The Hacker News | #1 Trusted Source for Cybersecurity News — Index Page

Watch out, readers! It is ransomware, another WannaCry, another wide-spread attack. The WannaCry ransomware is not dead yet and another large scale ransomware attack is making chaos worldwide, shutting down computers at corporates, power supplies, and banks across Russia, Ukraine, Spain, France, UK, India, and Europe and demanding $300 in bitcoins. According to multiple sources, a new variant of Petya ransomware , also known as Petwrap, is spreading rapidly with the help of same Windows SMBv1 vulnerability that the WannaCry ransomware abused to infect 300,000 systems and servers worldwide in just 72 hours last month. Apart from this, many victims have also informed that Petya ransomware has also infected their patch systems. "Petya uses the NSA Eternalblue exploit but also spreads in internal networks with WMIC and PSEXEC. That's why patched systems can get hit." Mikko Hypponen  confirms , Chief Research Officer at F-Secure. Petya is a nasty piece of rans...

Google has just lost its biggest regulatory battle! Google has been hit with a record-breaking $2.7 billion (€2.42 billion) fine by the European antitrust officials for unfairly manipulating search results since 2008. After a lengthy seven-year investigation that was launched in 2010 after several rivals complaint, the European Commission on Tuesday imposed this 'biggest even financial penalty' against the internet tech giant for breaking EU competition law. by using its search dominance to distort search-engine results to promote own shopping comparison service at the top of all search results. "Comparison shopping services rely to a large extent on traffic to be competitive." European Commission says in a press release . "The evidence shows that consumers click far more often on results that are more visible, i.e. the results appearing higher up in Google's search results. More traffic leads to more clicks and generates revenue." The Comm...

Russia has threatened to ban Telegram end-to-end encrypted messaging app, after Pavel Durov, its founder, refused to sign up to the country's new data protection laws. Russian intelligence service, the FSB, said on Monday that the terrorists that killed 15 people in Saint Petersburg in April had used the Telegram encrypted messaging service to plot their attacks. According to the new Russian Data Protection Laws, as of January 1, all foreign tech companies have been required to store the past six months' of the personal data of its citizens and encryption keys within the country; which the company has to share with the authorities on demand. "There is one demand, and it is simple: to fill in a form with information on the company that controls Telegram," Alexander Zharov said, head of communications regulator Roskomnadzor (state communications watchdog). "And to officially send it to Roskomnadzor to include this data in the registry of organizers of d...

A cyber attack has hit the email system of UK Houses of Parliament on Friday morning that breached at least 90 emails accounts protected by weak passwords belonging to MPs, lawmakers, and other parliamentary staff. Meanwhile, as a precaution, the Security service has temporarily shut down the remote access (outside the Westminster) to its network to protect email accounts. Liberal Democrat Chris Rennard has advised on Twitter that urgent messages should be sent by text message. "We have discovered unauthorized attempts to access accounts of parliamentary networks users and are investigating this ongoing incident, working closely with the National Cyber Security Centre," the spokesperson said . "Parliament has robust measures in place to protect all of our accounts and systems, and we are taking the necessary steps to protect and secure our network." The authorities found less than 1% of parliament's 9,000 email addresses had been compromised using the ...

A massive archive of Microsoft's top-secret Windows 10 builds, and the source codes for private software has been reportedly leaked online, which could lead to a nasty wave of Windows 10 exploits, journalist at the Reg claims. The Leaked files – uploaded on BetaArchive website – contains more than 32 terabytes of data, which includes many non-public Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016 builds created by Microsoft engineers for testing purpose. Interestingly, Windows 10 internal builds include private debugging symbols defined by the engineers usually to help other in-house developers understand how some specific codes in the operating system works and what functions it calls, the Register reports . Private debugging symbols reveal some sensitive in-depth knowledge about the operating system that could be used by exploit writers to find vulnerabilities. Moreover, the dump also contains Microsoft's Shared Source Kit , which includes source code for Windows 10 hardware ...

British police have arrested two men in the UK conspiring to hack into the computer networks of US tech giant Microsoft with plans to steal customers' data from the software giant. The suspects — 22-year-old from Sleaford and a 25-year-old from Bracknell — were arrested by the detectives from the Britain's South East Regional Organised Crime Unit (SEROCU) Thursday morning (22 June 2017). The UK authorities arrested them from their home in Lincolnshire and Bracknell and seized a number of devices after searching their home. While it is still unclear what systems were targeted, SEROCU believes the suspects are part of a larger international group that involved breaking into the Microsoft's network between January 2017 and March 2017 to scoop up the customer information. "This group is spread around the world and therefore the investigation is being coordinated with our various partners," Rob Bryant, detective sergeant SEROCU's Cyber Crime Unit said while ...

Vulnerabilities discovered in Microsoft PatchGuard kernel protection could allow hackers to plant rootkits on computers running the company's latest and secure operating system, Windows 10. Researchers at CyberArk Labs have developed a new attack technique which could allow hackers to completely bypass PatchGuard, and hook a malicious kernel code (rootkits) at the kernel level. PatchGuard, or (or Kernel Patch Protection) is a software tool that has been designed to forbid the kernel of 64-bit versions of Windows OS from being patched, preventing hackers from running rootkits or executing malicious code at the kernel level. Dubbed GhostHook , the attack is what the CyberArk Labs researchers call the first attack technique that thwarts the defensive technology to bypass PatchGuard, though it requires a hacker to already be present on a compromised system and running code in the kernel. So, basically, this is a post-exploitation attack. "[GhostHook] is neither an ...

It's been over a month since the WannaCry ransomware caused chaos worldwide and people have started counting its name as 'the things of past,' but… ...WannaCry is not DEAD! The self-spreading ransomware is still alive and is working absolutely fine. The latest victims of WannaCry are Honda Motor Company and 55 speed and traffic light cameras in Australia. The WannaCry ransomware shuts down hospitals, telecom providers, and many businesses worldwide, infecting over 300,000 Windows systems running SMBv1 in more than 150 countries within just 72 hours on 12th of May. The worm was leveraging an NSA's Windows SMB exploit, dubbed EternalBlue , leaked by the infamous hacking group Shadow Brokers in its April data dump, along with other Windows exploits. Honda Stops Production After WannaCry Hits its Computer Honda Motor Company released a statement this week, saying the company was forced to halt its production for more than 24 hours at in one of its Japan...

WikiLeaks has published a new batch of the ongoing Vault 7 leak , this time detailing a tool suite – which is being used by the CIA for Microsoft Windows that targets "closed networks by air gap jumping using thumb drives," mainly implemented in enterprises and critical infrastructures. Air-gapped computers that are isolated from the Internet or other external networks are believed to be the most secure computers on the planet have become a regular target in recent years. Dubbed Brutal Kangaroo (v1.2.1), the tool suit was allegedly designed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in year 2012 to infiltrate a closed network or air-gapped computer within an organization or enterprise without requiring any direct access. The previous version of Brutal Kangaroo was named as EZCheese , which was exploiting a vulnerability that was zero-day until March 2015, though the newer version was using " unknown link file vulnerability (Lachesis/RiverJack) related to the lib...

A security researcher has found four vulnerabilities, including a critical remote code execution bug, in OpenVPN, those were not even caught in the two big security audits of the open source VPN software this year. OpenVPN is one of the most popular and widely used open source VPN software solutions mostly used for various connectivity needs, but it is especially popular for anonymous and private access to the Internet. This year, two independent security audits of OpenVPN were carried out to look for flaws, backdoors, and other defects in the open source software – one conducted by a team led by Johns Hopkins University crypto-boffin Dr. Matthew D. Green. The audits resulted in a patch of a few vulnerabilities in the widely used open source software, giving OpenVPN a clean chit. Researcher Used Fuzzer to find Bugs in OpenVPN Researcher Guido Vranken of Netherlands exclusively used a fuzzer and recently discovered four security holes in OpenVPN that escaped both the secur...

'Do I really need to give this website so much about me?' That's exactly what I usually think after filling but before submitting a web form online asking for my personal details to continue. I am sure most of you would either close the whole tab or would edit already typed details (or filled up by browser's auto-fill feature) before clicking 'Submit' — Isn't it? But closing the tab or editing your information hardly makes any difference because as soon as you have typed or auto-filled anything into the online form, the website captures it automatically in the background using JavaScript, even if you haven't clicked the Submit button. During an investigation, Gizmodo has discovered that code from NaviStone used by hundreds of websites, invisibly grabs each piece of information as you fill it out in a web form before you could hit 'Send' or 'Submit.' NaviStone is an Ohio-based startup that advertises itself as a service to u...

The National Security Agency (NSA) — the United States intelligence agency which is known for its secrecy and working in the dark — has finally joined GitHub and launched an official GitHub page. The NSA employs genius-level coders and brightest mathematicians, who continually work to break codes, gather intelligence on everyone, and develop hacking tools like EternalBlu e that was leaked by the Shadow Brokers in April and abused by the WannaCry ransomware last month to wreak havoc worldwide. The intelligence agency mostly works in secret, but after Edward Snowden leaks in 2013, the NSA has started (slowly) opening itself to the world. It joined Twitter in the same year after Snowden leaks and now opened a Github account. GitHub is an online service designed for sharing code amongst programmers and open source community, and so far, the NSA is sharing 32 different projects as part of the NSA Technology Transfer Program ( TTP ), while some of these are 'coming soon.' ...