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Refuting allegations that its anti-virus product helped Russian spies steal classified files from an NSA employee's laptop, Kaspersky Lab has released more findings that suggest the computer in question may have been infected with malware. Moscow-based cyber security firm Kaspersky Lab on Thursday published the results of its own internal investigation claiming the NSA worker who took classified documents home had a personal home computer overwhelmed with malware. According to the latest Kaspersky report, the telemetry data its antivirus collected from the NSA staffer's home computer contained large amounts of malware files which acted as a backdoor to the PC. The report also provided more details about the malicious backdoor that infected the NSA worker's computer when he installed a pirated version of Microsoft Office 2013 .ISO containing the Mokes backdoor, also known as Smoke Loader. Backdoor On NSA Worker's PC May Have Helped Other Hackers Steal Classi...

The OnePlus Saga Continues… Just a day after the revelation of the hidden Android rooting backdoor pre-installed on most OnePlus smartphones, a security researcher just found another secret app that records tons of information about your phone. Dubbed OnePlusLogKit , the second pre-installed has been discovered by the same Twitter user who goes by the pseudonym " Elliot Alderson " and discovered the controversial " EngineerMode " diagnostic testing application that could be used to root OnePlus devices without unlocking the bootloader. OnePlusLogKit is a system-level application that is capable of capturing a multitude of things from OnePlus smartphones, including: Wi-Fi, NFC, Bluetooth, and GPS location logs, Modem signal and data logs, hot and power issue logs, list of the running processes, list of running service and battery status, media databases, including all your videos and images saved on the device. Unlike EngineerMode (which was found ...

Remember BlueBorne? A series of recently disclosed critical Bluetooth flaws that affect billions of Android, iOS, Windows and Linux devices have now been discovered in millions of AI-based voice-activated personal assistants, including Google Home and Amazon Echo . As estimated during the discovery of this devastating threat, several IoT and smart devices whose operating systems are often updated less frequently than smartphones and desktops are also vulnerable to BlueBorne. BlueBorne is the name given to the sophisticated attack exploiting a total of eight Bluetooth implementation vulnerabilities that allow attackers within the range of the targeted devices to run malicious code, steal sensitive information, take complete control, and launch man-in-the-middle attacks. What's worse? Triggering the BlueBorne exploit doesn't require victims to click any link or open any file—all without requiring user interaction. Also, most security products would likely not be abl...

As governments and enterprises migrate toward controller-based architectures, the role of a core network engineer are evolving and more important than ever. There is a growing number of jobs in Networking, but if you lack behind, you need to pass some certification exams to enter into this industry and get a significant boost in your IT career. If you are looking forward to making career advancement in Networking, then Cisco Certifications — CCNA and CCNP — are one of the most highly reputed entry-level networking certifications in the industry. While CCNA, or Cisco Certified Network Associate, is for entry-level network engineers to maximise their foundational networking knowledge, CCNP or Cisco Certified Network Professional is intended for professionals to implement, maintain and plan Cisco's wide range of high-end network solution products. But how long have you wanted to take CCNA and CCNP training classes to achieve the certifications, only to realise the cost is simpl...

Another day, another data breach. This time a fast-fashion retailer has fallen victim to payment card breach. American clothes retailer Forever 21 announced on Tuesday that the company had suffered a security breach that allowed unknown hackers to gain unauthorized access to data from payment cards used at a number of its retail locations. The Los Angeles based company, which operates over 815 stores in 57 countries, didn't say which of its stores were affected, but it did note that customers who shopped between March and October this year may be affected. Forever 21 learned of the breach after the retailer received a report from a third-party monitoring service, suggesting there may have been "unauthorized access to data from payment cards that were used at certain FOREVER 21 stores." Besides this, the company also revealed that it implemented encryption and token-based authentication systems in 2015 that are intended to protect transaction data on its point-...

You should be extra careful when opening files in MS Office. When the world is still dealing with the threat of 'unpatched' Microsoft Office's built-in DDE feature , researchers have uncovered a serious issue with another Office component that could allow attackers to remotely install malware on targeted computers. The vulnerability is a memory-corruption issue that resides in all versions of Microsoft Office released in the past 17 years, including Microsoft Office 365, and works against all versions of Windows operating system, including the latest Microsoft Windows 10 Creators Update. Discovered by the security researchers at Embedi , the vulnerability leads to remote code execution, allowing an unauthenticated, remote attacker to execute malicious code on a targeted system without requiring user interaction after opening a malicious document. The vulnerability, identified as  CVE-2017-11882 , resides in EQNEDT32.EXE, an MS Office component which is responsibl...

It's Patch Tuesday—time to update your Windows devices. Microsoft has released a large batch of security updates as part of its November Patch Tuesday in order to fix a total of 53 new security vulnerabilities in various Windows products, 19 of which rated as critical, 31 important and 3 moderate. The vulnerabilities impact the Windows OS, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Edge, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Scripting Engine, .NET Core, and more. At least four of these vulnerabilities that the tech giant has now fixed have public exploits, allowing attackers to exploit them easily. But fortunately, none of the four are being used in the wild, according to Gill Langston at security firm Qualys . The four vulnerabilities with public exploits identified by Microsoft as CVE-2017-8700 (an information disclosure flaw in ASP.NET Core), CVE-2017-11827 (Microsoft browsers remote code execution), CVE-2017-11848 (Internet Explorer information disclosure) and CVE-2017-11883 (denial of ser...

It is time to give Firefox another chance. The Mozilla Foundation today announced the release of its much awaited Firefox 57 , aka Quantum web browser for Windows, Mac, and Linux, which claims to defeat Google's Chrome. It is fast. Really fast. Firefox 57 is based on an entirely revamped design and overhauled core that includes a brand new next-generation CSS engine written in Mozilla's Rust programming language, called Stylo. Firefox 57 "Quantum" is the first web browser to utilize the power of multicore processors and offers 2x times faster browsing experience while consuming 30 percent less memory than Google Chrome. Besides fast performance, Firefox Quantum, which Mozilla calls "by far the biggest update since Firefox 1.0 in 2004," also brings massive performance improvements with tab prioritization, and significant visual changes with a completely redesigned user interface (UI), called Photon . This new version also adds in support for AMD V...

Due to rise in malware and adware abusing Android accessibility services, Google has finally decided to take strict steps against the apps on its app platform that misuse this feature. Google has emailed Android app developers informing them that within 30 days, they must show how accessibility code used in their apps is helping disabled users or their apps will be removed from its Play Store entirely. For those who are unaware, Android's accessibility services are meant to help disabled people interact with their smartphone devices ( such as automatically filling out forms, overlaying content or switching between apps ) by allowing app-makers to integrate verbal feedback, voice commands and more in their apps. Many popular Android apps use the accessibility API to legitimately provide users with benefits, but over the past few months, we have seen a series of malware, including DoubleLocker ransomware, Svpeng , and BankBot , misusing this feature to infect people. Re...

Another terrible news for OnePlus users. Just over a month after OnePlus was caught collecting personally identifiable information on its users, the Chinese smartphone company has been found leaving a backdoor on almost all OnePlus handsets. A Twitter user, who goes by the name "Elliot Anderson" ( named after Mr. Robot's main character ), discovered a backdoor (an exploit) in all OnePlus devices running OxygenOS that could allow anyone to obtain root access to the devices. The application in question is " EngineerMode ," a diagnostic testing application made by Qualcomm for device manufacturers to easily test all hardware components of the device. This APK comes pre-installed ( accidentally left behind ) on most OnePlus devices, including OnePlus 2, 3, 3T, and the newly-launched OnePlus 5. We can confirm its existence on the OnePlus 2, 3 and 5. You can also check if this application is installed on your OnePlus device or not. For this, simply go t...

Just a week after Apple released its brand new iPhone X on November 3, a team of hackers has claimed to successfully hack Apple's Face ID facial recognition technology with a mask that costs less than $150. Yes, Apple's "ultra-secure" Face ID security for the iPhone X is not as secure as the company claimed during its launch event in September this year. "Apple engineering teams have even gone and worked with professional mask makers and makeup artists in Hollywood to protect against these attempts to beat Face ID," Apple's senior VP of worldwide marketing Phil Schiller said about Face ID system during the event. "These are actual masks used by the engineering team to train the neural network to protect against them in Face ID." However, the bad news is that researchers from Vietnamese cybersecurity firm Bkav were able to unlock the iPhone X using a mask. Yes, Bkav researchers have a better option than holding it up to your face whi...

Almost two months after releasing details of 23 different secret CIA hacking tool projects under Vault 7 series , Wikileaks today announced a new Vault 8 series that will reveal source codes and information about the backend infrastructure developed by the CIA hackers. Not just announcement, but the whistleblower organisation has also published its first batch of Vault 8 leak, releasing source code and development logs of Project Hive —a significant backend component the agency used to remotely control its malware covertly. In April this year, WikiLeaks disclosed a brief information about Project Hive , revealing that the project is an advanced command-and-control server (malware control system) that communicates with malware to send commands to execute specific tasks on the targets and receive exfiltrated information from the target machines. Hive is a multi-user all-in-one system that can be used by multiple CIA operators to remotely control multiple malware implants used...