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Google has identified and blocked unauthorized digital certificates for a number of its domains issued by the National Informatics Centre (NIC) of India, a unit of India's Ministry of Communications and Information Technology. National Informatics Center (NIC) holds several intermediate Certification Authority (CA) certs trusted by the Indian government's top CA, Indian Controller of Certifying Authorities (India CCA), which are included in the Microsoft Root Store and so are trusted by a large number of applications running on Windows, including Internet Explorer and Chrome. The use of rogue digital certificates could result in a potentially serious security and privacy threat that could allow an attacker to spy on an encrypted communication between a user's device and a secure HTTPS website, which is thought to be secure. Google became aware of the fake certificates last Wednesday on July 2 and within 24 hours, the Indian Controller of Certifying Authorities (Ind...

Once again Facebook is on The Hacker News ! This time not for any scam or surveillance, but for a different reason.  The social networking giant has managed to take down a Greek botnet that used Facebook to spread malware and infected 250,000 computers to mine crypto-currencies, steal bitcoins, email passwords and banking details. Facebook is always one of the favourite weapon of cyber criminals, cyber thieves and scammers due to its popularity among other social media platforms. This social networking platform, with more than one billion active users, provides special opportunities for people to connect and share information, as well as also serves a great platform for malware developers and scammers. The botnet, dubbed as Lecpetex , was around from December 2013 to last month and compromised around 50,000 Facebook accounts at its peak, under which users would receive spam Facebook messages that would typically like "lol" with a zip archive attachment . O...

Until now, we have seen how different smart home appliances such as refrigerators, TVs and routers could expose our private data, but now you can add another worry to your list —LED light bulb. Don't laugh! It's true. Researchers at UK security firm Context have formulated an attack against the Wi-Fi connected lightbulbs, which is available to buy in the UK, that exposes credentials of the Wi-Fi network, it relies on to operate, to anyone in accessibility to one of the LED devices. Security vulnerabilities found in the LIFX Smart light bulbs , that can be controlled by the iOS-based and Android-based devices, could allow an attacker to gain access to a "master bulb" and with the help of that they could control all connected bulbs across that network, and help them expose user network configurations. Along with other Internet of Things (IoTs) devices, the smart bulbs are part of a rising trend in which the manufacturers enclose computing and networking capabilities to their devices s...

A major vulnerability believed to be present in most versions of Android can allow a malicious Android applications on the Android app store to make phone calls on a user's device, even when they lack the necessary permissions. The critical vulnerability was identified and reported to Google Inc. late last year by researchers from German security firm Curesec. The researchers believe the virus was first noticed in Android version 4.1, also known as " Jelly Bean ." APPS CAN MAKE CALLS FROM YOUR PHONE " This bug can be abused by a malicious application. Take a simple game which is coming with this code. The game won't ask you for extra permissions to do a phone call to a toll number – but it is able to do it ," Curesec's CEO Marco Lux and researcher Pedro Umbelino said Friday in a blog post. " This is normally not possible without giving the app this special permission. " By leveraging these vulnerabilities, malicious applications could initiate unauthorized phone call...

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has a dream to make Internet access available to everyone across the world - Zuckerberg argues Internet should be a service as essential as of 911 in the case of an emergency. In a blog post published Monday in The Wall Street Journal , founder of the social networking giant highlighted the future of universal Internet access, along with the steps he thinks to achieve it. Today 2.7 billion people, just over one-third of the world's population, have access to the Internet, Zuck said, and the adoption has been growing at a very lower rate, by less than 9% each year. The rest of the world's 5 billion people who do not have access to Internet are lacking access due to issues such as high costs or improper infrastructure. One may think that Zuckerberg's vision sounds like a self-interested push to gain more users for its social networking service, Facebook. But its true that the world is currently facing a growing technological divide, ...