The Hacker News - Cybersecurity News and Analysis: Search results for cyber

I frequently receive emails and messages on how to hack my friend's Facebook account , how to become a hacker, how to penetrate networks , how to break into computers, and how to compromise routers? These are some of the most frequent queries I came across, and in this article I'll attempt to answer these along with a solution on how to get started as a beginner. Before we begin, first let's know… ...What is Ethical Hacking? Most people want to learn hacking just for fun to hack into their friend's Facebook account or Gmail. Remember, Hacking is a skill and if you are here for the same reason, sadly but this platform may not work for you. Ethical hacking is testing the IT resources for a good cause and the betterment of technology. Ethical hackers are none other than computer security experts and researchers who focus on penetration testing and weaknesses in the organization's information systems they associated. A way to become an ethical hacker is to get C

Imagine… You drive to work in your Smart-Car connected to the GPS automatically, but a hacker breaks into your car's network, takes control of the steering wheel, crashes you into a tree, and BOOM ! Believe it or not, such cyber attacks on smart devices are becoming reality. Car Hacking was recently demonstrated by a pair of security researchers who controlled a Jeep Cherokee remotely from miles away, which shows a rather severe threat to the growing market of the Internet of Things (IoT) . Internet of Things (IoT) — A technology that connects objects to a network or the Internet, and enables interaction among varied devices such as: Smart Cars Smart TVs Refrigerators Wearables Routers Other embedded computing as well as non-computing devices. Few days back, I had read about Smart Dustbins that are the latest smart objects to become Wi-Fi-enabled. Internet of Things to make Cities Smart or Dumb? Cities around the world are becoming

The Potential threat, range from very narrow to very broad, posed by Cyber-Terrorism has provoked considerable alarm. Terrorists involved in Cyber Espionage and Operations aim at gaining access to Nation's critical infrastructure involving both Government as well as Private sectors. The Frequency and Intensity of such Cyber-attacks are increasing rapidly and extending into absolute cyber-war between states, allowing terrorist organizations to pilfer data from financial and military organizations. Similar Incident happened, few months back, when a group of Middle-east terrorists tried to infiltrate Indian Government officials operational in Cyber related divisions. In response, a team of Independent Indian security researchers planned a counter operation to track down the terrorist organization behind the cyber attack. Shesh Sarangdhar , a security researcher at Seclabs & Systems Pvt. told The Hacker News that his team successfully penetrated the sourc

Nearly a decade-long cyber espionage group that targeted a variety of Eastern European governments and security-related organizations including the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has been exposed by a security research firm. The US intelligence firm FireEye released its latest Advanced Persistent Threat ( APT ) report on Tuesday which said that the cyber attacks targeting various organisations would be of the interest to Russia, and " may be " sponsored by the Russian government. The Report entitled " APT28: A Window Into Russia's Cyber Espionage Operations " published by FireEye has " evidence of long-standing, focused operations that indicate a government sponsor - specifically, a government based in Moscow. " " Despite rumours of the Russian government's alleged involvement in high-profile government and military cyber attacks, there has been little hard evidence of any link to cyber espionage, " Dan McWhort

Botnets - a secretly compromised networks of ordinary home and office computers with rogue software or "malware" that are controlled by an individual criminal or a group - has dramatically increased over the past several years and are considered to pose the biggest threat to the Internet. Cyber criminals have brushed-up their hacking skills and are using Botnets as a cyber weapon to carry out multiple crimes like DDoS attacks (distributed denial of service), mass spamming, page rank and advertising revenue manipulation, mining bitcoins, cyber espionage and surveillance etc. 18 BOTNET INFECTIONS PER SECOND According to the director of FBI's cyber division, Joseph Demarest, Botnet has become one of the biggest enemies of the Internet today, and therefore its impact has been significant. Yesterday during a hearing before a U.S. Senate committee, he says that every second 18 computers worldwide are part of botnet armies, which amounts to over 500 million comp

The Israel Defense Force (IDF) claims to have neutralized an "attempted" cyber attack by launching airstrikes on a building in Gaza Strip from where it says the attack was originated. As shown in a video tweeted by IDF, the building in the Gaza Strip, which Israeli fighter drones have now destroyed, was reportedly the headquarters for Palestinian Hamas military intelligence, from where a cyber unit of hackers was allegedly trying to penetrate Israel's cyberspace. "We thwarted an attempted Hamas cyber offensive against Israeli targets. Following our successful cyber defensive operation, we targeted a building where the Hamas cyber operatives work. HamasCyberHQ.exe has been removed," said the Israeli Defence Forces on Twitter. However, the Israel Defense Force has not shared any information about the attempted cyber attack by the Hamas group, saying it would reveal the country's cyber capabilities. According to Judah Ari Gross of Times of Israel ,

The IT threat landscape has changed dramatically over the last three-four years. With no shortage of threat actors, from hacktivists to nation-states, criminals to terrorists, all of them are now after something new. It's no more just about stealing your money, credit cards and defacing websites, as now they are after the intellectual property, mass attacks and most importantly, our critical infrastructures. We have long-discussed nightmare scenarios of cyber attacks against nation's critical infrastructure, but now these scenarios have come to the real world, and we have seen many such incidents in the past years. The latest example is cyber attacks against Ukrainian power grid . Just two weeks back, Ukraine's national power company Ukrenergo confirmed that electricity outage on 17-18th December last year was caused by a cyber attack. Such sophisticated cyber attacks have revealed the extent of vulnerabilities in the systems that are operating the most critic

The country which built a Digital Iron Dome , Israel had undergone one of the largest serious cyber attack this year. This time, the name of Israel is being popped up in the current headlines is for the massive cyber attack which triggered against the Nation's Electrical Power Grid Authority's Network. "Yesterday we identified one of the largest cyber attacks that we have experienced," Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz confirmed at the CyberTech 2016 Conference at the Tel Aviv Trade Fair and Convention Center on Tuesday, according to an article published by The Times of Israel. "The virus was already identified and the right software was already prepared to neutralize it," Steinitz added. "We'd to paralyze many of the computers of the Israeli Electricity Authority. We are handling the situation and I hope that soon, this very serious event will be over...but as of now, computer systems are still not working as they should." Sev

In Brief What if we could Predict when a cyber attack is going to occur before it actually happens and prevent it? Isn't it revolutionary idea for Internet Security? Security researchers at MIT have developed a new Artificial Intelligence-based cyber security platform, called ' AI2 ,' which has the ability to predict, detect, and stop 85% of Cyber Attacks with high accuracy. Cyber security is a major challenge in today's world, as government agencies, corporations and individuals have increasingly become victims of cyber attacks that are so rapidly finding new ways to threaten the Internet that it's hard for good guys to keep up with them. A group of researchers at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) are working with machine-learning startup PatternEx to develop a line of defense against such cyber threats. The team has already  developed an Artificial Intelligence system that can detect 85 percent of attacks by

China finally admits it has special cyber warfare units — and a lot of them. From years China has been suspected by U.S. and many other countries for carrying out several high-profile cyber attacks, but every time the country strongly denied the claims. However, for the first time the country has admitted that it does have cyber warfare divisions – several of them, in fact. In the latest updated edition of a PLA publication called The Science of Military Strategy , China finally broke its silence and openly talked about its digital spying and network attack capabilities and clearly stated that it has specialized units devoted to wage war on computer networks. An expert on Chinese military strategy at the Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis, Joe McReynolds told TDB that this is the first time when China has explicit acknowledged that it has secretive cyber-warfare units, on both the military as well as civilian-government sides. CHINESE CYBER WARFARE UNI

The United Kingdom's National Crime Agency (NCA) has arrested 56 suspected hackers in a campaign against cybercrime called "strike week." Law-enforcement officials conducted, in total, 25 separate operations across England, Scotland and Wales, and those arrested were suspected in a wide range of cyber crimes including: Network intrusion and data theft from multinational companies and government agencies Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks Cyber-enabled fraud Malicious software and virus development The raids conducted by NCA were coordinated by its National Cyber Crime Unit (NCCU) , special officers Metropolitan Police and Regional Organised Crime Unit's (ROCUs) , associated with local forces around the UK. The arrested hackers also include alleged hackers suspected of being behind attacks on Yahoo, the US Department of Defence (DoD) , and PlayStation. The list of hackers arrested in the operation is given below: A 23-year-old man w

If you believe that your organization is not at real risk of cyber attack, then you are absolutely wrong. Incidents of massive data breaches, advanced cyber attacks coming from China , groups like Syrian Electronic Army , Hacking Point of Sale machines at retailers such as Target have splashed across the news in the last one year. Whether a Government Agency or Private Company, Small or a Large Tech Company.... ...It's no secret that No one is Immune to Cyber Attacks . This article is the first in a two-part series from The Hacker News , listing first four out of  Top 7 Brutal Cyber Attacks. And here we go... #1 "Hacking Team" Data Breach Hacking Team , the controversial spyware company, recently been hacked by some unidentified hackers that exposed over 400 gigabytes of its internal sensitive data on the Internet. Milan (Italy) based IT firm 'Hacking Team' sells intrusion and surveillance software solutions to Governments and Law Enforcement agen

With the evolving hacking events around us, cyber-security skills are in high demand across all organizations and industries, because a shortage of skilled cyber security practitioners could leave an organization vulnerable to cyber attacks. But knowledge alone is not sufficient, 'certification as eligibility' also matters, which shows employers that you are serious about your career and eligible as you have demonstrated your technical ability in some form. I frequently receive emails and messages from my readers asking: Should I get certified?, Are certifications important to build up a career in IT?, What certifications can one get to start a career in information security? and more. These are some of the most frequent queries I came across, and in this article, I will attempt to answer these along with a solution on how to get started. Whether you are looking to launch your career in the IT industry, or perhaps get promoted at your current job — getting certified

In Part I of this  two-part series from The Hacker News , the First Four list of Top Brutal Cyber Attacks shows that whoever you are, Security can never be perfect. As attackers employ innovative hacking techniques and zero-day exploits, the demand for increased threat protection grows. In this article, I have listed another three cyber attacks, as following: #5 Car Hacking Driving a car is a network's game now! ' Everything is hackable ,' but is your car also vulnerable to Hackers ? General Motors' OnStar application and cars like Jeep Cherokee, Cadillac Escalade, Toyota Prius, Dodge Viper, Audi A8 and many more come equipped with more advanced technology features. These cars are now part of the technology very well known as the " Internet of Things ". Recently two Security researchers, Chris Valasek and Charlie Miller demonstrated that Jeep Cherokee could be hacked wirelessly over the internet to hijack its steering, brakes, and transmi

Is it wrong to hack back in order to counter hacking attack when you have become a victim? — this has been a long time debate. While many countries, including the United States, consider hacking back practices as illegal, many security firms and experts believe it as "a terrible idea" and officially "cautions" victims against it, even if they use it as a part of an active defense strategy. Accessing a system that does not belong to you or distributing code designed to enable unauthorized access to anyone's system is an illegal practice. However, this doesn't mean that this practice is not at all performed. In some cases, retribution is part of current defense offerings, and many security firms do occasionally hack the infrastructure of threat groups to unmask several high-profile malware campaigns. But a new proposed bill intended to amend section 1030 of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act that would allow victims of ongoing cyber-attacks to fight