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Earlier last year, security researchers from Google's Project Zero outlined a way to hijack the computers running Linux by abusing a design flaw in the memory and gaining higher kernel privileges on the system. Now, the same previously found designing weakness has been exploited to gain unfettered "root" access to millions of Android smartphones, allowing potentially anyone to take control of affected devices. Researchers in the VUSec Lab at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam have discovered a vulnerability that targets a device's dynamic random access memory (DRAM) using an attack called Rowhammer . Although we are already aware of the Rowhammer attack , this is the very first time when researchers have successfully used this attack to target mobile devices. What is DRAM Rowhammer Attack? The Rowhammer attack against mobile devices is equally dangerous because it potentially puts all critical data on millions of Android phones at risk, at least until a secu...

A massive Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack against Dyn , a major domain name system (DNS) provider, broke large portions of the Internet on Friday, causing a significant outage to a ton of websites and services, including Twitter, GitHub, PayPal, Amazon, Reddit, Netflix, and Spotify. But how the attack happened? What's the cause behind the attack? Exact details of the attack remain vague, but Dyn reported a huge army of hijacked internet-connected devices could be responsible for the massive attack. Yes, the same method recently employed by hackers to carry out record-breaking DDoS attack of over 1 Tbps against France-based hosting provider OVH. According to security intelligence firm Flashpoint , Mirai bots were detected driving much, but not necessarily all, of the traffic in the DDoS attacks against DynDNS. Mirai is a piece of malware that targets Internet of Things (IoT) devices such as routers, and security cameras, DVRs, and enslaves vast numbers of ...

UPDATE — How an army of million of hacked Internet-connected smart devices almost broke the Internet today. Cyber attacks are getting evil and worst nightmare for companies day-by-day, and the Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack is one such attacks that cause a massive damage to any service. Recently, the Internet witnessed a record-breaking largest DDoS attack of over 1 Tbps against France-based hosting provider OVH, and now the latest victim of the attack is none other than Dyn DNS provider. A sudden outage of popular sites and services, including Twitter, SoundCloud, Spotify, and Shopify, for many users, is causing uproar online. It's because of a DDoS attack against the popular Domain Name System (DNS) service provider Dyn, according to a post on Ycombinator . DNS act as the authoritative reference for mapping domain names to IP addresses. In other words, DNS is simply an Internet's phone book that resolves human-readable web addresses, like thehackerne...

While phishing and ransomware dominate headlines, another critical risk quietly persists across most enterprises: exposed Git repositories leaking sensitive data. A risk that silently creates shadow access into core systems Git is the backbone of modern software development, hosting millions of repositories and serving thousands of organizations worldwide. Yet, amid the daily hustle of shipping code, developers may inadvertently leave behind API keys, tokens, or passwords in configuration files and code files, effectively handing attackers the keys to the kingdom. This isn't just about poor hygiene; it's a systemic and growing supply chain risk. As cyber threats become more sophisticated, so do compliance requirements. Security frameworks like NIS2, SOC2, and ISO 27001 now demand proof that software delivery pipelines are hardened and third-party risk is controlled. The message is clear: securing your Git repositories is no longer optional, it's essential. Below, we look at the ris...

A nine-year-old critical vulnerability has been discovered in virtually all versions of the Linux operating system and is actively being exploited in the wild. Dubbed " Dirty COW ," the Linux kernel security flaw (CVE-2016-5195) is a mere privilege-escalation vulnerability, but researchers are taking it extremely seriously due to many reasons. First, it's very easy to develop exploits that work reliably. Secondly, the Dirty COW flaw exists in a section of the Linux kernel, which is a part of virtually every distro of the open-source operating system, including RedHat, Debian, and Ubuntu, released for almost a decade. And most importantly, the researchers have discovered attack code that indicates the Dirty COW vulnerability is being actively exploited in the wild. Dirty COW potentially allows any installed malicious app to gain administrative (root-level) access to a device and completely hijack it within just 5 seconds. Earlier this week, Linus Torvalds admi...

Almost two months ago, the FBI quietly arrested NSA contractor Harold Thomas Martin III for stealing an enormous number of top secret documents from the intelligence agency. Now, according to a court document filed Thursday, the FBI seized at least 50 terabytes of data from 51-year-old Martin that he siphoned from government computers over two decades. The stolen data that are at least 500 million pages of government records includes top-secret information about "national defense." If all data stolen by Martin found indeed classified, it would be the largest NSA heist, far bigger than Edward Snowden leaks. According to the new filing, Martin also took "six full bankers' boxes" worth of documents, many of which were marked "Secret" and "Top Secret." The stolen data also include the personal information of government employees. The stolen documents date from between 1996 through 2016. "The document appears to have been printed by the...

2016 is the year of data breaches that has made almost every major companies victims to the cyber attacks, resulting in compromise of over billion of online users accounts. Weebly and Foursquare are the latest victims of the massive data breach, joining the list of "Mega-Breaches" revealed in recent months, including LinkedIn , MySpace , VK.com , Tumblr , Dropbox , and the biggest one -- Yahoo . Details for over 43 Million users have been stolen from the San Francisco-based website building service Weebly, according to breach notification site LeakedSource, who had already indexed a copy of the stolen data that it received from an anonymous source. In addition, LeakedSource posted details of the cyber attack in its blog post on Thursday explaining what happened. The attack believed to have been carried out in February 2016. "Unlike nearly every other hack, the Co-founder and CTO of Weebly Chris Fanini fortunately did not have his head buried deeply in the san...

Ransomware threat has risen exponentially so much that ransomware authors have started abusing the MBR in their attacks to lock down your entire computer instead of just encrypting your important files on hard drive. Talos team at Cisco Systems has released a free, open-source tool that protects the master boot record (MBR) sector of computers from modification by bootkits, ransomware, and other malicious attacks. Master Boot Record (MBR) is the first sector (512 bytes) on your Hard drive that stores the bootloader, a piece of code that is responsible for booting the current Operating System. Technically, Bootloader is first code that gets executed after system BIOS that tells your computer what to do when it start. An advanced malware program, such as rootkit and bootkit, leverages this process to infect computers by modifying the MBR. A boot malware or bootkits has the ability to install ransomware or other malicious software into your Windows kernel, which is almost i...

India is undergoing the biggest data breaches to date with as many as 3.2 Million debit card details reportedly stolen from multiple banks and financial platforms. The massive financial breach has hit India's biggest banks including State Bank of India (SBI), HDFC Bank, Yes Bank, ICICI Bank and Axis, and customers are advised to change their ATM PIN immediately. Hackers allegedly used malware to compromise the Hitachi Payment Services platform — which is used to power country's ATM, point-of-sale (PoS) machines and other financial transactions — and stole details of 3.2 Million debit cards, reports The Economic Times. Of 3.2 Million debit cards, 2.6 Million are powered by Visa or Mastercard and rest 600,000 work on top of India's own RuPay platform. Hacked Debit Cards Reportedly Used in China It is not yet clear who is behind the cyber attack, but the report adds that a number of affected customers have observed unauthorized transactions made by their cards in v...

The alleged Russian hacker arrested by the FBI in collaboration with the Czech police is none other than the hacker who was allegedly responsible for massive 2012 data breach at LinkedIn , which affected nearly 117 Million user accounts. Yevgeniy N , 29-year-old Russian hacker was arrested in Prague on October 5 suspected of participating in conducting cyber-attacks against the United States, according to Reuters . Earlier it was suspected that the hacker could be involved in hacking against the  Democratic National Committee  (DNC), or its presidential candidate Hillary Clinton , intended to influence the presidential election. However, the latest statement released by LinkedIn suggests that the arrest was related to a 2012 data breach at the social network that exposed emails and hashed password of nearly 117 Million users. "We are thankful for the hard work and dedication of the FBI in its efforts to locate and capture the parties believed to be responsible for ...

UPDATE — It Turns out that the Russian Hacker arrested by the FBI is responsible for 2012 LinkedIn Data Breach. ( Read latest update here ) Czech police, in cooperation with the FBI, has arrested a Russian citizen in Prague suspected of participating in conducting cyber-attacks against the United States. Czech police announced the arrest on its official website Tuesday evening, without giving any further details about the man and for what he is wanted for. Yevgeniy N , 29-year-old, alleged Russian Hacker, was arrested after Interpol issued a warrant. Police detained the individual at a hotel in the city's center 12 hours after receiving the order. Officials say he was living in the country with his girlfriend and enjoying a lavish lifestyle, driving expensive cars. Neither the Czech police nor the FBI has issued any details on the charges that led to the arrest of the suspect. "Czech police carried out a successful joint operation with the US Federal Bureau of...

Your driver's license photo could be scarier than it actually looks — Well, here's why: With the help of state driver's license data, U.S. law enforcement agencies have created a huge a face-recognition database of more than 117 Million American adults that are regularly scanned in the course of police investigations. What's even worse? Most of those people who are scanned by police without prior knowledge are law-abiding citizens. According to a 150-page study published Tuesday by the Center for Privacy & Technology at the Georgetown University, ID photographs of more than 117 Million adult US citizens — that's about half of the US population — are now part of the " Perpetual Line-up ," which can be searched using facial-recognition software. In the past few years, Facial Recognition technology has improved enormously. Even big technology companies like Facebook have developed so powerful facial recognition software that they can even ide...

When Hillary Clinton's private email server was hacked earlier this year, she was criticized for her bad security practices that exposed top secret documents stored in emails on that private server. The FBI called her behavior 'extremely careless.' Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his supporters are continuously criticizing Clinton's use of a private email server. And here's what Trump lectured in a debate about cybersecurity: "The security aspect of cyber is very, very tough. And maybe it's hardly doable. But I will say, we are not doing the job we should be doing. But that's true throughout our whole governmental society. We have so many things that we have to do better, Lester, and certainly, cyber is one of them." Forget Clinton; Trump has so worryingly insecure internet setup that anyone with little knowledge of computers can expose almost everything about Trump and his campaign. Security researcher Kevin Beaumont,...