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The hacktivist group Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) briefly took over the Twitter account of the satirical news publication The Onion, posting a series of anti-Israeli joke stories and an anti-Obama meme image. In a post on The Onion tech team's GitHub blog , the fake news site explains that the Syrian Electronic Army didn't wrestle control of its Twitter account using some advanced hacker scheme. The hack attack penetrated the publication with at least three methods of phishing attacks, where a false e-mail redirected people to a fake Website which then asked for Google Apps credentials. Previously the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) has shanghaied its way into the official Twitter feeds of AP and the Guardian, using the former to post a tweet falsely claiming that there had been an explosion at the white House. Exposing details about an attack is not the normal approach companies take after they are hacked. The New York Times revealed earlier this year how Chinese hackers brea...

This coming Tuesday, Microsoft will issue fixes for 33 vulnerabilities in total, including two critical  zero-day flaws relating to Internet Explorer recently discovered that has been used to attack several high-profile targets. Internet Explorer 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 are the recipients of a patch that can prevent an exploit that enables remote code execution in the browser. This affects all Windows operating systems except XP. The vulnerability ( CVE-​​2013-​​1347 ) had previously been addressed in a workaround yesterday , but given the way it was being exploited with attacks reported on the US Department of Labor and European aerospace and nuclear researchers the patch has been prioritised. A second bulletin deals with another IE vulnerability believed to be one disclosed in March at the annual Pwn2Own hacking competition. At least four of the patches require a restart, Microsoft said. The remaining eight patches will address flaws that ran...

The security features built into Apple 's iOS software are so good that the police are unable to gain access to defendant's iPhones when they need to.  Companies like Apple and Google are being asked by law enforcement officials to bypass these protections to aid in investigations. Apple receives so many police demands to decrypt seized iPhones that it has created a waiting list to handle the deluge of requests. In one of the recent cases, according to court documents, the federal agents were baffled by the encrypted iPhone 4S of a man in Kentucky who was charged for supplying crack cocaine. CNET reports that ATF agent Rob Maynard spent three months trying to "locate a local, state, or federal law enforcement agency with the forensic capabilities to unlock" an iPhone 4S. After everyone said that they did not have the capabilities, Maynard turned to Apple. Apple can reportedly bypass the security lock to get access to data on a phone, download it to an ...

The IT sector has become one of the most significant growth catalysts for the Indian economy. The government approved the National Cyber Security Policy that aims to create a secure computing environment in the country and build capacities to strengthen the current set up with focus on manpower training. The policy was approved by the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) that lays stress on augmentation of the India's indigenous capabilities in terms of developing the cyber security set-up.  The policy is not aimed only at government entities and big business, but at home users as well. It aims to create a cyber security framework that will address all related issues over a long period.  The framework will lead to specific actions and programmes to enhance the security posture of country's cyber space. Cyber Security Policy will also help in enhancing the intelligence as its integral component and help in anticipating attacks and adopt, counter measures....

They didn't use guns, masks or even threatening notes passed to bank tellers. It may be the largest bank robbery in history. A gang of cyber-criminals operating in 26 countries stole $45 million by hacking their way into a database of prepaid debit cards. Reportedly, the group of hackers targeted weaknesses in how banks and payment processors handle prepaid debit cards. Authorities said they arrested these seven U.S. citizens and residents of Yonkers, New York: Jael Mejia Collado, Joan Luis Minier Lara, Evan Jose Peña, Jose Familia Reyes, Elvis Rafael Rodriguez, Emir Yasser Yeje and Chung Yu-Holguin. The eighth defendant charged in the indictment, Alberto Yusi Lajud-Peña, also known as 'Prime' and 'Albertico,' was murdered on April 27 in the Dominican Republic. They're suspected of working with hackers who twice broke into credit card processing companies' computer systems, stole ATM card data and bypassed the withdrawal limits on the accounts....

Trend Micro researchers have uncovered a new backdoor pieces of malware from the Winnti family, which are mainly used by a Chinese  cyber criminal group to target South East Asian organizations from the video gaming sector. Winnti malware used by hackers to hijack control of web users systems using a new backdoor contained in the legitimate Aheadlib analysis tool. Dubbed as " Bkdr_Tengo.A, " passes itself off as a legitimate system DLL file called winmm.dll. " We believe that this was done using a legitimate tool called Aheadlib, which is a legitimate analysis tool. "  wrote Trend Micro's Eduardo Altares. " The file is not encrypted and neither was it particularly hard to analyze. Its main behavior is to steal Microsoft Office, .PDF, and .TIFF files from USB drives inserted into the system. These stolen files are stored in the $NtUninstallKB080515$ under the Windows folder. It also creates a log file named Usblog_DXM.log. The files can be retriev...