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A Philippine Hacker group claiming ties with the hacktivist collective Anonymous defaced early Monday several Chinese Government websites. " Anonymous Philippines " claimed responsibility for defacing more than 200 Chinese websites in retaliation for Beijing's aggressive actions in the West Philippine Sea, according to the messages posted on their Facebook page . " The operation was a success, we might not have brought China to it's knees but we gave hope to our brothers and sisters, because hope is what we need right now. Hope that someday people will stand-up and fight back! " Anonymous Philippines said. At the time of writing, More than 145 Chinese Government ( list 1 ) and 45 Commercial websites ( list 2 ) were displaying the following defacement message: " China's alleged claim on maritime territories and oppressive poaching can no longer be tolerated. Stand against Oppression! It's time to fight back! Say NO to China...

Point-of-sale (POS) is the hottest topic in payment structures and its one of the most popular technology topics as well. A Point-of-sale (POS) machine is a computerized replacement for a cash register. It has ability to quickly process a customer's transaction, accurately keep the records, process credit and debit cards , connect to other systems in a network, and manage inventory. A basic POS system would consist of a computer as its core part provided with application specific programs for the particular environment in which it will serve, along with a cash drawer, barcode scanner, receipt printer and the appropriate POS software. Point-of-sale (POS) terminals are used in most industries that have a point of sale such as a service desk, including restaurants, lodging, entertainment, and museums. Due to the better track inventory and accuracy of records, the Point-of-sale (POS) machine is used worldwide and it can be easily set-up, depending on the nature of the busi...

The most popular open source Instant messaging application based on the ' Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol ' (XMPP), formerly known as Jabber that enables you to connect with other people over the Internet will begin refusing unencrypted connections as from today. In an announcement yesterday, The XMPP Standard Foundation (XSF) informs that a large number of XMPP service operators and software developers permanently turned on mandatory encryption for client-to-server and server-to-server connections from today in order to harden the security of the messaging service. Many XMPP-based services operate independently, so it is tough to enforce all of them to use Encryption . ' While XMPP is an open distributed network, obviously no single entity can "mandate" encryption for the whole network - but as a group we are moving in the right direction ,' reads the blog post. ' If you use an XMPP service provided by someone else and you encounter problems contact...

On Friday, we reported about the large-scale operation of International raids launched by the FBI and other law enforcement officials in countries around the world to arrest the targeted customers of a popular Remote Administration Tool (RAT) called ' Blackshades ,' which is designed to take over the remote control of the infected computers and steal information. The news broke when various announcements on underground forums by hacking group members claimed that FBI especially going after all of them who purchased the hacking tool using PayPal as payment option. Today, the UK's National Crime Agency announced that the raids took place in more than 100 of countries and they have arrested more than 100 people worldwide involved in the purchasing, selling or using the Blackshades malware. More than half million computers in more than dozens of countries were infected by this sophisticated malware that has been sold on underground forums since at least 2010 to seve...

The United States has filed criminal charges against Chinese military officials for hacking and cyber espionage against several American companies. This case is first of its own kind in which the prosecutors have formally accused members of a foreign government with economic espionage charges. Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI are expected to reveal the new indictment later this afternoon, in which five officials of China's People's Liberation Army will be named, who are believed to be the current members of Beijing's military establishment. Accused chinese officials allegedly worked for the People's Liberation Army and have spied on U.S companies and stolen trade secrets. The alleged hackers are said to work for the PLA's Unit 61398 in Shanghai. Among the trade secrets, they are also accused for stealing information about a nuclear power plant design and a solar panel company's cost and pricing data, " They used military and intelligence faci...

If you are dealing in cryptocurrency Bitcoin and have Microsoft's Security Essentials (MSE) installed on your system, then you could be infected by a virus called " DOS/STONED " from the Bitcoin BlockChain. With a number of high-profile cases of fraud, theft, and technical incompetence against the bitcoins, it seems like cyber criminals are looking to scam unsuspecting customers. Blockchain is Bitcoin's most popular bitcoin wallet and block explorer. It is a central part of the Bitcoin system that includes a log file in which all bitcoin transactions are recorded. It stores the wallet data in encrypted form and runs on privately owned dedicated hardware. In an discussion on the Microsoft discussion boards, a user go by the name ' edc678 ' claimed that  Microsoft's Security Essentials  is showing alerts of the signature of the STONED virus in the Bitcoin BlockChain, which could only allow an attacker to write small chunk of text to accomp...

When it comes to crime, whether it's an online or offline, FBI doesn't spare anyone. According to the French media reports and various announcements on underground forums by hacking groups, the FBI has started a large-scale operation of International raids with the help of local law enforcement authorities to arrest a particular group of cyber criminals and Hackers. The FBI has targeted the customers of a popular Remote Administration Tool (RAT) called ' blackshades ', which allows them to connect and manage thousands of remotely infected computers over the Internet. WHAT IS BLACKSHADES RAT?? ' Blackshades ' is a remote administration tool (RAT) which allows an attacker to control several clients from around the world.  Blackshades  malware   is fully equipped with Drive-by attacks, Java exploits, keylogger and it allows an attacker to steal usernames and passwords for email and Web services, instant messaging applications, FTP clients and lot...

The Music Industry, Movie Studios and other companies who create media contents are always concerned with people getting access to their content without paying for it. Last year, On Request of Big Tech companies such as Microsoft, Google and Netflix, The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) defined a new API (Application Programming Interface) called ' Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) ' in HTML5 to aid web-based video services in restricting the rights of users who utilize their services. Now the companies won't need to rely on third-party plugins like Flash and Silverlight to deliver copy-protected movies and TV shows to your browser. Instead, now they have same capabilities of Digital rights management (DRM)  right into the fabrics of the web. All other major modern web browsers, including Internet Explorer, Chrome, and Safari are supporting  Encrypted Media Extensions (EME)  within the web browser since last year, except Mozilla Firefox . Even after criticizing the use...

It's an era of Mass Surveillance, where Encryption has become more important today for all of us than any other time in the History. But the trouble is that Crypto programs are too hard for Non-Internet-Savvy to implement and use. Time is loudly announcing the need to switch to some alternatives that provide end-to-end encryption for communication between two devices in order to keep your personal data away from NSA's prying eyes and respect your Privacy . But, many services, including Facebook's messaging application, don't support encryption and therefore are weak in providing security of our online data, which could result in data breach either by cyber criminals or by our own Government under surveillance programs. Because Facebook's messaging application doesn't support end-to-end encryption, an Open-source and most popular crypto chat-encryption application called 'Cryptocat' has made it possible to chat with your Facebook friends and rel...

Last year, Just after Snowden leaks, the U.S Government warned that NSA surveillance revelations will make harder to track bad guys trying to harm the United States, as disclosures can be helpful to terrorist groups. In response to the NSA revelations, the terrorists at Al-Qaeda have started using strongest encryption techniques in order to bypass the standard cryptographic protections in its various communications, according to the recent report released by the Threat Intelligence  company, Recorded Future . The analysis carried out by the intelligence firm revealed that the Infamous Terrorist Organizations, Al-Qaeda that attacked civilian and military targets in various countries, has switched to new encryption software for the first time in seven years, following the revelations of the US National Security Agency (NSA) by former contractor Edward Snowden . Al-Qaeda is a global militant Islamist and takfiri organization which operates as a network comprisi...

The Iranian hacking group, which calls itself the " Ajax Security Team ", was quite famous from last few years for websites defacement attacks , and then suddenly they went into dark since past few months. But that doesn't mean that the group was inactive, rather defacing the websites, the group was planning something bigger. The Group of hackers at Ajax Security Team last defaced a website in December 2013 and after that it transitioned to sophisticated malware-based espionage campaigns in order to target U.S. defense organizations and Iranian dissidents, according to the report released by FireEye researchers. " The transition from patriotic hacking to cyber espionage is not an uncommon phenomenon. It typically follows an increasing politicization within the hacking community, particularly around geopolitical events ," researchers Nart Villeneuve, Ned Moran, Thoufique Haq and Mike Scott wrote in the report. " This is followed by increasing links between the hacking ...

We All now know about the existence of the extensive metadata collection program by U.S National Security Agency ( NSA ), which creates an intimate repository of our lives -- whom we love, whom we're friends with, where we work, whom we call, when we you, how long we talk over the calls, and how often calls between the two parties are made and even the your interactions on social networking sites. Although U.S Government always argues that Metadata doesn't record the actual content ( of your call ) and it is used for NSA's automated analysis, but should we be worried? You are unique in the world and therefore your metadata too. So anyone with knowledge of the subject knows that analyzing terabytes of metadata can easily reveal far more details about a person's life than ever before. Worldwide debate on mass surveillance still was not finished yet, but today is a new alarming report revealed that US government murdering people around the world based solely on th...