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FinFisher spyware, a spyware application used by government and law enforcement agencies for the purpose of surveillance, appears to have been hacked earlier this week and a string of files has been dumped on the Internet. The highly secret surveillance software called “ FinFisher ” sold by British company Gamma International can secretly monitors computers by turning ON webcams, recording everything the user types with a keylogger, and intercepting Skype calls, copying files, and much more. A hacker has claimed on Reddit and Twitter that they'd infiltrated the network of one of the world's top surveillance & motoring technology company Gamma International, creator of FinFisher spyware, and has exposed 40GB of internal data detailing the operations and effectiveness of the FinFisher suite of surveillance platforms. The leaked information was published both on a parody Gamma Group Twitter account ( @GammaGroupPR ) and Reditt by the hacker that began publishi...

The individual responsible for one of the most significant leaks in US political history is Edward Snowden, a 31-year-old global surveillance whistleblower and former U.S. intelligence contractor, who has received a three- year residence permit from Russia, his lawyer announced on Today. “ On the first of August he received a three-year residence permit, ” lawyer Anatoly Kucherena told RT . He had not asked for political asylum, his lawyer added. The former NSA contractor has not apply for Russian citizenship for now, as he will be able to apply for the Russian citizenship in five years. “ A foreign citizen, who got a residence permit, will certainly be able to apply for citizenship, ” Kucherena said. “ He will be able to travel freely within the country and go abroad. He’ll be able to stay abroad for not longer than three months ,” Kucherena said. Snowden is responsible for handing over material from one of the world's most secretive organisations the NSA. The ...

When I say Ransomware, the first nasty piece of malware strikes in the mind is CryptoLocker . A nasty strain of ransomware malware that threatened most of the people around the world by effectively destroying important files of the victims forever. CRYPTOLOCKER - A DEVASTATING THREAT CryptoLocker is a simple rather a devastating piece of Ransomware that encrypts the files on a victim’s computer and issues an ultimatum - Pay up or lose your data. CryptoLocker is particularly designed to extort money from computer users by holding computer files hostage until the computer user pays a ransom fee to get them back. Cryptolocker hijacker sniffs out your personal files and wraps them with strong AES-256-bit encryption before it demands money. HOW TO DECRYPT CRYPTOLOCKER? FREE TOOL RELEASED Thanks to security experts, who created an online service where victims whose systems have been encrypted by the CryptoLocker ransomware can get the decryption keys for free. This o...

Users running the website on a self-hosted WordPress or on Drupal are strongly recommended to update their websites to the latest version immediately. A moderately critical vulnerability was discovered in the way Drupal and WordPress implement XMLRPC, which can lead an attacker to disable your website via a method known as Denial of Service (DoS) . VULNERABILITY RESULTS IN DoS ATTACK The latest update of WordPress 3.9.2 mainly addresses an issue in the PHP’s XML processor that could be exploited to trigger a DoS (denial of service) attack . The vulnerability affects all previous versions of WordPress. The XML vulnerability was first reported by Nir Goldshlager , a security researcher from Salesforce.com's product security team, that impacts both the popular website platforms. The issue was later fixed by Michael Adams and Andrew Nacin of the WordPress security team and David Rothstein of the Drupal security team. ATTACK MAKES YOUR WEBSITE COMPLETELY INACCES...

Yahoo-owned Flickr, one of the biggest online photo management and sharing website in the world was recently impacted by a web application vulnerability , which could allow an attacker to modify users’ profile image. Flickr is one of the most popular photo sharing website with more than 87 million users, therefore some top major target for cybercriminals. The site was vulnerable to the most common vulnerability known as Cross-Site Request Forgery (XSRF or CSRF), which is very easy to exploit by attackers. Cross-Site Request Forgery is a method of attacking a Web site in which an intruder masquerades as a legitimate and trusted user. All the attacker need to do is get the target browser to make a request to your website on their behalf. If they can either: Convince your users to click on a HTML page they've constructed Insert arbitrary HTML in a target website that your users visit Not too difficult, is it? Abdullah Hussam , a 17 years old programmer from Iraq found that just...

Tor has always been a tough target for law enforcement for years, but the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation ( FBI ) has found a way to successfully track users across the network. Just a few days back, Tor made a difficult announcement that an attack on its system likely exposed its users of anonymity. Now, a new report from Wired suggests that the FBI has been running a malware campaign to identify Tor users by infecting their computers for years on a large scale. FBI USES DRIVE-BY HACKING TO TRACK USERS Tor is generally thought to be a place where users come online to hide their activities and remain anonymous, but a court case has revealed an opposite story. FBI has been using a tactic called drive-by hacking to track computers using the Tor anonymous computing system. Security researchers call the tactic a “ drive-by download ” in which a hacker infiltrates a high-traffic website to deliver the malware to large swaths of visitors. That simply means t...

If we talk about old days, a hacker often rely on the natural helpfulness as well as weaknesses of people whom he wanted to target. This tactic to break into a computer network by gaining the confidence of an authorized user and get them to reveal information that compromises the network's security is known as Social Engineering . WHAT IS SOCIAL ENGINEERING Social engineering is nothing but a non technical kind of intrusion that relies heavily on human interaction and involves manipulating people so they give up confidential information. Social engineering was very effective those old days as well as today, as major targets are made victims using this old trick only and it is also one of the important components of many types of exploits like: Virus writers use social engineering tactics to persuade people to run malicious email attachments Phishers use social engineering tactics to convince people to disclose their sensitive information such as banking credentia...