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

Tor network offers users browse the Internet anonymously and is mostly used by activists, journalists to conceal their online activities from prying eyes. But it also has the Dark side, as Tor is also a Deep Web friendly tool that allows hackers and cyber criminals to carry out illicit activities by making themselves anonymous. Kaspersky security researcher reported that Tor network is currently being used to hide 900 botnet and other illegal hidden services, through its 5,500 plus nodes i.e. Server relays and 1,000 exit nodes i.e. Servers from which traffic emerges. These days, Cyber criminals are hosting malware's Command-and-control server on an anonymous Tor network to evade detection i.e., difficult to identify or eliminate. Illegal use of the Tor network boosted up after the launch of the most popular underground Drug Market - Silk road  that also offered arms and malware to their users against Bitcoin , one of the popular crypto currency . ChewBacca , a point-

NSS Labs issued the report titled " The Known Unknowns " to explain the dynamics behind the market of zero-day exploits. Last week I discussed about the necessity to define a model for " cyber conflict " to qualify the principal issues related to the use of cyber tools and cyber weapons in an Information Warfare context, today I decided to give more info to the readers on cyber arsenals of governments. Governments consider the use of cyber weapons as a coadiuvant to conventional weapons, these malicious application could be used for sabotage or for cyber espionage, they could be used to hit a specifically designed software (e.g. SCADA within a critical infrastructure ) or they could be used for large scale operations infecting thousand of machines exploiting zero-day in common application ( e.g. Java platform, Adobe software ). The zero-day flaw are the most important component for the design of an efficient cyber weapon, governments have recently created dedic

It's not a mystery, every nation is worried of the level of security of its infrastructure, the United States are among the most concerned governments due the high number of cyber-attack against its networks. US Government representative such us former States Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano warned in more than one occasion on the possible consequences of a cyber offensive and declared the necessity to improve the cyber capabilities of the country.  Senators are interested to evaluate the level of protection of nuclear stockpile of foreign governments against cyber attacks, question has been raised after that Pentagon's chief cyber officer admitted to ignore if countries such as Russia or China have adopted efficient countermeasures. Nelson and Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich. will request to national intelligence an assessment about the ability of foreign states to safeguard networked

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

PandaLabs,  the antimalware laboratory of  Panda Security , the cloud security company, has forecasted several radical innovations in cyber-crime for 2011. Hacktivism and cyber-war; more profit-oriented malware; social media; social engineering and malicious codes with the ability to adapt to avoid detection will be the main threats in the coming year. There will also be an increase in the threats to Mac users, new efforts to attack 64-bit systems and zero-day exploits. Following is a summary of what PandaLabs predicts as the ten major security trends of 2011: 1. Malware creation:  In 2010, PandaLabs witnessed significant growth in the amount of malware and discovered at least 20 million new strains, more than in 2009. At present, Panda's Collective Intelligence database stores a total of more than 60 million classified threats. The actual rate of growth year-on-year however, appears to have peaked. Several years ago it was over 100 percent and in 2010 it was 50 percent. 2. Cyber w

Have you given shed to Zombies in your house? No???? May be you have no idea about it. After Computers, Servers, Routers, Mobiles, Tablets…. Now its turn of your home appliances to be a weapon or a victim of cyber war. Recently Security Researchers from Proofpoint  found more than 100,000 Smart TVs, Refrigerator, and other smart household appliances compromised by hackers to send out 750,000 malicious spam emails. As the ' Internet of Things ' becoming smart and popular it became an easy weapon for cyber criminals to launch large scale of cyber attacks. " The attack that Proofpoint observed and profiled occurred between December 23, 2013 and January 6, 2014, and featured waves of malicious email, typically sent in bursts of 100,000, three times per day, targeting Enterprises and individuals worldwide." Previously, such attacks were only drafted theoretically by researchers, but this is the first such proven attack involved smart household appliances that are used as ' thingB

Like many other security issues that now affect computer users, there is a growing threat known as phishing". Phishing attacks are perpetrated by criminals who send deceptive emails in order to lure someone into visiting a fraudulent web site or downloading malicious software, expressly for stealing sensitive information such as credit card numbers, account information, passwords, etc. Cyber criminals continue to evolve and refine their attack tactics to evade detection and use techniques that work. Spear phishing emails are on the rise because they work. We have notice many times that Spear Phishing Attacks are really Successful in order to compromise Enterprise Networks and Stealing Data. From last one month I was getting mails from an unknown spoofed email id regrading a paypal warning with subject " Your account has been limited until we hear from you ! " Guess what, even I am not using that email for my Paypal account, from here I just judge that it's

Today I desire to propose an interview with Andrey Komarov , CEO of IntelCrawler and Dan Clements , President of IntelCrawler. IntelCrawler  is a multi-tier intelligence aggregator, which gathers information and cyber prints from a starting big data pool of over 3, 000, 000, 000 IPv4 and over 200, 000, 000 domain names, which are scanned for analytics and dissemination to drill down to a desired result. I have prepared for them a series of answers and questions to analyze significant evolutions in the cyber-threat landscape: Q. Which are the most concerning cyber threats for private businesses and government organizations? A. Avoiding talking about usual and standard things, of course, the most dangerous and annoying is the emergence of fundamentally new vulnerabilities in critical applications and systems. " Zero day " vulnerabilities market is developing every day and taking the shape of a part of the future cyber warfare market , as it is still in the process of formati

Smart Devices are growing at an exponential rate and so are the threats to them. After your Computers, Servers, Routers , Mobiles and Tablets, now hackers are targeting your Smart TVs, warns Eugene Kaspersky the co-founder and chief executive of Kaspersky Lab. As the increase in the manufactures of Smart TVs by different companies, it could be estimated that by 2016, over 100 million TVs are expected to be connected to the Internet and in the time it may rise as a profitable fruit for the malware authors and cyber criminals to exploit these devices. The 48 year-old Eugene Kaspersky , one of the world's top technology security experts, has thrown light on the future of Computer Security and warned that  Internet of Things (IoT) such as TVs, Refrigerators, Microwave or dishwashers will necessarily bring undesirable cyber threats to your home environment, because any device connected to the Internet is vulnerable and can be infected. " The threats will dive

The role of hacker is recognized as crucial today in cyber security, these specialists are the nightmare of security experts but their knowledge is fundamental to understand the vulnerabilities of our infrastructures … think like a hacker if you want really protect your system . But hacking is a culture, a way of life that is hard to match ago with the business logic, true hackers don't do this for money, money are fundamental but not all, the must for them is always to put into question their capabilities, try to consistently exceed their limits. Fortunately industry, private business and governments have understood it and have re-evaluated the importance of hackers, these specialists were once seen as shady individuals to avoid, today they are highly sought professionals in both private business and government sectors. Discover vulnerabilities before attackers could exploit them is essential, millions of people and devices are connected to the network, a unique oppo

Bangladesh is not the only bank that had become victim to the cyber heist . In fact, it appears to be just a part of the widespread cyber attack on global banking and financial sector by hackers who target the backbone of the world financial system, SWIFT. Yes, the global banking messaging system that thousands of banks and companies around the world use to transfer Billions of dollars in transfers each day is under attack. A third case involving SWIFT has emerged in which cyber criminals have stolen about $12 million from an Ecuadorian bank that contained numerous similarities of later attacks against Bangladesh's central bank that lost $81 Million in the cyber heist . The attack on Banco del Austro (BDA) in Ecuador occurred in January 2015 and, revealed via a lawsuit filed by BDA against Wells Fargo, a San Francisco-based bank on Jan. 28, Reuters reported. Here's how cyber criminals target banks: Uses malware to circumvent local security systems of a bank. Gains acces

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

Are you a proud owner of a Smartwatch, a Smart TV , a Smart fridge, a Smart lock, an Internet-enabled car , or live in a smart city? Caution! Recently, it has been reported that the growth of the Internet of Things would eventually lead to cyber criminals in making lots of money, as they started attacking the Internet of Things for Ransom. Yes, the latest Interest of the cyber criminals in the field of Internet of Things is ' Ransomware '. Internet of Things (IoT) such as Android and iOS-based wearable Smartwatches and the concept of connected homes has now given a treat to the current generation Ransomware. With the advancements in Technology, cyber criminals are simultaneously promoting themselves from the threat known for restricting computers or encrypting files and asking users for money in return for gaining back access to their systems. From computers to mobile phones, now criminals are targeting the IoT and the wearables devices. Security resea

THE internet was never meant to do sensitive banking transactions, cyber criminals are winning the war against online security and Australia's easy going nature is making us vulnerable targets to ever-more sophisticated internet thugs. That was San Francisco-based internet security watcher and author Joseph Menn's assessment of the current state of the internet before he spoke to the Internet Industry Association's gala dinner in Sydney last night. The only glimmer of hope was that people were becoming more aware of the risks involved with the internet - which he described as a "loaded gun" - but we have to be even more savvy if we are not to be become a cyber crime victim. Mr Menn said when he interviewed the former head of the US Department of Justice's Cyber Crime Unit she said half of all credit cards were in the hands of criminals. "And if your credit card details weren't in criminals' hands it was only because they hadn't got around to