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Security researchers have discovered an interesting piece of malware that infects systems with either a cryptocurrency miner or ransomware, depending upon their configurations to decide which of the two schemes could be more profitable. While ransomware is a type of malware that locks your computer and prevents you from accessing the encrypted data until you pay a ransom to get the decryption key required to decrypt your files, cryptocurrency miners utilize infected system's CPU power to mine digital currencies . Both ransomware and cryptocurrency mining-based attacks have been the top threats so far this year and share many similarities such as both are non-sophisticated attacks, carried out for money against non-targeted users, and involve digital currency. However, since locking a computer for ransom doesn't always guarantee a payback in case victims have nothing essential to losing, in past months cybercriminals have shifted more towards fraudulent cryptocurrency ...

Maintainers of the Gentoo Linux distribution have now revealed the impact and "root cause" of the attack that saw unknown hackers taking control of its GitHub account last week and modifying the content of its repositories and pages. The hackers not only managed to change the content in compromised repositories but also locked out Gentoo developers from their GitHub organisation. As a result of the incident, the developers were unable to use GitHub for five days. What Went Wrong? Gentoo developers have revealed that the attackers were able to gain administrative privileges for its Github account, after guessing the account password. The organisation could have been saved if it was using a two-factor authentication, which requires an additional passcode besides the password in order to gain access to the account. "The attacker gained access to a password of an organization administrator. Evidence collected suggests a password scheme where disclosure on on...

If you are looking for Fortnite v-bucks generator, aimbot or any other game cheats—then beware—you might end up installing malware on your PC! Web-based game-streaming platform Rainway is reporting that tens of thousands of Fortnite players have inadvertently infected their systems with a piece of malware that hijacks their encrypted HTTPS web sessions to inject fraudulent ads into every website they visit. According to a blog published by Rainway CEO Andrew Sampson, the company began receiving hundreds of thousands of error reports from its server logs last week, and after investigating, the team found that the systems of their users were attempting to connect with various ad platforms. Since Rainway system only allows whitelisted domains to load content, all ads-related requests got rejected, resulting in triggering an error every time the users' systems try to connect with a third-party server. It turns out that the malicious adware attacking Rainway users had one t...

Security researchers have been warning about a new malicious campaign that leverages an alternative scheme to mine cryptocurrencies without directly injecting the infamous CoinHive JavaScript into thousands of hacked websites. Coinhive is a popular browser-based service that offers website owners to embed JavaScript code that utilizes their website visitors' CPUs power in order to mine the Monero cryptocurrency for monetization. However, since its inception, mid-2017, cybercriminals have been abusing the service to illegally make money by injecting their own version of CoinHive JavaScript code to a large number of hacked websites, eventually tricking their millions of visitors into unknowingly mine Monero coins. Since a lot of web application security firms and antivirus companies have now updated their products to detect unauthorized injection of CoinHive JavaScript, cybercriminals have now started abusing a different service from CoinHive to achieve the same. Hackers ...

SUSE, the open source software company owned by British firm Micro Focus International, has been sold to a Swedish private equity firm. Yes, SUSE Linux and its associated software business has finally been acquired by EQT Partners for $2.535 billion, lifting its shares 6 percent. SUSE is one of the oldest open source companies and perhaps the first to provide enterprise-grade Linux software service to banks, universities and government agencies around the world. Since its foundation in 1992, SUSE has changed ownership multiple times. US-based software company Novell acquired SUSE for $120 million in November 2003 to compete with Microsoft in the operating system market. However, things did not work as the company thought and Novell in turn itself was acquired by another US-based company The Attachmate Group for $2.2 billion in 2011. Three years later, Micro Focus International acquired Attachmate for $2.35 billion in 2014. Since then SUSE Linux has been part of Micro Focus ...

Reminder—If you've forgotten about any Google app after using it once a few years ago, be careful, it may still have access to your private emails. When it comes to privacy on social media, we usually point fingers at Facebook for enabling third-party app developers to access users personal information—even with users' consent. But Facebook is not alone. Google also has a ton of information about you and this massive pool of data can be accessed by third-party apps you connect to, using its single sign-on service. Though Google has much stricter privacy policies about what developers can do with your data, the company still enables them to ask for complete access of your Google account, including the content of your emails and contacts. The entire Facebook's  Cambridge Analytica privacy saga highlights how crucial it is to keep track of the apps you have connected to your social media accounts and permitted to access your data. Last year, Google itself prom...