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The amount of malware crafted and aimed at Android devices is ever-increasing. With Android being the most popular platform for smartphones and tablets around the world, Android users have become the low-hanging fruit when it comes to writing malware by the nefarious users. A new Android threat has affected 500,000 devices in China so far. Analysts at TrustGo Security Labs have discovered the Trojan!SMSZombie.A. It is a complex and sophisticated malware that exploits a vulnerability in the China Mobile SMS Payment System to fund unauthorised payments, steal bank card numbers and receipt information regarding money transfers. The trojan is difficult to detect, and even more difficult to remove.  SMSZombieA was first discovered on August 8, and the malware is embedded in several wallpaper apps. The wallpaper apps are noted to use provocative titles and nude images to encourage users to download. The trojan installs itself on a device after its user has downloaded and installed the...

AuthenTec, a leading provider of mobile and network security, today introduced a new security offering that provides military-grade encryption to data stored on today's Android smartphones and tablets without sacrificing device performance. AuthenTec's MatrixDAR(TM) for Android meets the stringent requirements of FIPS 140 certification.  MatrixDAR allows for full disk encryption in both the device and its storage media and incorporates AuthenTec's SafeZone software. This expands the company's security services for data-in-transit over SSL and IPSec connections and data-as-rest stored on a mobile device. It prevents unauthorized access and renders the smartphone or tablet useless if lost or stolen. AuthenTec offers the product for OEMs to directly install on devices, allowing IT departments to avoid installation of separate encryption software. " Our new MatrixDAR offering gives smartphone and tablet OEMs the ability to easily integrate military-grade FIPS 140-cert...

It is now possible to hack the human brain ? YES ! This was explained researchers at the Usenix Conference on Security, held from 8 to 10 August in Washington State. Using a commercial off-the-shelf brain-computer interface, the researchers have shown that it's possible to hack your brain, forcing you to reveal information that you'd rather keep secret. In a study of 28 subjects wearing brain-machine interface devices built by companies like Neurosky and Emotiv and marketed to consumers for gaming and attention exercises, the researchers found they were able to extract hints directly from the electrical signals of the test subjects' brains that partially revealed private information like the location of their homes, faces they recognized and even their credit card PINs. Brain-computer interface or BCIs are generally used in a medical setting with very expensive equipment, but in the last few years cheaper, commercial offerings have emerged. For $200-300, you can buy an Emotive...

Julian Assange made a speech today from the balcony of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and I felt a primal urge brought on by the fact that this man, in all his manly glory, has stuck his proverbial neck out for the essence of life. Truth and Justice. He is a handsome and articulate man, fighting for the basic rights of every human being on the planet. What could be more sexy? Putting aside husbands, lovers, friends, and professional media, he can Wik my Leaks anytime he wants. Julian started by reminding us that he is there because he can't be elsewhere. He blended his thanks for Ecuador's stand for justice with the announcement of an emergency meeting of Latin American countries next Friday specifically to address his situation and to defend the right of asylum. He made a straight forward statement that the United States must return to the values it was founded on and " Obama must do the right thing ." Bradley Manning must be released and " he is a hero and example to all ...

A team of Hackers called, " r00tBeer Security Team " today hack into official blog of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) which is a American multinational semiconductor company. AMD is the second-largest global supplier of microprocessors based on the x86 architecture and also one of the largest suppliers of graphics processing units. Hacker deface the blog page ( https://blogs.amd.com/wp-content/r00tbeer.html ) and also leak the complete user database of blog on his twitter account. Leaked database SQL file uploaded on Mediafire by Hackers which include 200 AMD user's Emails, Wordpress Blog Usernames and Passwords. During the time of writing, I think AMD is not aware about that they are the Victim of a Hack attack. We are tweeting to the AMD team for informing them. Screenshot of Hack as shown below: Now only AMD, these hackers also hack another High Profile website called " TBN - The Botting Network ", A Popular forum to learn How to make Money with 96000 member...

A rather serious security flaw in the iPhone 's SMS messaging system has been discovered and revealed by well-known security researcher and jailbreak extraordinaire 'pod2g'. Security flaw affecting all iPhones that he says could facilitate hackers or thieves to access your personal information. The researcher claims that the flaw has actually been present in Apple's iPhone software ever since the first iPhone was launched in 2007, but has failed to have been picked up on by anybody, including Apple it seems. Researcher revealed an SMS spoofing flaw that affects every version of Apple's mobile OS. Using the flaw, hackers could spoof their identities via text and send messages asking for private information (by pretending to be from a users' bank, for example), or direct users to phishing sites. Users would be under the impression they were replying to the sender displayed on the screen of their iPhone, when in fact the text would be routed through to a different number without their ...

Malware researchers have uncovered an attack targeting an organization in the energy industry that attempts to wreak havoc by permanently wiping data from an infected computer's hard drive and rendering the machine unusable. Symantec would not name the victimized firm, and so far has seen the attack only in this one organization. W32.Disttrack is a new threat that is being used in specific targeted attacks against at least one organization in the energy sector. It is a destructive malware that corrupts files on a compromised computer and overwrites the MBR (Master Boot Record) in an effort to render a computer unusable. W32.Disttrack consists of several components: Dropper—the main component and source of the original infection. It drops a number of other modules. Wiper—this module is responsible for the destructive functionality of the threat. Reporter—this module is responsible for reporting infection information back to the attacker. " Ten years ago we used to see pur...

 Hello faithful readers and new comers to our magazine! We are very sorry to have missed publishing the July issue, however, we were busy at work putting on the THE HACKERS CONFERENCE in Delhi, India. We had a fantastic turn out and professional, informative speakers. We plan to have another conference on Internet Security in September next year and hope to see you there! For now, enjoy all the good information on Botnets in our August edition and thank you again for your continued support. Download Magazine

If you're not already particularly picky about who you friend on Facebook, you might want to think about rejiggering those privacy settings. It's not the backdoor access that the FBI has been pushing for, but US District Judge William Pauley III has now ruled that it and other law enforcement agencies are entitled to view your Facebook profile if one of your "friends" gives them permission to do so. As GigaOm reports, a New York City federal judge ruled in a recent racketeering trial that it's legal for police to view your Facebook profile if one of your friends grants them permission. Better start sniffing out the rats on your friends list. That's because all of that data that you think is personal really isn't that personal after all, according to the Judge. " Colon's legitimate expectation of privacy ended when he disseminated posts to his friends because those friends were free to use the information however the wanted including sharing it with the Government ...

A team of researchers has discovered a weakness in the command-and-control infrastructure of one of the major DDoS toolkits, Dirt Jumper, that enables them to stop attacks that are in progress. The command and control (C&C) servers of the Dirt Jumper DDoS toolkit can be compromised and, in principle, completely taken over via SQL injection holes. SQL injection involves inserting database instructions in unexpected and unprotected places, effectively taking charge of a web application's database from the outside. According to the Prolexic report, the open source penetration testing tool sqlmap can be used to dump the contents of Dirt Jumper's database configuration file in a matter of seconds, revealing administrative usernames and passwords. The company's research includes Dirt Jumper v.3, Pandora and Di BoT. According to Prolexic, the Dirt Jumper family of DDoS botnet kits was originally authored by an individual who uses the handle 'sokol.' Various versions of Dir...

Adobe has missed dozens of vulnerabilities in Reader in this week's Patch Tuesday run according to Google engineers who reported the flaws. Sixteen vulnerabilities still affected the Windows and Mac OS X versions, while 31 critical and "trivially exploitable" bugs were found in the Linux application. Of particular concern to Google's Mateusz Jurczyk and Gynvael Coldwind are bugs in Reader for Linux, although other issues affect versions for Windows and OS X. For the Linux version, which went completely unpatched, Adobe and Google have been working together to counter 14 "new unique crashes" and nine "test-cases" that were potentially exploitable for remote code execution. When Adobe released a new version of Reader for Windows and Mac OS X earlier this week, it patched 12 vulnerabilities, but another 16 remained unpatched. Jurczyk and Coldwind decided to come forward with information on those flaws in the interest of user safety, as Adobe has no plans to issue additional out of band ...

FireEye Security experts are analyzing a targeted trojan that leverages emailed PDF files to gain access to systems and deliver its payload to specified networks in the aerospace, chemical, defense and tech industries. " We have seen different versions of this malware arriving as an exe inside a zipped file or as a PDF attachment. In this particular sample, the exe once executed opens up a PDF file called "Health Insurance and Welfare Policy." In addition to opening up a PDF file, the initial exe also drops another executable called ABODE32.exe (notice the typo) in the temp directory ." The malware also uses JavaScript to assess which version of Adobe Reader is currently running on the host machine, and then executes attacks based on known vulnerabilities in the discovered version. Once the trojan has infected its host machine, it communicates with its command and control server, the user agent string and URI of which are hard-coded into MyAgent's binary. FireEye...

There's a new family of malware that's using a complex set of capabilities to disable antimalware and listen in on sessions between users and some social networks. Bafruz is essentially a backdoor trojan that also is creating a peer-to-peer network of infected computers. Microsoft has announced that its Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool has recently been modified to detect two new malware families, Matsnu and Bafruz. The payload seems to start by terminating a long list of security processes listed in its code. It then displays a fake system alert that looks like that of any standard rogue AV attack. The device actually restarts in Safe Mode. Here, the malware can disable all the security products more easily, allowing it to perform its other tasks without being interrupted. " This may lead the user into believing all is well with their security product, while in the meantime, Bafruz is downloading additional components and malware onto the computer in the back...

It sounds like an air traveler's nightmare, Researchers at Trusteer recently uncovered a variant of the Citadel Trojan targeting the virtual private network (VPN) credentials used by employees at a major airport.The firm would not disclose the name of the airport because the situation is being investigated by law enforcement. Many businesses use VPNs to provide outside workers with access to secure data. Incursions on these networks often involve advanced "Man in the Browser" malware such as the Citadel, Zeus, and SpyEye programs. The man-in-the-browser (MITB) assault first used form-grabbing malware, which steals data entered into web forms before it is passed over the internet, to steal the airport employees' VPN usernames and passwords, Amit Klein, Trusteer's chief technology officer, said in a blog post. "This was potentially very dangerous, but we don't know whether the attacker group was targeting the financial system of the airport for economic gain or if the attack wa...

The latest version of Backtrack is out! Check out Backtrack 5 R3! " The time has come to refresh our security tool arsenal – BackTrack 5 R3 has been released. R3 focuses on bug-fixes as well as the addition of over 60 new tools – several of which were released in BlackHat and Defcon 2012. A whole new tool category was populated – "Physical Exploitation", which now includes tools such as the Arduino IDE and libraries, as well as the Kautilya Teensy payload collection. " Backtrack Team have released a single VMware Image (Gnome, 32 bit), for those requiring other VM flavors of BackTrack. Download BackTrack 5 R3

FinFisher , a software application used by law enforcement agencies for surveillance, appears to be far more widespred than originally thought.Sold by British company Gamma Internationl Gmbh, FinFisher secretly monitors computers by turning on webcams, recording everything the user types with a keylogger, and monitoring Skype calls. It can also bypass popular antivirus products, communicate covertly with remote servers, record emails, chats, and VOIP calls, and harvesting data from the hard drive.  On Wednesday, computer security company Rapid7 researcher Claudio Guarnieri shared new details of the workings of FinFisher, a piece of malware sold by UK contractor Gamma Group to government agencies. He found FinFisher servers at work in Australia, Czech Republic, United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia, Estonia, Indonesia, Latvia, Mongolia, Qatar, and the United States. Rapid7 has published the IP addresses and communication "fingerprint" of the command and control servers it has disc...

Routers made by China-based Huawei Technologies have very few modern security protections and easy-to-find vulnerabilities, two network-security experts stated at the Defcon hacking convention. Huawei is one of the fastest-growing network and telecommunications equipment makers in the world. The vulnerabilities were discovered and presented by Felix Lindner and Gregor Kopf of the security firm Recurity Labs. They talks about three vulnerabilities demonstrated at the Defcon conference, which included a session hijack, a heap overflow, and a stack overflow, and the discussion of more than 10,000 calls in the firmware code that went to sprintf, an insecure function. The problem is due to the use of "1990s-style code" in the firmware of some Huawei VRP routers, he said. (The models are the Huawei AR18 and AR 29 series). With a known exploit, an attacker could get access to the systems, log in as administrator, change the admin passwords and reconfigure the systems, which would ...

Hacking group Anonymous claimed to have shut down a computer server belonging to Australia's domestic spy agency ASIO, reportedly briefly closing down access to its public web page. The Australian Security Intelligence Organization acknowledged some disruption to its website. The ASIO website was down for about 30 minutes after the attack and is now operating slowly or not at all. It appears the attack may be ongoing, but ASIO's technical staff are recovering the situation. Anonymous has been claiming on its Twitter feed over the past few days that it was able to bring down several sites, including ASIO's. It wrote: " asio.gov.au has been down for some time now, And will be for the rest of the day! " It appeared linked to a controversial government plan to store the web history of all Australians for up to two years which was shelved Thursday until after the 2013 elections. The group Anonymous, which is believed to be a loosely affiliated network of "hacktivists",...

A new cyber surveillance virus has been found in the Middle East that can spy on banking transactions and steal login and passwords, according Kaspersky Lab , a leading computer security firm. After Stuxnet, Duqu, and Flame, this one seems to mainly spy on computer users in Lebanon. It's been dubbed Gauss (although Germanic-linguistic purists will no doubt be complaining that it should be written Gauß). Gauss is a complex cyber-espionage toolkit, highly modular and supports new functions which can be deployed remotely by the operators in the form of plugins. The currently known plugins perform the following functions: Intercept browser cookies and passwords. Harvest and send system configuration data to attackers. Infect USB sticks with a data stealing module. List the content of the system drives and folders Steal credentials for various banking systems in the Middle East. Hijack account information for social network, email and IM accounts. The researchers at Russia-based Ka...

Security researchers at Kaspersky Lab have discovered five new samples of the ZeuS-in-the-Mobile (ZitMo) malware package, targeting Android and BlackBerry devices. Zitmo (Zeus in the mobile) is the name given to the mobile versions of Zeus, and it's been around for a couple of years already, mostly infecting Android phones. The Zitmo variant has reportedly been operating for at least two years targeting Android phones by masquerading as banking security application or security add-on. ZitMo gets hold of banking information by intercepting all text messages and passing them on to attackers' own devices. It gets onto devices inside malicious applications, which users are duped into downloading. In this case, the malicious app was posing as security software called 'Zertifikat'. Once installed, the packages forward all incoming SMS messages to one of two command and control numbers located in Sweden, with the aim of snaring secure codes and other data. Kaspersky found mobile users ...

26-year-old Slovenian hacker known as Iserdo stands thought to have been behind the Mariposa botnet is on trial in Slovenia, charged with having masterminded an international cybercrime gang. At its height, the Mariposa botnet infected up to 12.7 million PCs, with more than half of the Fortune 1,000 companies believed to have been compromised, including 40 major banks. Once a computer had been compromised and brought into the botnet, operators could steal information from innocent users - including credit card details and banking passwords. Computer crime-fighting authorities had succeeded in bringing down the Mariposa botnet at the end of 2009, FBI officials worked with Spanish and Slovenian authorities to track down Mariposa's mastermind, Iserdo. He was said to charge between $500 for basic versions of the botnet code and up to $1,300 for more advanced ones, which included customised features, such as capabilities which allowed its operators to to steal credit cards and onlin...

Security researcher Jonathan Brossard created a proof-of-concept hardware backdoor called Rakshasa that replaces a computer's BIOS (Basic Input Output System) and can compromise the operating system at boot time without leaving traces on the hard drive. In short, firmware is software that is stored in non-volatile memory on a computer chip, and is used to initialise a piece of hardware's functionality. In a PC, the BIOS is the most common example of firmware but in the case of wireless routers, a whole Linux operating system is stored in firmware. Hardware backdoors are lethal for three reasons: They can't be removed by conventional means (antivirus, formatting). They can circumvent other types of security (passwords, encrypted file systems). They can be injected during manufacturing. Rakshasa, named after a demon from the Hindu mythology, is not the first malware to target the BIOS the low-level motherboard firmware that initializes other hardware components. Rakshasa replac...

Whenever an important event takes place, new opportunities for cyber criminals, especially for those who develop attacks based on social engineering, arise. Currently, the whole world has its eyes glued to TV screens watching the London 2012 Olympic Games. Anti-malware and anti-virus solutions provider Webroot has issued a warning that an app app called " London Olympics Widget ," which is described as an app that displays aggregated Olympic news coverage. In fact, it's really just harvesting the user's contact list and device ID while reading up on SMS messages too. The package name is 'com.games.London.Olympics.widget'. This app has a digital certificate claiming it was developed in New Delhi, India. For this scam, cybercriminals create websites that are very appealing; some even look very professional that they make it seem that you are close to having access to live programming. Researchers explain that the crooks rely on black hat SEO techniques to make sure t...

Website of the Southern Railways www.southernrailway.gov.in has been defaced apparently by Pakistani hackers. The hacker group that calls itself ' Pak Cyber Pyrates ' replaced the home page of the website with a page with content that denounces India's role in Kashmir. Indian and Pakistani hacking groups are engaged in a cyber war of sorts with websites in both the countries being regularly attacked and defaced.

At DEFCON 20, Raphael Mudge the developer of Armitage released the most significant update to Armitage. Armitage is now fully scriptable and capable of hosting bots in acollaborative hacking engagement. Raphael Mudge is the founder of Strategic Cyber LLC, a Washington, DC based company that creates software for red teams. He created Armitage for Metasploit, the Sleep programming language, and the IRC client jIRCii. Previously, Raphael worked as a security researcher for the US Air Force, a penetration tester, and he even invented a grammar checker that was sold to Automattic.  Raphael talk about Cortana scripting language for Cobalt Strike and Armitage. Cortana allows you to write scripts that automate red team tasks and extend Armitage and Cobalt Strike with new features. This technology was funded byDARPA's Cyber Fast Track program and it's now open source . Armitage a red team collaboration tool built on the Metasploit Framework. Cobalt Strike is Ar...

Business networking site LinkedIn has announced it took a hit of up to $1 million due to one of the year's largest reported data breaches . LinkedIn spent between $500,000 and $1 million on forensic work after a large number of passwords were breached, LinkedIn CFO Steve Sordello said on the company's earnings call today. He said the 175-million-member company continued to strengthen its website's security and is expected to add $2 million to $3 million in costs in the current quarter toward those efforts. " Part of adding value to our members every day means ensuring that their experience on LinkedIn is safe and secure ," he said. " Since the breach, we have redoubled our efforts to ensure the safety of member account on LinkedIn by further improving password strengthening measures and enhancing the security of our infrastructure and data. The health of our network as measured by number of growth and engagement remains as strong as it was prior to the incident ." After...

On Friday, Reuters blog platform was hacked with false posts and on Saturday, the @ReutersTech account on Twitter was taken over and renamed @TechMe. False tweets were sent before it was taken down. The first attack came Friday after Syrian hackers loyal to President Bashar al-Assad allegedly gained access to Reuters' blogging platform, which they used to post a fake interview with rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) leader Riad al-Assad. The interview essentially said the general was withdrawing troops after a battle. Presumably, the same hackers are responsible for also compromising a Reuters Twitter account dedicated to technology news, which has about 17,500 followers. Reuters confirmed the breach today in a tweet on its main Twitter account: Earlier today @ReutersTech was hacked and changed to @ReutersME. The account has been suspended and is currently under investigation Several of the updates posted on the hacked Reuters account, which claimed that rebels in the city of Aleppo ...

Chinese telecoms equipment suppliers have previously been criticized for allegedly being security risks. Huawei is working with British spooks to prove that it has no backdoors in its products which would allow Chinese agents to snuffle Her Majesty's secrets. The U.S. and Australia have made clear their distrust of one of the world's biggest telecoms company. The Australian government, for instance, banned the company from participating in bids for its national broadband network due to potential spying threats. Huawei, which has grown to become one of today's dominant telecommunications equipment companies, is likewise constantly under threat because of what some might call China-bashing. Over the past ten years or so, Chinese telecoms firms such as Huawei and ZTE, another telecoms-equipment provider, have expanded from their vast home market to become global players. Huawei is becoming an increasingly powerful global player, capable of going head-to-head with the best in i...

Hong Kong police said Sunday they had arrested a 21-year-old man believed to be a member of the international hacker group Anonymous, after he reportedly said on social networking site Facebook that he would hack several government websites. " The Internet is not a virtual world of lawlessness ," a police spokesman said, adding that the man was required to report back to the police in October. He faces up to five years imprisonment if found guilty.The man is a member of the global hacker group Anonymous, the South China Morning Post said. The group is said to have 20 members in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory, which guarantees civil liberties not seen on the mainland, including freedom of speech. The police spokesman declined to confirm his link to Anonymous. The last posting on the "Anonymous HK" Facebook page on July 22 urged authorities to show "respect" to citizens.

Is your iCloud account secured by a good password? Please Don't rely on the cloud. Here's a terrifying tale of modern hacking. Mat Honan, a reporter at tech site Gizmodo, was playing with his daughter when his phone went dead. Thinking it was a software glitch, he rebooted, and went to log in to his iCloud. But his password wouldn't work. He was "irritated, but not alarmed", and connected his iPhone to his MacBook Air to restore from backup. On opening his laptop, an iCal message popped up telling him his Gmail account information was wrong. The screen went grey, and he was asked for a four-digit pin, which he didn't have. By now he knew something was up, but had no idea just how much damage the hacker had done. After presumably brute-forcing his way into iCloud, the hacker was able change the password of and gain access to Mat's Google account, remote wipe his Macbook Air, iPhone, and iPad, get into his Twitter and then use that to get access to the Gizmodo US ...

This Sunday, The Capital , New Delhi plays host to an International The Hackers Conference where blackhat hackers will discuss the challenges of cyber safety with security agencies. Your Smartphone is an always-on and always-connected digital extension of your life which will be used by attackers to covertly steal your sensitive data and spy on you. Mahesh , An Independent Security Researcher and Android Developer/Hacker will demonstrate " Android Spy Agent ". This application allows us to remotely access the entire victim's personal information and even though the confidential data available in the android cell phone. The type of personal information includes the victim's contacts, call logs, messages, browser's history, GPS location and much more information directly available on the victim's cell phone.  Many-a-times we think that is there any way by which we can read the private sms of anyone. So here is the solution Mr. Mahesh will present in...

Security researchers are expected to disclose new vulnerabilities in near field communication (NFC), mobile baseband firmware, HTML5 and Web application firewalls next week at the Black Hat USA 2012 security conference. The Black Hat session aim to expose sometimes shocking vulnerabilities in widely used products. They also typically show countermeasures to plug the holes. Two independent security consultants will give a class called " Advanced ARM exploitation ," part of a broader five-day private class the duo developed. In a sold-out session, they will detail hardware hacks of multiple ARM platforms running Linux, some described on a separate blog posting. The purpose of the talk is to reach a broader audience and share the more interesting bits of the research that went into developing the Practical ARM Exploitation and presenters Stephen Ridley and Stephen Lawler demonstrate how to defeat XN, ASLR, stack cookies, etc. using nuances of the ARM architecture on Linux. I...