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

With the rise in mobile market, last year we have seen sharp growth in malicious ' adware ' — the most prevalent mobile threat in the world. And now, security researchers have once again found Google Play Store offering malicious apps that are infecting millions of Android users with adware . It's not at all surprising that the Android operating system is surrounded by a number of unwanted intrusions that may gain users' attention to fall victim for one, but this issue might be even worse than we thought. WHAT IS ADWARE ? For those not familiar with adware, adware is a software that automatically displays or downloads advertising material like banners or pop-ups when a user is online. Doesn't sound dangerous, Right? But adware could result in a serious threat to users. Android Adware can pose a major threat to users' privacy, since some ad networks gather personal information like phone number, email address, and many more. Depending on where the ad netwo...

The popular DSL wireless router model from D-Link are allegedly vulnerable to a software bug that could allow remote hackers to modify the DNS (Domain Name System) settings on affected routers and to hijack users' traffic. The main goal of DNS hijacking is to secretly redirect user's traffic from a legitimate websites to a malicious one controlled by hackers. The vulnerability might also affects other devices because it is located in the same, widely-used wireless router firmware used by different manufacturers. Bulgarian security researcher Todor Donev discovered the flaw which exists in a widely deployed ZynOS firmware from ZyXEL Communications Corporation, that is used in network hardware from TP-Link Technologies, ZTE and D-Link. According to the security researcher, D-Link's popular DSL2740R wireless router and a number of other D-Link routers, particularly the DLS-320B, are vulnerable. Late last year, similar router vulnerability was discovered in the ...

A number of western companies are doing big business in China, but now they may have to pay a huge value for to do so. China has introduced strict new banking cyber security regulations on western companies selling technology to Chinese banks. The Chinese government wants backdoors installed in all technologies that imports into the Middle Kingdom for the benefit of Chinese security services. The latest rules also state that western companies must hand over the Encryption Keys and secret source code as well. The requirements are so absurd that it would be impossible for companies like Apple to comply, which could harm American businesses. " The Chinese government has adopted new regulations requiring companies that sell computer equipment to Chinese banks to turn over secret source code, submit to invasive audits and build so-called back doors into hardware and software, according to a copy of the rules obtained by foreign technology companies that do billions of do...

An extremely critical vulnerability has recently been discovered in WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communication) , an open-source standard that enables the browsers to make voice or video calls without needing any plug-ins. AFFECTED PRODUCTS Late last month, security researchers revealed a massive security flaw that enables website owner to easily see the real IP addresses of users through WebRTC , even if they are using a VPN or even PureVPN to mask their real IP addresses. The security glitch affects WebRTC-supporting browsers such as Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox, and appears to be limited to Windows operating system only, although users of Linux and Mac OS X are not affected by this vulnerability. HOW DOES THE WebRTC FLAW WORKS WebRTC allows requests to be made to STUN (Session Traversal Utilities for NAT) servers which return the "hidden" home IP-address as well as local network addresses for the system that is being used by the user. The results of t...

Warning for Adobe users! Another zero-day vulnerability has been discovered in Adobe Flash Player   that is actively being exploited by cyber crooks in drive-by download attacks, security researchers warned today. This is for the third time in last few weeks when Adobe is dealing with a zero day vulnerability in Flash Player. The Adobe Flash Player Vulnerability identified as CVE-2015-0313 , exists in the latest version of Flash Player, i.e. version 16.0.0.296 and earlier. In late January, Adobe released an updated version of its Flash player software that patches zero-day vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2015-0311 , spotted by French security researcher Kafeine. This Adobe Flash Player Vulnerability was also being actively exploited via Malvertisement and drive-by-download attacks. In case of a "drive-by-download" attack, an attacker downloads a malicious software to a victim's computer without their knowledge or explicit consent. As a result, the flaw cou...

Earlier today, when Raspberry Pi Foundation unveiled the second avatar of its mini computer, the tech giant Microsoft revealed that Windows 10 operating system will support the Raspberry Pi 2 for the development of smart devices and appliances. Really a great news for all Micro-computing fans – a new, powerful Raspberry Pi 2 Model B in town. However, Microsoft added another reason to celebrate it – the new model of  Raspberry Pi 2  runs Windows 10 . The all-new and powerful version of Raspberry Pi 2 brings a host of new hardware, including a Broadcom 900MHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 processor and 1GB of RAM . Raspberry Pi Foundation says that these upgrades make the Pi 2 Model B a much more powerful computer which costs $35 only. Raspberry Pi 2 have six times the processing power of Model B+ . Also, its quad-core chip and twice the amount of main memory will support more intensive processing tasks, which means the device can do almost everything a normal PC can...

In spite of all the things smartphones can do, messaging remains one of the most popular activities. Popular messaging apps like WhatsApp , Viber, WeChat  support text messages, voice calls, photo & video sharing features, but there is no provision for sharing every file types on these amazing messengers. But, some or the other day, we all got struck into an awkward situation where we have to share PDF, apk or zip files with our friends while chatting. However using any other 3rd-party file sharing services, we can share image, video, audio, zip files or any other file type with our friends, but it would be a lengthy process and sometimes require to use computer. Gone are the days when you relied on your computer to get all of your work done. Telegram Messenger , the most popular and ultra secure messaging application, is now offering file sharing feature that allows its users to share large files and documents (up to 1.5GB) securely . Telegram is a messagi...

A wave of excitement in The Pirate Bay lovers. After almost two months of untimely and unexpected outage, the infamous torrent-indexing website The Pirate Bay (TPB) made a defiant return on Saturday. The Pirate Bay — a widely popular file-sharing website predominantly used to share copyrighted material free of charge — went dark from the Internet following a raid in Sweden late last year. In response to a complaint from Swedish anti-piracy group Rights Alliance, the police raided The Pirate Bay's server room in Stockholm and seized several servers and other equipment. Though, its almost impossible to keep The Pirate Bay offline for too long, last took down was the longest outage the torrenting site has ever experienced. The site is back one day early based on the countdown timer that was running on the official domain of TPB, i.e. thepiratebay.se . Anyone visiting thepiratebay.se domain today will be welcomed with a functioning site. People are already uploading and downloa...

WhatsApp is again in news but this time not for any security holes, but for its all new and, of course, much-awaited Free Voice Calling feature — similar to other instant messaging apps like Skype and Viber allow users to make voice calls using Internet. After launching its much-awaited Web client (dubbed WhatsApp Web ) to Android users, the most popular mobile messaging application WhatsApp has started rolling out the promised free voice calling feature, and this time again to Android users first. Late last night, some screenshots of WhatsApp's new voice calling feature appeared on Reddit. Reportedly, this new feature will allow WhatsApp users to make free voice calls to their online pals by simply tapping your phone icon to call their WhatsApp friends. The report broke when a Reddit user ( pradnesh07 ) received a WhatsApp call from a friend, and this is how the feature get activated. The free voice calling feature, for now, seems to be invite-only. So, if you still have to ...

Facebook users just Beware!! Don't click any porn links on Facebook. Foremost reason is that you have thousands of good porn sites out there, but there's an extra good reason right now. Rogue pornography links on the world's most popular social network have reportedly infected over 110,000 Facebook users with a malware Trojan in just two days and it is still on the rise, a security researcher warned Friday. The Facebook malware disguised as a Flash Player update and spreads itself by posting links to a pornographic video from the Facebook accounts of previously infected users. The malware generally tags as many as 20 friends of the infected user . "In the new technique, which we call it ' Magnet ,' the malware gets more visibility to potential victims by tagging the friends of the victim in the malicious post," said Mohammad Faghani, a senior consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers, in a mailing list post to the Full Disclosure infosec hangout.  "A tag may...

After the disclosure of extremely critical GHOST vulnerability in the GNU C library (glibc) — a widely used component of most Linux distributions, security researchers have discovered that PHP applications, including the WordPress Content Management System (CMS), could also be affected by the bug. " GHOST " is a serious vulnerability ( CVE-2015-0235 ), announced this week by the researchers of California-based security firm Qualys, that involves a heap-based buffer overflow in the glibc function name - "GetHOSTbyname()." Researchers said the vulnerability has been present in the glibc code since 2000. Though the major Linux distributors such as Red Hat , Debian and Ubuntu , have already updated their software against the flaw, GHOST could be used by hackers against only a handful of applications currently to remotely run executable code and silently gain control of a Linux server. As we explained in our previous article, heap-based buffer overflow was found ...

Last week, the most popular mobile messaging application WhatsApp finally arrived on the web — dubbed WhatsApp Web , but unfortunately it needs some improvements in its web version. An independent 17-year-old security researcher Indrajeet Bhuyan reported two security holes in the WhatsApp web client that in some way exposes its users' privacy. Bhuyan called the first hole, WhatsApp photo privacy bug and the other WhatsApp Web Photo Sync Bug. Bhuyan is the same security researcher who reported us the vulnerability in the widely popular mobile messaging app which allowed anyone to remotely crash WhatsApp by sending a specially crafted message of just 2kb in size, resulting in the loss of conversations. Whatsapp Photo Privacy Bug According to him, the new version of WhatsApp Web allows us to view a user's profile image even if we are not on the contact list of that user. Even if the user has set the profile image privacy setting to " Contacts Only ," the pro...