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Sudoku is one such game that I believe will benefit your brain, but now not for your system. Peter Szabo from SophosLabs have identified a piece of malware that resides behind a Microsoft Excel-based Sudoku generator. The Malware developed in Visual Basic requires macros, a scripting language that allows users to create equations based on values in different columns and rows. Microsoft disable macros by default , because in past macros were the weapon of choice for cyber criminals . But in order for the generator to work, the user must activate macros. Unfortunately, while the user is enjoying the Sudoku, the macro is installing malware in the targeted machine. Keyboard and mouse macros allow sequences of keystrokes and mouse actions to be transformed into shorter commands and also it can easily gathers system information by using the ipconfig, systeminfo like commands. Once the bug has collected a machine's IP address, running processes, ins...

One of the ' The Hacker News ' reader inform us today about porn content on some Indian Government websites. After analyzing such websites, we came across more than 30 sub domains belongs to ' entegramam.gov.in ' . Where ' entegramam' means "My village" and all sub domains of this website are names of the different cities of Kerala state. The websites are in Malayalam language and most of the sites are powered by Joomla and Drupal (older vulnerable versions) with discussion forums on them. On our further analyze we found that time stamp of the Porn articles posted on forum dated back to " 2012/08/30 16:00 ".  That means, Government websites hosting Child Porn content from last four months and authorities or  the moderators of the website are not aware about the issue. On a simple Google search, one can found all such pages : site:gov.in "nude"  for further reports and analyzing. Google also giving notification...

Accunetix a web application security company reported vulnerabilities found in the Wordpress Pingback feature. According to report, Pingback vulnerability exists in the WordPress blogging platform that could leak information and lead to distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. " WordPress has an XMLRPC API that can be accessed through the xmlrpc.php file. When WordPress is processing pingbacks, it's trying to resolve the source URL, and if successful, will make a request to that URL and inspect the response for a link to a certain WordPress blog post. If it finds such a link, it will post a comment on this blog post announcing that somebody mentioned this blog post in their blog. " Bogdan Calin explained . Pingback is one of three types of linkbacks, methods for Web authors to request notification when somebody links to one of their documents. This enables authors to keep track of who is linking to, or referring to their articles. Some weblog software, such as Mo...

Iranian CERT is sounding the alarm over another bit of data-deleting malware it's discovered on PCs in the country. Dubbed Batchwiper , the malware systematically wipes any drive partitions starting with the letters D through I Drive, along with any files stored on the Windows desktop of the user who is logged in when it's executed Why naming Batchwiper ?  The name was chosen because the malware is packed in a batch file. The malware initiates its data wiping routine on certain dates, the next one being Jan. 21 2013. However, the dates of Oct. 12, Nov. 12 and Dec. 12, 2012, were also found in the malware's configuration, suggesting that it may have been in distribution for at least two months. GrooveMonitor.exe is the original dropper, which is a self-extracting RAR file, once executed it extracts the following files: -- \WINDOWS\system32\SLEEP.EXE, md5: ea7ed6b50a9f7b31caeea372a327bd37 -- \WINDOWS\system32\jucheck.exe, md5: c4cd216112cbc5b8c046934843c579f6 -...

Stuxnet case is considered by security expert the first concrete act of cyber warfare, a malware specifically designed to hit SCADA systems inside nuclear plants in Iran. The event has alerted the international security community on the risks related to the effects of a cyber attack against supervisory control and data acquisition in industrial environment.  SCADA systems are adopted practically in every industrial control system (ICS) used for the control and monitor of industrial processes that are potential targets of a cyber attack such as a critical infrastructures or a utility facilities. Manufacturing, production, power generation, water treatment facilities, electrical power transmission and distribution and large communication systems are all considered critical asset for every countries and represent privileged targets for cyber attacks. Obtain access to SCADA systems is fundamental step for a attackers that desires to compromise the controlled processes and contrary...

It is that time of year which everybody loves. It is the holiday season and you will start to see a lot more people express good attitudes and wish everyone else a happy new year. As a matter of fact it may be hard to think that with all of this much goodwill in the air there is someone out there who is trying to take advantage of that. But the fact is no matter what time of year it is there are always going to be bad guys around every corner and they will try to stalk their prey at anytime. It does not matter what time of year it is, the bad guys like to work all year round and you always have to be on the lookout for them. As a matter of fact this time of year is a very good time when it comes to black hat hackers . This is because there are so many people online around this time and they are looking for a bunch of deals for their Christmas shopping. The retailers really go full throttle around this time of year and they want to be able to make as much money as they can. This t...

Ask an expert on cyber espionage and he for sure he will speak of China, the most active and advanced country in this sector, this time a clamorous campaign apparently originated from Korea has been discovered. Security company FireEye collected evidences of a cyber espionage campaign, named " Sanny ", attributable to Korea. FireEye hasn't revealed the real origin of the offensive, it's a mystery which Korea is responsible between North or South Korea, but it confirmed that 80% of victims are Russian organizations and companies belonging to space research industry, information, education and telecommunication. According Ali Islam, security researcher at FireEye declared " Though we don't have full concrete evidence, we have identified many indicators leading to Korea as a possible origin of attack."   The following are the indicators we have so far: 1. The SMTP mail server and CnC are in Korea 2. The fonts "Batang" and "KP CheongPong" used in the ...

A user over at the XDA Developers Forum has gone searching through Samsung Exynos kernels and has found one whopper of an exploit. There's both good and bad news with this exploit so head down below for more details on this new found glory. This exploits affects a number of Samsung-made devices, along with potentially any device using an Exynos 4412 or 4210 processor and Samsung kernels. The vulnerability was described on Saturday by the user " alephzain " on XDA Developers, a forum for mobile developers. This Vulnerability could give remotely downloaded apps the ability to read user data, brick phones, or perform other malicious activities. This functionality can be exploited by some malicious apps to gain root access to the device, wipe/steal sensitive data, install malicious codes, and could also be used to potentially brick the phone. According to xda-developers user supercurio, Samsung has been made aware of the security hole, but the company has not p...

This Morning Anonymous member with twitter handle @OsamaTheGod leaked a huge database from server of Israeli Musical Act Magazine (act.co.il). The leaked database posted on public note website and includes users ID, username, password in clear text, IP address and phone numbers. Hacker posted data of about 10000 users from the site. Reason of hack yet not mentioned anywhere, but because hacker use #OpIsrael hash in his tweets, so this could be an attack against Israel in fight of Anonymous vs Israel. Stay tuned for further update.

In November I was contacted for first time by the Egyptian Hacker named ViruS_HimA who announced me to have hacked into Adobe servers and leaked private data. The hacker violated Adobe servers gaining full access and dumping the entire database with more of 150,000 emails and hashed passwords of Adobe employees and customers/partner of the firm such as US Military, USAF, Google, Nasa DHL and many other companies. ViruS_HimA specifically addressed the inefficient and slow patch management process that leaves exposed for long period "big companies".  " When someone report vulnerability to them, It take 5-7 days for the notification that they've received your report!! It even takes 3-4 months to patch the vulnerabilities! Such big companies should really respond very fast and fix the security issues as fast as they can ." Like , we reported two days before that one month old reported critical vulnerability of account hijacking in Outlook and Hotmail  is sti...

Mohamed Ramadan from Attack-Secure discovered a critical vulnerability in Etsy's iPhone application. Etsy is a social commerce website focused on handmade or vintage items as well as art and craft supplies. Any attacker on the same network can sniff traffic (including user password) invisibly without any warning from Etsy app. Its is very similar to the man in the middle attack reported in iPhone Instagram app a few days back. Bug Hunting ! Because Etsy having a Security Bug Bounty Program , so first Mohamed was trying to find a vulnerability in Etsy website , later he found that they have enough good security. Because Etsy mobile apps are eligible in bug bounty program, so next try was on Mobile apps. Mohamed finally  downloaded the latest version 2.2 and installed that on his iPhone 4S with iOS 6 and also on his ipad. Then he configured his Burp Suite proxy 1.5 to listen on all interfaces on port 8080 in invisible mode....

Cui, a fifth year grad student from the Columbia University Intrusion Detection Systems Lab and co-founder of Red Balloon Security, has demonstrated an attack on common Cisco-branded Voice over IP (VoIP) phones that could easily eavesdrop on private conversations remotely. The vulnerability Cui demonstrated was based on work he did over the last year on what he called ' Project Gunman v2 ', where a laser printer firmware update could be compromised to include additional, and potentially malicious, code. The latest vulnerability is based on a lack of input validation at the syscall interface. Cui said, " allows arbitrary modification of kernel memory from userland, as well as arbitrary code execution within the kernel. This, in turn, allows the attacker to become root, gain control over the DSP , buttons, and LEDs on the phone. " While he did not specify the precise vulnerability, Cui said it allowed him to patch the phone's software with arbitrary pieces of code, and that t...