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Facebook Open Sources its Capture the Flag (CTF) Platform

Facebook Open Sources its Capture the Flag (CTF) Platform
May 11, 2016
Hacking into computer, networks and websites could easily land you in jail. But what if you could freely test and practice your hacking skills in a legally safe environment? Facebook just open-sourced its Capture The Flag (CTF) platform to encourage students as well as developers to learn about cyber security and secure coding practices. Capture the Flag hacking competitions are conducted at various cyber security events and conferences, including Def Con, in order to highlight the real-world exploits and cyber attacks. The CTF program is an effective way of identifying young people with exceptional computer skills, as well as teaching beginners about common and advanced exploitation techniques to ensure they develop secure programs that cannot be easily compromised. Facebook  CTF Video Demo: Since 2013, Facebook has itself hosted CTF competitions at events across the world and now, it is opening the platform to masses by releasing its source code on GitHub. "

Hacker Hijacks a Police Drone from 2 Km Away with $40 Kit

Hacker Hijacks a Police Drone from 2 Km Away with $40 Kit
Apr 01, 2016
A researcher has demonstrated how easy it is to steal high-end drones, commonly deployed by government agencies and police forces, from 2 kilometres away with the help of less than $40 worth of hardware . The attack was developed by IBM security researcher Nils Rodday, who recently presented his findings at Black Hat Asia 2016. Hacking the $28,463 Drone with Less than $40 of Hardware Rodday explained how security vulnerabilities in a drone's radio connection could leverage an attacker ( with some basic knowledge of radio communications ) to hijack the US$28,463 quadcopters with less than $40 of hardware. Rodday discovered ( PPT ) two security flaws in the tested drone that gave him the ability to hack the device in seconds. First, the connection between drone's controller module, known as telemetry box, and a user's tablet uses extremely vulnerable ' WEP ' ( Wired-Equivalent Privacy ) encryption – a protocol long known to be 'crackable in sec

Making Sense of Operational Technology Attacks: The Past, Present, and Future

Making Sense of Operational Technology Attacks: The Past, Present, and Future
Mar 21, 2024Operational Technology / SCADA Security
When you read reports about cyber-attacks affecting operational technology (OT), it's easy to get caught up in the hype and assume every single one is sophisticated. But are OT environments all over the world really besieged by a constant barrage of complex cyber-attacks? Answering that would require breaking down the different types of OT cyber-attacks and then looking back on all the historical attacks to see how those types compare.  The Types of OT Cyber-Attacks Over the past few decades, there has been a growing awareness of the need for improved cybersecurity practices in IT's lesser-known counterpart, OT. In fact, the lines of what constitutes a cyber-attack on OT have never been well defined, and if anything, they have further blurred over time. Therefore, we'd like to begin this post with a discussion around the ways in which cyber-attacks can either target or just simply impact OT, and why it might be important for us to make the distinction going forward. Figure 1 The Pu

Vigilante Hackers Aim to Hijack 200,000 Routers to Make Them More Secure

Vigilante Hackers Aim to Hijack 200,000 Routers to Make Them More Secure
Feb 10, 2016
The same "Vigilante-style Hacker," who previously hacked more than 10,000 routers to make them more secure, has once again made headlines by compromising more than 70,000 home routers and apparently forcing their owners to make them secure against flaws and weak passwords. Just like the infamous hacking group Lizard Squad , the group of white hat hackers, dubbed the White Team , is building up a sizeable botnet consisting of hundreds of thousands of home routers, but for a good purpose. Lizard Squad , the same group responsible for Sony PlayStation Network and Microsoft Xbox Live outages , uses their botnets to launch DDoS ( Distributed Denial of Service ) attacks against target websites to flood them with traffic and knock them offline. Hacking Routers to Make them More Secure Challenged by Lizard Squad's maliocus work, the White Team of vigilante hackers built their own peer-to-peer botnet that infects routers to close off vulnerabilities , such

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Critical iOS Flaw allowed Hackers to Steal Cookies from Devices

Critical iOS Flaw allowed Hackers to Steal Cookies from Devices
Jan 21, 2016
Apple has patched a critical vulnerability in its iOS operating system that allowed criminal hackers to impersonate end users' identities by granting read/write access to website's unencrypted authentication cookies. The vulnerability was fixed with the release of iOS 9.2.1 on Tuesday, almost three years after it was first discovered and reported to Apple. The vulnerability, dubbed " Captive Portal " bug, was initially discovered by Adi Sharabani and Yair Amit from online security company Skycure and privately reported to Apple in June 2013. Here's How the Vulnerability Worked The vulnerability caused due to the way iOS handles Cookie Stores at Captive Portals , generally a login page that requires users to authenticate themselves before connecting to the free or paid public Wi-Fi hotspots when they are first joining. So, when a user with a vulnerable iPhone or iPad connects to a captive-enabled network ( sample page shown in the screensho

Cracking WiFi Passwords By Hacking into Smart Kettles

Cracking WiFi Passwords By Hacking into Smart Kettles
Oct 21, 2015
Hackers have come after your phone, your computer, and your car . Now hackers are coming after your home refrigerators, Smart TVs , and eventually KETTLES . Yes, your kettle turns out good for more than just heating up water or making coffee for you– they are potentially a good way for hackers to breach your wireless network. Also Read:   How to Weaponize your Cat to Hack Neighbours' Wi-Fi Passwords . Ken Munro, a security researcher at PenTest Partners, has managed to hack into an insecure iKettle , which was proclaimed " the world's first WiFi kettle " by its developers, and stolen a home's Wi-Fi password. Besides boiling water, the iKettle can connect to a user's home WiFi network. It also comes inbuilt with an Android and iOS app that allows the user to switch on the kettle and boil the water from other location. However, the biggest security flaw resides in the Android iKettle app that keeps the kettle's password as the defa

Critical Netgear Router Exploit allows anyone to Hack You Remotely

Critical Netgear Router Exploit allows anyone to Hack You Remotely
Oct 10, 2015
Yes, NETGEAR Routers have once again become a victim of DNS Monitoring, potentially affecting 11,000 Devices. This week, we reported about a Vigilante Hacker , who protected users by installing malware on their Wi-Fi routers, forcing them to use a secure password. Now within few days, a security researcher has discovered a serious vulnerability in Netgear routers that has been publicly exploited by hackers. The critical flaw could allow hackers to bypass authentication mechanism and change the Domain Name System (DNS) settings of victims' routers to the malicious IP address. [ Exploit Code ] A security researcher, named Joe Giron, gave the details of his experience to BBC, saying that he noticed some anonymous activities in his machine and on investigating he learned that: The admin settings on his personal router have been modified on 28 September. Specifically, Domain Name System (DNS) settings on his router were changed to a suspicious IP address.

​SYNful Knock: Backdoor Malware Found in Cisco Routers

​SYNful Knock: Backdoor Malware Found in Cisco Routers
Sep 17, 2015
Mandiant , a FireEye sister concern has been involved in researches related to cyber defense. In their recent findings, a backdoor malware named SYNful Knock identified as the one compromising the principles of Cisco routers with features such as... ...Having an everlasting effect, i.e. Serious Persistence. What?- The malicious program is implanted in the router illicitly through the device's firmware (regardless of the vendor). The goal is achieved by modifying the router's firmware image, which exists even after the device gets a reboot. How?- installing SYNful Knock in Cisco 1841 router, Cisco 2811 router, and Cisco 3825 router. Affected areas- 14 instances in 4 countries including India, Mexico, Ukraine, and the Philippines. Impact- the backdoor is backed up with such abilities that can compromise the availability of other hosts and access to sensitive data in an organization. " The theoretical nature of router-focused attacks created a minds

Techie Police Officer Builds a Sniffing Tool to Track Stolen Devices (based on War-Driving)

Techie Police Officer Builds a Sniffing Tool to Track Stolen Devices (based on War-Driving)
Sep 09, 2015
Ever wonder, How can you Track your Stolen Smartphone , Laptop or any Smart Device? ...With IMEI Number? ...Or IP address? ...Or may be some special types of equipment? Well, Not required, because now it is possible to track stolen devices just by scanning their MAC addresses. Yes, Just MAC addresses, which is assigned to each device on a unique basis by the IEEE, but crooks can modify it in an attempt to hide the origin of the stolen device. But given the people's practice to never notice the MAC address of their mobile phone, tablet, laptop, desktop, smart TV, smart refrigerator, or broadband router, MAC addresses can be used to track stolen electronics. This exactly is what an Iowa City cop wants to do.  How Police Can Track Stolen Devices? According to Gazette, an Iowa police officer David Schwindt has developed a sniffing software that helps police find more stolen properties. The software, Schwindt dubbed L8NT (short for Latent analysi

Google Unveils Smart, New OnHub Wi-Fi Router

Google Unveils Smart, New OnHub Wi-Fi Router
Aug 19, 2015
Don't stare at the screen for too long for the buffering to end, Google has a solution ! It seems like Google is buckling up to carve out a niche in the market of wireless smart network devices. Just few days after Google made itself a subsidiary and a separate venture under Alphabet Inc , it announced the news of Android Marshmallow and now ithe company has announced to offer a new way to Wi-Fi and seemingly a newer and different outlook of routers. " OnHub a new way to Wi-Fi" as Google says is a speedy, secure, easy to use and a reliable Wi-Fi with a stylish look is all in a package the company can offer. Key Highlights of OnHub OnHub looks different from other routers in many unique ways, which are as follows: OnHub is cylindrical in shape It has Congestion Sensing Antennas It provides support for connecting up to 128 Devices at a time It Speaks your Language OnHub contains High-Performance Antennas hidden inside the Router Shell It has

Hacking Team and Boeing Built Cyber Weaponized Drones to Spy on Targets

Hacking Team and Boeing Built Cyber Weaponized Drones to Spy on Targets
Jul 20, 2015
The leaked internal emails from the Italian surveillance software company Hacking Team have revealed that the spyware company developed a robotic aircraft designed to attack computers and smartphone devices through Wi-Fi networks. Over a year ago, some security researchers developed a drone called ' Snoopy ' that was capable to intercept data from users' Smartphones through spoofed wireless networks. Now, the email conversations posted on WikiLeaks website reveal that both Boeing and Hacking Team want unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVS) called Drones to carry out attacks that inject spyware into target computers or mobile phones via WiFi. After attending the International Defense Exposition and Conference (IDEX) in Abu Dhabi in February 2015, the U.S. drone company Boeing subsidiary Insitu become interested in using surveillance drones to deliver Hacking Team's Remote Control System Galileo for even more surveillance. Among the emails, co-founder Ma

Researcher to Demonstrate Poor SSL Implementations Using Pineapple WiFi

Researcher to Demonstrate Poor SSL Implementations Using Pineapple WiFi
Jul 28, 2014
A leading provider of advanced threat, security and compliance solutions, Tripwire , has announced that Craig Young , a security researcher from its Vulnerability and Exposure Research Team (VERT) , is working on a paper about SSL vulnerabilities that will be presented at DEF CON 22 Wireless Village . There are thousands of websites over Internet that contain serious mistakes in the way that Secure Sockets Layer and Transport Layer Security (SSL/TLS) is implemented, leaving them vulnerable to man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks that could compromise sensitive user data such as banking credentials, credit card numbers and other information. MitM attack is one of the common and favorite techniques of attackers used to intercept wireless data traffic. Cyber criminals could able to intercept sensitive user data, including credit card numbers, PayPal credentials and social network credentials as well. Young has unearthed various situations where poor SSL implementations in co

FIFA World Cup Security Team Accidentally Reveals their Wi-Fi Password

FIFA World Cup Security Team Accidentally Reveals their Wi-Fi Password
Jun 26, 2014
This FIFA World Cup, the security has been really going well and yet no calamitous incident reported so far, other than the security company who is responsible to keep an eye on the event's security, itself tweeted a photograph of their state-of-the-art monitoring centre that exposed the World Cup security centre's internal Wi-Fi password to the whole world. Israel-based security firm RISCO is providing security management at the soccer stadium and very proud of their incredible work in securing this year's World Cup, which includes monitoring and maintaining hundreds of CCTV security cameras all over the 41,000-seat Arena Pantanal football stadium in Cuiaba, Brazil. The image was originally published by news outlet Correio Braziliense, that showed the Federal Police's head of international co-operation Luiz Cravo Dorea , standing in the mulch-million-dollar security center overseen by Israeli company RISCO and was watching Live video feeds from surveillance camera

Philips Smart TVs vulnerable to Screen Hijack and Cookie Theft

Philips Smart TVs vulnerable to Screen Hijack and Cookie Theft
Mar 29, 2014
Previous articles on The Hacker News have highlighted that How Internet of Things (IoT) opens your home to cyber threats. Recently the security researchers from vulnerability research firm  ReVuln  published a video demonstration shows that Philips Smart TV is prone to cyber attacks by hackers. According to the researchers, some versions of Philips Smart TV with latest firmware update are wide open to hackers and also vulnerable to cookie theft. The fault is in a feature called Miracast , that allows TVs to act as a WiFi access point with a hard-coded password 'Miracast,' and allows devices nearby within the range to connect the device for receiving the screen output. " The main problem is that Miracast uses a fixed password, doesn't show a PIN number to insert and, moreover, doesn't ask permission to allow the incoming connection, " Luigi Auriemma, CEO and security researcher at ReVuln, told SCMagazine . The vulnerability allows an attacker within the device'

Snoopy Drone Can Hack Your Smartphones

Snoopy Drone Can Hack Your Smartphones
Mar 25, 2014
The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVS) called Drones is rapidly transforming the way we go to war. Drones were once used for land surveillance, Delivering Pizza's, then equipped with bombs that  changed the way nations conduct war and  now these hovering drones are ready to hack your Smartphones. London-based Sensepoint security researchers have developed a drone called ' Snoopy ' that can intercept data from your Smartphones using spoofed wireless networks, CNN Money reported. The Drone will search for WiFi enabled devices and then using its built-in technology, it will see what networks the phones have accessed in the past and pretends to be one of those old network connections. Spoofing WiFi networks that device has already accessed allows Snoopy Drone to connect with targeted Smartphone without authentication or interaction. In technical terms, The Drone will use ' Wireless Evil Twin Attack ' to hack Smartphones. Once connected, Snoopy

Outernet - Free Global Wi-Fi Service from Outer Space

Outernet - Free Global Wi-Fi Service from Outer Space
Feb 28, 2014
If you are reading this THN Article, then you are the one of those lucky guys who has access to the Internet, but everyone is not as lucky as you. On this planet, about 40% of the population is still not having an access to the Internet services. So, there is good news for all those who are still deprived of Internet services - Free Global WiFi Internet Access called ' Project Outernet '. A Non-profit organization ' Media Development Investment Fund (MIDF) ' based in New York has taken this initiative, regardless of the geographical location, the Outernet will broadcast free, bypassing filtering or other means of censorship and universal Internet all over the globe from high in orbit. A few hundred of  Low-cost mini satellites ( cubesats ) will be sent into the space to create a constellation in the low earth orbit. To widen the range of service area, these Cubesats will utilize universally accepted standard protocols like DVB, Digital Radio Mondiale and  User

Chameleon Virus that Spreads Across WiFi Access Points like Common Cold

Chameleon Virus that Spreads Across WiFi Access Points like Common Cold
Feb 26, 2014
Do you know, A Computer viruses could go Airborne over WiFi networks? Security researchers at the University of Liverpool  in Britain have demonstrated a WiFi virus that can spread between computer networks just like the ' common cold ' spreads between Humans. They have created a proof-of-concept which can infect the entire wireless network instead of a single computer at a time,  that replaces the firmware of the vulnerable Access Point (AP) with a virus-loaded version, and then propagates itself to the next victim on the WiFi network . The  WiFi  based virus named as ' Chameleon ', that can self-propagate over WiFi networks from access point to access point,  but  doesn't affect the working of the Wireless Access Point. This Virus is able to identify WiFi access points that are not protected by encryption and passwords, according to the research paper . It can badly hit less-protected open access WiFi networks available in coffee shops or airp

Chainfire's Pry-Fi Android App released to defend against NSA Spying under Public Wi-Fi

Chainfire's Pry-Fi Android App released to defend against NSA Spying under Public Wi-Fi
Feb 01, 2014
Turn your face in any direction, someone is always trying to spy on you; doesn't matter who and what you are? Just yesterday we reported that Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) in Canada and NSA are together, running a spying program called ' game-changer '. It was revealed that the agencies are tracking all the travelers who passed through the airport terminal, and could be tracked throughout the country by referencing it with the intercepted information from Wi-Fi in cafes, libraries and other public places. Today XDA Senior Recognized Developer ' Chainfire ' has released a new Android app called Pry-Fi , that allow a user to disable Wi-Fi completely, including the background network scanning.  Pry-Fi will prevent your device from announcing all the networks it knows to the outside world, but it will still allow background scanning and automatically connecting to Wi-Fi networks. ' Retailers, crooks, the government, and other

Spying agencies tracking your location by capturing MAC address of your devices

Spying agencies tracking your location by capturing MAC address of your devices
Jan 31, 2014
Again a top secret revelation from the Snowden's Desk! A new document retrieved by the whistleblower Edward Snowden shows that the Canadian spy agency is tracking airline travelers even days after they left the terminal, just by capturing their device identification from the free Wi-Fi service at a major Canadian airport. CBC News reported that the US Intelligence agency worked with its counterpart Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) in Canada, and slurped information from the free Internet hotspots to track anyone who passed through the airport terminal, and could be tracked throughout the country by cross-referencing it with the intercepted information from Wifi at cafes, libraries and other public places, although it is not clear that they were tracking only the users who logged-in to the WiFi services or not. But It is also possible that one can capture the MAC addresses of all the available devices within the range of a Wi-Fi device (using some special tools

ASUS Wireless router leaves USB Storage Devices vulnerable to remote attackers

ASUS Wireless router leaves USB Storage Devices vulnerable to remote attackers
Jan 13, 2014
In this era of Computers and Smartphones, where we are connected to the Internet every second and use it almost for everything. For an Internet connection, one has to plug a device called Router between the ISP (Internet Service Provider) and device. Some Routers are available with USB option, where you can attach an external Hard Disk that allows files to be stored and retrieved across a computer network. Asus one of the largest IT hardware manufacturer providing these kind of devices by which you can connect to the internet and make your external hard disk available on the Internet as FTP server just by configuring AiDisk utility from the router's administrator panel.  Many ASUS Routers have this feature available, including models: RT-N66U, RT-N56U, RT-N15U, RT-N65U, RT-AC66U, DSL-N55U and RT-N16. Recently a vulnerability has been noticed by some Sweden users in the ASUS Routers, that allows an attacker to access your Hard Disk remotely from any part of the wo
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