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Security researchers have claimed to have discovered possibly the largest malware campaign on Google Play Store that has already infected around 36.5 million Android devices with malicious ad-click software. The security firm Checkpoint on Thursday published a blog post revealing more than 41 Android applications from a Korean company on Google Play Store that make money for its creators by creating fake advertisement clicks from the infected devices. All the malicious apps, developed by Korea-based Kiniwini and published under the moniker ENISTUDIO Corp, contained an adware program, dubbed Judy, that is being used to generate fraudulent clicks to generate revenue from advertisements. Moreover, the researchers also uncovered a few more apps, published by other developers on Play Store, inexplicably containing the same the malware in them. The connection between the two campaigns remains unclear, though researchers believe it is possible that one developer borrowed code from...

We came across so many revelations of sensitive government and corporate data on the Internet these days, but what's the accuracy of that information leaked by unknown actors? Security researchers have discovered new evidence of one such sophisticated global espionage and disinformation campaign with suspected ties to the Russian government that's been aimed to discredit enemies of the state. Although there is no definitive proof of Russian government's involvement in the campaign, there is "overlap" with previously reported cyber espionage activities tied to a Russia-backed hacking group well known as APT28 . APT28 — also known as Fancy Bear, Sofacy, Sednit, and Pawn Storm — is the same group which was responsible for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) breach. The group has been operating since at least 2007 and has alleged tied to the Russian government. A new report, titled Tainted Leaks , published this week by the Citizen Lab at the Univers...

You may have heard of hilarious Nigerian scams. My all time favourite is this one: A Nigerian astronaut has been trapped in space for the past 25 years and needs $3 million to get back to Earth, Can you help? Moreover, Nigerians are also good at promising true love and happiness. But You know, Love hurts. Those looking for true love and happiness lost tens of millions of dollars over the Nigerian dating and romance scams. These criminals spend their whole day trolling the online dating sites for contact emails and then send off hundreds of thousands of fraudulent emails awaiting the victim's response. A US federal district court in Mississippi has sentenced such three Nigerian scammers to a collective 235 years in prison for their roles in a large-scale international fraud network that duped people out of tens of millions of dollars. The three Nigerian nationals were part of a 21-member gang of cyber criminals, of which six, including Ayelotan, Raheem, and Mewase,...

Researchers have discovered a new attack, dubbed 'Cloak and Dagger', that works against all versions of Android, up to version 7.1.2. Cloak and Dagger attack allows hackers to silently take full control of your device and steal private data, including keystrokes, chats, device PIN, online account passwords, OTP passcode, and contacts. What's interesting about Cloak and Dagger attack? The attack doesn't exploit any vulnerability in Android ecosystem; instead, it abuses a pair of legitimate app permissions that is being widely used in popular applications to access certain features on an Android device. Researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology have discovered this attack, who successfully performed it on 20 people and none of them were able to detect any malicious activity. Cloak and Dagger attacks utilise two basic Android permissions: SYSTEM_ALERT_WINDOW ("draw on top") BIND_ACCESSIBILITY_SERVICE ("a11y") The first permissi...

Brace yourselves for a possible 'second wave' of massive global cyber attack, as SMB ( Server Message Block) was not the only network protocol whose zero-day exploits created by NSA were exposed in the Shadow Brokers dump last month. Although Microsoft released patches for SMB flaws for supported versions in March and unsupported versions immediately after the outbreak of the WannaCry ransomware, the company ignored to patch other three NSA hacking tools, dubbed " EnglishmanDentist ," " EsteemAudit ," and " ExplodingCan ." It has been almost two weeks since WannaCry ransomware began to spread, which infected nearly 300,000 computers in more than 150 countries within just 72 hours, though now it has been slowed down. For those unaware, WannaCry exploited a Windows zero-day SMB bug that allowed remote hackers to hijack PCs running on unpatched Windows OS and then spread itself to other unpatched systems using its wormable capability. ...