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Google has patched a high-severity vulnerability that has been around for the last five years, potentially leaving users' text messages, call histories, and other sensitive data open to snooping. The vulnerability, CVE-2016-2060, affects Android versions 4.3 and earlier that use the software package maintained by mobile chipmaker Qualcomm, according to a blog post published by security firm FireEye . The issue was first introduced in 2011 when Qualcomm released a set of new APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) for a network manager system service to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) and later the "netd" daemon. Qualcomm modified the netd daemon for providing additional networking capabilities to your smartphone, including additional tethering capabilities, among other things. But unfortunately, the modification introduced a critical bug to the Android operating system that could allow low-privileged apps to gain access to your private data that is sup...

" Talent has no Age Limit " That’s what I said for a 10-year-old Finnish boy on our official Facebook page while sharing his recent achievement with our readers i.e. Winning $10,000 bug bounty from Instagram . Last Tuesday when we at The Hacker News first acknowledged this talented boy and the flaw he discovered in image-sharing social network Instagram, I did not have an idea that the Facebook post would get an enormous response from our followers, encouraging me to introduce Jani to our website readers too. Those who aren’t aware, Jani from Helsinki recently reported an Instagram bug to Facebook that allowed him to delete other Instagram users' comments just by entering a malicious code into the app's comment field. " I would have been able to eliminate anyone's comment from Instagram, even Justin Bieber, " Jani told a local newspaper. Jani responsibly disclosed the vulnerability details to Facebook, who owns Instagram, in February and ...

In Brief Arthur Budovsky, co-founder of popular digital currency business 'Liberty Reserve', was sentenced Friday to 20 years in prison for running a money laundering scheme for hackers, identity thieves, child pornographers and drug dealers around the globe. Since its inception, 2005, to the year 2013, when Liberty Reserve was shut down by authorities, the company processed more than $8 billion worth of transactions for more than 5.5 million users worldwide. He was also ordered to forfeit $122 million and fined $500,000. The co-founder of Liberty Reserve, a widely-used digital currency, was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Friday for running a global money-laundering scheme that operated as "the financial hub for cyber criminals around the world." Arthur Budovsky Belanchuk, 42, ran an online digital currency business out of Costa Rica called Liberty Reserve from around 2005 until it was shut down by the federal authorities in 2013 with the arrest of Bud...

Without adequate analysis and algorithms, mass surveillance is not the answer to fighting terrorism and tracking suspects. That's what President Obama had learned last year when he signed the USA Freedom Act , which ends the bulk collection of domestic phone data by US Intelligence Agencies. There is no doubt that US Government is collecting a vast quantity of data from your smartphone to every connected device i.e. Internet of the things , but… Do they have enough capabilities to predict and identify terrorists or cyber criminals or state-sponsored hackers before they act? Well, if they had, I would not be getting chance to write about so many brutal cyber attacks , data breaches, and terrorist attacks that not only threatened Americans but also impacted people worldwide. The Ex-NSA technical director William E. Binney, who served the US National Security Agency for over 30-years, said last year in the front of Parliamentary Joint Committee that forcing analysts t...

In Brief What would you do if you get access to a Quantum Computer? IBM Scientists launches the world’s first cloud-based quantum computing technology, calling the IBM Quantum Experience, for anyone to use. It is an online simulator that lets anyone run algorithms and experiments on the company's five-qubit quantum computer. Quantum computers are expected to take the computing technology to the highest level, but it is an experimental and enormously complex technology that Google and NASA are working on and is just a dream for general users to play with. Hold on! IBM is trying to make your dream a reality. IBM just made its new quantum computing project online ( with tutorials ), making it available for free to anyone interested in playing with it. Quantum Computers — Now A Reality! The technology company said on Wednesday that it is giving the world access to one of its quantum computing processors, which is yet an experimental technology that has the potential...