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When it comes to safeguarding your Internet security, installing an antivirus software or running a Secure Linux OS on your system does not mean you are safe enough from all kinds of cyber-threats. Today majority of Internet users are vulnerable to cyber attacks, not because they aren't using any best antivirus software or other security measures, but because they are using weak passwords to secure their online accounts. Passwords are your last lines of defense against online threats. Just look back to some recent data breaches and cyber attacks, including high-profile data breach at OPM ( United States Office of Personnel Management ) and the extra-marital affair site Ashley Madison , that led to the exposure of hundreds of millions of records online. Although you can not control data breaches, it is still important to create strong passwords that can withstand dictionary and brute-force attacks . You see, the longer and more complex your password is, the much harder...

Facebook's legal war with Brazilian government seems to be never-ending. Facebook-owned cross-platform messaging service WhatsApp has already been blocked a total of three times in Brazil since December for failing to comply with a court order asking the company to access WhatsApp data under criminal investigation. But, now the Brazilian government has taken an even tougher step. On Wednesday, the public federal prosecutor in the Brazilian state of Amazonas said the court froze 38 Million real ( US $11.7 Million ) of funds held in Facebook's bank account, Reuters reports . The prosecutor has said that the decision to freeze Facebook funds was made after the social media giant failed to comply with the court order to hand over data of WhatsApp users who are under criminal investigation. Since WhatsApp communications are end-to-end encrypted , even the company would not be able to access any message exchanged between users. Facebook representatives weren't imme...

If you get caught using a VPN (Virtual Private Network) in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and the broader of United Arab Emirates (UAE), you could face temporary imprisonment and fines of up to $545,000 (~Dhs2 Million). Yes, you heard that right. Online Privacy is one of the biggest challenges in today's interconnected world. The governments across the world have been found to be using the Internet to track people's information and conduct mass surveillance. Here VPNs and proxy servers come into Play. VPNs and proxy servers are being used by many digital activists and protesters, who are living under the most oppressive regimes, to protect their online activity from prying eyes. However, using VPN or proxy in the UAE could land you into great difficulty. The UAE President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan has issued new sovereign laws for combating cyber crimes, which includes a regulation that prohibits anyone, even travelers, in the UAE from using VPNs to secure their web traff...

Do you know that you can access your WeChat, Line and WhatsApp chats on your desktop as well using an entirely different, but fastest authentication system? It's SQRL , or Secure Quick Response Login, a QR-code-based authentication system that allows users to quickly sign into a website without having to memorize or type in any username or password. QR codes are two-dimensional barcodes that contain a significant amount of information such as a shared key or session cookie. A website that implements QR-code-based authentication system would display a QR code on a computer screen and anyone who wants to log-in would scan that code with a mobile phone app. Once scanned, the site would log the user in without typing in any username or password. Since passwords can be stolen using a keylogger, a man-in-the-middle (MitM) attack, or even brute force attack, QR codes have been considered secure as it randomly generates a secret code, which is never revealed to anybody else. ...

A critical zero-day flaw has been discovered in the popular cloud password manager LastPass that could allow any remote attacker to compromise your account completely. LastPass is one of the best password manager that also available as a browser extension that automatically fills credentials for you. All you need is to remember one master password to unlock all other passwords of your different online accounts, making it much easier for you to use unique passwords for different sites. However, the password manager isn't as secure as it promises. Also Read:  Popular Password Managers Are Not As Secure As You Think Google Project Zero Hacker Tavis Ormandy discovered several security issues in the software that allowed him to steal passwords stored with LastPass. " Are people really using this LastPass thing? I took a quick look and can see a bunch of obvious critical problems. I'll send a report asap ," Ormandy revealed on Twitter . Once compromise a v...

SMS-based Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) has been declared insecure and soon it might be a thing of the past. Two-Factor Authentication or 2FA adds an extra step of entering a random passcode sent to you via an SMS or call when you log in to your account as an added layer of protection. For example, if you have 2FA enabled on Gmail, the platform will send a six-digit passcode to your mobile phone every time you sign in to your account. But, the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has released a new draft of its Digital Authentication Guideline that says SMS-based two-factor authentication should be banned in future due to security concerns. Here's what the relevant paragraph of the latest DAG draft reads: "If the out of band verification is to be made using an SMS message on a public mobile telephone network, the verifier SHALL verify that the pre-registered telephone number being used is actually associated with a mobile network and not wi...

Radio-based wireless keyboards and mice that use a special USB dongle to communicate with your PC can expose all your secrets – your passwords, credit card numbers and everything you type. Back in February, researchers from the Internet of things security firm Bastille Networks demonstrated how they could take control of wireless keyboards and mice from several top vendors using so-called MouseJack attacks. The latest findings by the same security firm are even worse. Researchers have discovered a new hacking technique that can allow hackers to take over your wireless keyboard and secretly record every key you press on it. Dubbed KeySniffer , the hack is death for millions of wireless, radio-based keyboards. The Cause: Lack of Encryption and Security Updates The KeySniffer vulnerability affects wireless keyboards from eight different hardware manufacturers that use cheap transceiver chips ( non-Bluetooth chips ) – a less secure, radio-based communication protocol. T...

Researchers have discovered over 100 malicious nodes on the Tor anonymity network that are "misbehaving" and potentially spying on Dark Web sites that use Tor to mask the identities of their operators. Two researchers, Amirali Sanatinia and Guevara Noubir, from Northwestern University, carried out an experiment on the Tor Network for 72 days and discovered at least 110 malicious Tor Hidden Services Directories (HSDirs) on the network. The nodes, also known as the Tor hidden services directories ( HSDirs ) are servers that act as introductory points and are configured to receive traffic and direct users to hidden services (" .onion " addresses). In other words, the hidden services directory or HSDir is a crucial element needed to mask the true IP address of users on the Tor Network. But, here's the issue: HSDir can be set up by anyone. "Tor's security and anonymity is based on the assumption that the large majority of its relays are honest and...

On Friday, just three days prior to the start of the party's national convention, WikiLeaks released almost 20,000 e-mails with more than 8,000 stolen from the US Democratic National Committee (DNC) following a cyber attack in June. Two days later, on Sunday, DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz announced her resignation and now had no major role on the party's convention stage. Many of the leaked emails indicted that the top DNC officials were actively working against the campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders and strongly favoring Hillary Clinton over Sanders during the primaries, when they were supposed to be neutral. The controversy ruined the start of the DNC's national convention in Philadelphia and forced the Wasserman Schultz to resign. The leak, from January 2015 to May 2016, is believed to be an attempt by the Russian government to influence the presidential election, some U.S. lawmakers and cybersecurity experts say. The leak features DNC staffers debat...

No More Ransom, so is the Ransomware Threat. The European Police agency Europol has joined forces with police and cyber security companies to launch a worldwide initiative to combat and tackle together the exponential growth of Ransomware used by cyber criminals. Europol announced today the initiative, dubbed NO More Ransom, that has been backed by technology giant Intel, cyber security firm Kaspersky Lab and the Netherlands police, aiming at decreasing an "exponential" rise in Ransomware threat. Ransomware is a piece of malware that typically locks victim's device using encryption and demands a fee to decrypt the important data. The estimated number of ransomware victims tripled in the first quarter of this year alone. "For a few years now ransomware has become a dominant concern for EU law enforcement," said Europol's deputy director Wil van Gemert. "We expect to help many people to recover control over their files, while raising awareness...

Cyber attacks get bigger, smarter, more damaging. P*rnHub launched its bug bounty program two months ago to encourage hackers and bug bounty hunters to find and responsibly report flaws in its services and get rewarded. Now, it turns out that the world's most popular p*rn*graphy site has paid its first bounty payout. But how much? US $20,000! Yes,  P*rnHub  has paid $20,000 bug bounty to a team of three researchers, who gained Remote Code Execution (RCE) capability on its servers using a zero-day vulnerability in PHP – the programming language that powers  P*rnHub 's website. The team of three researchers, Dario Weißer (@haxonaut), cutz and Ruslan Habalov (@evonide), discovered two use-after-free vulnerabilities ( CVE-2016-5771/CVE-2016-5773 ) in PHP's garbage collection algorithm when it interacts with other PHP objects. One of those is PHP's unserialize function on the website that handles data uploaded by users, like hot pictures, on multiple pat...

Guess What? Someone just downloaded Twitter's Vine complete source code. Vine is a short-form video sharing service where people can share 6-second-long looping video clips. Twitter acquired the service in October 2012. Indian Bug bounty hunter Avinash discovered a loophole in Vine that allowed him to download a Docker image containing complete source code of Vine without any hassle. Launched in June 2014, Docker is a new open-source container technology that makes it possible to get more apps running on the same old servers and also very easy to package and ship programs. Nowadays, companies are adopting Docker at a remarkable rate. However, the Docker images used by the Vine, which was supposed to be private, but actually was available publically online. While searching for the vulnerabilities in Vine, Avinash used Censys.io – an all new Hacker's Search Engine similar to Shodan – that daily scans the whole Internet for all the vulnerable devices. Using Censys, Avina...

Finally, Someone has come forward to buy Yahoo! Guess Who? The telecommunication giant Verizon . Yes, Verizon Communications Inc. is reportedly closing in on a deal to acquire Yahoo's core business for about $5 Billion, according to a report from Bloomberg. Since the agreement between the companies has not been finalized, it is unclear at this moment that which Yahoo's assets the deal would include. "In order to preserve the integrity of the process, we're not going to comment on the issue until we've finalized an agreement," a Yahoo spokeswoman said in a statement provided to CNNMoney. You might be wondering Why Verizon is buying Yahoo! Well, I'll come to it in the second half of my article, because before discussing this point, let's first focus on why Yahoo! wants to get acquired. Why Yahoo Was Up For Sale? Founded in 1995, Yahoo! was once the brightest star of the Web. But when its rivals including Google, Facebook and even few-years-old com...

Today, whistleblowing website Wikileaks has finally published more than 19,000 e-mails, which contains more than 8,000 attachments from the US Democratic National Committee (DNC) . The new trove of documents apparently pilfered from the DMC released after Wikileaks yesterday announced via its official Twitter account that a "series" about Hillary Clinton is coming soon. The published documents are part one of Wikileaks' new Hillary Leaks series, Wikileaks said in a press release. The emails released by Wikileaks were handed over to the whistleblower organization by the DNC hacker using handle " Guccifer 2.0 ," who hacked DNC's computer systems in a such a way that the hacker was able to read all email and chat traffic. The leaked 19,252 emails cover a period from January 2015 to May 2016 and allegedly come from the accounts of seven key figures in the DNC: Communications Director Luis Miranda — 10770 emails. National Finance Director Jordon Kapl...

We just cannot imagine our lives without smartphones, even for a short while, and NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden had not owned a smartphone since 2013 when he began leaking NSA documents that exposed the government's global surveillance program. Snowden fears that cellular signals of the smartphone could be used to locate him, but now, to combat this, he has designed an iPhone case that would detect and fight against government snooping. With help from renowned hardware hacker Andrew "Bunnie" Huang, Snowden has devised the design, which they refer to as an " Introspection Engine, " that would keep journalists, activists, and human rights workers from being tracked by their own devices leaking their location details. "This work aims to give journalists the tools to know when their smartphones are tracking or disclosing their location when the devices are supposed to be in airplane mode," Huang and Snowden wrote in a blog post published Thu...

Now no more fight with Apple or any smartphone maker, as federal authorities have discovered a new tool for unlocking phones, as far as your phone is using any biometric sensor… 3D Printing! Yes, Police in Michigan is considering 3D printing a dead man's fingers so they could unlock smartphones in investigation crimes using their biometric sensors. A new report published today from Flash Forward creator Rose Eveleth revealed that the police recently approached professors at the University of Michigan to reproduce a dead man's fingerprint from a prerecorded scan. Once reproduced, the 3D print would be used to create a false fingerprint of the dead man, which could then be used to unlock his smartphone using its biometric sensors. The man was a murder victim, and law enforcement investigators believed that his phone might contain some useful information relevant to the case. Why Police Can't 3D-Print Themselves? Because... Since smartphone biometric sensors used ...

We have heard a lot about privacy concerns surrounding Windows 10 and accusations on Microsoft of collecting too much data about users without their consent. Now, the French data protection authority has ordered Microsoft to stop it. France's National Data Protection Commission (CNIL) issued a formal notice on Wednesday, asking Microsoft to "stop collecting excessive data" as well as "tracking browsing by users without their consent." The CNIL, Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertés, ordered Microsoft to comply with the French Data Protection Act within 3 months, and if fails, the commission will issue a sanction against the company. Moreover, the CNIL notified Microsoft that the company must also take "satisfactory measures to ensure the security and confidentiality" of its users' personal data. The notice comes after a series of investigations between April and June 2016 by French authorities, revealing that Mic...

The federal authorities have finally arrested the alleged mastermind behind the world's largest and most notorious BitTorrent distribution site Kickass Torrents (KAT) , the US Justice Department announced on Wednesday. After The Pirate Bay had suffered copyright infringement hardship, Kickass Torrents (KAT) became the biggest and most-used pirate site on the Internet, attracting millions of daily unique visitors. However, the site appears to be offline after its alleged owner Artem Vaulin , a 30-year-old Ukrainian national was apprehended in Poland today, and the US government has requested his extradition. Although some proxy sites seem to be currently up and running, its main site, https://kat.cr , appears to be down worldwide and most of the other Kickass Torrents domains, including kickasstorrents.com, kastatic.com, thekat.tv, kat.cr, kickass.cr, kickass.to, kat.ph, have been seized by the authorities. Charges Filed Against Kickass Torrents Owner Accord...

As far as security is concerned, Google is going very strict with the newest version of its mobile operating system. Until now, Google has not done more than just alerting you of the potential threats when your Android device runs the check as part of the boot process. Android Marshmallow 6.0 does nothing more than just warning you that your device has been compromised, though it continues to let your device boot up. 1. Android Nougat 7.0 Getting Strictly Enforced 'Verified Boot' In Android Nougat , Google has taken the security of its Android operating system to the next level by strictly enforcing verified boot on devices. Among multiple layers of security protection, Android uses verified boot - since Android version 4.4 KitKat - that improves its device's security by using cryptographic integrity checking to detect if your device has been tampered with. Now, Android Nougat will strictly enforce the boot check, giving you far more than just a warning. ...