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New top secret documents provided by Edward Snowden exposed that Microsoft worked hand-in-hand with the United States government and handed the NSA access to encrypted messages and built a series of backdoors into Outlook.com, Skype, and SkyDrive to ease difficulties in accessing online communications. Over the last three years, Microsoft has reportedly assisted the FBI and NSA in encryption bypassing its products' encryption that would otherwise prevent the interception of web chats, emails, and user data. The documents obtained by The Guardian show that: Microsoft helped the NSA to circumvent its encryption to address concerns that the agency would be unable to intercept web chats on the new Outlook.com portal; The agency already had pre-encryption stage access to email on Outlook.com, including Hotmail; The company worked with the FBI this year to allow the NSA easier access via Prism to its cloud storage service SkyDrive, which now has more than 250 million users world...

An Android malware is spreading around WhatsApp messenger called ' Priyanka '. It changes all your groups names to Priyanka, and may also change your contact names to Priyanka. Apparently, the malware doesn't actually harm Android devices, but it is very annoying and it spreads manually, relying on victims to accept and install a contact file from a friend, named " Priyanka, ". Just in this week this virus started infecting WhatsApp users. If you receive a contact file from a friend, named 'Priyanka' and install it, your WhatsApp will be infected. If you receive the contact file but don't accept it, nothing will happen. Follow below steps to remove the virus, if your are infected: Go to your contacts, search for Priyanka and DELETE it Go to Settings on your phone Select Apps or App manager and then select Whatsapp from the list Tap on Force stop and then on Clear data Once done. Open Whatsapp on your phone and it'll show up as you've j...

Social networking sites are unfortunately now major interest to malicious cyber criminals, spreading malware and building botnet army to steal money direct from your keyboards. Janne Ahlberg, a security professional from Finland found and analysed an interesting piece of malicious code, offered as browser plugin, and infecting system to steal passwords from user's browser and also modifies the original Pinterest Pins links to spam with malicious links automatically. A diet spam on Pinterest redirecting users to a malicious site with domain name  pinteresf.org , plausible-looking domain name, like original Pinterest with similar appearance. On page load, it triggers a pop up message to all incoming visitors, offering to download " Pinterest Tool " as shown in screenshots " To continue, install our Pinterest Tool and enjoy more features of our site. " Janne's investigation claims that, this fake site offering a fake malware loaded browser plugin,...

Google and Microsoft are at each other's throats again. In a recent statement, Microsoft says hackers have been actively exploiting a vulnerability that was publicly disclosed by a Google researcher,  Tavis Ormandy . Microsoft addressed the vulnerability in its monthly " Patch Tuesday " package of fixes for July. Tavis Ormandy revealed the vulnerability in Windows 7 and 8 allows local users to obtain escalated privileges , making it easier for a hacker to compromise a system. Ormandy has been criticized by Microsoft and some in the security community who subscribe to the practice that a vulnerability shouldn't be made public until a software maker has an opportunity to fix it. Ormandy said that Microsoft " treat vulnerability researchers with great hostility " and are " often very difficult to work with ". He also advised researchers to use pseudonyms when dealing with the software giants. In 2012, Tavis accused Sophos of " poor development prac...

On Tuesday, The Foundation for Internet Domain Registration (.NL) in the Netherlands (SIDN) was compromised and some malicious files were uploaded to their server by hackers. According to a blog post ,  SQL injection vulnerability was used to compromise one of the website ( 25jaarvan.nl ) on same server initially, that allows hacker to temporarily access to the domain name registration system. " The DRS web application was shut down and zone file publication was temporarily suspended. ", company said. " As a result of our precautionary action, some areas of the website that registrars use to download registrarship-related data have been unavailable since Tuesday evening. " In another cyber attack on Tuesday, several Belgium websites was also got defaced by another group of hackers. Domain Registrar behind Belgium i.e DNS.be was compromised by attackers. The hackers were able to infiltrate and modify a DNS server, pointing all of the websites...

A major vulnerability has been discovered in the U.S. Emergency Alert System , researchers have warned.that could allow hackers to break into the system and broadcast fake messages to the United States. According to a new report by security firm IOActive, U.S. Emergency Alert System, the system used to broadcast to the United States in times of national crisis can be hacked remotely by hackers. Recent firmware update of DASDEC-I and DASDEC-II application servers disseminated the secure shell (SSH) keys, that allows anyone with limited knowledge to log in at the root level of the server. Technically, compromising the DASDEC systems doesn't sound too difficult. In that scenario, an attacker could take over the system and issue emergency messages. Monroe Electronics was notified about vulnerabilities in its equipment in January and the company's internal development team developed a software update that was made available in March. The Emergency Alert S...

When you sign up on Facebook, you have to enter an email address and that email address becomes your primary email address on Facebook. In a recent disclosure by a Security researcher, Stephen Sclafani - The Social Networking site Facebook was  vulnerable to disclosure of primary email address of any Facebook user to hackers and spammers . The flaw resides in the invitation mechanism of Facebook, using which one can invite his all contacts emails to Facebook for making new account. As shown in following screenshot, an invitation received on an email, where one need to click the Signup URL: After clicking that URL, invited user will be redirected to a signup page filled in with the email address and the name of a person who used the link to sign up for an account was displayed: There are two parameters in this URL, i.e "re" and "mid". According to Stephen changing some part of "mid" parameter can expose the email address of another user. http:/...

What if hackers could take an existing legitimate app or update with a valid digital signature, and modify it in order to use it as a malicious Trojan to access everything on your Android phone or tablet? Last week, researchers from Bluebox Security announced that the Android operating system has been vulnerable to hackers for the past four years, allowing them to modify or manipulate any legitimate application and enabling them to transform it into a Trojan programme. The bug hasn't, so far, been spotted being exploited in the wild, but technical details and a proof-of-concept exploit have been published for a recently announced publicly by Pau Oliva Fora, a mobile security engineer at security firm ViaForensics. Jeff Forristal of Bluebox security stated that the security hole as been around since at least Android 1.6, and it could affect all Android devices i.e. around 900 million devices could be affected by hackers. CyanogenMod , a popular open source d...

McAfee Lab researchers issued a report on the large scale cyber attacks against South Korea that appear to be linked to hackers also specialized in cyber espionage . The attackers behind these recent attacks against South Korean infrastructure are skilled professionals and they designed a specialized malware to steal military secrets from the South Korea and US military networks. The cyber espionage campaign dubbed as " Operation Troy ", due the numerous references into the source code analyzed to the city. McAfee said that in 2009, malware was implanted into a social media website used by military personnel in South Korea Ryan Sherstobitoff, a senior threat researcher at McAfee, started the investigation after the malware came into action in an attacks occurred on March 20th, known as the Dark Seoul Incident , in which tens of thousands of hard drives belongs to television networks and banks in South Korea were wiped completely. Versions of the code...

Japanese video game maker Nintendo recently revealed that one of its main fan sites Club Nintendo got hacked and Out of 15.5 million login attempts in brute-force process, almost 24,000 user accounts have been hijacked early last month. Nintendo said it first became aware of the illicit logins on Tuesday evening after a large number of access errors on the site. However the security team believe that the hackers obtained the logins and passwords from an outside resource. The fan site, Club Nintendo, allows 3DS and Wii owners, as well as other fans of Nintendo games and hardware to answer survey questions and register their products. Members can do all this in exchange for "coins" or points. These can later be traded for other goods or services on the site. The site is open to users from all over the world, about four million of which are located in Japan. These accounts contain secure data of users' real names, addresses, phone numbers and email information. " The...