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As it was speculated that the author of LuminosityLink RAT was arrested last year, a plea agreement made available to the public today confirmed the news. Back in September last year, Europol's European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) and National Crime Agency began the crackdown on the LuminosityLink RAT, targeting sellers and users of the malware, which resulted in the seizure of a considerable number of computers and internet accounts across the world, and complete takedown of the threat. Colton Grubbs , a 21-year-old man from Kentucky, the developer of the LumunosityLink RAT has pleaded guilty to federal charges of creating, selling and providing technical support for the malware to his customers, who used it to gain unauthorized access to thousands of computers across 78 countries worldwide. First surfaced in April 2015, the LuminosityLink RAT (Remote Access Trojan), also known as Luminosity, was a hacking tool that was sold for $40, marketing itself as a legitimate tool for Wi...

The US Justice Department has announced criminal indictments against 12 Russian intelligence officers tied to the hack of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) during the 2016 US presidential election campaign. The charges were drawn up as part of the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election by Robert Mueller, the Special Counsel, and former FBI director. The indictments against 12 Russian military officers were announced by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein during a DoJ press conference on Friday—just 3 days before the Russian leader Vladimir Putin is scheduled to meet with President Donald Trump. All 12 Russian officers are members of the country's GRU military intelligence unit and are accused of carrying out "large-scale cyber operations" to hack into DNC network and steal Democrats' emails to influence the 2016 presidential election. Here's the list of all 12 defendants: Viktor Borisovich Netyksho Boris...

Security researchers have uncovered a "highly targeted" mobile malware campaign that has been operating since August 2015 and found spying on 13 selected iPhones in India. The attackers, who are also believed to be operating from India, were found abusing mobile device management (MDM) protocol—a type of security software used by large enterprises to control and enforce policies on devices being used their employees—to contol and deploy malicious applications remotely. Exploiting Apple MDM Service to Remotely Control Devices To enroll an iOS device into the MDM requires a user to manually install enterprise development certificate, which enterprises obtained through the Apple Developer Enterprise Program. Companies can deliver MDM configuration file through email or a webpage for over-the-air enrollment service using Apple Configurator. Once a user installs it, the service allows the company administrators to remotely control the device, install/remove apps, in...

Google has by default enabled a security feature called "Site Isolation" in its web browser with the release of Chrome 67 for all desktop users to help them protect against many online threats, including Spectre and Meltdown attack . Site Isolation is a feature of the Google Chrome web browser that adds an additional security boundary between websites by ensuring that different sites are always put into separate processes, isolated from each other. Since each site in the browser gets its own sandboxed process, the feature makes it harder for untrusted websites to access or steal information of your accounts on other websites. In January this year when Google Project Zero researchers disclosed details of Spectre and Meltdown CPU vulnerabilities, the tech giant recommended Chrome desktop users to manually turn on Site Isolation feature on their devices to mitigate speculative side-channel attacks. "Even if a Spectre attack were to occur in a malicious web page, ...

You never know what you will find on the hidden Internet ' Dark Web .' Just about an hour ago we reported about someone selling remote access linked to security systems at a major International airport for $10 . It has been reported that a hacker was found selling sensitive US Air Force documents on the dark web for between $150 and $200. Cybercrime tracker Recorded Future today reported that it discovered a hacker attempting to sell secret documents about the MQ-9 Reaper drone used across federal government agencies for only a few hundred dollars on a Dark Web forum last month. First introduced in 2001, the MQ-9 Reaper drone is currently used by the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Navy, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, NASA, the CIA, and the militaries of several other countries. The tech intelligence's Insikt Group analysts found the hacker during their regular monitoring of the dark web for criminal activities. They posed as potential buyers and engaged the new...

If you can't find it on Google, you will definitely find it on the Dark Web . Black markets on the Dark web are not known for just buying drugs, it is a massive hidden network where you can buy pretty much anything you can imagine—from pornography, weapon, and counterfeit currencies, to hacking tools, exploits, malware, and zero-days. One such type of underground marketplace on Dark Web is RDP Shop, a platform from where anyone can buy RDP access (remote desktop protocol) to thousands of hacked machines for a small fee. While investigating several underground RDP shops, security researchers from the McAfee's Advanced Threat Research team discovered that someone is selling remote access linked to security systems at a major International airport for as low as $10. Yes, that's $10, I didn't miss any zeros. Instead of buying RDP credential, researchers used the Shodan search engine to find the correct IP address of the hacked Windows Server machine, whose ad...

Facebook has been fined £500,000 ($664,000) in the U.K. after the country's data protection watchdog concluded that its data-sharing scandal broke the law, making it as the social network's first fine over the Cambridge Analytica scandal . Yes, £500,000—that's the maximum fine allowed by the UK's Data Protection Act 1998, and equals to what Facebook earns every 8 minutes. Facebook has been under scrutiny since earlier this year when it was revealed that personal data of 87 million users was improperly gathered and misused by political consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica, who reportedly helped Donald Trump win the US presidency in 2016. According to the social media giant, a Cambridge University lecturer named Aleksandr Kogan collected the users' data legitimately through a quiz app but then violated its terms by sharing the data with Cambridge Analytica, which was then hired by the Trump presidential campaign. The UK's Information Commissioner's...

Intel has paid out a $100,000 bug bounty for new processor vulnerabilities that are related to Spectre variant one ( CVE-2017-5753 ). The new Spectre-class variants are tracked as Spectre 1.1 (CVE-2018-3693) and Spectre 1.2, of which Spectre 1.1 described as a bounds-check bypass store attack has been considered as more dangerous. Earlier this year, Google Project Zero researchers disclosed details of Variants 1 and 2 (CVE-2017-5753 and CVE-2017-5715), known as Spectre, and Variant 3 (CVE-2017-5754), known as Meltdown. Spectre flaws take advantage of speculative execution, an optimization technique used by modern CPUs, to potentially expose sensitive data through a side channel by observing the system. Speculative execution is a core component of modern processors design that speculatively executes instructions based on assumptions that are considered likely to be true. If the assumptions come out to be valid, the execution continues, otherwise discarded. New Spectre-Cla...

Yet another incident which showcases that you should not explicitly trust user-controlled software repositories. One of the most popular Linux distros Arch Linux has pulled as many as three user-maintained software repository AUR packages after it was found hosting malicious code. Arch Linux is an independently developed, general-purpose GNU/Linux distribution composed predominantly of free and open-source software, and supports community involvement. Besides official repositories like Arch Build System (ABS), Arch Linux users can also download software packages from several other repositories, including AUR (Arch User Repository), a community-driven repository created and managed by Arch Linux users. Since AUR packages are user-produced content, Arch maintainers always suggest Linux users to carefully check all files, especially PKGBUILD and any .install file for malicious commands. However, this AUR repository has recently been found hosting malware code in several inst...

It's time to gear up your systems and software for the latest July 2018 Microsoft security patch updates. Microsoft today released security patch updates for 53 vulnerabilities, affecting Windows, Internet Explorer (IE), Edge, ChakraCore, .NET Framework, ASP.NET, PowerShell, Visual Studio, and Microsoft Office and Office Services, and Adobe Flash Player. Out of 53 vulnerabilities, 17 are rated critical, 34 important, one moderate and one as low in severity. This month there is no critical vulnerability patched in Microsoft Windows operating system and surprisingly, none of the flaw patched by the tech giant this month is listed as publicly known or under active attack. Critical Flaws Patched In Microsoft Products Most of the critical issues are memory corruption flaws in IE, Edge browser and Chakra scripting engine, which if successfully exploited, could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to execute arbitrary code on a targeted system in the context of the cur...

Adobe has released security patches for a total 112 vulnerabilities in its products, most of which have a higher risk of being exploited. The vulnerabilities addressed in this month's patch Tuesday affect Adobe Flash Player, Adobe Experience Manager, Adobe Connect, Adobe Acrobat, and Reader. None of the security vulnerabilities patched this month were either publicly disclosed or found being actively exploited in the wild. Adobe Flash Player (For Desktops and Browsers) Security updates include patches for two vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash Player for various platforms and application, as listed below. One of which has been rated critical (CVE-2018-5007), and successful exploitation of this "type confusion" flaw could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code on the targeted system in the context of the current user. This flaw was discovered and reported to Adobe by willJ of Tencent PC Manager working with Trend Micro's Zero Day Initiative. Withou...

Security researchers from Check Point Threat Intelligence Team have discovered the comeback of an APT (advanced persistent threat) surveillance group targeting institutions across the Middle East, specifically the Palestinian Authority. The attack, dubbed "Big Bang," begins with a phishing email sent to targeted victims that includes an attachment of a self-extracting archive containing two files—a Word document and a malicious executable. Posing to be from the Palestinian Political and National Guidance Commission, the Word document serves as a decoy to distract victims while the malware is installed in the background. The malicious executable, which runs in the background, act as the first stage info-stealer malware designed for intelligence gathering to identify potential victims (on the basis of what is unclear as of now), and then it accordingly downloads the second stage malware designed for espionage. "While the analysis...discloses the capabilities of ...

With the release of iOS 11.4.1, Apple has finally rolled out a new security feature designed to protect your devices against USB accessories that connect to the data port, making it harder for law enforcement and hackers to break into your iPhone or iPad without your permission. Dubbed USB Restricted Mode , the feature automatically disables data connection capabilities of the Lightning port on your iPhone or iPad if the device has been locked for an hour or longer, while the port can still be used for device charging. In other words, every time you lock your iPhone, a countdown timer of an hour gets activated in the background, which if completed, enables the USB restricted mode to prevent unauthorized access to the data port. Once the USB Restricted Mode gets activated, there's no way left for breaking into an iPhone or iPad without the user's permission. The feature would, no doubt, defeat law enforcement's use of special unlocking hardware made by Cellebrite ...

Digitally signed malware has become much more common in recent years to mask malicious intentions. Security researchers have discovered a new malware campaign misusing stolen valid digital certificates from Taiwanese tech-companies, including D-Link, to sign their malware and making them look like legitimate applications. As you may know, digital certificates issued by a trusted certificate authority (CA) are used to cryptographically sign computer applications and software and are trusted by your computer for execution of those programs without any warning messages. However, malware author and hackers who are always in search of advanced techniques to bypass security solutions have seen been abusing trusted digital certificates in recent years. Hackers use compromised code signing certificates associated with trusted software vendors in order to sign their malicious code, reducing the possibility of their malware being detected on targeted enterprise networks and consumer...

Besides Timehop , another data breach was discovered last week that affects users of one of the largest web hosting companies in Germany, DomainFactory, owned by GoDaddy. The breach initially happened back in last January this year and just emerged last Tuesday when an unknown attacker himself posted a breach note on the DomainFactory support forum. It turns out that the attacker breached company servers to obtain the data of one of its customers who apparently owes him a seven-figure amount, according to Heise . Later the attacker tried to report DomainFactory about the potential vulnerability using which he broke into its servers, but the hosting provider did not respond, and neither disclosed the breach to its customers. In that situation, the attacker head on to the company's support forum and broke the news with sample data of a few customers as proof, which forced DomainFactory to immediately shut down the forum website and initiate an investigation. Attacker G...

And the hacks just keep on coming. Timehop social media app has been hit by a major data breach on July 4th that compromised the personal data of its more than 21 million users. Timehop is a simple social media app that collects your old photos and posts from your iPhone, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Foursquare and acts as a digital time machine to help you find—what you were doing on this very day exactly a year ago. The company revealed on Sunday that unknown attacker(s) managed to break into its Cloud Computing Environment and access the data of entire 21 million users, including their names, email addresses, and approximately 4.7 million phone numbers attached to their accounts. "We learned of the breach while it was still in progress, and were able to interrupt it, but data was taken. Some data was breached," the company wrote in a security advisory posted on its website. Social Media OAuth2 Tokens Also Compromised Moreover, the attackers also got th...

PRIVACY – a bit of an Internet buzzword nowadays, because the business model of the Internet has now shifted towards data collection. Today, most users surf the web unaware of the fact that websites and online services collect their personal information, including search histories, location, and buying habits and make millions by sharing your data with advertisers and marketers. If this is not enough, then there are governments across the world conducting mass surveillance, and hackers and cyber criminals who can easily steal sensitive data from the ill-equipped networks, websites, and PCs. So, what's the solution and how can you protect your privacy, defend against government surveillance and prevent malware attacks? No matter which Internet connection you are using to go online, one of the most efficient solutions to maximize your privacy is to use a secure VPN service. In this article, we have introduced two popular VPN services, TigerVPN and VPNSecure , which help...

Hacker himself got hacked. It turns out that most samples of the LokiBot malware being distributed in the wild are modified versions of the original sample, a security researcher has learned. Targeting users since 2015, LokiBot is a password and cryptocoin-wallet stealer that can harvest credentials from a variety of popular web browsers, FTP, poker and email clients, as well as IT administration tools such as PuTTY. The original LokiBot malware was developed and sold by online alias "lokistov," a.k.a. "Carter," on multiple underground hacking forums for up to $300, but later some other hackers on the dark web also started selling same malware for a lesser price (as low as $80). It was believed that the source code for LokiBot was leaked which might have allowed others to compile their own versions of the stealer. However, a researcher who goes by alias " d00rt " on Twitter found that someone made little changes (patching) in the original Lok...

A former employee of one of the world's most powerful hacking companies NSO Group has been arrested and charged with stealing phone hacking tools from the company and trying to sell it for $50 million on the Darknet secretly. Israeli hacking firm NSO Group is mostly known for selling high-tech malware capable of remotely cracking into Apple's iPhones and Google's Android devices to intelligence apparatuses, militaries, and law enforcement around the world. However, the phone hacking company has recently become the victim of an insider breach attack carried out by a 38-year-old former NSO employee, who stole the source code for the company's most powerful spyware called Pegasus and tried to sell it for $50 million on the dark web in various cryptocurrencies, including Monero and Zcash, Israeli media reported. That's much higher than the actual NSO Group's price tag for Pegasus, which reportedly sells for under $1 million per deployment. If you remember...