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Since its launch over a month ago, new virtual currency Zcash (ZEC) has become a significant way for cybercrooks to make money by infecting computers with software mining program. Launched in late October, Zcash (ZEC) is a new cryptocurrency currency that claims to be more anonymous than Bitcoin, as the sender, recipient and value of transactions can be hidden. With this premise, Zcash attracted significant interest from academics, investors, miners, and cyber criminals. Within the first few hours of its launch, 1 ZEC reached $30,000, a relatively high value any cryptocurrency ever had. At the time of writing, 1 ZEC is worth 0.06 BTC or around $49. However, according to a blog post published on Monday by Kaspersky Lab, cyber criminals have already started deploying malware that installs on and infects the computers of unsuspecting users and then uses their resources to mine Zcash for the hacker's profit. You Might have Zcash Mining Malware on Your PC! The actual s...

Europol has announced that the law enforcement agencies from 13 countries around the globe have arrested 34 users of Netspoof DDoS attack tool and interviewed and warned 101 suspects in a global crackdown. According to the report published on the official website of Europol, law enforcement authorities worldwide have made the arrest between 5 December and 9 December 2016. Europol's European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) supported the law enforcement agencies in their efforts to identify suspects in the European Union and beyond. Arrested Suspects Are Mainly Teenagers All those arrested are mainly "young adults under the age of 20," who are suspected of paying for Netspoof stresser as well as booters services to maliciously deploy DDoS-for-hire software and using them to launch cyber attacks. The ddos attacks flooded target websites and web servers with massive amounts of data, leaving those services inaccessible to users. Europol's European Cybercrime Cent...

The non-profit organization behind TOR – the largest online anonymity network that allows people to hide their real identity online – has launched an early alpha version of Sandboxed Tor Browser 0.0.2 . Yes, the Tor Project is working on a sandboxed version of the Tor Browser that would isolate the Tor Browser from other processes of the operating system and limit its ability to interact or query low-level APIs that can lead to the exposure of real IP addresses, MAC addresses, computer name, and more. Sandboxing is a security mechanism for separating running programs. When an application is sandboxed, its process runs in a separate environment from the underlying operating system, so that errors or security issues in that application can not be leveraged to affect other parts of the OS. Sandbox applications are enabled in their own sequestered area and memory, where they can be worked on without posing any threat to other applications or the operating system. Major moder...

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How many Internet-connected devices do you have in your home? I am surrounded by around 25 such devices. It's not just your PC, smartphone, and tablet that are connected to the Internet. Today our homes are filled with tiny computers embedded in everything from security cameras, TVs and refrigerators to thermostat and door locks. However, when it comes to security, people generally ignore to protect all these connected devices and focus on securing their PCs and smartphones with a good antivirus software or a firewall application. What if any of these connected devices, that are poorly configured or insecure by design, get hacked? It would give hackers unauthorized access to your whole network allowing them to compromise other devices connected to the same network, spy on your activities and steal sensitive information by using various sophisticated hacks. There have already been numerous cases of attackers hacking home appliances, industrial control, automotive, medic...

If you came across a celebrity sex video on Facebook featuring Jessica Alba or any other celebrity, just avoid clicking it. Another Facebook scam is circulating across the social networking website that attempts to trick Facebook users into clicking on a link for a celebrity sex tape that instead downloads malware onto their computers. Once installed, the malware would force web browsers to display aggressive advertising web pages which include sites with nudity and fake lotteries. The spam campaign was uncovered by researchers at Cyren, who noted that a malicious Google Chrome extension is spreading nude celebrity PDFs through private messages and posts on various Facebook groups. If opened, the PDF file takes victims to a web page with an image containing a play button, tricking users that the PDF may contain a video. Once clicked, the link redirects users of Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Safari to a web page with overly-aggressive popups and advertisements related to ...

In his final month in office, President Barack Obama has ordered U.S. intelligence agencies to conduct a "full review" of pre-election cyber attacks against Democratic Party organizations that many believe affected the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. The United States intelligence agencies have attributed those series of cyber-attacks to Russia that shook the US election season. "The President earlier this week instructed the intelligence community to conduct a full review of the pattern of malicious cyber activity related to our presidential election cycle," White House spokesman Eric Schultz told reporters. At an event hosted by the Christian Science Monitor, White House's counterterrorism adviser Lisa Monaco announced that the president had "directed the Intelligence Community to conduct a full review of what happened during the 2016 election process." President is expecting a full report before the end of his term, and Pres...

Bad news for consumers with Netgear routers: Two popular Netgear routers are vulnerable to a critical security bug that could allow attackers to run malicious code with root privileges. Netgear's R7000 and R6400 routers, running current and latest versions of firmware, are vulnerable to arbitrary command injection attacks, though the number of users affected by the flaw is still unclear. In an advisory published on Friday in Carnegie Mellon University's public vulnerability database (CERT), security researchers said that all an attacker needs to do is trick a victim into visiting a website that contains specially crafted malicious code to exploit the flaw. As soon as the victim lands on the page, the malicious commands would execute automatically with root privileges on affected routers. A working exploit leveraging the vulnerability has also been publicly released so that anyone can carry out attacks against the vulnerable routers. Researchers warned that othe...

Is your PC infected with Ransomware? Either pay the ransom amount to the attacker or spread the infection further to get the decryption keys. Yes, this new technique has been employed by cyber criminals with the latest round of ransomware threat, dubbed Popcorn Time. Initially discovered by MalwareHunterTeam , the new Popcorn Time Ransomware has been designed to give the victim's a criminal way of getting a free decryption key for their encrypted files and folders. Popcorn Time works similar to other popular ransomware threats, such as the Crysis Ransomware and TeslaCrypt, that encrypt various data stored on the infected computer and ask victims to pay a ransom amount to recover their data. But to get their important files back, Popcorn Time gives victims option to pay a ransom to the cyber criminal or infect two other people and have them pay the ransom to get a free decryption key. What's even worse? The victims are encouraged to pay the ransom of 1 Bitcoin (~$75...

Uber was in controversies at the mid of this year for monitoring the battery life of its users, as the company believed that its users were more likely to pay a much higher price to hire a cab when their phone's battery is close to dying. Uber is now tracking you even when your ride is over, and, according to the ride-hailing company, the surveillance will improve its service. Uber recently updated its app to collect user location data in the background. So, if you have updated your Uber app recently, your app's location tracking permissions have changed, allowing the app to monitor your location before and five minutes after your trip ends, even if you have closed the app. A popup on the Uber app will ask you, "Allow 'Uber' to access our location even when you are not using the app?" You can click " Allow " or " Don't Allow " in response to this request. If you don't allow it, Uber won't track you. According to t...

Yahoo has patched a critical security vulnerability in its Mail service that could have allowed an attacker to spy on any Yahoo user's inbox. Jouko Pynnönen, a Finnish Security researcher from security firm Klikki Oy, reported a DOM based persistent XSS (Cross-Site Scripting) in Yahoo mail, which if exploited, allows an attacker to send emails embedded with malicious code. In his blog post published today, the researcher demonstrated how a malicious attacker could have sent the victim's inbox to an external site, and created a virus that attached itself to all outgoing emails by secretly adding a malicious script to message signatures. Since the malicious code is in the message's body, the code will get executed as soon as the victim opens the boobytrapped email and its hidden payload script will covertly submit victim's inbox content to an external website controlled by the attacker. This issue is because Yahoo Mail failed to properly filter potentially malici...

The Russian government has introduced a draft bill that proposes prison sentences as punishment for hackers and cyber criminals creating malicious software used in targeting critical Russian infrastructure, even if they have no part in actual cyber attacks. The bill, published on the Russian government’s website on Wednesday, proposes amendments to the Russian Criminal Code and Criminal Procedure Code with a new article titled, "Illegal influence upon the critical informational infrastructure of the Russian Federation." The article introduces punishment for many malicious acts, including the "creation and distribution of programs or information, which can be used for the destruction, blocking or copying data from the Russian systems." When suspects found as part of any hacking operation, they will face a fine between 500,000 and 1 Million rubles (about $7,700 to $15,400) and up to five years in prison, even if the hacking causes little or no harm. Also R...

DDoS has become a game now that could knock any service offline. A Turkish hacking group is encouraging individuals to join its DDoS-for-Points platform that features points and prizes for carrying out distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against a list of predetermined targets. The points earned can later be redeemed for various online click-fraud and hacking tools. Dubbed Sath-ı Müdafaa , translated as Surface Defense in English, this DDoS-for-Points platform is advertised via local Turkish hacking forums, including Turkhackteam and Root Developer. Surface Defense prompts other hackers in Turkey to sign up and asks them to attack political websites using a DDoS tool known as Balyoz , translated as Sledgehammer. According to Forcepoint security researchers, who discovered this program, Balyoz works via Tor and requires a username and password to log in. The tool then uses a DoS technique to flood targets with traffic. Here's How the Balyoz Tool Works On...

A hacker who was arrested last year for hacking into celebrities' email accounts to steal the unreleased movie and television scripts, their private messages, and tapes to sell them has finally been sentenced five years in prison. Alonzo Knowles , a 24-year-old Bahamian man, was convicted by U.S. District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer in Manhattan on Tuesday. Knowles, who maintained a list of emails and phone numbers of 130 celebrities, pleaded guilty in May to charges of identity theft and criminal copyright infringement. The sentence is twice longer than the amount of years the federal sentencing guidelines suggested, as the judge felt that Knowles "would be a clear and present danger to commit the very same crime again," the New York Times reports . The hacker expressed remorse in court and had already handed over unreleased scripts, songs, and $1,900 in cash. The authorities arrested Knowles late December and seized his laptop that was later destroyed by inv...

A 5-year-old serious privilege-escalation vulnerability has been discovered in Linux kernel that affects almost every distro of the Linux operating system, including Redhat, and Ubuntu. Over a month back, a nine-year-old privilege-escalation vulnerability, dubbed " Dirty COW ," was discovered in the Linux kernel that affected every distro of the open-source operating system, including Red Hat, Debian, and Ubuntu. Now, another Linux kernel vulnerability ( CVE-2016-8655 ) that dates back to 2011 disclosed today could allow an unprivileged local user to gain root privileges by exploiting a race condition in the af_packet implementation in the Linux kernel. Philip Pettersson, the researcher who discovered the flaw, was able to create an exploit to gain a root shell on an Ubuntu 16.04 LTS system (Linux Kernel 4.4) and also defeated SMEP/SMAP (Supervisor Mode Execution Prevention/Supervisor Mode Access Prevention) protection to gain kernel code execution abilities. In ...

If you have visited any popular mainstream website over the past two months, your computer may have been infected — Thanks to a new exploit kit discovered by security researchers. Researchers from antivirus provider ESET released a report on Tuesday stating that they have discovered an exploit kit, dubbed Stegano , hiding malicious code in the pixels of banner advertisements that are currently in rotation on several high profile news websites. Stegano originally dates back to 2014, but since early October this year, cyber crooks had managed to get the malicious ads displayed on a variety of unnamed reputable news websites, each with Millions of daily visitors. Stegano derived from the word Steganography , which is a technique of hiding messages and content inside a digital graphic image, making the content impossible to spot with the naked eye. In this particular malvertising campaign, operators hide malicious code inside transparent PNG image's Alpha Channel, which def...

North Korea's own homegrown computer operating system, that's supposed to be fully hacker proof and more secure than foreign OS, like Microsoft's Windows, can easily be hacked remotely. A group of hackers managed to break into Red Star OS — North Korea's government sanctioned Linux-based OS — using just a link. Red Star OS is North Korea's own homegrown OS that looks remarkably just like Apple's OS X and gives North Korean authorities more control over the computers, providing not only security but also spying tools that help track files in a way that if the government wants, every bit of user's data can be traced easily. According to the information security company Hacker House , Red Star OS contains a critical vulnerability that makes it possible for hackers to gain remote access to any PC running North Korea's OS just by tricking victims into opening a hyperlink. The latest version of Red Star OS ships with a Firefox-based web browser cal...

Another day, another data breach. This time a popular video sharing platform DailyMotion has allegedly been hacked and tens of millions of users information have been stolen. Breach notification service LeakedSource announced the data breach on Monday after the company obtained 85.2 Million records from Dailymotion. According to LeakedSource, the DailyMotion data breach appears to have taken place on October 20, 2016, which means it is possible that hackers have been circulating the data for over a month. The stolen data consists of 85.2 Million unique email addresses and usernames and around 20 percent of the accounts (more than 18 Million users) had hashed passwords tied to them. The passwords were protected using the Bcrypt hashing algorithm with ten rounds of rekeying, making it difficult for hackers to obtain user's actual password. Bcrypt is a cryptographic algorithm that makes the hashing process so slow that it would literally take centuries to actual brute-...

Hacking multiple computers across the world just got easier for the United States intelligence and law enforcement agencies from today onwards. The changes introduced to the Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure by the United States Department of Justice came into effect on Thursday, after an effort to block the changes failed on Wednesday. The change grants the FBI much greater powers to hack into multiple computers within the country, and perhaps anywhere in the world, with just a single warrant authorized by any US judge (even magistrate judges). Usually, magistrate judges only issue warrants for cases within their jurisdiction. That's the same the FBI did in its 2015 investigation into child pornography site Playpen, in which the agency hacked into some 8,700 computers across 120 different countries. The Supreme Court approved the changes to Rule 41 in April, allowing any U.S. judge to issue search warrants that give the FBI and law enforcement agenc...

The critical Firefox vulnerability being actively exploited in the wild to unmask Tor users has been patched with the release of new browser updates. Both Mozilla and Tor Project has patched the vulnerability that allows attackers to remotely execute malicious code on Windows operating system via memory corruption vulnerability in Firefox web browser. Tor Browser Bundle is a repackaged version of the open-source Mozilla Firefox browser that runs connections through the Tor anonymizing network configured to hide its user's public IP address. However, the exploit code released by an unnamed online user was currently being exploited against Tor Browser users to leak the potentially identifying information of Tor users. "The security flaw responsible for this urgent release is already actively exploited on Windows systems," an official of the anonymity network wrote in an advisory published on Wednesday.  "Even though there is currently...no similar explo...