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The popular social media site Twitter is rolling out a couple of new features to its login process to help users prevent their account in a more secure way and restore access to their account if they forget their accounts' password. For tighten up the security measures Twitter is launching two factor authentication in its new password reset experience, making its users to reset their password in easier way and at the same time difficult for cybercriminals to log in to users' accounts. " The new process lets you choose the email address or phone number associated with your account where you'd like us to send your reset information. That way, whether you've recently changed your phone number, or are traveling with limited access to your devices, or had an old email address connected to your Twitter account, you've got options ," Twitter said in a blogpost on Thursday. RESET TWITTER PASSWORD WITH SMS This new experience will let Twitter users to ...

It's more than a month since we all were warned of the critical OpenSSL Heartbleed vulnerability , but that doesn't mean it disappeared. The critical bug compromised many popular websites and after been discovered the problem was solved. But is that so? No, not at all! A recent finding from the security researcher Robert David Graham claims that there are still more than 300,000 servers apparently remain vulnerable to the most critical OpenSSL bug, Heartbleed, which is admittedly down in numbers from the previous which resulted in over 600,000 systems a month ago. Graham announced on the Errata Security blog that he arrived at the number through a recently done global internet scan (or at least the important bits: port 443 of IPv4 addresses), which reveals that exactly 318,239 systems are still vulnerable to the OpenSSL Heartbleed bug and over 1.5 million servers still support the vulnerable "heartbeat" feature of OpenSSL that allowed the critical bug. "...

Microsoft has released its advance notification for the month of May 2014 patch Tuesday security updates, that will patch a total of eight flaws issued next Tuesday , May 13. Among the eight vulnerabilities two of them are rated critical, rest all are rated important in severity. Just a week before, Microsoft provided an 'out-of-band security update' for all versions of Internet Explorer (IE) that were affected by the zero-day vulnerability , and since IE6 for Windows XP retired last month, even though it received patches for IE6 zero-day flaw. But, Microsoft has no plan to make any such accommodations this time. 13th MAY 2014 - MICROSOFT PATCH TUESDAY  Next week the security updates will include fixes for vulnerabilities including the critical one in Internet Explorer (IE), along with .NET Framework, Windows, Office and SharePoint for all versions of Windows except Windows XP.  " Our existing policy remains in place, and as such, Microsoft no longer supports...

Today, the estimated number of known computer threats like viruses, worms, backdoors, exploits, Trojans, spyware, password stealers, and other variants of potentially unwanted software range into millions. It has ability to create several different forms of itself dynamically in order to thwart antimalware programs. Instagram users are also targeted by the potentially unwanted software programs that claims to enable them to download their Instagram photos and videos using desktop machines or computers. But once downloaded and installed into system, it could expose the user to a number of security vulnerabilities, often overlap with adware , warned the security firm Malwarebytes. " In the case of Instagram, what we've seen out there could pose greater risk than, say, your average phishing site, " said Malwarebytes intelligence analyst Jovi Umawing in a blog post . Instagram is a social networking service use for online photo-sharing and video-sharing. It...

The United States charged two men for their involvement in a conspiracy to hack into the computer systems of dozens of government and commercial organizations, including the U.S. Navy and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), according to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Tulsa. On Monday, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that the 27 year old Virginia man, Nicholas Knight , who served as systems administrator in the nuclear reactor department of an aircraft carrier, was one of two individuals charged with one count of conspiring to hack the computer systems of about 30 public and private organizations, while he was active in his duty as a Navy member. Along with Knight, a 20 year old Illinois man, Daniel Krueger, who was a student at an Illinois community college where he studied network administration, was also charged with the conspiracy count for his participation to hack into the computer servers as part of a plan to steal identities, obstruct justice,...

French leading telecommunications company ' Orange ' hit by second major data breach of its kind in a matter of months. Company announced that hackers have stolen personal data of 1.3 million customers of its online portal. ORANGE HACKED SECOND TIME IN THREE MONTHS Hackers have stolen a " limited amount of personal information concerning clients and future customers ", including their first names, Surnames email addresses, phone numbers for both mobiles and fixed lines, dates of birth as well as the names of clients' mobile and Internet operators. " The data recovered could be used to contact those concerned by email, SMS or by phone, particularly for phishing purposes ," company said in an statement . The Incident was detected by the company on April 18, but the company has waited until now to inform customers to determine its full extent and to ensure that the security holes leveraged by the hackers have been patched. BEWARE OF PHISHING ATTAC...

Edward Snowden 's leaks last year questioned the integrity of several big and reputed companies such as Apple, Google and Microsoft that were found in relation with the NSA in its surveillance programs.  Thereafter they maintained distance with the Agency and claimed to be unaware of such government spying activities. Now, email exchanges between Google executives Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt and former NSA director Gen. Keith Alexander , obtained through the Freedom of Information Act that in real do not reveal anything ridiculously outrageous but suggest that the tech companies behind the services you use are very closely in relationship with the NSA and have worked with them over the years. The series of emails obtained by Al Jazeera clearly indicate that the relationship between Google and the National Security Agency (NSA) was far cozier than anyone thought. This revelation questions not only the reputation of the largest Internet giant, but also the privac...

If you see any wall post or inbox message -- saying, " Warning!!! Facebook Security Warning!!! Do this before your account gets deactivated! ," and urges you to follow some steps to reactivate your Facebook account, then just ignore it; It's a Facebook Scam! Facebook has become one of the most popular website with more than one billion active users this year. Hundreds of people join the social networking website to reconnect with their old friends and get a chance to make new friends. But, with the increase in various scams on Facebook to target users, it became very clear that not only does the social networking platform provide special opportunities for people to connect and share information; it also serves as a great and useful platform for scammers. Once again scammers have targeted Facebook users by spreading new kind of scam that threatens users with account deactivation if they don't register it again. " Attention : to all facebook users Your ...

After hacking PCs, Cyber criminals have now begun targeting Smartphones with a special piece of malicious software that locks up the devices until the victims pay a ransom to get the keys to unlock the phone, called Ransomware .  Ransomware typically targets users' personal computers and has become a profitable way for cyber criminals to earn money. To deliver the Ransomware malwares to the mobile devices, cyber criminals have started creating malicious software programs that masquerade as antivirus apps or other play store apps, but instead of protecting your smart devices, they lock up your Smartphone until you pay a ransom to unlock it. RANSOMWARE - POLICE &  CRYPTOLOCKER As we reported earlier in news updates, security researchers disclosed various Police ransomware targeting users' personal computers. The ransomware software once installed, cyber criminals attempts to lock the victim's computer hard disk and files from a remote location. Usuall...

After the Heartbleed bug that exposed half of the Internet vulnerable to hackers thereby marking as one of the largest Internet vulnerability in recent history, the critical flaw in the implementation of the DNS protocol could also represent a serious menace to the Internet security. A Serious security vulnerability has been discovered in the algorithms of DNS software – BIND by the two Israeli students ' Roee Hay ' and ' Jonathan Kalechstein ', who are working under a project out at the Laboratory of Computer Communication & Networking in the Faculty of Computer Science at the Technion , which was led by Dr. Gabi Nakibly from Rafael (Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd.). Although, Technion students have not provided any detail explanation about the vulnerability , but indicated that by exploiting the DNS protocol flaw an attacker could redirect the users who are trying to visit a legitimate website to a fake and bogus website which the attacker con...

The collection of slashes and hyphens in URLs of websites make it look complicated and messy, now the new experimental version of the Google Chrome browser bury the whole URL into the top-level domain name. Google's new experiment to the recent update to Chrome 's publicly available Canary browser indicates that in the coming weeks Google may eventually hide the full URLs of the websites and will show only the website name and domain even if you are navigating within the website, something familiar with the mobile version of Safari. Chrome Canary is an early build and a leading-edge of the next version of Google's web browser and a couple of days ago, Google pushed an update to both of its Chrome Canary and beta builds that hide long URLs of a website from the address bar. OMNIBOX - NEW ADDRESS BAR The field that is mostly known as address bar is now better known as "omnibox", a single bar at the top of the screen that gives you ability to type terms you want to ...

An 18-year old Miami University student is facing charges for allegedly breaching the school's computer system to change grades for himself and four other students. Jose Bautista appeared before a judge Friday after he was arrested Thursday by the Miami School Board Police after the principal of Dr. Michael M. Krop Senior High School turned him in, after the student reportedly gave him a written confession. The principal claims he obtained a written confession from the student. " It's not fair to the people that really try ," said Mayan Dehry , a student at Bautista's school. " Like, I know a lot of kids are in AP classes, and they try really hard to get the grades that they get. I don't know, if you're just going to be lazy and then change your grades, that's not what learning is about. " A fellow student Brett Curtis said Bautista's actions are not representative of the majority of his peers. " We have almost 3,000...

After Heartbleed bug , a security flaw in widely used open-source software OpenSSL that puts countless websites at risk, another vulnerability has been found in popular authentication software OpenID and authorization software OAuth. Wang Jing , a Chinese mathematics Ph.D student at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, found that the OAuth and OpenID open source login tools are vulnerable to the " Covert Redirect " exploit. The login tools ' OAuth ' and 'OpenID' protocols are the commonly used open standard for authorization. OAuth designed as a way for users to sign in or sign up for other services using an existing identity of a site such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft or Twitter, whereas OpenID is a decentralized authentication system for the Internet that allows users to log in at websites across the internet with same digital identity. The Covert Redirect vulnerability could affect those who use 'OAuth' and 'OpenID' protocols to 'login' to the websites ...

Microsoft had publicized widely its plans to stop supporting oldest and widely used Operating system, Windows XP after 8th April this year, which means Microsoft would no longer issue security patches for XP. A few days back, we reported about a new critical Zero-day vulnerability in all versions of Microsoft's browser Internet Explorer, starting with IE version 6 and including IE version 11. According to the advisory (CVE-2014-1776), All versions of Internet Explorer are vulnerable to Remote Code Execution flaw, which resides ' in the way that Internet Explorer accesses an object in memory that has been deleted or has not been properly allocated ,' Microsoft confirmed . An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could gain the same user rights as the current user. FIRST PATCH FOR WINDOWS XP, EVEN AFTER EXPIRATION DATE Internet Explorer vulnerability poses a special concern for people still using Windows XP , but can Microsoft really ignore inno...

An alleged member of the famous amorphous Hacktivist group Anonymous is now facing a total of 44 charges after the filing of the latest superseding Indictment of cyber assaults charges against him with the collective to hack Computer systems of a County Government, a school district and a Newspaper organization in Texas, federal investigators announced on Tuesday. 27-year-old Fidel Salinas of Donna, Texas, charged with several counts of cyber stalking, attempted computer hacking and with intent to harass and intimidate a female victim, making it altogether 44 counts of cyber assaults that could lead him up to 440 years in Jail. Salinas intentionally tried to hack into the computer system of Hidalgo County practically two years earlier, for which he was charged with one count of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act after a grand jury in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas found him guilty, last October. It looked like, Salinas wou...

There is no question that Mobile devices have become a staple in everyday living around the world. But have you ever asked yourself, How Secure are the Android, iPhone or any other Smart devices? It is really important for us to think about the Security and Privacy of our Data stored in Smartphones. In June 2010, Apple introduced ' Data protection ' feature in iOS 4.0 devices that offer hardware encryption for  all the data stored on the devices. " Data protection enhances the built-in hardware encryption by protecting the hardware encryption keys with your passcode. This provides an additional layer of protection for your email messages attachments , and third-party applications ." Apple claimed  in an old announcement. But unexpectedly, In last few updates Apple has silently removed the email attachment encryption from  data protection mechanisms. Noticed by Security Researcher -  Andreas Kurtz , claims that  since at...

We're comfortable in sharing information with our Facebook friends, but it is quite sneaky for Facebook users to offer their Identities and credentials when logging in to third-party apps , they don't trust. To deal with this issue, the social network giant has plans to improve the way users login to the third party apps with more privacy controls on the web as well as mobile devices. ANONYMOUS LOGIN At Facebook's F8 developer conference in San Francisco on Wednesday, Keynote speaker - Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg announced the new Facebook's login tool, " Anonymous Login " that would let users sign into apps and websites anonymously without sharing their personal information-Biggest news for Facebook users. " Today, we want to do more to put control and power back into people's hands, " Zuckerberg said at the conference. " Up until now, your friends have been able to share your data via using apps. Now we're changing this, so every...

When it comes to Digital Forensics, Penetration and Security testing, we mostly relies on Kali Linux distribution (also known as Backtrack), which is designed for security professionals and packed with more than 300 security testing tools. But Today, Mailing List sub-domain of Kali Linux get hacked and defaced by Libyan hacking group known as ' The GreaT TeAm (TGT) '. A mailing list is simply a list of email addresses to which the same information is being sent. A discussion list is used to allow a group of people to discuss topics amongst themselves, with everyone able to send mail to the list and have it distributed to everyone in the group. Mailing lists have become a popular way for Internet users to keep up with topics they're interested in. At the time of writing, The Homepage of Kali Linux mailing list domain was displaying two lists, i.e. Kali with description "Hacked By The GreaT TeAm -TGT" Kali-Dev with description "Libyan Hackers" S...