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As we have reported you earlier that Microsoft is pulling out their Windows XP support after April 8 2014. Since a vast majority of bank ATMs around the world currently runs on Windows XP, but if they’ll continue sticking to it after the deadline, then they’ll be exposed to all kinds of security threats, as Microsoft will no longer provide the security patches thereafter. Many countries’ Banks have got a way out, many banks have arranged or are in the process of arranging extended support for Windows XP for which they are ready to pay Microsoft millions of dollars, but may be not in the case of India. Yes, India will never feed Microsoft for providing extra support to the older version; rather they could switch over to the Linux operating system. India has around 115,000 ATMs across the country at present and the counts will go up in coming days, but the end of life for XP will not affect banks and functioning of ATMs as the financial institutions across the ...

Earlier this week, Microsoft admitted that they have accessed a French Blogger's private Hotmail account to identify a former Microsoft employee who had leaked the company's trade secrets in 2012. Microsoft defined this private investigation as part of " Protecting our customers and the security and integrity of our products ", mentioned in the Microsoft's terms of service, which says that the action was within the boundaries of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. U.S. Authorities arrest Alex Kibkalo , ex-Microsoft employee. The indictment states , Kibkalo " uploaded proprietary software and pre-release software updates for Windows 8 RT as well as the Microsoft Activation Server Software Development Kit (SDK) to his personal SkyDrive account in August 2012. " Kibkalo not only leaked the secret screenshots of Windows 8 , but also provided the information about ' activation of Windows ' that helped the crackers to create a keygen for ...

Another leak from  Edward Snowden files, but this time not about the NSA, rather the documents revealed that France's central intelligence agency, the DGSE has complete and unconditional  access to all of  telecom giant  Orange’s data, not just metadata . Yes! It is the same  Orange company who threatened to sue the NSA for hacking into the underwater cable that it jointly owns with 15 other companies. According to the French paper Le Monde -- Orange, the leading telecom company in France with more than 26 million customers worldwide cooperated allegedly illegally for years with France’s main intelligence agency. DGSE and Agents with military clearance have been working with Orange for at least 30 years. France has a PRISM like surveillance  program to target phone communications, emails and data from tech companies like Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft and Yahoo. Furthermore, DGSE is also sharing this data with foreign ...

Till now we all were aware about the truth that tech companies gave legal access to user data on the government's request, but we were unaware that well known tech companies also charge the government for providing data. Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) , the pro-hacker group, who had compromised Microsoft's Twitter account and blog, earlier this year and Microsoft did announce a breach on its blog earlier this year. " It appears that documents associated with law enforcement inquiries were stolen ,". It seems that they have achieved something bigger than we expected by once more targeting Microsoft. This time the SEA hacking group has managed to successfully get into the FBI's super-secret Digital Intercept Technology Unit (DITU), where they found the actual invoices from Microsoft; detailing how much each request for data cost, which means that the company charges for every document they provide to the FBI agents, Daily Dot reported. The invoic...

2014 - The Year for Encryption! Good News for Security & Privacy seekers, Gmail is now more secure than ever before. Google has announced that it has enhanced encryption for its Gmail email service to protect users from government cyber-spying; by removing the option to turn off HTTPS . So from today, Gmail will always use an encrypted HTTPS connection by default when you check or send email. Furthermore, Google also assured that every single email message will now be encrypted as it moves internally between the company's data centers. " Today's change means that no one can listen in on your messages as they go back and forth between you and Gmail’s servers—no matter if you're using public WiFi or logging in from your computer, phone or tablet. " Nicolas Lidzborski, Gmail Security Engineering Lead said in a blog post . It was previously disclosed by Edward Snowden that the National Security Agency (NSA) is intercepting email messages as th...

Recently we aware you about the tricky phishing scam targeting Google Docs and Google Drive , a similar phishing scam has been detected by the researchers targeting Apple users to steal users’ credentials. According to the researchers at Netcraft , a UK based security services company, the hackers have compromised the web server owned by the gaming company, Electronic Arts (EA) to host a phishing site which targets Apple ID Account holders, asking for users’ Apple ID and password, along with their full name and date of birth and credit card details as well. “ The phishing site attempts to trick a victim into submitting his Apple ID and password. It then presents a second form which asks the victim to verify his full name, card number, expiration date, verification code, date of birth, phone number, mother's maiden name, plus other details that would be useful to a  fraudsters , ” wrote the researchers in a blog post. The Hackers compromised the EA Games server by exp...

Could a perfectly innocent looking device like router, TV set-top box or security cameras can mine Bitcoins? YES! Hackers will not going to spare the Smart Internet-enabled devices. A Linux worm named Linux . Darlloz , earlier used to target Internet of Things (IoT) devices, i.e. Home Routers, Set-top boxes, Security Cameras, printers and Industrial control systems; now have been upgraded to mine Crypto Currencies like Bitcoin. Security Researcher at Antivirus firm Symantec spotted the Darlloz Linux worm back in November and they have spotted the latest variant of the worm in mid-January this year. Linux . Darlloz worm exploits a PHP vulnerability ( CVE-2012-1823 ) to propagate and is capable to infect devices those run Linux on Intel’s x86 chip architecture and other embedded device architectures such as PPC, MIPS and MIPSEL. The latest variant of Linux . Darlloz equipped with an open source crypto currency mining tool called ' cpuminer ', could be us...