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Security researchers have discovered an interesting piece of malware that infects systems with either a cryptocurrency miner or ransomware, depending upon their configurations to decide which of the two schemes could be more profitable. While ransomware is a type of malware that locks your computer and prevents you from accessing the encrypted data until you pay a ransom to get the decryption key required to decrypt your files, cryptocurrency miners utilize infected system's CPU power to mine digital currencies . Both ransomware and cryptocurrency mining-based attacks have been the top threats so far this year and share many similarities such as both are non-sophisticated attacks, carried out for money against non-targeted users, and involve digital currency. However, since locking a computer for ransom doesn't always guarantee a payback in case victims have nothing essential to losing, in past months cybercriminals have shifted more towards fraudulent cryptocurrency ...

Maintainers of the Gentoo Linux distribution have now revealed the impact and "root cause" of the attack that saw unknown hackers taking control of its GitHub account last week and modifying the content of its repositories and pages. The hackers not only managed to change the content in compromised repositories but also locked out Gentoo developers from their GitHub organisation. As a result of the incident, the developers were unable to use GitHub for five days. What Went Wrong? Gentoo developers have revealed that the attackers were able to gain administrative privileges for its Github account, after guessing the account password. The organisation could have been saved if it was using a two-factor authentication, which requires an additional passcode besides the password in order to gain access to the account. "The attacker gained access to a password of an organization administrator. Evidence collected suggests a password scheme where disclosure on on...

If you are looking for Fortnite v-bucks generator, aimbot or any other game cheats—then beware—you might end up installing malware on your PC! Web-based game-streaming platform Rainway is reporting that tens of thousands of Fortnite players have inadvertently infected their systems with a piece of malware that hijacks their encrypted HTTPS web sessions to inject fraudulent ads into every website they visit. According to a blog published by Rainway CEO Andrew Sampson, the company began receiving hundreds of thousands of error reports from its server logs last week, and after investigating, the team found that the systems of their users were attempting to connect with various ad platforms. Since Rainway system only allows whitelisted domains to load content, all ads-related requests got rejected, resulting in triggering an error every time the users' systems try to connect with a third-party server. It turns out that the malicious adware attacking Rainway users had one t...

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...

Security researchers have been warning about a new malicious campaign that leverages an alternative scheme to mine cryptocurrencies without directly injecting the infamous CoinHive JavaScript into thousands of hacked websites. Coinhive is a popular browser-based service that offers website owners to embed JavaScript code that utilizes their website visitors' CPUs power in order to mine the Monero cryptocurrency for monetization. However, since its inception, mid-2017, cybercriminals have been abusing the service to illegally make money by injecting their own version of CoinHive JavaScript code to a large number of hacked websites, eventually tricking their millions of visitors into unknowingly mine Monero coins. Since a lot of web application security firms and antivirus companies have now updated their products to detect unauthorized injection of CoinHive JavaScript, cybercriminals have now started abusing a different service from CoinHive to achieve the same. Hackers ...

SUSE, the open source software company owned by British firm Micro Focus International, has been sold to a Swedish private equity firm. Yes, SUSE Linux and its associated software business has finally been acquired by EQT Partners for $2.535 billion, lifting its shares 6 percent. SUSE is one of the oldest open source companies and perhaps the first to provide enterprise-grade Linux software service to banks, universities and government agencies around the world. Since its foundation in 1992, SUSE has changed ownership multiple times. US-based software company Novell acquired SUSE for $120 million in November 2003 to compete with Microsoft in the operating system market. However, things did not work as the company thought and Novell in turn itself was acquired by another US-based company The Attachmate Group for $2.2 billion in 2011. Three years later, Micro Focus International acquired Attachmate for $2.35 billion in 2014. Since then SUSE Linux has been part of Micro Focus ...

Reminder—If you've forgotten about any Google app after using it once a few years ago, be careful, it may still have access to your private emails. When it comes to privacy on social media, we usually point fingers at Facebook for enabling third-party app developers to access users personal information—even with users' consent. But Facebook is not alone. Google also has a ton of information about you and this massive pool of data can be accessed by third-party apps you connect to, using its single sign-on service. Though Google has much stricter privacy policies about what developers can do with your data, the company still enables them to ask for complete access of your Google account, including the content of your emails and contacts. The entire Facebook's  Cambridge Analytica privacy saga highlights how crucial it is to keep track of the apps you have connected to your social media accounts and permitted to access your data. Last year, Google itself prom...

Security researchers at Microsoft have unveiled details of two critical and important zero-day vulnerabilities that had recently been discovered after someone uploaded a malicious PDF file to VirusTotal, and get patched before being used in the wild . In late March, researchers at ESET found a malicious PDF file on VirusTotal, which they shared with the security team at Microsoft "as a potential exploit for an unknown Windows kernel vulnerability." After analyzing the malicious PDF file, the Microsoft team found that the same file includes two different zero-day exploits—one for Adobe Acrobat and Reader, and the other targeting Microsoft Windows. Since the patches for both the vulnerabilities were released in the second week of May, Microsoft released details of both the vulnerabilities today, after giving users enough time to update their vulnerable operating systems and Adobe software. According to the researchers, the malicious PDF including both the zero-days e...

Facebook has admitted that the company gave dozens of tech companies and app developers special access to its users' data after publicly saying it had restricted outside companies to access such data back in 2015. It's an unusual clear view of how the largest social networking site manages your personal information. During the Cambridge Analytica scandal revealed March this year, Facebook stated that it already cut off third-party access to its users' data and their friends in May 2015 only. However, in a 747-page long document [ PDF ] delivered to Congress late Friday, the social networking giant admitted that it continued sharing data with 61 hardware and software makers , as well as app developers after 2015 as well. The disclosure comes in response to hundreds of questions posed to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg by members of Congress in April about its company's practices with data of its billions of users. The Washington Post reported that the company...

If your mobile carrier offers LTE, also known as the 4G network, you need to beware as your network communication can be hijacked remotely. A team of researchers has discovered some critical weaknesses in the ubiquitous LTE mobile device standard that could allow sophisticated hackers to spy on users' cellular networks, modify the contents of their communications, and even can re-route them to malicious or phishing websites. LTE, or Long Term Evolution, is the latest mobile telephony standard used by billions of people designed to bring many security improvements over the predecessor standard known as Global System for Mobile (GSM) communications. However, multiple security flaws have been discovered over the past few years, allowing attackers to intercept user's communications, spy on user phone calls and text messages, send fake emergency alerts, spoof location of the device and knock devices entirely offline. 4G LTE Network Vulnerabilities Now, security researchers...

Typeform, the popular Spanish-based online data collection company specializes in form building and online surveys for businesses worldwide, has today disclosed that the company has suffered a data breach that exposed partial data of its some users. The company identified the breach on June 27th, and then quickly performed a full forensic investigation of the incident to identify the source of the breach. According to the company, some unknown attackers managed to gain unauthorized access to its servers and downloaded a partial data backups for surveys conducted before May 3rd 2018. Typeform confirmed that it patched the issue within just half an hour after identifying the intrusion, and emailed all the affected users, warning them to watch out for potential phishing scams, or spam emails. The company did not disclose any details about the vulnerability that was exploited by hackers to gain access to its servers, though it assured its users that no payment card details or pass...

A team of security researchers has discovered a new set of techniques that could allow hackers to bypass all kind of present mitigations put in place to prevent DMA-based Rowhammer attacks against Android devices. Dubbed RAMpage , the new technique (CVE-2018-9442) could re-enable an unprivileged Android app running on the victim's device to take advantage from the previously disclosed Drammer attack , a variant of DRAM Rowhammer  hardware vulnerability for Android devices, in an attempt to gain root privileges on the target device. You might have already read a few articles about RAMpage on the Internet or even the research paper, but if you are still unable to understand— what the heck is RAMpage —we have briefed the research in language everyone can understand. Before jumping directly on the details of RAMpage, it is important for you to understand what is RowHammer vulnerability, how it can be exploited using Drammer attack to hack Android devices and what mitigations G...

Downloaded anything from Gentoo's GitHub account yesterday? Consider those files compromised and dump them now—as an unknown group of hackers or an individual managed to gain access to the GitHub account of the Gentoo Linux distribution on Thursday and replaced the original source code with a malicious one. Gentoo is a free open source Linux or FreeBSD-based distribution built using the Portage package management system that makes it more flexible, easier to maintain, and portable compared to other operating systems. In a security alert released on its website yesterday, developers of the Gentoo Linux distribution warned users not to use code from its GitHub account, as some "unknown individuals" had gained its control on 28 June at 20:20 UTC and "modified the content of repositories as well as pages there." According to Gentoo developer Francisco Blas Izquierdo Riera, after gaining control of the Gentoo Github organization, the attackers "repla...