The Hacker News | #1 Trusted Source for Cybersecurity News — Index Page

Cybersecurity researchers today disclosed details of two newly identified Magecart attacks targeting online shoppers of bedding retailers MyPillow and Amerisleep . Magecart is an umbrella term researchers gave to at least 11 different hacking groups that are specialized in implanting malware code on e-commerce websites with an intent to steal payment card details of their customers silently. Magecart made headlines last year after attackers conducted several high-profile cyber attacks against major international companies including British Airways , Ticketmaster , and Newegg . Magecart hackers use a digital payment card skimmer, a few lines of malicious Javascript code they insert into the checkout page of hacked websites and designed to captured payment information of customers in real time and then send it to a remote attacker-controlled server. Earlier this year, Magecart attackers also compromised nearly 277 e-commerce websites in a supply-chain attack by inserting its...

The popular SSH client program PuTTY has released the latest version of its software that includes security patches for 8 high-severity security vulnerabilities. PuTTY is one of the most popular and widely used open-source client-side programs that allows users to remotely access computers over SSH, Telnet, and Rlogin network protocols. Almost 20 months after releasing the last version of its software, the developers of PuTTY earlier this week released the latest version 0.71 for Windows and Unix operating systems. According to an advisory available on its website, all previous versions of the PuTTY software have been found vulnerable to multiple security vulnerabilities that could allow a malicious server or a compromised server to hijack client's system in different ways. Here below I have listed all 8 vulnerabilities with brief information that PuTTY 0.71 has patched: 1) Authentication Prompt Spoofing — Since PuTTY doesn't have a way to indicate whether a piec...

Google announced some major changes for its Android mobile operating system in October after the European Commission hit the company with a record $5 billion antitrust fine for pre-installing its own apps and services on third-party Android phones. The European Commission accused Google of forcing Android phone manufacturers to "illegally" tie its proprietary apps and services—specifically, Chrome and Google Search as the default browsers—to Android, unfairly blocking competitors from reaching consumers. This rule led Google to change the way it licenses the Google mobile application suite to Android smartphone makers. Now, Google is further making some changes related to browser and search engine choice. In a blog post published Tuesday, Google announced that the company would prompt Android phone owners in Europe (new and existing ones) in the coming months to choose from a variety of web browsers and search engines for their devices as their default apps. ...

SaaS Adoption is Skyrocketing, Resilience Hasn't Kept Pace SaaS platforms have revolutionized how businesses operate. They simplify collaboration, accelerate deployment, and reduce the overhead of managing infrastructure. But with their rise comes a subtle, dangerous assumption: that the convenience of SaaS extends to resilience. It doesn't. These platforms weren't built with full-scale data protection in mind . Most follow a shared responsibility model — wherein the provider ensures uptime and application security, but the data inside is your responsibility. In a world of hybrid architectures, global teams, and relentless cyber threats, that responsibility is harder than ever to manage. Modern organizations are being stretched across: Hybrid and multi-cloud environments with decentralized data sprawl Complex integration layers between IaaS, SaaS, and legacy systems Expanding regulatory pressure with steeper penalties for noncompliance Escalating ransomware threats and inside...

Google has recently released the first beta version of Android Q, the next upcoming version of Google's popular mobile operating system, with a lot of new privacy improvements and other security enhancements. Android Q, where Q has not yet been named, offers more control over installed apps, their access, and permissions, and location settings; more support for passive authentication like face ID, and warnings when you install a new app targeting Android Marshmallow or older. Instead of directly going through dozens of different pages Google published about Android Q, here I have summarized all new privacy and security features of the new version of Android you can quickly learn from: 1) Stop Android Apps From Tracking Your Location in the Background Android Q gives you more control over how an app can use your device location information. Currently, you have a single option to either allow or deny an app access to your device location, doesn't matter if it is in-use...

Photo by Terje Pedersen / NTB scanpix One of the world's largest producers of aluminum has been forced to shut down several of its plants across Europe and the U.S. after an "extensive cyber attack" hit its operations, leaving companies' IT systems unusable. According to a press release shared by Aluminum giant Norsk Hydro today, the company has temporarily shut down several plants and switched to manual operations, "where possible," in countries including Norway, Qatar, and Brazil in an attempt to continue some of its operations. The cyber attack, that began in the U.S.,was first detected by the company's IT experts around late Monday evening CET and the company is working to neutralize the attack, as well as investigating to know the full extent of the incident. "Hydro's main priority is to continue to ensure safe operations and limit operational and financial impact. The problem has not led to any safety-related incidents," t...

Libssh2, a popular open source client-side C library implementing the SSHv2 protocol, has released the latest version of its software to patch a total of nine security vulnerabilities. The Libssh2 library is available for all major distributors of the Linux operating systems, including Ubuntu, Red Hat, Debian, and also comes bundled within some distributions and software as a default library. According to an  advisory published Monday, all the below listed vulnerabilities that were patched with the release of libssh2 version 1.8.1 lead to memory corruption issues which could result in arbitrary code execution on a client system in certain circumstances. Here's the list of security vulnerabilities patched in Libssh: 1. CVE-2019-3855: Possible integer overflow in transport read that could lead to an out-of-bounds write. A malicious server, or a remote attacker who compromises an SSH server, could send a specially crafted packet which could result in executing malicious ...

Security researchers have uncovered a new variant of the infamous Mirai Internet of Things botnet , this time targeting embedded devices intended for use within business environments in an attempt to gain control over larger bandwidth to carry out devastating DDoS attacks . Although the original creators of Mirai botnet have already been arrested and jailed , variants of the infamous IoT malware, including Satori and Okiru , keep emerging due to the availability of its source code on the Internet since 2016. First emerged in 2016, Mirai is well known IoT botnet malware that has the ability to infect routers, and security cameras, DVRs, and other smart devices—which typically use default credentials and run outdated versions of Linux—and enslaves the compromised devices to form a botnet, which is then used to conduct DDoS attacks . New Mirai Variant Targets Enterprise IoT Devices Now, Palo Alto Network Unit 42 researchers have spotted the newest variant of Mirai that...

A hacker who was selling details of nearly 890 million online accounts stolen from 32 popular websites in three separate rounds has now put up a fourth batch of millions of records originating from 6 other sites for sale on the dark web. The Hacker News today received a new email from the Pakistani hacker, who goes by online alias Gnosticplayers and previously claimed to have hacked dozens of popular websites from companies which, according to him, probably had no idea that they were compromised. The hacker last month made three rounds of stolen accounts up for sale on the popular dark web market called Dream Market, posting details of 620 million accounts stolen from 16 websites in the first round, 127 million records from 8 sites in the second, and 92 million from 8 websites in the third. Although while releasing the third round Gnosticplayers told The Hacker News that it would be his last batch of the stolen database, the hacker released the fourth round containing nearl...

Various cyber criminal groups and individual hackers are still exploiting a recently patched critical code execution  vulnerability in WinRAR , a popular Windows file compression application with 500 million users worldwide. Why? Because the WinRAR software doesn't have an auto-update feature, which, unfortunately, leaves millions of its users vulnerable to cyber attacks. The critical vulnerability (CVE-2018-20250) that was patched late last month by the WinRAR team with the release of WinRAR version 5.70 beta 1 impacts all prior versions of WinRAR released over the past 19 years. For those unaware, the vulnerability is "Absolute Path Traversal" bug that resides in the old third-party library UNACEV2.DLL of WinRAR and allows attackers to extract a compressed executable file from the ACE archive to one of the Windows Startup folders, where the malicious file would automatically run on the next reboot. Therefore, to successfully exploit this vulnerability and tak...

WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram faced a widespread outage yesterday with users from around the world reporting issues with sending messages on WhatsApp and Messenger, posting feeds on Facebook and accessing other features on the three Facebook-owned platforms. While the outage was quite troubling both for the social media giant and its millions of users, guess who benefits the most out of the incident? TELEGRAM. Pavel Durov, the founder of the popular secure messaging platform Telegram, claims to have had a surge in sign-ups within the last 24 hours, at the time duration when its rival messaging services were facing downtime. "I see 3 million new users signed up for Telegram within the last 24 hours," Durov wrote on his Telegram channel. "Good. We have true privacy and unlimited space for everyone." Telegram is an excellent alternative to Facebook's Messenger and WhatsApp services, offering users an optional end-to-end encrypted messaging feature,...

If for some reason your WordPress-based website has not yet been automatically updated to the latest version 5.1.1, it's highly recommended to immediately upgrade it before hackers could take advantage of a newly disclosed vulnerability to hack your website. Simon Scannell, a researcher at RIPS Technologies GmbH, who previously reported multiple critical vulnerabilities in WordPress, has once again discovered a new flaw in the content management software (CMS) that could potentially lead to remote code execution attacks. The flaw stems from a cross-site request forgery (CSRF) issue in the Wordpress' comment section, one of its core components that comes enabled by default and affects all WordPress installations prior to version 5.1.1. Unlike most of the previous attacks documented against WordPress, this new exploit allows even an "unauthenticated, remote attacker" to compromise and gain remote code execution on the vulnerable WordPress websites. "...

If you are a Counter-Strike gamer, then beware, because 39% of all existing Counter-Strike 1.6 game servers available online are malicious that have been set-up to remotely hack gamers' computers. A team of cybersecurity researchers at Dr. Web has disclosed that an attacker has been using malicious gaming servers to silently compromise computers of Counter-Strike gamers worldwide by exploiting zero-day vulnerabilities in the game client. According to the researchers, Counter-Strike 1.6, a popular game that's almost two decades old, contains unpatched multiple remote code execution (RCE) vulnerabilities in its client software that let attackers execute arbitrary code on the gamer's computer as soon as they connect to a malicious server, without requiring any further interaction from the gamers. It turned out that a Russian gaming server developer, nicknamed 'Belonard,' has been exploiting these vulnerabilities in the wild to promote his business and create a...

With countless web apps and online services launching every day, there is an increasing demand for cloud developers. This exciting niche is due to grow rapidly over the next few years, and the paycheck should follow suit. If you want to build a career in this lucrative niche, it pays to know AWS (Amazon Web Services). With the AWS Certified Architect Developer Bundle 2019 , you get seven courses and over 51 hours of video tutorials that are working towards official exams. It's worth nearly $1,000, but you can get the training now for only $35 for a limited time . According to Synergy Research , Amazon Web Services has a massive 35% share of the cloud computing market. The platform plays host to millions of clients and dozens of multinationals, including Adobe, LinkedIn, GE, and Netflix. As a certified AWS expert, you put yourself first in line for exciting opportunities at these major companies. AWS Certification Training – 7 In-Depth Online Courses If you're...

Mozilla has made it easy for you to share large files securely and privately with whomever you want, eliminating the need to depend upon less secure free third-party services or file upload tools that burn a hole in your pocket. Mozilla has finally launched its free, end-to-end encrypted file-transfer service, called Firefox Send , to the public, allowing users to securely share large files like video, audio or photo files that can be too big to fit into an email attachment. Firefox Send was initially rolled out by Mozilla to test users way back in August 2017 as part of the company's now-defunct "Test Pilot" experimental program. Firefox Send allows you to send files up to 1GB in size, but if you sign up for a free Firefox account, you can upload files as large as 2.5GB in size. The service uses a browser-based encryption technology that encrypts your files before uploading them to the Mozilla server, which can only be decrypted by the recipients. Unlike popul...

It's time for another batch of "Patch Tuesday" updates from Microsoft. Microsoft today released its March 2019 software updates to address a total of 64 CVE-listed security vulnerabilities in its Windows operating systems and other products, 17 of which are rated critical, 45 important, one moderate and one low in severity. The update addresses flaws in Windows, Internet Explorer, Edge, MS Office, and MS Office SharePoint, ChakraCore, Skype for Business, and Visual Studio NuGet. Four of the security vulnerabilities, all rated important, patched by the tech giant this month were disclosed publicly, of which none were found exploited in the wild. Microsoft Patches Two Zero-Day Flaws Under Active Attack Microsoft has also patched two separate zero-day elevation of privilege vulnerabilities in Windows. Both flaws, also rated as important, reside in Win32k component that hackers are actively exploiting in the wild, including the one that Google warned of last w...

Adobe users would feel lighter this month, as Adobe has released patches for just two security vulnerability in its March Security Update. The company today released its monthly security updates to address two critical arbitrary code execution vulnerabilities—one in Adobe Photoshop CC and another in Adobe Digital Editions. Upon successful exploitation, both critical vulnerabilities could allow an attacker to achieve arbitrary code execution in the context of the current user and take control of an affected system. However, the good news is that the company found no evidence of any exploits in the wild for these security issues, Adobe said. The vulnerability in Adobe Photoshop CC , discovered by Trend Micro Zero Day Initiative and assigned CVE-2019-7094, is a heap corruption issue which affects Photoshop CC 19.1.7 and earlier 19.x versions as well as Photoshop CC 20.0.2 and earlier 20.x versions for Microsoft Windows and Apple macOS operating systems. Users are recommended ...

Cynet goes head-to-head with CrowdStrike, DarkTrace, Cylance, Carbon Black & Symantec, offering their unhappy customers a refund for the time remaining on their existing contracts. Cynet, the automated threat discovery and mitigation platform was built to address the advanced threats that AV and Firewalls cannot stop. Today, Cynet announced that any organization currently deploying an advanced security solution from the list below who are unhappy with it and up for renewal in 2019 - can try Cynet for free  here. If they decide to switch to Cynet – they will be reimbursed for the remaining contract with the previous security vendor. The Cynet offer is relevant to companies that have at least 300 endpoints and are currently customers of any of the following solutions: Crowdstrike / Carbon Black / Darktrace / Cylance / Symantec / Fire Eye Endpoint Protection / SentinelOne / Cybereason / CISCO AMP / Trend Micro Apex / Palo Alto Networks Traps. What makes Cynet s...

Do you always think twice before installing Windows updates worrying that it could crash your system or leave it non-working the day after Patch Tuesdays? Don't worry. Microsoft has addressed this issue by adding a safety measure that would from now onwards automatically uninstall buggy software updates installed on your system if Windows 10 detects a startup failure, which could be due to incompatibility or issues in new software. A new document published by Microsoft on Monday, a day before this month's Patch Tuesday, says just like Windows "automatically installs updates to keep your device secure and running at peak efficiency," the OS will now run another automatic process to uninstall problematic updates. From now on, if you receive the following notification on your device, that means your Windows 10 computer has recently been recovered from a startup failure,first sighted by Windows Latest blog . "We removed some recently installed updates...

One of the most important software companies NGINX , which is also behind the very popular open-source web server of the same name, is being acquired by its rival, F5 Networks , in a deal valued at about $670 million. While NGINX is not a name that you have ever heard of, the reality is that you use NGINX every day when you post a photo, watch streaming video, purchase goods online, or log into your applications at work. NGINX powers over half of the busiest websites in the world. Majority of sites on the Internet today, including The Hacker News, and hundreds of thousands apps, like Instagram, Pinterest, Netflix, and Airbnb are hosted on web servers running NGINX. NGINX web server is the third most widely used servers in the world—behind only Microsoft and Apache, and ahead of Google. In short, the internet as we know it today would not exist without NGINX. F5 Acquires NGINX to Bridge NetOps and DevOps F5 Networks is the industry leader in cloud and security application...