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Own an Android smartphone? Beware, as just an innocuous-looking image on social media or messaging app could compromise your smartphone. Along with the dangerous Quadrooter vulnerabilities that affected 900 Million devices and other previously disclosed issues, Google has patched a previously-unknown critical bug that could let attackers deliver their hack hidden inside an innocent looking image via social media or chat apps. In fact, there is no need for a victim to click on the malicious photo because as soon as the image's data was parsed by the phone, it would quietly allow a remote attacker to take control over the device or simply crash it. The vulnerability is similar to last year's Stagefright bug ( exploit code ) that allowed hackers to hijack Android devices with just a simple text message without the owners being aware of it. The Stagefright flaw affected more than 950 Million Android devices and resided in the core Android component Stagefright — a multim...

Another data breach from 2012, and this time, it's Russia's biggest internet portal and email provider Rambler.ru . Rambler.ru , also known as Russia's Yahoo, suffered a massive data breach in 2012 in which an unknown hacker or a group of hackers managed to steal nearly 100 Million user accounts, including their unencrypted plaintext passwords. The copy of the hacked database obtained by the breach notification website LeakedSource contained details of 98,167,935 Rambler.ru users that were originally stolen on 17 February 2012, but went unreported. The leaked user records in the database included usernames, email addresses, ICQ numbers (IM chat service), social account details, passwords and some internal data, the data breach indexing site said in a blog post . The data breach was reported by the same hacker using the daykalif@xmpp.jp Jabber ID who handed LeakedSource over 43.5 Million user records from another 2012 hack suffered by the Last.fm music streaming se...

Air-gapped computers that are isolated from the Internet or other networks and believed to be the most secure computers on the planet have become a regular target in recent years. A team of researchers from Ben-Gurion University in Israel has discovered a way to extract sensitive information from air-gapped computers – this time using radio frequency transmissions from USB connectors without any need of specialized hardware mounted on the USB. Dubbed USBee , the attack is a significant improvement over the NSA-made USB exfiltrator called CottonMouth that was mentioned in a document leaked by former NSA employee Edward Snowden. Unlike CottonMouth , USBee doesn't require an attacker to smuggle a modified USB device into the facility housing the air-gapped computer being targeted; rather the technique turns USB devices already inside the facility into an RF transmitter with no hardware modification required. Must Read: BadUSB Code Released – Turn USB Drives Into Undete...

Recently, two European countries, France and Germany, have declared war against encryption with an objective to force major technology companies to built encryption backdoors in their secure messaging services. However, another neighborhood country, Netherlands, is proactively taking down cyber criminals, but do you know how? Dutch Police has seized two servers belonging to Virtual Private Network (VPN) provider Perfect Privacy , as part of an investigation, without even providing any reason for seizures. Switzerland-based VPN provider said they came to know about the servers seizure from I3D, the company that provides server hosting across Rotterdam. For those unfamiliar, Virtual Private Networks or VPNs are easy security and privacy tools that route your Internet traffic through a distant connection, protecting your browsing, hiding your location data and accessing restricted resources. VPNs have now become a great tool not just for large companies, but also for individual...

Around five years after unknown hackers gained unauthorized access to multiple kernel.org servers used to maintain and distribute the Linux operating system kernel, police have arrested a South Florida computer programmer for carrying out the attack. Donald Ryan Austin , a 27-year-old programmer from of El Portal, Florida, was charged Thursday with hacking servers belonging to the Linux Kernel Organization ( kernel.org ) and the Linux Foundation in 2011, the Department of Justice announced on Thursday. The Linux Kernel Organization runs kernel.org servers for distributing the Linux operating system kernel, which is the heart of the operating system, whereas the Linux Foundation is a separate group that supports kernel.org. According to an indictment [ PDF ] unsealed by federal prosecutors on Monday, Austin managed to steal login credentials of one of the Linux Kernel Organization system administrators in 2011 and used them to install a hard-to-detect malware backdoor, dubbe...

As promised at the Black Hat and Def Con security and hacking conferences, Offensive Security – the creators of Swiss army knife for researchers, penetration testers, and hackers – has finally released the much awaited Kali Linux 2016.2. Kali Linux is an open-source Debian-based Linux distribution designed to help ethical hackers and security professionals with a wide range of tools for penetration testing, forensics, hacking and reverse engineering together into a single package. Earlier the Kali Linux distribution was known as BackTrack . Kali Linux 2016.2 is an updated Live ISO image of the popular GNU/Linux distribution that includes the latest software versions and enhancements for those who want to deploy the operating system on new systems. What's new? Besides bringing the updated Live ISOs of Kali Linux, the Kali Linux team brings multiple variants of the GNU/Linux distribution with various Desktop Environments, specifically KDE, Xfce, MATE, LXDE, and Enlighten...

Another Day, Another Data Breach! If you love to listen to music online and have an account on Last.fm website, your account details may have compromised in a data breach that leaked more than 43 Million user personal data online. Last.fm was hacked in March of 2012 and three months after the breach, London-based music streaming service admitted to the incident and issued a warning, encouraging its users to change their passwords. But now it turns out that the Last.fm data breach was massive, and four years later the stolen data have surfaced in the public. The copy of the hacked database obtained by the data breach indexing website LeakedSource contained 43,570,999 user records that were originally stolen from Last.fm on March 22, 2012, according to timestamps in the database. The leaked records include usernames, hashed passwords, email addresses, the date when a user signed up to the website, and ad-related data. Wait! Have you visited The Hacker News early this wee...

If you own a Mac laptop or desktop, you need to update your system right now. It turns out that the critical zero-day security vulnerabilities disclosed last week, which targeted iPhone and iPad users, affect Mac users as well. Late last week, Apple rolled out iOS 9.3.5 update to patch a total of three zero-day vulnerabilities that hackers could have used to remotely gain control of an iPhone by simply making the victim click a link. Dubbed "Trident," the security holes were used to create spyware (surveillance malware) called ' Pegasus ' that was apparently used to target human rights activist Ahmed Mansoor in the United Arab Emirates. Pegasus could allow an attacker to access an incredible amount of data on a target victim, including text messages, calendar entries, emails, WhatsApp messages, user's location, microphone. Pegasus Spyware could even allow an attacker to fully download victim's passwords and steal the stored list of WiFi networks,...

Mr. Robot is the rare show that provides a realistic depiction of hacks and vulnerabilities that are at the forefront of cyber security. This is the reason it's been the most popular TV show of its kind. Throughout season 1 and season 2, we have seen that connected devices are the entry point of choice of Elliot and fsociety to breach networks and traditional security controls. Pwn Phone On Mr. Robot Show In this week's episode, Elliot uses a Pwnie Express Pwn Phone, which he describes as " a dream device for pentester ," to run a custom script he has written to take over someone else's phone. Security pros have long know about the Pwn Phone as a powerful mobile platform for penetration testing and security assessments, so it is not surprising to see it on Mr. Robot. The coolest part is that Pwnie Express is giving away a Pwn Phone , just like the one used in the show. The Pwn Phone is a mobile pentesting device that makes it incredibly easy to evaluate wired, wirel...

Hackers have obtained credentials for more than 68 Million accounts for online cloud storage platform Dropbox from a known 2012 data breach. Dropbox has confirmed the breach and already notified its customers of a potential forced password resets, though the initial announcement failed to specify the exact number of affected users. However, in a selection of files obtained through sources in the database trading community and breach notification service Leakbase , Motherboard found around 5GB of files containing details on 68,680,741 accounts, which includes email addresses and hashed (and salted) passwords for Dropbox users. An unnamed Dropbox employee verified the legitimacy of the data. Out of 68 Million, almost 32 Million passwords are secured using the strong hashing function " BCrypt , " making difficult for hackers to obtain users' actual passwords, while the rest of the passwords are hashed with the SHA-1 hashing algorithm . These password hashes als...

Elisa , one of the biggest Finnish Internet Service Providers (ISP), claims to have achieved a new world record for 4G network with 1.9 gigabit-per-second (Gbps) data download speed using Huawei technology. Currently, Sweden and the United Kingdom have been crowned as the top countries across the world when it comes to fastest mobile 3G and 4G speeds, but now Finland is also working hard to give them a tough competition. Elisa set this record-breaking benchmark with the help of technology provided by Chinese telecom giant Huawei that could allow real-world mobile 4G users to download a Blu-ray film in just 40-45 seconds. 4G and 5G Technology: The future of Mobile Networks In February last year, a team of researchers from the University of Surrey managed to achieve a record-breaking speed of 1 Terabit per second (1Tbps) during a test of 5G wireless data connections, which is over 500 times faster than Elisa's 4G speed. While, in June last year, the International Tele...

Famous Android developer Chainfire released an experimental hack with a new app, called " Suhide ," that allows users to hide the root status of their rooted Android devices on an app-by-app basis. Rooting your Android device can bring a lot of benefits by giving you access to a wide variety of apps and deeper access to the Android system...But at what cost? One of the major drawbacks of rooting your device is losing access to certain apps, which includes banking, payment and corporate security apps that work with financial and confidential data, such as your bank details. Such apps don't work on rooted devices. A great example for this is Google's Android Pay . Since its launch, developers has been working hard to get Android Pay working for rooted devices, but unfortunately, they have not gotten much success. But Why Rooted Devices? It's because Google cares about your security. SafetyNet — That's How Google Detects Tampered Devices Google ...