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It's not always necessary to break into your computer or smartphone to spy on you. Today all are day-to-day devices are becoming more connected to networks than ever to add convenience and ease to daily activities. But here's what we forget: These connected devices can be turned against us because we are giving companies, hackers, and law enforcement a large number of entry points to break into our network. These connected devices can also be a great boon for law enforcement that can listen and track us everywhere. Let's take the recent example of 2016 Arkansas murder case where Amazon was asked to hand over audio recordings from a suspect's Echo. However, that was not the first case where feds asked any company to hand over data from a suspect's connected device, as they have long retrieved such information from connected cars. According to court documents obtained by Forbes , United States federal agencies have a 15-year history of " Cartapping ...

A 21-year-old former Langley High School student, who won a Programmer of the Year Award in high school, pleaded guilty on Friday to charges of developing and selling custom key-logging malware that infected thousands of victims. Zachary Shames from Virginia pleaded guilty in a federal district court and now faces a maximum penalty of up to 10 years in prison for his past deeds. Shames was arrested this summer while he was working as a technical intern at Northrop Grumman, a security and defense government contractor, developing front-end site code and backend Java software and managing a MySQL database, according to what appears on his Linkedin page. According to a press release from the U.S. Department of Justice, Shames developed a keylogger in 2013 that allowed users to steal sensitive information, including passwords and banking credentials, from a victim's computer, while he was still a high school student in 2013. Keylogger is malicious software designed to recor...

What is a backdoor? By definition: "Backdoor is a feature or defect of a computer system that allows surreptitious unauthorized access to data, " either the backdoor is in encryption algorithm, a server or in an implementation, and doesn't matter whether it has previously been used or not. Yesterday, we published a story based on findings reported by security researcher Tobias Boelter that suggests WhatsApp has a backdoor that "could allow" an attacker, and of course the company itself, to intercept your encrypted communication. The story involving the world's largest secure messaging platform that has over a billion users worldwide went viral in few hours, attracting reactions from security experts, WhatsApp team, and Open Whisper Systems, who partnered with Facebook to implement end-to-end encryption in WhatsApp. Note: I would request readers to read complete article before reaching out for a conclusion. And also, suggestions and opinions are ...

SaaS Adoption is Skyrocketing, Resilience Hasn't Kept Pace SaaS platforms have revolutionized how businesses operate. They simplify collaboration, accelerate deployment, and reduce the overhead of managing infrastructure. But with their rise comes a subtle, dangerous assumption: that the convenience of SaaS extends to resilience. It doesn't. These platforms weren't built with full-scale data protection in mind . Most follow a shared responsibility model — wherein the provider ensures uptime and application security, but the data inside is your responsibility. In a world of hybrid architectures, global teams, and relentless cyber threats, that responsibility is harder than ever to manage. Modern organizations are being stretched across: Hybrid and multi-cloud environments with decentralized data sprawl Complex integration layers between IaaS, SaaS, and legacy systems Expanding regulatory pressure with steeper penalties for noncompliance Escalating ransomware threats and inside...

Important Update — Most Security Experts argued, " It's not a backdoor, rather it's a feature ," but none of them denied the fact that, if required, WhatsApp or a hacker can intercept your end-to-end encrypted chats. Read detailed explanation on arguments in my latest article. Most people believe that end-to-end encryption is the ultimate way to protect your secret communication from snooping, and it does, but it can be intercepted if not implemented correctly. After introducing " end-to-end encryption by default " last year, WhatsApp has become the world's largest secure messaging platform with over a billion users worldwide. But if you think your conversations are completely secure in a way that no one, not even Facebook, the company that owned WhatsApp, can intercept your messages then you are highly mistaken, just like most of us and it's not a new concept. Here's the kick: End-to-end encrypted messaging service, such as WhatsApp and Te...

Former New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani has been appointed as a cyber security advisor for the President-elect Donald Trump, but it appears that he never actually checked the security defenses of his own company's website. Giuliani is going to head a new Cybersecurity Working group for the President-elect, and "will be sharing his expertise and insight as a trusted friend concerning private sector cyber security problems and emerging solutions developing in the private sector," the Trump's Transition Team announced Thursday. Trump administration has appointed Giuliani after citing his 16 years of experience "providing security solutions in the private sector," but the news met online criticism with many users on Twitter asking: 'What does the former New York mayor know about cyber security?' As the news broke, online users started scanning his website " www.giulianisecurity.com " and found that the site for Giuliani Sec...

The company that sells digital forensics and mobile hacking tools to others has itself been hacked. Israeli firm Cellebrite , the popular company that provides digital forensics tools and software to help law enforcement access mobile phones in investigations, has had 900 GB of its data stolen by an unknown hacker. But the hacker has not yet publicly released anything from the stolen data archive, which includes its customer information, user databases, and a massive amount of technical data regarding its hacking tools and products. Instead, attackers are looking for possible opportunities to sell the access to Cellebrite system and data on a few selected IRC chat rooms, the hacker told Joseph Cox, contributor at Motherboard , who was contacted by the hacker and received a copy of the stolen data. Meanwhile, Cellebrite also admitted that it recently experienced "unauthorized access to an external web server," and said that it is "conducting an investigation ...

Just like most of you, I too really hate filling out web forms, especially on mobile devices. To help make this whole process faster, Google Chrome and other major browsers offer "Autofill" feature that automatically fills out web form based on data you have previously entered in similar fields. However, it turns out that an attacker can use this autofill feature against you and trick you into spilling your private information to hackers or malicious third parties. Finnish web developer and whitehat hacker Viljami Kuosmanen published a demo on GitHub that shows how an attacker could take advantage of the autofill feature provided by most browsers, plugins, and tools such as Password Managers. Although, this trick was first discovered by Ricardo Martin Rodriguez , Security Analyst at ElevenPaths, in the year 2013, but it seems Google haven't done anything to address weakness in Autofill feature. The proof-of-concept demo website consists of a simple online...

Recent data breaches have taught us something very important — online users are spectacularly bad at choosing their strong passwords. Today majority of online users are vulnerable to cyber attacks, not because they are not using any best antivirus or other security measures, but because they are using weak passwords that are easy to remember and reuse same passwords on multiple accounts and reusable passwords to secure their online accounts. Ideally, your password should be at least 16 characters long and should contain a combination of digits, symbols, uppercase letters and lowercase letters. Most of us know about this good password practice, but we just ignore it because it is really painful for us to memorize complex password strings for different accounts. Here comes the need of a Password Manager OR  Password Management Software . Password Manager can significantly reduce your password memorizing problem, along with the cure for your bad habit of setting weak pass...

In Brief Microsoft has issued its first Patch Tuesday for 2017 , and it's one of the smallest ever monthly patch releases for the company, with only four security updates to address vulnerabilities in its Windows operating system as well as Adobe Flash Player. Meanwhile, Adobe has also released patches for more than three dozen security vulnerabilities in its Flash Player and Acrobat/Reader for Windows, MacOS, and Linux desktops. According to the Microsoft Advisory, only one security bulletin is rated critical, while other three are important. The bulletins address security vulnerabilities in Microsoft's Windows, Windows Server, Office, Edge and Flash Player. The only security bulletin rated as critical is the one dedicated to Adobe Flash Player, for which Microsoft distributed security patches through Windows Update. Other security bulletins that addresses flaws in Microsoft products are as follows: Bulletin 1 — MS17-001 This security update resolves just one v...

The Shadow Brokers who previously stole and leaked a portion of the NSA hacking tools and exploits is back with a Bang! The hacking group is now selling another package of hacking tools, " Equation Group Windows Warez ," which includes Windows exploits and antivirus bypass tools, stolen from the NSA-linked hacking unit, The Equation Group. For those unfamiliar with the topic, The Shadow Brokers is a notorious group of black-hat hackers who, in August 2016, leaked exploits, security vulnerabilities, and "powerful espionage tools" created by The Equation Group. On Saturday, the Shadow Brokers posted a message on their ZeroNet based website, announcing the sale of the entire " Windows Warez " collection for 750 Bitcoin (around US$678,630). The data dump contains many windows hacking tools, categorized as following: Fuzzing tools (used to discover errors and security loopholes) Exploit Framework Network Implants Remote Administration Tools (RAT) Remot...

Ransomware has turned on to a noxious game of Hackers to get paid effortlessly. Once again the heat was felt by the Los Angeles Valley College (LAVC) when hackers managed to infect its computer network with ransomware and demanded US$28,000 payment in Bitcoins to get back online. The cyber-attack occurred over winter break and caused widespread disruption to online, financial aid, email and voicemail systems, including locking out 1,800 students and staffs from their computers. As the situation was gone out of its hand, the Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD) agreed to pay the ransom demand of $28,000 in Bitcoin to criminals to resume their operations after gaining the decryption keys, the school newspaper, The Valley Star, reports . The cyber criminals gave the college a week to pay the ransom and threatened to delete all the data if they were not paid. Also Read: RansomFree Tool Detects Never-Seen-Before Ransomware Before It Encrypts Your Data Just like mos...

It's time to say goodbye to Yahoo! While Yahoo's core internet business was being sold to Verizon for $4.8 Billion , the remaining portions of the company left behind is renaming itself to Altaba Inc, which marks the sad ending of one of the most familiar brand names on the internet. In a public filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Monday, the company announced that after the planned sale of its core business to telecom giant Verizon, the leftover would change its brand name to Altaba. So, the company's branding you are familiar with will integrate with Verizon, and it is possible that the telecom titan may continue to use the Yahoo brand for some of the services that it will acquire in the deal. The remaining company under the new name Altaba Inc. is hanging on to its 15% ownership of Alibaba and 35.5% stake in Yahoo Japan, which is a joint venture with Softbank. Marissa Mayer to Leave Yahoo Board The newly formed company will operat...