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An Android-based malware campaign has been found to control as many as 85 million Android devices globally and is making its gang an estimated $300,000 per month in fraudulent ad revenue. A Chinese advertising company called Yingmob is responsible for distributing the malware on a massive scale and would appear to be the same firm behind Yispecter iOS malware , cybersecurity company Check Point revealed. Yingmob, based in Chongqing, China, markets itself as an advertising firm, claiming to provide easy-to-deploy ads support (text, pictures and video ads), without affecting the user experience. The service offers pop-up, sidebar, and in-app ads. However, Check Point researchers claim that the company's "Development Team for Overseas Platform" is responsible for two of the biggest waves of malware: HummingBad for Android and Yispecter for iOS. "Yingmob runs alongside a legitimate Chinese advertising analytics company, sharing its resources and technolog...

A second man has pleaded guilty for his role in ' The Fappening ' breach of 2014, in which the Internet was flooded with thousands of photographs of popular celebrities, including Jennifer Lawrence , Kim Kardashian , Kate Upton and Kirsten Dunst. Edward Majerczyk (28) of Chicago, Illinois agreed to plead guilty last Friday to hacking into the Apple iCloud and Gmail accounts of more than 300 victims, including 30 celebrities, between November 2013 and August 2014, federal prosecutors said. Like Ryan Collins , Majerczyk used phishing scheme to trick celebrities into entering their account credentials into bogus 'security' sites and then accessed private and photographs and videos of celebrities. The hackers then leaked hundreds of thousands of explicit photos of Hollywood actresses on the Internet in September 2014 that later known as The Fappening (or 'Celebgate') breach. "This defendant not only hacked into email accounts — he hacked into his...

A former United States undercover agent who stole hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of Bitcoins during an investigation into the underground drug marketplace Silk Road is now suspected of stealing even more of the cryptocurrency from two other cases. Shaun Bridges is one of two former US agents who pleaded guilty last year and was sentenced in December to almost six years in prison for stealing over $800,000 in Bitcoin while investigating the Darknet marketplace. Bridges and his partner stole money from Silk Road accounts and framed someone else for it, which lead the Silk Road chief Ross Ulbricht to plan a murder. Ulbricht is now serving life in prison sentence . Ulbricht was convicted in February 2015 of running the underground black market . According to court filings unsealed on Thursday, Bridges is believed to have stolen additional funds from a Secret Service account on two different occasions months after he was initially charged. Bridges and 46-ye...

Own an Android smartphone? Hackers can secretly install malicious apps, games, and pop-up adverts on your smartphone remotely in order to make large sums of money. Security researchers at Cheetah Mobile have uncovered one of the world's largest and most prolific Trojan families, infecting millions of Android devices around the world. Dubbed Hummer , the notorious mobile trojan stealthily installs malicious apps, games, or even porn apps onto victim's phones and yields its creators more than $500,000 (£375,252) on a daily basis. First discovered in 2014 by Cheetah Mobile, Hummer gained traction in early 2016 when the Trojan family was infecting "nearly 1.4 Million devices daily at its peak" with 63,000 infections occurring daily in China, according to researchers at Cheetah Mobile Security Research Lab. "This Trojan continually pops up ads on victims' phones, which is extremely annoying," researchers wrote in a blog post. "It also pushe...

The heated battle between Apple and the FBI provoked a lot of talk about Encryption – the technology that has been used to keep all your bits and bytes as safe as possible. We can not say a lot about Apple's users, but Android users are at severe risk when it comes to encryption of their personal and sensitive data. Android's full-disk encryption can be cracked much more easily than expected with brute force attack and some patience, affecting potentially hundreds of millions of mobile devices. And the worst part: There may not be a full fix available for current Android handsets in the market. Google started implementing Full Disk Encryption on Android by default with Android 5.0 Lollipop. Full disk encryption (FDE) can prevent both hackers and even powerful law enforcement agencies from gaining unauthorized access to device's data. Android's disk encryption, in short, is the process of encoding all user's data on an Android device before ever wri...

Here's something you'll not like at all: Apple has been awarded a patent for technology that would prevent you from snapping pictures and shooting videos with your iPhone or iPad at places or events, like concerts or museums, where it might be prohibited or inappropriate. The patent , granted on Tuesday by the United States Patents and Trademark Office, is highly technical. Apple's latest patent describes an iPhone or iPad camera receiving coded infrared signals beamed from emitters in public places would temporarily disable device camera functionality, preventing any photography or recording for as long as the signal is on. "An infrared emitter can be located in areas where picture or video capture is prohibited," reads the patent. "An electronic device can then receive the infrared signals, decode the data and temporarily disable the device’s recording function based on the command." The technology patented by Apple could also be used to be...