The Hacker News | #1 Trusted Source for Cybersecurity News — Index Page

Adobe releases open source malware classification tool Adobe Systems has released a malware classification tool in order to help security incident first responders, malware analysts and security researchers more easily identify malicious binary files. The ' Adobe Malware Classifier ' tool uses machine learning algorithms to classify Windows executable and dynamic link library (DLL) files as clean, malicious or unknown, Adobe security engineer Karthik Raman said in a recent blog post , Raman originally developed Malware Classifier for in-house use by Adobe's Product Security Incident Response (PSIRT) Team. When run, the tool extracts seven key attributes from every analyzed binary file and compares them to data obtained by running the J48, J48 Graft, PART, and Ridor machine-learning algorithms on a set of 100,000 malicious programs and 16,000 clean ones, Raman said. “ Malware classification can be a difficult task for even experienced analysts, especially in the modern ...

Cloudworm - Candidate MS12-020 - POC How secure are cloud servers? In technical circles, people are aware of the cloud variables and that cloud service providers offload the virtual machine security onto the customer as much as possible. Technical people know this. Not all cloud customers fall into this category and not all clouds are created equally. There are more casual and also very (too busy) customers as well. It is highly probably that many Windows cloud images may be vulnerable to a MS12-020 RDP exploit by default. New research using the nmap nse script " rdp-ms12-020.nse " developed by @ea_foundation shows that all Rackspace Windows cloud images are vulnerable by default. And on AWS EC2 any existing, unpatched Windows AMIs or EBS images (pre 2012.03.13) that are booted with the AWS Management Console default firewall ruleset are vulnerable as well. A Cloudworm Although cloud service providers have taken some steps to mitigate MS12-020, it is nowhere near enough...

Johnny - GUI for John the Ripper Johnny is a GUI for John the Ripper. It was proposed by Shinnok. s release includes all things from development release plus nice tabbed panel for mode selection and some additional clean-ups. Basic functionality is supposed to work: password could be loaded from file and cracked with different options. The reasoning behind Johnny is simple but at the same time profound: Complexity through simplicity and non-intrusive expert and non-expert availability. Johnny is a GUI concept to John the Ripper written in C++ using the Qt framework, making it cross-platform on both Unix/Linux and Windows operating systems. It was programmed as a part of the Google Summer of Code 2012 and supports bother 32-bit and 64-bit architectures. The interface also leaves room for lots of new options, either future John options, as well as GUI specific options like, hash detection, dictionary editing and generation or interactive bruteforce charsets or rules creation and many ...

POC Android botnet - Command and Control Channel over SMS To avoid detection, this proof-of-concept code utilizes the Short Messaging Service (SMS) as a command & control channel. This adds fault tolerance because, if a smartphone is not available on the GSM network due to being powered off or out of service range, when an SMS message arrives for delivery, the message is queued and delivered by the network. Download the POC code from Here. Compiling instructions are simple and straight forward. Please follow these: Compile with arm-gcc with the -static flag set Copy to anywhere on the underlying OS that is writable (/data/ is good). Rename /dev/smd0/ to /dev/smd0real/ Start the bot application Kill the radio application (ps | grep rild) The radio will automatically respawn and now the bot proxy will be working The PoC code for smartphone botnet C&C over SMS was presented at the Shmoocon held in January 2011. It seems that the author also has it working for the ...

Cyber Warfare - The Hacker News Magazine April 2012 Edition Call it Cyber Warfare, Terrorism, Computer Mania this month The Hacker News turns over every leaf of the newest way world citizens are fighting wars and using their keyboards to destroy planet earth. Most call it Cyber Warfare and we are once again proud to have some fantastic writers like Pierluigi Paganini , Mourad Ben Lakhoua , Lee Ives , Paul F. Renda and Ahmed Sherif back with us to help educate all our readers about the impending cyber war crisis and what we can do about it. Pierluigi Paganini gives us a step by step technical understanding of the issue and Ahmed Sherif gives a fantastic look at SCADA, the workings and the take downs. Join us as we explore this new frontier and let us know how you feel and what you have learned! Download   (Cyber Warfare)   April Edition [7.05 Mb PDF] Want to Download All other Editions ? [ Click Here ]

The Pirate Bay Buys Greek Airspace for Launching Low Orbit Server Drones Few days back we reported that , One of the world's largest BitTorrent sites " The Pirate Bay " is going to put servers on GPS-controlled aircraft drones in order to evade authorities who are looking to shut the site down. Most of the people from World didn't take it serious, well but The Pirate Bay is apparently deadly serious about investing in drone servers that it will fly in international airspace to make it incredibly difficult for governments to stop its expansion. A blog posting on the Pirate Bay site said the service had gone offline for a few hours on 18th March to move its front machines (which redirect a user’s traffic to a masked location). “ We have now decided to try to build something extraordinary ,” it said. If actually happening, it is part of a wider move to stay several steps ahead of the law, with The Pirate Bay gleefully thumbing its nose at the legislative attempts...

New Java Exploits boosts BlackHole exploit kit A widely disseminated exploit kit popular with hackers has been updated to take advantage of a recently discovered Java vulnerability. Researchers at Microsoft reported last week that it had observed this vulnerability being exploited in the wild. The Java exploit allows attackers to bypass the Java Runtime Environment's sandbox platform to install malicious code remotely. The malicious Java applet is loaded from an obfuscated HTML file. The Java applet contains two Java class files one Java class file triggers the vulnerability and the other one is a loader class used for loading. Named CVE-20120-0507, the flaw essentially allows hackers to bypass the Java sandbox, which is a mechanism designed to blunt attacks from malicious code. For its part, the BlackHole exploit kit, available underground, allows users armed with only basic computer knowledge to set up malicious websites to target vulnerable computers through the web browser...

Lulzsec Ryan Cleary Again in Jail for breaking his bail conditions The lawyer for a 19-year-old Briton Ryan Cleary suspected of links to the hacking group Lulz Security says her client's back behind bars for breaching his bail conditions. Mr Cleary, is accused of being a member of the hacktivist group LulzSec as it carried out a series of attacks on targets including the UK's Serious Organised Crime Agency, the CIA and News International. Cleary, who was never an official LulzSec member but ran an Internet Relay Chat that the group used to communicate, had apparently been trading e-mails with Hector Xavier Monsegur, a.k.a. Sabu, the recently outed LulzSec mastermind turned FBI informant. That was a direct violation of his bail agreement, which dictated that Cleary was to have no access to the Internet whatsoever. The Metropolitan Police said Cleary was rearrested on March 5, a day before the FBI disclosed that Monsegur, better known as Sabu, had been secretly working as...

Chinese hacker targeting Indian government and Tibetan activists Sites Websites of Indian government and Tibetan activists in the country are under attack in a cyber attack campaign engineered by a Chinese hacker, working with one of the world's largest e-tailers Tencent. The cyber criminal in question is Gu Kaiyuan, once a graduate student at a Chinese university that receives government financial support for its computer security program and currently an employee at Chinese portal Tencent. Before Kaiyuan initiated the exploits, collectively called the Luckycat campaign , he was involved in recruiting students for his school’s computer security and defense research. The Luckycat cyber campaign, has been linked to 90 attacks in recent past against targets in India and Japan, as well as against Tibetan activists, said the report released by the Japanese network security firm. 'Luckycat' has been able to compromise about 233 computers many of which are in India. A report...

Android Malware as Chinese game " The Roar of the Pharaoh " Security researchers have spotted a bogus Chinese game, that’s actually a trojan horse gathering sensitive information from infected devices, next to sending premium-rate SMS messages. It is Chinese game that is original with its rights but on Android it is a fake application that inherits malware Trojan to steal important information from your cell phone. The malware works after an unknowing Android handset owner installs the app, allowing the malware to collect data, such as phone number, IMEI number, phone model, screen size and platform, and recording the OS version and platform used for sending via SMS to the Trojan’s authors. But it also noted the new Trojan is unusual as it does not ask for any specific permissions during installation, which is often an indicator an application is up to no good.It added the malware masquerades as a service called " GameUpdateService " a very plausible name for a ...

U.S. Ambassador claim to be hacked by Russians Michael McFaul, the U.S. ambassador to Russia, took to Twitter Thursday night to accuse Russian media organization NTV of hacking his cell phone and email account. “ I respect the right of the press to go anywhere & ask any question. But do they have a right to read my email and listen to my phone? ” he tweeted this afternoon. when McFaul arrived for a meeting with the group For Human Rights today, reporters from state-owned NTV began peppering him with questions that kept him on the freezing street without a coat.“ Everywhere I go NTV is there. Wonder who gives them my calendar? They wouldn’t tell me. Wonder what the laws are here for such things? ” McFaul tweeted. Russian news agencies said NTV dismissed McFaul’s complaint, and officials at the station, which is owned by Gazprom, the state-controlled monopoly, said they have a network of informants who provide them with information. Mr McFaul suggested the television reporters ...

DKFBootKit - First Android BootKit Malware NQ Mobile Security Research Center has recently uncovered a new malware DKFBootKit. This malware is identified when monitoring and analyzing the evolution of earlier DroidKungFu variants. What sets DKFBootKit apart from malware like DroidDream, is that DKFBootKit replaces certain boot processes and can begin running even before the system is completely booted up. DKFBootKit repackages legitimate apps by enclosing its own malicious payloads in them. However, the victim apps it chooses to infect are utility apps which require the root privilege to work properly. NQ says the malicious code has already infected 1,657 Android devices in the past two weeks and has appeared on at least 50 different mobile apps. These apps seem to have legitimate reasons to request root privilege for their own functionality. It is also reasonable to believe that users will likely grant the root privilege to these apps. DKFBootKit makes use of the grant...

Twitter Takes Tweetdeck Offline due to Vulnerability Twitter has taken its Tweetdeck app offline after an apparent bug has possibly given some Tweetdeck users access to others’ accounts. The web version of Tweetdeck is currently down , although older desktop editions of the software appear to continue to receive and send Tweets at the moment, and can still log out and back in. A Sydney, Australia-based Tweetdeck user named Geoff Evason says he discovered today he was somehow able to access hundreds of other accounts through Tweetdeck . “ I’m a tweetdeck user. A bug has given me access to hundreds of twitter and facebooks account through tweetdeck. I didn’t do anything special to make this happen. I just logged in one day, the account was was slower than normal, and I could post from many more accounts. ” And demonstrated that he could access another account by sending Tweet . Other accounts may well be affected, as Twitter quickly shut off access to Tweetdeck entirel...

Your Xbox 360 credit card details Vulnerable to Hack It has been discovered by researchers at Philadelphia’s Drexel University, that credit card data on older Xbox 360 systems that have been traded in or sold on. Hackers can now retrieve personal information from refurbished Xbox consoles, suggesting consumers exercise more caution with their electronic devices. " Anyone can freely download a lot of this software, essentially pick up a discarded game console, and have someone's identity ," said researcher Ashley Podhradsky. The team has discovered that even restoring your console to factory settings won’t remove some of the data stored on the Xbox 360. " Xbox is not designed to store credit card data locally on the console, and as such seems unlikely credit card data was recovered by the method described. Additionally, when Microsoft refurbishes used consoles we have processes in place to wipe the local hard drives of any other user data. We can assure Xbox own...

Chinese Government sites defaced by Anonymous China @AnonymousChina Hackers taking down and defacing various Chinese government web sites. Hack is the part of operation #GlobalRevolution by Anonymous. The page is like other defacements with ASCII text, a message to the government in question and other Anonymous trademarks. This defacement is far more entertaining than past hacks, however, because they autoplay The Who’s classic song Baba O’Riley. Also it have one Chinese phrase, “患难见真情.” According to Google Translate, it means “ A friend in need is a friend indeed .” Deface sites include :  http://www.qnwqdj.gov.cn/ http://www.dzwqb.gov.cn/ http://www.bbdj.gov.cn/ http://tygtzy.gov.cn/index.php And with this, Hackers also leak the database info of http://www.wnpop.gov.cn/ and http://www.meda.gov.cn. Leaks are posted on Pastebin 1 and 2 .

50K Cards Compromised using Credit Card Processor Some 50,000 credit and debit cardholders may have their information exposed following a security breach at Global Payments. The breach occurred sometime between between Jan. 21, 2012 and Feb. 25, 2012. Both Visa and MasterCard have confirmed they have warned U.S. banks that a credit card processor was reportedly breached. Both firms say their own security systems were not compromised. MasterCard said law enforcement has been notified of the matter and an "independent data security organization" is conducting a forensic review of the matter. " MasterCard's own systems have not been compromised in any manner, " a company spokesman said in a statement. The company will " continue to both monitor this event and take steps to safeguard account information ." Because it sits in this middle ground directing where payment information goes, an attack on its system would leave a lot of private financial data...

Why Hackers Can't take down DNS root servers ? Interpol Chief Ronald Noble on Friday warned that a group of hackers might try to shut down internet service tomorrow. The hacking group, Anonymous, is protesting against several reasons including the crash of Wall Street and irresponsible leaders. There are 13 DNS servers that host the core databases for translating IP addresses. Anonymous hackers have announced " Operation Global Blackout ", promising to cause an Internet-wide blackout by disabling the core DNS servers. Anonymous  Hackers wants to bombard those 13 servers with traffic using a distributed denial of service attack. If the servers get too overloaded, they’ll crash and therefore be unable to fulfil DNS lookups rendering all domain names useless. But there are lots of Limitations in this type of attack : There are 13 Root Servers out there, It it not possible to shut down every of them. Even every root server is under control of various companies and they h...

CIA Chief : We will Spy on You Through Your TV According to the Central Intelligence Agency, the organization says spies won't have to plant bugs in homes, businesses or other places where they want to spy because of coming advances in computer and Internet technology. The CIA claims that when you download a Netflix film or listen to web radio, they will know exactly what you are doing. Spies will no longer have to plant bugs in your home, the rise of 'connected' gadgets controlled by apps will mean that people 'bug' their own homes, says CIA director David Petraeus. The CIA says it is very possible the agency and others will be able to "read" these and other gadgets from outside the places they want to monitor via the Internet and perhaps even with radio waves outside your home. Once upon a time, spies had to place a bug in your chandelier to hear your conversation. With the rise of the smart home, you’d be sending tagged, geolocated data that a spy...

FBI Cyber Chief Says U.S. Losing War Against Hackers FBI is struggling to combat cyberattacks by hackers. "We're not winning," FBI executive assistant director Shawn Henry said. Four top government cybersecurity officials have basically come out to say America is getting her hiney kicked in cyberattacks by nation state hackers. Shawn Henry, who is getting ready to leave the bureau after more than two decades with the law enforcement agency, says the United States is falling behind in the ongoing fight against cyber ne'er-do-wells. " Your government failed you ," testified Richard Clarke, a former cybersecurity and cyberterrorism advisor for the White House. He said that to Congress about 9/11, but now he's warning the people that we are defenseless when it comes to cybersecurity; our government has failed us again. Clarke stated, " Every major company in the United States has already been penetrated by China ." Who declared this war and ...

Apple Azerbaijan got hacked by Team Nuts The domain Apple.az represents 'Apple Azerbaijan' and it redirect to the Official Reseller of Apple in Arizona ( www.almastore.az ) , Which Got Hacked By Member Of Team Nuts ' YasH' and 'COde InjectOr' today evening. 1st Deface page was uploaded by hacker on Index page, but later they upload it to another location : http://www.almastore.az/news/images/ . Linux kernel on server reported by hackers is 2.6.18-92.el5 #1 SMP Tue Jun 10 18:49:47 EDT 2008 i68 which have Vulnerability of Remote Arbitrary Code Execution. No web-shell was used in this attack.  Hackers added that this was not targetted. Last week same hacker hack into Stanford University website and deface it.

 eCommerce Fraud Detection Tool   - An Anti-fraud solution by MasterCard In the past, a lost wallet, stolen credit card, or misplaced ID were among the paramount culprits of identity theft.Today, one need not lose a thing to eventually lose it all. commerce merchants have a new tool at their disposal to help mitigate the risk of fraud in online transactions, with MasterCard’s introduction of Expert Monitoring Fraud Scoring for Merchants. MasterCard will release an e-commerce anti-fraud product for merchants in May, said Mike Plotnick, MasterCard's communications leader. MasterCard announced the product at the Merchant Risk Council show in Las Vegas. The solution is designed for global merchants to assess transactions on U.S.-issued cards. In other words, the service provides merchants with a “predictive fraud score for Card-Not-Present transactions in real time to measure the likelihood that a transaction is fraudulent.”Basically, the service looks at the buyer’s...

NMAP Script to Check Presence of ms12-020 RDP vulnerability Yesterday   Sam Bowne was working on a NMAP script, which will be able to  Check Presence of ms12-020 RDP vulnerability on a machine via scan only. But unfortunately, it was less in success rate, Later  @ea_foundation joins  Sam Bowne  to develop a working Nmap script. Microsoft bulletin ms12-020 patches two vulnerabilities. CVE-2012-0152 which addresses a DoS vulnerability inside Terminal Server,and CVE-2012-0002 which fixes a vulnerability in Remote Desktop Protocol.Both are part of Remote Desktop Services. The hackers worked quickly on this particular vulnerability and we've already seen attempts to exploit the flaw which exists in a part of Windows called the Remote Desktop Protocol. Script works by checking for a CVE-2012-0152 vulnerability.Patched and unpatched system differ in the  results from whichwe can conclude if the service is vulnerable or not. Download Nmap Scri...

Corruption & Persistent Vulnerability in Skype 5.8 and 5.5 Ucha Gobejishvili ( longrifle0x ) Benjamin Kunz Mejri (Rem0ve)&Alexander Fuchs (f0x23) , security Experts from The Vulnerability-Lab Team discovered a remote pointer corruption with persistent weakness on Skypes v5.8.0.156 Windows 7 & MacOS v5.5.2340. The security risk of the remote denial of service vulnerability via pointer corruption is estimated as high(-). Skype is a software application that allows users to make voice and video calls and chats over the Internet. Calls to other users within theSkype service are free, while calls to both traditional landline telephones and mobile phones can be made for a fee using a debit-baseduser account system. According to Expert, Vulnerability was reported to Vendor on 2012-02-24,  and Vendor Fix/Patch by Check on 2012-03-20. Affected versions are Skype - Windows, MacOs & Linux v5.8.0.156, 5.5.0.2340, 2.2 Beta. The exploitation met...

Office based Trojan threat for Mac OS X by Chinese hackers Security company ESET watches the newly found Trojan for OS X establish connections and receive commands to steal information. Earlier this month, researchers from AlienVault and Intego reported a new malware attack targeting Tibetan NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations).  The attack consisted of luring the victim into visiting a malicious website, which then would drop a malicious payload on the target’s computer using Java vulnerability CVE-2011-3544 and execute it.  During installation on a Windows system, the payload deployed was a variant of Gh0st RAT (Remote Access Trojan). On the Mac though, a new payload, dubbed OSX/Lamadai.A, was used. ESET observed that once the Trojan installs it will establish a connection to a hard-coded remote C&C server located in China, and will wait in "busy" loop where it attempts to maintain its connection with the server. The server can then be used to issue co...

Kelihos Botnet with 110,000 PCs take down finally Botnets are particularly insidious, using thousands of virus-infected computers which their owners are unaware are being used for sending out spam, launching denial-of-service attacks and stealing data.But taking down a botnet poses challenges. The main problem is that legitimate security companies can’t use the same type of weapons as criminals. A group of malware experts from security companies Kaspersky Lab, CrowdStrike, Dell SecureWorks and the Honeynet Project, have worked together to disable the second version of the Kelihos botnet, which is significantly bigger than the one shut down by Microsoft and its partners. Kelihos is used to send spam, carry out DDoS attacks, and steal online currency such as bitcoin wallets. It operates as a so-called "peer-to-peer" bot network, which are more difficult to take down than those with a centralized command and control servers (C&C), according to Tillmann Werner, a senior ...

Dominican Republic Police arrested 6 Anonymous hackers Dominican Republic Police has arrested six hackers , Milton Corniell David Jimenez (Zerohack), Juan Rafael Leonardo Acosta (Nmap), Cristian de la Rosa Jose de los Santos (Mot), Robert Reynoso Delgado (Frank-Ostia) linked to Anonymous and accused by the authorities of attacking websites of state and private companies. Public Prosecutor German Vasquez alleges the six hacked into government websites, including ones for the president and the education ministry. He says the suspects range in age between 17 and 23. The members of combat cyber crime unit made the arrest in an joint operating in the country early Sunday in the capital Santiago. Defense lawyer Carlos Guerrero denies the accusations and says the government has no evidence. The defendants are accused of cyber terrorism, which the prosecution defined as a new form of threats and vulnerabilities in the Internet. denunciations of the "hacks" to institutions DG Int...

Japan orders Google to remove auto-complete function over privacy complaint Google has been ordered to disable part of its autocomplete function in Japan after complaints it violates privacy. According to a report by The Japan Times, the court was acting on a petition accusing Google’s autocomplete feature of being defamatory. The petition was filed by a Japanese man (name not disclosed) who alleged that some of the autocomplete suggestions accompanying his name were not only defamatory but also breached his privacy. The unnamed petitioner, in fact, claimed that these defamatory search suggestions even cost him his job. The man came to this conclusion after discovering that when people type his name into Google's search engine, words suggesting criminal acts, which he is unfamiliar with, automatically appear. If a computer-suggested term is selected, more than 10,000 items defaming or disparaging him show up in a list, Tomita said. Google has so far not carried out the court...

Customer Credit Reports for Resale in Black market Internet security concerns grew the most, Approximately half of respondents said they were seriously concerned about viruses, spam, and the safety of online shopping. 70% of respondents said they were seriously concerned about identity theft, and 68% said they were seriously concerned about credit or debit card fraud. MSNBC today reported that, Hackers breach into credit rating agencies and stealing customer credit reports for resale on the black market. They claim that AnnualCreditReport.com, Equifax.com, or CreditReport.com are being hacked and consumer data stolen from them. " I'm selling super prime credit reports and scores which include all 3 bureaus and other information ," brags one advertisement on one site. Hackers’ claim that the credit reporting firms are easy to compromise. The hacker explained that the trick is to open several credit report sites and keep trying random answers until one set works. A w...

17-year-old Hacker arrested for hacking into KPN mobile telecommunications A 17-year-old boy has been arrested for hacking into mobile telecommunications company KPN in the Netherlands. He has also been accused of other breaches in Japan, Korea, and Norway. The teenager was arrested last Tuesday in the Dutch town of Barendrecht, where police seized an encrypted computer, two laptops and other storage media including external hard drives, DVDs and USB sticks. The arrested teenager called himself "xS", "Yoshioka" and "Yui" online, is also suspected of breaching security of Tokohu University in Japan, as well as hacking computers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and at Trondheim University in Norway. Last but not least, he reportedly ran a website used for selling stolen credit card data. KPN also noted the arrest is unrelated to a January hack which resulted in the company taking 2 million e-mail accounts offline as a pre...

Microsoft censors The Pirate Bay links on Windows Live Messenger Microsoft has decided to block access to The Pirate Bay from Windows Live Messenger. When users try to send an instant message to a friend with a link from The Pirate Bay, Windows Live Messenger displays a warning, saying that the link is " blocked because it was reported as unsafe ." " We block instant messages if they contain malicious or spam URLs based on intelligence algorithms, third-party sources, and/or user complaints. Pirate Bay URLs were flagged by one or more of these and were consequently blocked ," Redmond told The Register in an emailed statement. The Pirate Bay has been a lightning rod of controversy for years now, as copyright holders take aim at the organisation for giving users access to their content. Much of the focus of last year's ill-fated Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) centered on stopping The Pirate Bay and other sites that provide a similar service. Still, The Pirate ...