website Defaced | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

It's one thing for hackers to target websites and proudly announce it on social media platforms for all to see. It's, however, an entirely different thing to leave a digital trail that leads cybersecurity researchers right to their doorsteps. That's exactly what happened in the case of a hacktivist under the name of VandaTheGod, who has been attributed to a series of attacks on government websites since July 2019. In a report shared with The Hacker News, researchers from Check Point said they were able to map VandaTheGod's activity over the years, and eventually zero down the attacker's real identity to a Brazilian individual from the city of Uberlândia. The cybersecurity firm said it notified concerned law enforcement of its findings for further action, adding the social media activities on profiles associated with VandaTheGod came to a halt towards the end of 2019. A Long Social Media Trail VandaTheGod has a long history of going after government we...

During the 2016 presidential election campaign, we reported about how insecure was the mail servers operated by the Trump organization that anyone with little knowledge of computers can expose almost everything about Trump and his campaign. Now, some unknown hackers calling themselves "Pro_Mast3r" managed to deface an official website associated with President Donald Trump's presidential campaign fundraising on Sunday. The hacker, claiming to be from Iraq, reportedly defaced the server, secure2.donaldjtrump.com, which is behind CloudFlare's content management system and security platform. The server appears to be an official Trump campaign server, reported Ars, as the certificate of the server is legitimate, " but a reference to an image on another site is insecure, prompting a warning on Chrome and Firefox that the connection is not secure. " The defaced website displayed an image of a black hat man and included a text message, which reads: Ha...

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...

Last week, we reported about a critical zero-day flaw in WordPress that was silently patched by the company before hackers have had their hands on the nasty bug to exploit millions of WordPress websites. To ensure the security of millions of websites and its users, WordPress delayed the vulnerability disclosure for over a week and worked closely with security companies and hosts to install the patch, ensuring that the issue was dealt with in short order before it became public. But even after the company's effort to protect its customers, thousands of admins did not bother to update their websites, which are still vulnerable to the critical bug and has already been exploited by hackers. While WordPress includes a default feature that automatically updates unpatched websites, some admins running critical services disable this feature for first testing and then applying patches. Even the news blog of one of the famous Linux distribution OpenSUSE (news.opensuse.org) was ...

On Tuesday, Indian and Pakistani army forces continued to exchange fire along the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir, which was started when Pakistan's military fired machine guns and mortars at about 60 Indian army posts during last week. Tensions between the two countries have intensified since Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the only son of former Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, made a statement that his Pakistan People's Party (PPP) would take back entire Kashmir from India. However, the Indian political party described his statement as " childish " and " irresponsible ." Different reactions came from different people out there from India for the chairman of Pakistan People's Party and Central Executive Committee Bilawal Bhutto, but Hackers have their own way of expressing their part. Here Bilawal Bhutto said that he would not leave an inch of Kashmir with India, and there an Indian Hacker defac...

Hackforums - one of the popular hacking forum in the world - has been hacked and defaced by the famous Egyptian hacker with the online handle Eg-R1z . HackForums is popular among both whitehats and blackhats. On one end of the spectrum, HackForums helps over 110,000 hacking community members to remove dangerous malware off of their computers, as well as promotes research and learning of various malwares. But on the other end, it servers as a great platform for hackers and cyber thieves as well, who posts infected material in order to victimize others. The website is hosted in Europe on a server and expected to be earning an estimated $7,316 USD on a daily basis. Last night, hackforums.net went dark with a defacement message that reads: "[403 Forbidden Error] - You might be blocked by your IP, Country, or ISP." That's really nasty msg guys , don't u think so?! Just sending greets from Egypt i-Hmx , H3ll C0D3 , Egyptian.H4x0rZ ./Eg-R1z Cr3w It i...

The hacktivist group Anonymous has reportedly taken down the official website of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad against Israel's military incursion in Gaza, which has resulted in hundreds of civilian casualties. The government of Israel has yet to comment on the Mossad hack attack. The ' Hacktivists ' were able to take down Mossad's website in a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack early morning, claims a statement on one of the Anonymous hacker's Twitter account. The attack on the website is supposed to be severe as it has been over 10 hours and the site is still down at the time of writing. OPERATION SAVE GAZA The Anonymous group has already targeted a number of other Israeli organizations as part of a campaign titled " Operation Save Gaza " in the mission to stop this " massacre ." Anonymous group has also claimed responsibility of taking down multiple Israeli government sites following the death of one of the organization's members. The member n...

Forbes  is the latest victim in a long line of high-profile attacks by the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) , sending a reminder to the international community that cyber warfare is alive and well. The pro-Assad group also took responsibility for hacking multiple Forbes websites and hijacked three Twitter accounts related to the website. According to the screenshots published by the team, it appears the hackers gained the access to the Wordpress administration panel of Forbes website and  edited several articles posted earlier on Forbes by authors Travis Bradberry, Matthew Herper, Andy Greenberg, John Dobosz, Steve Forbes  and titled then as " Hacked by Syrian Electronic Army ". Hackers tweeted, " Syrian Electronic Army was here " from the compromised Twitter accounts, including accounts of Social media editor Alex Knapp @TheAlexKnapp and Personal finance report Samantha Sharf  @Samsharf , and @ForbesTech account. The  Syrian Electronic Arm...