files that NSA has the ability to decrypt most of anything that is on the internet. They have done this not through cracking encryption mathematically, but by secretly using influence and billions of dollars to insert backdoors designed to preserve their ability to eavesdrop.  Also the majority of devices connected to the Tor anonymity network may be using encryption keys that can be broken by the National Security Agency, according to Rob Graham, CEO of penetration testing firm Errata Security. The ability to crack high-level encryption is something that has been a pretty significant legend in the infosec community. Graham arrived at that conclusion after analyzing nearly 23,000 Tor connections through an exit node that Graham controls and about 76 percent of the

Since Snowden came forward with details about the NSA's PRISM program in June, web users concerned about online privacy are increasingly turning toward privacy tools to protect their online data. U.S. Government project PRISM allows the government to tap phone calls, email, and web browsing of any citizen without a warrant. New metrics from The Tor Project show that, the usage of Tor Browser is increasing day by day due to the fact that internet users are getting more and more inclined in keeping their online activity isolated from internet surveillance programs like US Prism. Tor was launched in 2004 and developed by the U.S. Navy, is used by governments, activists, journalists and dissidents to conceal their online activities from prying eyes. The TOR online anonymity service has exploded since early June, up more than 100 percent, from just over 500,000 global users to more than 1.2 million. Of those 600,000 new users, roughly ten percent are from the

TOR is the dark side of the Internet, the so-called dark web, which provides a safe haven to privacy advocates but is also where drugs, assassins for hire and other weird and illegal activities can allegedly be traded. A claimed zero-day vulnerability in Firefox 17 was used by the FBI to identify some users of the privacy-protecting Tor anonymity network. The FBI did not compromise the TOR network itself and The complex multi-layers of encryption still stand. Instead the FBI compromised the TOR browser only using a zero-day JavaScript exploit and used this to implant a cookie which fingerprinted users through a specific external server. Eric Eoin Marques , 28 year-old man in Ireland believed to be behind Freedom Hosting , the biggest service provider for sites on the encrypted Tor network , is awaiting extradition on p*rno charges. It is understood the FBI had spent a year trying to locate Mr Marques. Marques was arrested on a Maryland warrant that includes charges

Tor has become a tool of free expression in parts of the world where citizens can not speak freely against their government. On Tuesday, a number of users have noticed that Facebook is blocking connections from the Tor network. Tor is a free tool that keeps Web browsing sessions private and anonymous . For activists and political dissidents who use the Internet to communicate with the outside world in countries where doing so is a crime , being unable to login to Facebook using TOR posed a huge problem. Later, Facebook resolves the Tor issues and said that A high volume of malicious activity across Tor exit nodes triggered Facebook's automated malware detection system, which temporarily blocked visitors who use the Tor anonymity service to access the social network . The role that Tor and Facebook played in facilitating the dissemination of information under restrictive regimes cannot be underestimated. Security researchers are also frequent users of Tor, for instan

Paul F Renda give an overview that, What and how new long distance and short distance Dead drop techniques are used by National Security Agency for secure communications. What is a dead drop? It is methods that spies use or have used to communicate with associates who have information for them. The dead drop allows them to exchange information without having actual physical contact with each other. The person leaving the information can leave it under a rock or a can or bush. A special type of empty spikes that can be dropped into holes has also been used drop information. The person leaving the information also leaves some kind of signal the drop was made. The signal could be a chalk marks on a tree or pavement. Someone views the signal and retrieves information. Some more unusual dead drops have used dead animals like rabbits, rats and large birds to hide the information. These have been used by both the CIA and KGB. The one problem with this type of dead drop is that other

The Deep Web (or Invisible web) is the set of information resources on the World Wide Web not reported by normal search engines. According several researches the principal search engines index only a small portion of the overall web content, the remaining part is unknown to the majority of web users. What do you think if you were told that under our feet, there is a world larger than ours and much more crowded? We will literally be shocked, and this is the reaction of those individual who can understand the existence of the Deep Web , a network of interconnected systems, are not indexed, having a size hundreds of times higher than the current web, around 500 times. Very exhaustive is the definition provided by the founder of BrightPlanet, Mike Bergman, that compared searching on the Internet today to dragging a net across the surface of the ocean: a great deal may be caught in the net, but there is a wealth of information that is deep and therefore missed. Ordinary