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Unpatched Mac OS X Zero-day Bug Allows Root Access Without Password

Unpatched Mac OS X Zero-day Bug Allows Root Access Without Password

Aug 04, 2015
Hackers have their hands on something of your concern. A severe zero-day vulnerability in the latest, fully patched version of Apple's Mac OS X is reportedly being exploited in the wild by the hackers. The vulnerability could allow attackers to install malware and adware onto a target Mac, running OS X 10.10 (Yosemite) operating system, without requiring victims to enter system passwords , a new report says. The zero-day bug came over a week after security researcher Stefan Esser discovered a privilege escalation zero-day vulnerability in the latest version of Apple's OS X Yosemite that caused due to environment variable DYLD_PRINT_TO_FILE and dynamic linker dyld , new error-logging features added to the operating system. The developers failed to implement standard safeguards that are needed while adding support for new environment variables to the OS X dynamic linker dyld, allowing hackers to create or modify files with root privileges that can fit anywhere i...
Hacker Finds How Easy Is to Steal Money Using Square Credit-Card Reader

Hacker Finds How Easy Is to Steal Money Using Square Credit-Card Reader

Aug 04, 2015
Next time just be careful while swiping your credit card at small retailers or trendy stores that use Square Reader to accept credit card payments. The increasingly popular and widely used Square Reader can be easily turned into a skimming device that can be used to steal your credit card data, a group of researchers warned. Square Reader is a tiny device that allows small retailers to easily accept credit and debit card payments without having to spend the money on the traditional point of sale systems. However, despite its convenience, this cheap and easy-to-use alternative has a critical flaw that could allow anyone to easily steal your payment card information. All an attacker need is a screwdriver, superglue, and roughly 10 minutes to turn the latest generation Square Reader into a tiny, portable card skimmer . Converting a New Generation Square Reader into a Card Skimmer? A team of three security researchers from Boston University has discovered a w...
Operation Lotus Blossom APT - Elise Malware

Operation Lotus Blossom APT - Elise Malware

Aug 04, 2015
Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) type attacks continue to emerge on a global scale. What makes these attacks deviate from the norm is often the resources required to develop and implement them: time, money, and the knowledge required to create custom pieces of malware to carry out specific, targeted attacks. Operation Lotus Blossom is one of the more recent APT attacks that has been discovered and analyzed. It is an advanced adversary campaign against the mostly government and state-sponsored entities in the Philippines, Hong Kong, Vietnam, and Indonesia. It is thought that this group carried out the attack to gain a geopolitical advantage by stealing specific information from government and military institutions in that area.  At this point, it is still too early to tell if the reach of the attack will extend to the private sector (a la Stuxnet and Duqu). How does the attack work? It was found that Operation Lotus Blossom involved a novel custom-built malw...
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10 Best Practices for Building a Resilient, Always-On Compliance Program

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Find and Fix the Gaps in Your Security Tools

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Despite Issues, 6 Reasons Why Windows 10 is Best Windows Ever

Despite Issues, 6 Reasons Why Windows 10 is Best Windows Ever

Aug 03, 2015
Windows 10 is built with the power features of Windows 7 and 8.1, which makes it a robust operating system. It gained 65 million users in the first three days after its release. Still counting and making Windows 10 as a universal platform for all the devices running the same operating system. By Introducing " Windows as a service " utility, The Microsoft is offering Windows 10 Free Upgrade to all the users running Windows 7 or 8.1 as a Windows update, and not as a separate product. From now on, the company will provide regular updates for Windows in the same manner Apple does with its Mac OS X operating system that gets regular updates on a yearly basis and has been known as OS X for over 15 years. Despite some privacy issues , including " Wi-Fi Sense " and " Bandwidth sharing for Windows Update ", and few more, Windows 10 offers a bevy of new and advanced features that makes the operating system unique from others. Also Read: How to Fix 35+ Windows 10 Privacy Iss...
Mt.Gox Bitcoin Exchange CEO Arrested by Japanese Police

Mt.Gox Bitcoin Exchange CEO Arrested by Japanese Police

Aug 03, 2015
Remember  Mt.Gox ? Once the world's largest Bitcoin exchange… ...then in early 2014, Tokyo-based Mt.Gox Bitcoin exchange filed for bankruptcy saying it lost some 8,50,000 Bitcoins (worth $64 Million) to hackers and suddenly went dark with no explanation. Last Friday, Mark Karpeles , the former CEO of the collapsed Mt.Gox, was arrested by Tokyo Metropolitan Police in connection with the disappearance of Bitcoins worth £247 Million. Police believe Mr. Karpeles had accessed the computer system of the Bitcoin exchange and manipulated the outstanding balance to cover up fraudulent transactions. The company said at the time that 750,000 customers' Bitcoins and another 100,000 belonging to the exchange were stolen due to an unknown vulnerability in the company's software. While he is not yet been charged, the authorities are investigating his involvement in the stealing of Millions of dollars of the Bitcoin virtual currency when the exchange collapsed in 2014. ...
Sadly, Windows 10 Is Stealing Your Bandwidth 'By Default' — Disable It Immediately

Sadly, Windows 10 Is Stealing Your Bandwidth 'By Default' — Disable It Immediately

Aug 03, 2015
After installing Windows 10, Feeling like your Internet Bandwidth is dropping away? Windows 10 is stealing your network bandwidth. Along with the privacy features related to Wi-Fi Sense , Windows 10 users should check for another hidden by default feature that uses your network bandwidth to share updates with other Windows 10 users across the Internet. Microsoft launched Windows 10 on July 29 and offered a free upgrade to Windows 7,8 and 8.1 users , and for anyone who wants to download it. But, handling millions of simultaneous 3.5GB downloads is quite difficult for the company. So, in order to cope up with the issue, Microsoft has baked a new feature into its latest desktop operating system that uses the torrent-style approach to obtain software updates , allowing Windows 10 users to download updates from other users. Also Read:  How to Fix 35+ Windows 10 Privacy Issues With Just One Click . Windows 10 is Stealing your Internet Bandwidth The feature, kn...
Untethered TaiG Jailbreak Tool for iOS 8.4 [Mac OS X version] Released

Untethered TaiG Jailbreak Tool for iOS 8.4 [Mac OS X version] Released

Aug 03, 2015
Good news for iOS 8.4 users! The Chinese jailbreaking team TaiG has finally released its long-awaited Untethered Jailbreak tool for Apple's iOS 8.4 mobile operating system for the Mac OS X platform. Yes, TaiG Jailbreak is now officially available for OS X users that will allow you to jailbreak iOS 8.4 on your Mac computer without having to resort to using a virtual machine. In late June, the TaiG team released the Jailbreak tool (.exe) only for Windows version, forcing Macs users to rely on other applications or use Boot Camp to tweak their iOS devices. TaiG Jailbreak for Mac, currently at Mac version 1.0.0, is designed from the ground up to support versions of iOS mobile operating system from 8.1.3 to 8.4. You can download the tool from the project's website. How to JailBreak your Device? The process of jailbreaking the device is so easy; anyone can do it. Download and Install the App Disable 'Find My iPhone' on your device's iCloud settings before p...
How Spies Could Unmask Tor Users without Cracking Encryption

How Spies Could Unmask Tor Users without Cracking Encryption

Aug 01, 2015
T he O nion R outer (Tor) is weeping Badly! Yes, Tor browser is in danger of being caught once again by the people commonly known as " Spies ," who's one and only intention is to intrude into others' network and gather information. A team of security researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed digital attacks that can be used to unmask Tor hidden services in the Deep Web with a high degree of accuracy. The Tor network is being used by journalists, hackers, citizens living under repressive regimes as well as criminals to surf the Internet anonymously. A plethora of nodes and relays in Tor network is used to mask its users and make tracking very difficult. Any user when connects to Tor, the connection gets encrypted and routed through a path called a "circuit ." The request first reaches an entry node, also known as a ' Guard ' that knows the actual IP address of the user, and then goes through every ho...
How to Hack Millions of Android Phones Using Stagefright Bug, Without Sending MMS

How to Hack Millions of Android Phones Using Stagefright Bug, Without Sending MMS

Aug 01, 2015
Earlier this week, security researchers at Zimperium revealed a high-severity vulnerability in Android platforms that allowed a single multimedia text message to hack 950 Million Android smartphones and tablets. As explained in our previous article, the critical flaw resides in a core Android component called " Stagefright ," a native Android media playback library used by Android to process, record and play multimedia files. To Exploit Stagefright vulnerability, which is actively being exploited in the wild, all an attacker needed is your phone number to send a malicious MMS message and compromise your Android device with no action, no indication required from your side. Hacking Without Knowing Phone Number But, Now you Don't even require the mobile numbers of your victims to infect their devices, a recent research claimed. In the previously known attack scenario, an attacker can exploit Stagefright vulnerability only against his/her known contact n...
AntiVirus Firm BitDefender Hacked; Turns Out Stored Passwords Are UnEncrypted

AntiVirus Firm BitDefender Hacked; Turns Out Stored Passwords Are UnEncrypted

Aug 01, 2015
Forget about Financial services and Online shopping websites, but at least we expect from Security Firms and Antivirus vendors to keep our personal and Sensitive data Encrypted and Secured. One of the most popular and much-respected Antivirus and computer security firms 'BitDefender' has recently been hacked and has had a portion of its customer data leaked. The Data Breach in BitDefender is incredibly embarrassing for the security firm, not because the company failed to prevent its customers data from hackers, but because the Security company failed to encrypt its customers' most sensitive data . Now, this is something really not expected from a reputed Security Firm. It appears that the hacker, who uses the online alias DetoxRansome , was able to break into a Bitdefender server that hosted the cloud-based management dashboards for its small and medium-sized business clients, and pilfer usernames and passwords belonged to them. They Forget to Encrypt C...
Windows 10 Wi-Fi Sense Explained: Actual Security Threat You Need to Know

Windows 10 Wi-Fi Sense Explained: Actual Security Threat You Need to Know

Jul 31, 2015
Just one day after Microsoft released its new operating system, over 14 Million Windows users  upgraded their PCs to Windows 10 . Of course, if you are one of the Millions, you should aware of Windows 10's Wi-Fi Sense feature that lets your friends automatically connects to your wireless network without providing the Wi-Fi password. Smells like a horrible Security Risk! It even triggered a firestorm among some security experts, who warned that Wi-Fi Sense is a terrible and dangerous feature and that you should disable it right away. Even some researchers advised Windows 10 users to rename their Wi-Fi access points. Before discussing the risks of Wi-Fi Sense, let's first know how it works. Also Read:  How to Fix 35+ Windows 10 Privacy Issues With Just One Click . How Windows 10 Wi-Fi Sense works? Windows 10 Wi-Fi Sense feature allows you to share your Wi-Fi password with your friends or contacts, as well as lets you automatically connect to netwo...
Most Vulnerable Smart Cities to Cyber Attack on Internet of Things (IoT)

Most Vulnerable Smart Cities to Cyber Attack on Internet of Things (IoT)

Jul 31, 2015
Imagine… You drive to work in your Smart-Car connected to the GPS automatically, but a hacker breaks into your car's network, takes control of the steering wheel, crashes you into a tree, and BOOM ! Believe it or not, such cyber attacks on smart devices are becoming reality. Car Hacking was recently demonstrated by a pair of security researchers who controlled a Jeep Cherokee remotely from miles away, which shows a rather severe threat to the growing market of the Internet of Things (IoT) . Internet of Things (IoT) — A technology that connects objects to a network or the Internet, and enables interaction among varied devices such as: Smart Cars Smart TVs Refrigerators Wearables Routers Other embedded computing as well as non-computing devices. Few days back, I had read about Smart Dustbins that are the latest smart objects to become Wi-Fi-enabled. Internet of Things to make Cities Smart or Dumb? Cities around the world are becoming...
Hackers Can Remotely Hack Self-Aiming Rifles to Change Its Target

Hackers Can Remotely Hack Self-Aiming Rifles to Change Its Target

Jul 30, 2015
High-tech Sniper Rifles can be remotely hacked to shoot the wrong target – Something really scary and unpredictable. Yes, Hackers can remotely gain access to the $13,000 TrackingPoint sniper rifles that run Linux and Android operating system and have Wi-Fi connections. So then they can either disable the gun or choose a wrong target. A married pair of security researchers have proved that anything connected to the Internet can ultimately be hacked, whether computer systems, cars or… GUNS . According to the duo, the Tracking Point's self-aiming rifle sights, better known as the ShotView targeting system, is vulnerable to WiFi-based attacks that could allow your enemy to redirect bullets to new targets of their choice. Hacking $13,000 Self-aiming Rifles to Shoot wrong target Runa Sandvik and her husband Michael Auger are planning to present their findings on exploiting two of the $13,000 self-aiming rifles at the Black Hat hacking conference . In the hack, the duo demonstrates...
New Android Vulnerability Could Crash your Phones Badly

New Android Vulnerability Could Crash your Phones Badly

Jul 30, 2015
Bad week for Android. Just days after a critical Stagefright vulnerability was revealed in the widely popular mobile platform, another new vulnerability threatens to make most Android devices unresponsive and practically unusable to essential tasks. Security researchers at Trend Micro have developed an attack technique that could ultimately crash more than 55 percent of Android phones , almost making them completely unresponsive and useless to perform very basic functions, including to make or receive calls. The dangerous security flaw affects any device running Android 4.3 Jelly Bean and later, including the latest Android 5.1.1 Lollipop , potentially putting hundreds of millions of Android users vulnerable to hackers. The flaw surfaced two days after Zimperium researchers warned that nearly 950 Million Android phones can be hijacked by sending a simple text message. Dubbed Stagefright , the vulnerability is more serious because it required no end-user interaction at...
United Airlines Hacked by Sophisticated Hacking Group

United Airlines Hacked by Sophisticated Hacking Group

Jul 30, 2015
A group of China-backed hackers believed to be responsible for high-profile data breaches, including the U.S. Office of Personnel Management and the insurance giant Anthem , has now hit another high-profile target –  United Airlines . United detected a cyber attack into its computer systems in May or early June; Bloomberg reported , citing some unnamed sources familiar with the matter. The same sources say that the hackers responsible for the data breach in United's systems are the same group of China-backed hackers that successfully carried out several other large heists, including the United States' Office of Personnel Management and the health insurer Anthem Inc. Dangerous Intentions: United Airlines Data Breach The stolen data includes manifests, which contain information on flights' passengers and their origins and destinations, meaning that the hackers have " data on the movements of Millions of Americans ." Since United Airlines ...
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