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Everything is now crystal clear: The security researchers from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) were hired by the federal officials to discover a technique that could help the FBI Unmask Tor users and Reveal their IP addresses as part of a criminal investigation. Yes, a federal judge in Washington has recently confirmed that the computer scientists at CMU's Software Engineering Institute (SEI) were indeed behind a hack of the TOR project in 2014, according to court documents [ PDF ] filed Tuesday. In November 2015, The Hacker News reported that Tor Project Director Roger Dingledine accused the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of paying the CMU, at least, $1 Million for providing information that led to the criminal suspects identification on the Dark Web . After this news had broken, the FBI denied the claims , saying "The allegation that we paid [CMU] $1 Million to hack into TOR is inaccurate."  Meanwhile, the CMU also published a press ...

Currently, Asus is undergoing through a troublesome situation after a lawsuit had been filed by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regarding its Router Insecurity. On Tuesday, FTC settled charges with Asus, where the hardware manufacturing company agrees to: Undergo Independent Security Audits Once in 2 years, for the Next 2 Decades . This action had been taken as the result of security negligence in Asus Wireless Routers that put the home and corporate networks of hundreds of thousands of consumers at risk. If Asus is found to violate the agreement, the company could end up paying a civil penalty of up to $16,000 for each violation. Asus Router Security Blunders Since Asus markets its products under the label of Secure and Intelligent routers through its website, following flaws would splash its level of security and intelligence. 1. Default Username & Password: ADMIN In 2014, a serious security issue had been brought to the public regarding...

Until now, the FBI is asking for Apple's help in unlocking the iPhone belonging to one of the terrorists in the San Bernardino shootings that killed 14 and injured 24 in December. However, in addition to iPhone 5C belonged to San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook, the U.S. Justice Department is looking at court orders forcing Apple to help officials unlock at least 12 iPhones. Citing sources, the Wall Street Journal reported that the federal authorities want to extract data from iPhones seized in a variety of criminal investigations are involved in undisclosed cases where prosecutors are compelling Apple to help them bypass iPhone's lockscreen. Although more details of these cases are not yet publicly disclosed, these dozen or so cases are all distinct from San Bernardino shooter's case and involve many iPhones using an older iOS version that has fewer security barriers to bypass. Also Read:    Police Reset Shooter's Apple ID that leaves iPhone Data U...

If you invite guest users into your Entra ID tenant, you may be opening yourself up to a surprising risk.  A gap in access control in Microsoft Entra's subscription handling is allowing guest users to create and transfer subscriptions into the tenant they are invited into, while maintaining full ownership of them.  All the guest user needs are the permissions to create subscriptions in their home tenant, and an invitation as a guest user into an external tenant. Once inside, the guest user can create subscriptions in their home tenant, transfer them into the external tenant, and retain full ownership rights. This stealthy privilege escalation tactic allows a guest user to gain a privileged foothold in an environment where they should only have limited access. Many organizations treat guest accounts as low-risk based on their temporary, limited access, but this behavior, which works as designed, opens the door to known attack paths and lateral movement within the resource t...

No matter how secure you think your computer might be, something malicious can always happen. As a Computer is an open book with right tools and talent. The same is proved by a group of security researchers by hacking into a computer with no internet, and no Bluetooth devices. Yes, it is possible for attackers to Hack Your Computer through non-Bluetooth devices such as your wireless mouse and keyboard and install Malware or Rootkit onto your machine. That innocent-looking tiny dongle plugged into your USB port to transmit data between your wireless mouse, and the computer is not as innocent as it pretends to be. What's the Vulnerability? Security researchers from the Internet of things security firm Bastille have warned that wireless keyboards and mice from seven popular manufacturers including Logitech, Dell, Microsoft, HP and Lenovo are… …vulnerable to so-called MouseJack attacks , leaving Billions of computers vulnerable to hackers. The flaw actually resides in the way t...

There are several encrypted messaging apps for mobile and desktop platforms that shipped with "The Most Secure" tagline but ends up in de-anonymizing the real identity of its users in some or the other way. In fact, very few encrypted messaging apps available today deal with the core problem of Metadata .  The majority of apps offer end-to-end encryption that kept the content of your messages away from prying eyes, but your metadata will still be accessible to them, which is enough to know who you really are, and who you're talking to. But, one messenger app stands out of the crowd by providing superb anonymity to its users, and it is dubbed as " Ricochet ." Ricochet is a peer-to-peer instant messaging system available for Windows, Mac, and Linux and you can trust it as the app has already cleared its first professional security audit carried out by cyber security company NCC Group . What's so Promising about Ricochet? Unlike ...

Utah State computer systems are experiencing a massive cyber attack on up to 300 Million Hacking attempts per day due to National Security Agency's (NSA) data center in the state. Yes, 300,000,000 hacking attempts in a day! According to the statistical survey, it is evident that the computer systems in the US State of Utah began to experience the hacking attack a few years back, precisely, soon after the NSA revelations by global surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden. It is a less-known fact that the NSA has built its new data center near the city of Bluffdale, Utah. However, a couple of years back, when Snowden revealed the presence of the data center, the attacks have constantly been going on. The PRISM spying program by Big Brothers at NSA might have shifted the attention of hackers for the retaliation against mass-surveillance and flared up this heightened cyber attacks against the spying agency. According to Utah Commissioner of public safety, Keith S...

The source code of a recently discovered Android banking Trojan that has the capability to gain administrator access on your smartphone and completely erase your phone's storage has been LEAKED online. The banking Trojan family is known by several names; Security researchers from FireEye dubbed it SlemBunk, Symantec dubbed it Bankosy, and last week when Heimdal Security uncovered it, they dubbed it MazarBot . All the above wave of Android banking Trojans originated from a common threat family, dubbed GM Bot, which IBM has been tracking since 2014. GM Bot emerged on the Russian cybercrime underground forums, sold for $500 / €450, but it appears someone who bought the code leaked it on a forum in December 2015, the IBM X-Force team reported. What is GM Bot and Why Should You Worry about it? The recent version of GM Bot ( dubbed MazarBOT ) has the capability to display phishing pages on the top of mobile banking applications in an effort to trick Android users ...

Are you also the one who downloaded Linux Mint on February 20th? You may have been Infected! Linux Mint is one of the best and popular Linux distros available today, but if you have downloaded and installed the operating system recently you might have done so using a malicious ISO image. Here's why: Last night, Some unknown hacker or group of hackers had managed to hack into the Linux Mint website and replaced the download links on the site that pointed to one of their servers offering a malicious ISO images for the Linux Mint 17.3 Cinnamon Edition . "Hackers made a modified Linux Mint ISO, with a backdoor in it, and managed to hack our website to point to it," the head of Linux Mint project Clement Lefebvre said in a surprising announcement dated February 21, 2016. Who are affected? As far as the Linux Mint team knows, the issue only affects the one edition, and that is Linux Mint 17.3 Cinnamon edition. The situation happened last night, s...

As the groundwork for the presidential election is being cooked up in the United States to be held on 8 November 2016, candidates are very busy in sharpening their skills to gain the vote of reliance. By struggling to gain an upper hand in the National issues at this moment could benefit the candidates bring them into the limelight and stardom. Donald Trump (a Presidential Candidate from Republican Party) is not an exception to this. Recently, Trump made a controversial statement to boycott Apple until the company handovers the San Bernardino terrorist's phone data to the authority; during a rally in South Carolina yesterday. "First of all, Apple ought to give the security for that phone. What I think you ought to do is boycott Apple until they give that security number," Trump addressed in the rally. This action was the outcome of the Apple denial to the request of Californian Judge to build a backdoor for the shooter's iPhone. Also Read: ...

Another Surprising Twist in the Apple-FBI Encryption Case : The Apple ID Passcode Changed while the San Bernardino Shooter's iPhone was in Government Custody. Yes, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has been screwed up and left with no option to retrieve data from iPhone that belonged to San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook. Apple has finally responded to the Department of Justice (DoJ) court filing that attempts to force Apple to comply with an FBI request to help the feds unlock Farook's iPhone, but Apple refused to do so. According to Apple, the company had been helping feds with the investigation since early January to provide a way to access Farook's iPhone, but the problem is that the feds approached the company after attempting a 'blunder' themselves. Here's How the FBI Screwed itself On October 19, 2015, Roughly six weeks before the San Bernardino terrorist attacks, Syed Farook made a last full iCloud backup of his iPhone 5...

The 21st century is witnessing a great change over in the daily life of folks with the advent of IoT devices that are capable of talking to each other without any human intervention. Yeah! Now you do not have to individually cascade an instruction to each of your home devices to accomplish a task. All have gone automated with the actuators and sensors which are infused into the home appliances. The fact is that your IoT devices would only comply within the family of same manufacturers. For example, if you have a Samsung smart refrigerator, and your wearable device is from Apple or any other vendors, then it couldn't sync as both are from different genres. No need to worry now! Zephyr: Future of IoTs The Linux Foundation has broken all the barriers of compatibility issues by releasing a Real-Time Operating System (RTOS) for Internet of Things devices , dubbed " Zephyr ". This OS enables connected devices to communicate with the same protocol. ...

Apple has been asked to comply with a federal court order to help the FBI unlock an iPhone 5C by one of the terrorists in the San Bernardino mass shootings that killed 14 and injured 24 in December. The FBI knows that it can not bypass the encryption on the iPhone, but it very well knows that Apple can make a way out that could help them try more than 10 PINs on the dead shooter's iPhone without getting the device's data self-destructed. Although Apple refused to comply with the court order and has always claimed its inability to unlock phones anymore, the FBI so cleverly proved that Apple does have a technical way to help feds access data on a locked iOS device. And this is the first time when Apple has not denied that it can not unlock iPhones, rather it simply refused to build the FBI a Backdoor  for the iPhone, in an attempt to maintain its users trust. So, now we know that Apple is not doing so, but it has the ability to do so. Now, when you know ...