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If your PC has been infected by WannaCry – the ransomware that wreaked havoc across the world last Friday – you might be lucky to get your locked files back without paying the ransom of $300 to the cyber criminals. Adrien Guinet, a French security researcher from Quarkslab, has discovered a way to retrieve the secret encryption keys used by the WannaCry ransomware for free, which works on Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003 and 2008 operating systems. WannaCry Ransomware Decryption Keys The WannaCry's encryption scheme works by generating a pair of keys on the victim's computer that rely on prime numbers, a "public" key and a "private" key for encrypting and decrypting the system's files respectively. To prevent the victim from accessing the private key and decrypting locked files himself, WannaCry erases the key from the system, leaving no choice for the victims to retrieve the decryption key except paying the ransom to ...

If you ever ordered food from Zomato, You should be Worried! India's largest online restaurant guide Zomato confirmed today that the company has suffered a data breach and that accounts details of millions of its users have been stolen from its database. In a blog post published today, the company said about 17 Million of its 120 Million user accounts from its database were stolen. What type of information? The stolen account information includes user email addresses as well as hashed passwords. Zomato claims that since the passwords are encrypted, it cannot be decrypted by the attackers, so the "sanctity of your password is intact." It seems Zomato is downplaying the threat or unaware of the fact that these days hackers are using cloud computing, which enables them to decrypt even a 15-18 character passwords within a few hours. So there's no guarantee your passwords will not eventually get cracked. Update: As shown in the above screenshot taken ...

After the closures of Kickass Torrents and Torrentz.eu, the torrent community now bids farewell to ExtraTorrent, once the second most popular torrent site worldwide. ExtraTorrent has officially shut down. Users should stop searching for 'extratorrents unblock' and 'extratorrents proxy' websites. In a clear message on its homepage, ExtraTorrent announced on Wednesday that it has permanently shut down, bidding "farewell" to its millions of users. The shutdown message reads: "ExtraTorrent has shut down permanently. ExtraTorrent with all mirrors goes offline. We permanently erase all data. Stay away from fake ExtraTorrent websites and clones. Thanks to all ET supporters and the torrent community. ET was a place to be..." The message does not explain the reason for the shutdown but indicates that the popular torrent index will not return. Launched in November 2006, ExtraTorrent became the world's second-largest torrent index after The Pirate Ba...

If your website is based on the popular Joomla content management system, make sure you have updated your platform to the latest version released today. Joomla, the world's second popular open source Content Management System, has reportedly patched a critical vulnerability in its software's core component. Website administrators are strongly advised to immediately install latest Joomla version 3.7.1, released today, to patch a critical SQL Injection vulnerability (CVE-2017-8917) that affects only Joomla version 3.7.0. " Inadequate filtering of request data leads to a SQL Injection vulnerability ." release note says. The SQL Injection vulnerability in Joomla 3.7.0 was responsibly reported by Marc-Alexandre Montpas, a security researcher at Sucuri last week to the company. According to the researcher , ' The vulnerability is easy to exploit and doesn't require a privileged account on the victim's site ,' which could allow remote hackers to steal sensitive inf...

While we all were busy in the WannaCry ransomware menace, two separate data breaches have been reported, one in DocuSign, a major provider of electronic signature technology, and another in BELL , Canada's largest telecommunications company. In a notice on its website on Tuesday, DocuSign confirmed a breach at one of its email systems when investigating the cause of an increase in DocuSign-impersonating phishing emails. "A malicious third party had gained temporary access to a separate, non-core system that allows us to communicate service-related announcements to users via email," DocuSign said in the announcement. What Happened? An unknown hacker or group of hackers managed to breach one of the electronic signature technology provider's email systems and steal a database containing the email addresses of DocuSign customers. The attackers then used the stolen data to conduct an extensive phishing campaign to target the DocuSign's users over the past w...

While we all were busy in the WannaCry ransomware menace, two separate data breaches have been reported, one in DocuSign , a major provider of electronic signature technology, and another in BELL, Canada's largest telecommunications company. Canadian mobile phone, TV, and internet service provider Bell on Monday confirmed that the company had been hit by an unknown hacker who has managed to access its customer information illegally. In a brief statement released by Bell Canada, the company said an unknown hacker managed to have his hands on data of millions of Bell customers. However, the company did not mention the compromised customer details stolen in the hack were pulled from which particular service. The company said email addresses, names and telephone numbers of its customers had been accessed in the breach. How many victims Affected? Bell confirmed the hack and said the unknown hacker has managed to gain access to information on nearly 2 million customers. ...

A security researcher has discovered a serious vulnerability in the default configuration of the latest version of Google's Chrome running on any version of Microsoft's Windows operating system, including Windows 10, that could allow remote hackers to steal user's login credentials. Researcher Bosko Stankovic of DefenseCode has found that just by visiting a website containing a malicious SCF file could allow victims to unknowingly share their computer's login credentials with hackers via Chrome and the SMB protocol. This technique is not new and was exploited by the Stuxnet — a powerful malware that specially designed to destroy Iran's nuclear program — that used the Windows shortcut LNK files to compromise systems. What's make this attack different from others is the fact that such SMB authentication related attacks have been first time demonstrated on Google Chrome publicly, after Internet Explorer (IE) and Edge. Chrome + SCF + SMB = Stealing Windows...

A security researcher has just discovered a stealthy cryptocurrency-mining malware that was also using Windows SMB vulnerability at least two weeks before the outbreak of WannaCry ransomware attacks. According to Kafeine, a security researcher at Proofpoint , another group of cyber criminals was using the same EternalBlue exploit , created by the NSA and dumped last month by the Shadow Brokers, to infect hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide with a cryptocurrency mining malware called ' Adylkuzz .' This malicious campaign went unnoticed for weeks because unlike WannaCry , this malware does not install ransomware or notify victims, but instead, it quietly infects unpatched computers with malware that only mine ' Monero ,' a Bitcoin-like cryptocurrency. This Malware Saves Computers From Getting Hacked By WannaCry The Researcher believes Adylkuzz malware attack could be larger in scale than WannaCry ransomware attack because it has been designed to blo...

The infamous hacking collective Shadow Brokers – the one who leaked the Windows SMB exploit in public that led to last weekend's WannaCrypt menace – are back, this time, to cause more damage. In typically broken English, the Shadow Brokers published a fresh statement (with full of frustration) a few hours ago, promising to release more zero-day bugs and exploits for various desktop and mobile platforms starting from June 2017. However, this time the Shadow Brokers leaks will not be available for everybody, as the hacking collective said: "TheShadowBrokers is launching new monthly subscription model. Is being like [the] wine of month club. Each month peoples can be paying membership fee, then getting members only data dump each month." To some extent, this is good news, but it is terrible news too. Good because now all these upcoming alleged unpatched vulnerabilities will be patched after being disclosed and terrible because the group will sell new zero-day e...

While Windows users are currently in fear of getting their systems hijacked by the WannaCry ransomware outbreak, Apple users are sitting relaxed, thinking that malware attacks are something that happens to Windows users, and not Apple. But you are mistaken – Apple products are also not immune to the hack attacks and malware infections, as an ebook can hack your Mac, iPhone, and iPad. Apple on Monday pushed out software updates for iOS, macOS, Safari, tvOS, iCloud, iTunes, and watchOS to fix a total of 67 unique security vulnerabilities, many of which allows attackers to perform remote code execution on an affected system. iOS is 10.3.2 for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Apple's mobile operating system iOS 10.3.2 for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch addresses 41 security flaws, 23 of which resides in WebKit, including 17 remote code execution and 5 cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities. Besides this, iOS 10.3.2 also addresses a pair of flaws in iBooks for iOS (CVE-2017-24...

So far, nobody had an idea that who was behind WannaCry ransomware attacks? But now there is a clue that lies in the code. Neel Mehta, a security researcher at Google, found evidence that suggests the WannaCry ransomware, that infected 300,000 machines in 150 countries over the weekend, is linked to a state-sponsored hacking group in North Korea, known for cyber attacks against South Korean organizations. What's Happening? What is WannaCry? This is the fifth day since the WannaCry ransomware attack surfaced, that leverages a critical Windows SMB exploit and still infecting machines across the world using newly released variants that don't have any "kill switch" ability. In case, if you have landed on WannaCry story for the first time, and don't know what's going on, you are advised to also read this simple, summarized, but detailed explanation: WannaCry: What Has Happened So Far & How to protect your PCs WannaCry: First Nation-State Powered Ran...

By now I am sure you have already heard something about the WannaCry ransomware , and are wondering what's going on, who is doing this, and whether your computer is secure from this insanely fast-spreading threat that has already hacked nearly 200,000 Windows PCs over the weekend. The only positive thing about this attack is that — you are here — as after reading this easy-to-understandable awareness article, you would be so cautious that you can save yourself from WannaCry, as well as other similar cyber attacks in the future. Also Read — Google Researcher Finds Link Between WannaCry Attacks and North Korea . Since this widely spread ransomware attack is neither the first nor the last one to hit users worldwide, prevention is always the key to protect against such malware threats. What is WannaCry? How to Protect your Computer from WannaCry Ransomware? Follow These Simple Steps. TWEET THIS In this article, we have provided some of the most important primary secu...