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Iranian CERT is sounding the alarm over another bit of data-deleting malware it's discovered on PCs in the country. Dubbed Batchwiper , the malware systematically wipes any drive partitions starting with the letters D through I Drive, along with any files stored on the Windows desktop of the user who is logged in when it's executed Why naming Batchwiper ?  The name was chosen because the malware is packed in a batch file. The malware initiates its data wiping routine on certain dates, the next one being Jan. 21 2013. However, the dates of Oct. 12, Nov. 12 and Dec. 12, 2012, were also found in the malware's configuration, suggesting that it may have been in distribution for at least two months. GrooveMonitor.exe is the original dropper, which is a self-extracting RAR file, once executed it extracts the following files: -- \WINDOWS\system32\SLEEP.EXE, md5: ea7ed6b50a9f7b31caeea372a327bd37 -- \WINDOWS\system32\jucheck.exe, md5: c4cd216112cbc5b8c046934843c579f6 -...

Stuxnet case is considered by security expert the first concrete act of cyber warfare, a malware specifically designed to hit SCADA systems inside nuclear plants in Iran. The event has alerted the international security community on the risks related to the effects of a cyber attack against supervisory control and data acquisition in industrial environment.  SCADA systems are adopted practically in every industrial control system (ICS) used for the control and monitor of industrial processes that are potential targets of a cyber attack such as a critical infrastructures or a utility facilities. Manufacturing, production, power generation, water treatment facilities, electrical power transmission and distribution and large communication systems are all considered critical asset for every countries and represent privileged targets for cyber attacks. Obtain access to SCADA systems is fundamental step for a attackers that desires to compromise the controlled processes and contrary...

It is that time of year which everybody loves. It is the holiday season and you will start to see a lot more people express good attitudes and wish everyone else a happy new year. As a matter of fact it may be hard to think that with all of this much goodwill in the air there is someone out there who is trying to take advantage of that. But the fact is no matter what time of year it is there are always going to be bad guys around every corner and they will try to stalk their prey at anytime. It does not matter what time of year it is, the bad guys like to work all year round and you always have to be on the lookout for them. As a matter of fact this time of year is a very good time when it comes to black hat hackers . This is because there are so many people online around this time and they are looking for a bunch of deals for their Christmas shopping. The retailers really go full throttle around this time of year and they want to be able to make as much money as they can. This t...

Ask an expert on cyber espionage and he for sure he will speak of China, the most active and advanced country in this sector, this time a clamorous campaign apparently originated from Korea has been discovered. Security company FireEye collected evidences of a cyber espionage campaign, named " Sanny ", attributable to Korea. FireEye hasn't revealed the real origin of the offensive, it's a mystery which Korea is responsible between North or South Korea, but it confirmed that 80% of victims are Russian organizations and companies belonging to space research industry, information, education and telecommunication. According Ali Islam, security researcher at FireEye declared " Though we don't have full concrete evidence, we have identified many indicators leading to Korea as a possible origin of attack."   The following are the indicators we have so far: 1. The SMTP mail server and CnC are in Korea 2. The fonts "Batang" and "KP CheongPong" used in the ...

A user over at the XDA Developers Forum has gone searching through Samsung Exynos kernels and has found one whopper of an exploit. There's both good and bad news with this exploit so head down below for more details on this new found glory. This exploits affects a number of Samsung-made devices, along with potentially any device using an Exynos 4412 or 4210 processor and Samsung kernels. The vulnerability was described on Saturday by the user " alephzain " on XDA Developers, a forum for mobile developers. This Vulnerability could give remotely downloaded apps the ability to read user data, brick phones, or perform other malicious activities. This functionality can be exploited by some malicious apps to gain root access to the device, wipe/steal sensitive data, install malicious codes, and could also be used to potentially brick the phone. According to xda-developers user supercurio, Samsung has been made aware of the security hole, but the company has not p...

This Morning Anonymous member with twitter handle @OsamaTheGod leaked a huge database from server of Israeli Musical Act Magazine (act.co.il). The leaked database posted on public note website and includes users ID, username, password in clear text, IP address and phone numbers. Hacker posted data of about 10000 users from the site. Reason of hack yet not mentioned anywhere, but because hacker use #OpIsrael hash in his tweets, so this could be an attack against Israel in fight of Anonymous vs Israel. Stay tuned for further update.

In November I was contacted for first time by the Egyptian Hacker named ViruS_HimA who announced me to have hacked into Adobe servers and leaked private data. The hacker violated Adobe servers gaining full access and dumping the entire database with more of 150,000 emails and hashed passwords of Adobe employees and customers/partner of the firm such as US Military, USAF, Google, Nasa DHL and many other companies. ViruS_HimA specifically addressed the inefficient and slow patch management process that leaves exposed for long period "big companies".  " When someone report vulnerability to them, It take 5-7 days for the notification that they've received your report!! It even takes 3-4 months to patch the vulnerabilities! Such big companies should really respond very fast and fix the security issues as fast as they can ." Like , we reported two days before that one month old reported critical vulnerability of account hijacking in Outlook and Hotmail  is sti...

Mohamed Ramadan from Attack-Secure discovered a critical vulnerability in Etsy's iPhone application. Etsy is a social commerce website focused on handmade or vintage items as well as art and craft supplies. Any attacker on the same network can sniff traffic (including user password) invisibly without any warning from Etsy app. Its is very similar to the man in the middle attack reported in iPhone Instagram app a few days back. Bug Hunting ! Because Etsy having a Security Bug Bounty Program , so first Mohamed was trying to find a vulnerability in Etsy website , later he found that they have enough good security. Because Etsy mobile apps are eligible in bug bounty program, so next try was on Mobile apps. Mohamed finally  downloaded the latest version 2.2 and installed that on his iPhone 4S with iOS 6 and also on his ipad. Then he configured his Burp Suite proxy 1.5 to listen on all interfaces on port 8080 in invisible mode....

Cui, a fifth year grad student from the Columbia University Intrusion Detection Systems Lab and co-founder of Red Balloon Security, has demonstrated an attack on common Cisco-branded Voice over IP (VoIP) phones that could easily eavesdrop on private conversations remotely. The vulnerability Cui demonstrated was based on work he did over the last year on what he called ' Project Gunman v2 ', where a laser printer firmware update could be compromised to include additional, and potentially malicious, code. The latest vulnerability is based on a lack of input validation at the syscall interface. Cui said, " allows arbitrary modification of kernel memory from userland, as well as arbitrary code execution within the kernel. This, in turn, allows the attacker to become root, gain control over the DSP , buttons, and LEDs on the phone. " While he did not specify the precise vulnerability, Cui said it allowed him to patch the phone's software with arbitrary pieces of code, and that t...

A vulnerability in different versions of Microsoft's widely used browser Internet Explorer can allow hackers to track the movements of your mouse. Microsoft is investigating reports of a mouse-tracking flaw that puts virtual keyboards and keypads at risk to remote monitoring. Spider.io, a UK-based company in the advertising analytics field, alleged that two unnamed companies are improperly using a flaw that allows them to track whether display advertisements, sometimes buried far down in web pages, are actually viewed by users. Almost every US-based user of Internet Explorer will have their mouse cursor tracked via this exploit almost every day they browse the web. Microsoft has confirmed that every version of Internet Explorer, from version 6 dating back to 2001 up to 10, released this year, is vulnerable. How this works ? All a hacker needs to do is, buy a ad space on any webpage and wait until a user visits it. If the tab remains open, the hacker has continuous access to use...

This Friday I was working with my co-security researcher " Christy Philip Mathew " in +The Hacker News  Lab for testing the Cookie Handling Vulnerabilities in the most famous email services i.e Hotmail and Outlook. Well, both are merged now and part of the same parent company - Microsoft, the software giant.  Vulnerability allows an attacker to Hijack accounts in a very simple way, by just exporting & importing cookies of an user account from one system to attacker's system, and our results shows that even after logout by victim, the attacker is still able to reuse cookies at his end. There are different way of stealing cookies, that we will discuss below. In May 2012, another Indian security researcher Rishi Narang claimed similar vulnerability in Linkedin website. Vulnerability Details Many websites including Microsoft services uses cookies to store the session information in the user's web browser. Cookies are responsible for main...

A former University of Georgia (UGA) student under investigation for allegedly hacking into the school's computerized personnel records system committed suicide last month. Stell attended classes at UGA between 2005 and 2007. The Data breach was carried out around two months back near 15th October and that may have led to compromised Full names and Social Security numbers, along with additional sensitive data of 8,500 current and former school employees. According to reports , an investigation into the security breach was ongoing when the suspect, Charles Staples Stell , 26, was found dead at his home in Athens on Nov. 7. The UGA Police Department's computer forensics team was investigating the hack. They said, There is no evidence that the compromised data were used to commit additional crimes. The employee files involved in the security breach were found under the control of Stell during the ensuing forensic evaluation of evidence obtained during the course of the invest...

Japan's National Police Agency has offered a monetary reward for a wanted hacker, use programming languages like C# to create a virus called " iesys.exe " and Hijack systems of innocent people to post aggressive messages on Internet on behalf of Users.  Method called a " Syberian Post Office " to post messages to popular Japanese bulletin board. Hacker use cross-site request forgery exploit, that allow hackers to making online postings via innocent users automatically. The messages included warnings of plans for mass killings at an elementary school posted to a city website. It is the first time that Japan's National Police Agency has offered a monetary reward for a wanted hacker  and will pay up to 3 million yen (US$36,000). The case is an embarrassing one for the police, in which earlier this year four individuals were wrongly arrested after their PCs were hacked and used to post  such messages on public bulletin boards. " Up until now t...