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It seems as though not a day goes by without news spreading over another major cyber attack. Hackers are becoming increasingly efficient at targeting everything from small startups to Fortune 500 companies and even entire government agencies, and as the world moves further away from traditional types of warfare and more toward engaging in all-out cyber warfare, these attacks are only going to grow in terms of scope and intensity. While it may sound a bit counterintuitive, the only person who can stop a hacker is another hacker. Known as ethical or "white hat" hackers, these cyber warfare professionals are called upon to anticipate, thwart, and retaliate against a wide range of sophisticated cyber attacks, and their services are in high-demand across virtually every industry. The Complete Online Ethical Hacking Training Course The Computer Hacker Professional Certification Package will help you earn the credentials you need to join the exciting and increasingly

As part of this month's Patch Tuesday, Microsoft has released security patches for a total of 55 vulnerabilities across its products, including fixes for four zero-day vulnerabilities being exploited in the wild. Just yesterday, Microsoft released an emergency out-of-band update separately to patch a remote execution bug ( CVE-2017-0290 ) in Microsoft's Antivirus Engine that comes enabled by default on Windows 7, 8.1, RT, 10 and Server 2016 operating systems. The vulnerability, reported by Google Project Zero researchers, could allow an attacker to take over your Windows PC with just an email, which you haven't even opened yet. May 2017 Patch Tuesday — Out of 55 vulnerabilities, 17 have been rated as critical and affect the company's main operating systems, along with other products like Office, Edge, Internet Explorer, and the malware protection engine used in most of the Microsoft's anti-malware products. Sysadmins all over the world should prioriti

Over the past two years, a shocking  51% of organizations surveyed in a leading industry report have been compromised by a cyberattack.  Yes, over half.  And this, in a world where enterprises deploy  an average of 53 different security solutions  to safeguard their digital domain.  Alarming? Absolutely. A recent survey of CISOs and CIOs, commissioned by Pentera and conducted by Global Surveyz Research, offers a quantifiable glimpse into this evolving battlefield, revealing a stark contrast between the growing risks and the tightening budget constraints under which cybersecurity professionals operate. With this report, Pentera has once again taken a magnifying glass to the state of pentesting to release its annual report about today's pentesting practices. Engaging with 450 security executives from North America, LATAM, APAC, and EMEA—all in VP or C-level positions at organizations with over 1,000 employees—the report paints a current picture of modern security validation prac

Threat intelligence refers to gathering, processing, and analyzing cyber threats, along with proactive defensive measures aimed at strengthening security. It enables organizations to gain a comprehensive insight into historical, present, and anticipated threats, providing context about the constantly evolving threat landscape. Importance of threat intelligence in the cybersecurity ecosystem Threat intelligence is a crucial part of any cybersecurity ecosystem. A robust cyber threat intelligence program helps organizations identify, analyze, and prevent security breaches. Threat intelligence is important to modern cyber security practice for several reasons: Proactive defense:  Organizations can enhance their overall cyber resilience by integrating threat intelligence into security practices to address the specific threats and risks that are relevant to their industry, geolocation, or technology stack. Threat intelligence allows organizations to identify potential threats in advanc

The massive hacking attack against Sony Pictures Entertainment have reached a totally unbelievable and scary phase as multiple media sources are saying that Sony Pictures employees received e-mails from hackers threatening to harm them and their family members . Said one employee, " It's really crazy and scary. " It seems like matters for Sony Pictures is getting worse with time. Last month hacking attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment made the studio's internal corporate systems offline and spewed confidential information onto the Internet. Hackers group that identifies itself as # GOP ( Guardians of Peace ) claimed responsibility for the hack and apparently stolen reams of internal corporate data as well. Just a week after the cyber-attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment, high-quality versions of five newest films – Annie , Fury , Still Alice , Mr. Turner and To Write Love on Her Arms – distributed by Sony Pictures leaked online during Black Friday.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) on Wednesday  indicted  three suspected North Korean hackers for allegedly conspiring to steal and extort over $1.3 billion in cash and cryptocurrencies from financial institutions and businesses. The three defendants — Jon Chang Hyok, 31; Kim Il, 27; and Park Jin Hyok, 36 — are said to be members of the Reconnaissance General Bureau, a military intelligence division of North Korea, also known as the  Lazarus group ,  Hidden Cobra , or Advanced Persistent Threat 38 (APT 38). Accusing them of creating and deploying multiple malicious cryptocurrency applications, developing and fraudulently marketing a blockchain platform, the indictment expands on the  2018 charges brought against Park , one of the alleged nation-state hackers previously charged in connection with the 2014 cyberattack on Sony Pictures Entertainment. A Wide-Ranging Scheme to Commit Cyberattacks and Financial Crimes "North Korea's operatives, using keyboards rather than g

With rapidly growing Internet of Thing (IoT) devices, they have become a much more attractive target for cybercriminals. Just recently we saw a record-breaking Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks against the France-based hosting provider OVH that reached over one Terabit per second (1 Tbps), which was carried out via a botnet of infected IoT devices. Now, such attacks are expected to grow more rapidly as someone has just released the source code for IoT botnet, which was 'apparently' used to carry out world's largest DDoS attacks. Internet of Things-Botnet 'Mirai' Released Online Dubbed Mirai , the malware is a DDoS Trojan that targets BusyBox systems , a collection of Unix utilities specifically designed for embedded devices like routers. The malware is programmed to hijack connected IoT devices that are using the default usernames and passwords set by the factory before devices are first shipped to customers. Spotted by Brian Krebs , the

The MITRE Corporation revealed that it was the target of a nation-state cyber attack that exploited two zero-day flaws in Ivanti Connect Secure appliances starting in January 2024. The intrusion led to the compromise of its Networked Experimentation, Research, and Virtualization Environment (NERVE), an unclassified research and prototyping network. The unknown adversary "performed reconnaissance of our networks, exploited one of our Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) through two Ivanti Connect Secure zero-day vulnerabilities, and skirted past our multi-factor authentication using session hijacking," Lex Crumpton, a defensive cyber operations researcher at the non-profit,  said  last week. The attack entailed the  exploitation  of CVE-2023-46805 (CVSS score: 8.2) and CVE-2024-21887 (CVSS score: 9.1), which could be weaponized by threat actors to bypass authentication and run arbitrary commands on the infected system. Upon gaining initial access, the threat actors moved late

The U.S. Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM) on Wednesday officially confirmed MuddyWater's ties to the Iranian intelligence apparatus, while simultaneously detailing the various tools and tactics adopted by the espionage actor to burrow into victim networks. "MuddyWater has been seen using a variety of techniques to maintain access to victim networks," USCYBERCOM's Cyber National Mission Force (CNMF)  said  in a statement. "These include side-loading  DLLs  in order to trick legitimate programs into running malware and obfuscating PowerShell scripts to hide command and control functions." The agency characterized the hacking efforts as a subordinate element within the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS), corroborating earlier reports about the nation-state actor's provenance. Also tracked under the monikers Static Kitten, Seedworm, Mercury and TEMP.Zagros,  MuddyWater  is known for its  attacks  primarily directed against a wide gamut of en

The Internet of Things (IoTs) or Internet-connected devices are growing at an exponential rate and so are threats to them. Due to the insecure implementation, these Internet-connected embedded devices, including Smart TVs, Refrigerators, Microwaves, Set-top boxes, Security Cameras and printers, are routinely being hacked and used as weapons in cyber attacks. We have seen how hackers literally turned more than 100,000 Smart TVs and Refrigerator into the cyber weapon to send out millions of malicious spam emails for hacking campaigns; we have also seen how hackers abused printers and set-top-boxes to mine Bitcoins. And now… Cyber crooks are hacking CCTV cameras to form a massive botnet that can blow large websites off the Internet by launching Distributed Denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. Researchers at Security firm Sucuri came across a botnet of over 25,000 CCTV cameras targeting business around the globe while defending a small jewelry shop against a DDoS attack . Al

Days after  Microsoft ,  Secureworks , and  Volexity  shed light on a new spear-phishing activity unleashed by the Russian hackers who breached SolarWinds IT management software, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) Tuesday said it intervened to take control of two command-and-control (C2) and malware distribution domains used in the campaign. The court-authorized domain seizure took place on May 28, the DoJ said, adding the action was aimed at disrupting the threat actors' follow-on exploitation of victims as well as block their ability to compromise new systems. The department, however, cautioned that the adversary might have deployed additional backdoor accesses in the interim period between when the initial compromises occurred, and the seizures took place last week. "[The] action is a continued demonstration of the Department's commitment to proactively disrupt hacking activity prior to the conclusion of a criminal investigation,"  said  Assistant Attorney Ge

The hackers group responsible for the last year's largest hacking attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment left many clues which proves that the Sony's hackers , who called themselves Guardians of Peace (GOP) , linked to North Korea, as claimed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Speaking at the International Conference on Cyber Security (ICCS) at Fordham University in New York on Wednesday, the director of the FBI defended his bureau's claim and said that the North Korean government was involved in the massive cyber attack against Sony Pictures – saying skeptics " don't have the facts that I have ." " There's not much I have high confidence about, " James Comey said, as reported by the FBI New York field office's official Twitter feed. " I have very high confidence... on North Korea. " According to Comey, the hackers usually relied on proxy connections to hide their real IP address each time they sent threatening

Amid heightened  border tensions  between India and China, cybersecurity researchers have revealed a concerted campaign against India's critical infrastructure, including the nation's power grid, from Chinese state-sponsored groups. The attacks, which coincided with the standoff between the two nations in May 2020, targeted a total of 12 organizations, 10 of which are in the power generation and transmission sector. "10 distinct Indian power sector organizations, including four of the five Regional Load Despatch Centres (RLDC) responsible for operation of the power grid through balancing electricity supply and demand, have been identified as targets in a concerted campaign against India's critical infrastructure," Recorded Future  said  in a report published yesterday. "Other targets identified included 2 Indian seaports." Chief among the victims include a power plant run by National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) Limited and New Delhi-based Power

It has been three weeks since the website of the Central Bureau of Investigation was hacked into by a group of suspected Pakistanis who call themselves 'Pakistani Cyber Army'. The website still remains inactive. With the state's premier investigation agency's website hacked into and remaining inactive for so long, CBI says that they are putting in place security audit measures so that such an incident won't occur again. Independent Information Technology companies had repeatedly warned the government about the vulnerability of its websites, but their advice was not heeded. "We at the National Anti-Hacking Group had been warning the government since 2003, that their websites were vulnerable. We hacked into the government hosted websites and later told them what we had done, just so that they could understand how easy it was. Since the government never took action on any of our recommendations, we dropped the campaign. Today, all our warnings have come true.

The same group of hackers that caused the power outage across several regions in Ukraine last Christmas holidays might have once again shut down power supply in northern Ukraine during the weekend. According to Ukrainian energy provider Ukrenergo, a cyber attack on Kyiv's power grid may have caused the power outages in the country on Saturday, December 17, near midnight. The blackout affected the northern part of Kiev, the country's capital, and surrounding areas, Ukrenergo Director Vsevolod Kovalchuk explained in a post on Facebook. Shortly after the incident, Ukrenergo engineers switched to manual mode and started restoring power in approximately 30 minutes in an effort to deal with the cyber attack. Power was fully restored after just an hour and fifteen minutes of the blackout. According to Kovalchuk, the one responsible for the weekend outage could be an "external interference through data network," however, the company's cybersecurity experts a

It is 2019, and millions of computers still either have at least one outdated application installed or run outdated operating systems, making themselves vulnerable to online threats and known security vulnerabilities/exploits. Security vendor Avast has released its PC Trends Report 2019 revealing that millions of users are making themselves vulnerable to cyber attacks by keeping outdated versions of popular applications on their computers. Probably the most overlooked vectors for any cyber attack is out-of-date programs, which most of the times, is the result of the users' laziness and company's administrators ignoring the security updates in a business environment as they can't afford the downtime. According to the report [ PDF ],  Adobe Shockwave tops the list of software that most user left outdated on their PCs, followed by VLC Media Player, Skype, Java Runtime Environment , 7-Zip File Manager, and Foxit Reader. The outdated software applications often provide an ope

If you are a die heart fan of 'Game of Thrones' series, there's good news for you, but obviously bad for HBO. Hackers claim to have stolen 1.5 terabytes of data from HBO, including episodes of HBO shows yet to release online and information on the current season of Game of Thrones. What's more? The hackers have already leaked upcoming episodes of the shows "Ballers" and "Room 104" on the Internet. Additionally, the hackers have also released a script that is reportedly for the upcoming fourth episode of "Game of Thrones" Season 7 . According to Entertainment Weekly , hackers claim to have obtained 1.5 terabytes of data from the entertainment giant and informed several reporters about the hack via anonymous email sent on Sunday. Though HBO has confirmed the cyber attack on its network and released a statement, the company did not confirm what the hackers have stolen more information, and whether or not upcoming episodes of the

Mirai Botnet is getting stronger and more notorious each day that passes by. The reason: Insecure Internet-of-things Devices. Last month, the Mirai botnet knocked the entire Internet offline for a few hours, crippling some of the world's biggest and most popular websites. Now, more than 900,000 broadband routers belonging to Deutsche Telekom users in Germany knocked offline over the weekend following a supposed cyber-attack, affecting the telephony, television, and internet service in the country. The German Internet Service Provider, Deutsche Telekom, which offers various services to around 20 Million customers, confirmed on Facebook that as many as 900,000 customers suffered internet outages on Sunday and Monday. Millions of routers are said to have vulnerable to a critical Remote code Execution flaw in routers made by Zyxel and Speedport, wherein Internet port 7547 open to receive commands based on the TR-069 and related TR-064 protocols, which are meant to use by