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A really bad year for the world's second-largest email service provider, Yahoo Mail ! The company announced today, ' we identified a coordinated effort to gain unauthorized access to Yahoo Mail accounts ', user names and passwords of its email customers have been stolen and are used to access multiple accounts. Yahoo did not say how many accounts have been affected, and neither they are sure about the source of the leaked users' credentials. It appears to have come from a third party database being compromised, and not an infiltration of Yahoo's own servers. " We have no evidence that they were obtained directly from Yahoo’s systems. Our ongoing investigation shows that malicious computer software used the list of usernames and passwords to access Yahoo Mail accounts. The information sought in the attack seems to be names and email addresses from the affected accounts’ most recent sent emails. " For now, Yahoo is taking proactive actions t...

The Encyclopedia giant WIKIPEDIA has been found vulnerable to remote code execution because of a critical flaw in the MediaWiki software . Wikipedia is a name which has become a major source of information for all of us. It has webpages on almost every topic you need to search. This giant is powered by an open source wiki software called MediaWiki. MediaWiki not only empowers Wikipedia, but also a number of other wiki websites. This software is a product of the Wikimedia Foundation and is coded in PHP with a database as backend. Cyber Point Software Technologies found a remote code execution vulnerability in MediaWiki, " This vulnerability affects all versions of MediaWiki from 1.8 onwards. " The vulnerability assigned with ID CVE-2014-1610 allows an attacker to execute shell code remotely via an incorrectly sanitized parameter on the MediaWiki application server. “Shell meta characters can be passed in the page parameter to the thumb.php.” Bug 60339...

After Financial and Banking Malwares, Ransomware has become the first choice of money motivated cybercriminals. A new Ransomware Trojan known as ICEPOL has been one of those widespread malware which has been successfully installed approximately 267,786 times worldwide and 42,400 in the USA alone over a five month period, analyzed by the security firm BitDefender . The ICEPOL Trojan categorized as Ransomware that locks your PC and demand for a ransom amount to unlock it. The Malware was using a previously known vulnerability in Java software i.e. CVE-2013-0422 to infect the systems. The malware threatened the user with accusations of illegal piracy or ' porn-related activity ' and requires money for exemption from punishment that pretends to be from the 'police'. “ The ICEPOL Trojan extorted victims who downloaded it by sending them a message in any one of 25 languages purporting to be from police accusing them of downloading copyrighted material ...

Over the past several months, it has become clear that the Internet and our Privacy have been fundamentally compromised. A Private search engine DuckDuckGo claims that when you click on one of their search results, they do not send personally identifiable information along with your request to the third party. Like Google dorks (advance search patterns), there are thousands of similar, but technically more useful search hacks are also available in DuckDuckGo called DuckDuckGoodies . Today I am going to share about Handy " Cryptography " using DuckDuckGo search engine . Whether you are a Hacker, Cracker or a Researcher, you need to face a number of hash strings in your day to day life. Hashing is a one way encryption of a plain text or a file, generally used to secure passwords or to check the integrity of the file. There is a certain set of hashing algorithms, e.g.md5, sha1, sha-512 etc. A hash function generates the exact output if executed n numbe...

Now there is really great news for all the supporters of Former National Security Agency ( NSA ) contractor Edward Snowden , as he is nominated for the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize by two Norwegian lawmakers. Snorre Valen and Baard Vegar Solhjell , parliamentarians from Norway’s Socialist Left Party said, “ He has contributed to revealing the extreme level of surveillance by nations against other nations and of citizens ,” Edward Snowden revealed various widely extended NSA spying projects and responsible for handing over the material from one of the world's most secretive organizations the NSA. He faces charges of theft and espionage and is in Russia on temporary asylum. “ Snowden contributed to people knowing about what has happened and spurring public debate ” on trust in government, which he said was “ a fundamental requirement for peace ”. Snorre Valen also added that, “ There’s no doubt that the actions of Edward Snowden may have damaged the security interes...

These days botnets are all over the news. In simple terms, a botnet is a group of computers networked together, running a piece of malicious software that allows them to be controlled by a remote attacker. A major target for most of the malware is still Windows, but the growing market of Mac OS X, Linux and Smartphones, is also giving a solid reason to cyber criminals to focus. Recently, Kaspersky Lab has detected another cross-platform Java-Bot , capable of infecting computers running Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux that has Java Runtime Environment installed. Last year, Zoltan Balazs - CTO at MRG Effitas submitted the samples of malicious Java application for analysis to Kaspersky Lab and they identified it as HEUR : Backdoor.Java.Agent.a . According to researchers, to compromise computers, Java-Bot is exploiting a previously known critical Java vulnerability CVE-2013-2465 that was patched in last June. The vulnerability persists in Java 7 u21 and earlier vers...

A Russian man has pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges in a federal court in Atlanta on Tuesday for developing and distributing a malicious banking malware ' SpyEye ' that infected more than 1.4 million computers worldwide since 2009. Aleksandr Andreevich Panin , a 24 year old programmer, also known as Gribodemon and Harderman , was the main author of ‘ SpyEye ’, a sophisticated malware designed to steal people’s identities and financial information, including online banking credentials, credit card information, user names, passwords and PINs from their bank accounts without their knowledge. The SpyEye secretly infects the victim’s computer and gives the remote control to the cybercriminals who remotely access the infected computer through command and control servers and steal victims’ personal and financial information through a variety of techniques, including web injects, keystroke loggers, and credit card grabbers without authorization. Between 2009 and...

In the last quarter of 2013, sale of a Smartphone with ANDROID operating system has increased and every second person you see is a DROID user. A Russian security firm ' Doctor Web' identified the first mass distributed Android bootkit malware called ' Android.Oldboot ', a piece of malware that's designed to re-infect devices after reboot, even if you delete all working components of it. The bootkit Android.Oldboot has infected more than 350,000 android users in China, Spain, Italy, Germany, Russia, Brazil, the USA and some Southeast Asian countries. China seems to a mass victim of this kind of malware having a 92 % share. A Bootkit is a rootkit malware variant which infects the device at start-up and may encrypt disk or steal data, remove the application, open connection for Command and controller. A very unique technique is being used to inject this Trojan into an Android system where an attacker places a component of it into the boot...

Malware code can be very small, and the impact can be very severe! The Antivirus firm AVAST spotted a malicious version of the open source FTP (File Transfer Protocol) software ' FileZilla ' out in the wild. The software is open source, but has been modified by the hackers that steal users' credentials, offered on various hacked sites for download with banner or text ads. Once installed, the software's appearance and functionalities are equal to the original version, so a user cannot distinguish between the fake or real one, and the malware version of the “ .exe ” file is just slightly smaller than the real one. " The installed malware FTP client looks like the official version and it is fully functional! You can’t find any suspicious behavior, entries in the system registry, communication or changes in application GUI ." The only difference is that the malware version use 2.46.3-Unicode and the official installer use v2.45-Unicode , as ...

We are continuously keeping our eye on new variants of the widely spread Ransomware family like Cryptolocker , Prison Locker, Copycat and Locker which encrypts your files and ask for a random amount to decrypt it.  If infected by such malware, to be very honest, there is no hope for recovering your documents without paying a ransom amount to the cyber criminals. Online users are now facing another similar ransomware called ' CryptorBit ', ( Virustotal report ) first spotted on September 2013. It is not a variant of Cryptolocker but it does exactly the same thing i.e. Encrypt all the files on the Hard Disk. CryptorBit is an infection that activates by clicking links in a spam message or malicious email, or websites while browsing the web, or by opening an attachment in an email from a malicious source. Once your system gets infected by the CryptorBit, it will encrypt your files and hold them until a ransom of $50 - $500 or more is not paid. It will display...

Are you fond of playing games on your Smartphone like Angry Birds or Subway Surfer ?? You should now stop wasting your time, because NSA is utilizing your gaming energy in the best possible way. According to the latest documents leaked by former U.S. Government contractor Edward Snowden , Some of the world's most popular Smartphone applications are telling British (GCHQ) and American intelligence agencies ( NSA ) everything about you. NSA is tapping communication across the Internet of all " leaky " apps ( Unencrypted app, without SSL connection ) to peek into the tremendous amounts of very personal data, including your age, location, sex and even sexual preferences. This is really unacceptable! The Guardian claims that the NSA and its UK counterpart GCHQ have been developing capabilities to take advantage of these ‘leaky’ apps, collecting most sensitive information such as sexual orientation and " even sends specific sexual preferences such a...

A location based Social Networking platform with 45 million users,' Foursquare ' was vulnerable to the primary email address disclosed.  Foursquare is a Smartphone application that gives you details of nearby cafes, bars, shops, parks using GPS location and also tells about your friends nearby. According to a Penetration tester and hacker ' Jamal Eddin e ',  an attacker can extract email addresses of all 45 million users just by using a few lines of scripting tool. Basically the flaw exists in the Invitation system of the Foursquare app. While testing the app, he found that invitation received on the recipient's end actually disclosing the sender's email address, as shown above. Invitation URL:  https://foursquare.com/mehdi?action=acceptFriendship&expires=1378920415&src=wtbfe& uid = 64761059 &sig=mmlx96RwGrQ2fJAg4OWZhAWnDvc%3D Where 'uid' parameter represents the sender's profile ID.  Hacker noticed th...

Do you use Thunderbird , a free; open-source; cross-platform application for managing email and news feeds? According to a Pakistani Security Researcher from Vulnerability-Lab, a flaw gives an attacker the ability to run code on a user’s machine. Mozilla Thunderbird 17.0.6 email application is vulnerable to critical validation and filter bypass vulnerability, enables an attacker to bypass the filter that prevents HTML tags from being used in messages. According to a Security Advisory released by Vulnerability-Lab , the flaw resides in Mozilla's Gecko engine. During the testing, the researchers found many java script errors which gave the researcher much hope in believing that the application might actually be vulnerable. By default, HTML tags like <script> and <iframe> are blocked in Thunderbird and get filtered immediately upon insertion. However, while drafting a new email message, attackers can easily bypass the current input filters by encoding...

Using Tormail Email service for being Anonymous online while conversations and mail exchange?? There is a very disappointing news for all   current and past users, US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has a complete copy of Tormail server and they are using it to catch the Criminals & Hackers. According to court documents that recently surfaced, the FBI  have cloned the entire email database while investigating Freedom Hosting. In August 2013, when the FBI seized the Tor network's top web host, Freedom Hosting , that gave the feds access to every record of every anonymous site hosted by Freedom Hosting , including TorMail , a service that allowed to send and receive email anonymously . New evidence uncovered by Wired suggests those archives are now being used in completely unrelated investigations, but possibly now the FBI is mining the information from that database to track cyber criminals. Remember the shutdown of the Silk Road bl...

The year 2014 starts with the formation of new mobile malware like ‘ Android . HeHe ’, with the ability to steal text messages, intercept phone calls, and other malware such as ‘ XXXX . apk ’ uses WiFi networks or hotspots to steal information, infected more than 24,000 Devices. But it should not be forgotten by us that 2014 marks the 10th Anniversary of the World’s First mobile malware . FortiGuard Labs has published a whitepaper  that briefly explains the major mobile threats from 'Cabir' to 'FakeDefend' over the last decade. The world’s first mobile malware was ' Cabir ', detected in 2004 when mobiles were not so popular among all of us. It was developed by the group of hackers known as 29A , designed to infect the Nokia Series 60 , the most popular Smartphone platform with tens of millions users worldwide at that time. The name “ Caribe ” appears on the screen of the infected phones and the worm spreads itself by seeking other devices such as ...

Hackers broke into an Israeli defense ministry computer via an email attachment tainted with malicious software. Reuters reported Israeli Defense is the latest illustrious victim of the Spear Phishing Attack , and hackers penetrated into an Israeli defense ministry computer using a malicious email as a vector. Aviv Raff , Chief Technology officer at Seculert , confirmed that an Email with a malicious attachment that looked like it had been sent by the country’s Shin Bet Secret Security Service. The attackers have penetrated into the network of Israeli Defense accessing to 15 computers, one of them managed by the Israel’s Civil Administration that monitors Palestinians in Israeli-occupied territory. The Civil Administration is a unit of Israel’s Defense Ministry that control the passage of goods between Israel and the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It is clear that the information contained in the infected system represents a precious target for someone that intend to examin...

Western landscapes are facing a hell lot of data breaches started with Target , Neiman Marcus and now country's largest crafts chain ' Michael’s Art and Crafts ' may be is the latest retailer hit by a security breach. In a statement, Irving, Texas-based company acknowledged a possible data security breach that may have affected its customers' payment card information at its 1250 stores across the United States and Canada. They also announced that it is working closely with federal law enforcement and is conducting an investigation with the help of third-party data security experts to establish the facts. " Michaels said in its statement that it had "recently learned of possible fraudulent activity on some US payment cards that had been used at Michaels, suggesting that the company may have experienced a data security attack " company said . CEO Chuck Rubin said that the company has not confirmed a breach, but wanted to alert customers: ...