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The US government, particularly the National Security Agency  has been paying a French security firm for backdoors and zero day hacks. According to a contract newly released in response to a Freedom of Information request, last year the NSA purchased a 12-month subscription to a " binary analysis and exploits service " sold by Vupen, a zero-day Exploit Seller based in France. VUPEN is one of a handful of companies that sell software exploits and vulnerability details, who do original vulnerability research and develop exploits for bugs that they find. They Sold those exploits to the Governments and Law enforcement agencies. VUPEN has promised that the company only will sell its services to NATO countries and will not deal with oppressive regimes. It is unclear how much money the NSA spent on the Vupen exploits package because the cost has been redacted in the released contract. Last year, Vupen researchers successfully cracked Google's Chrome browser, but declined to

All supported versions of Internet Explorer are vulnerable to a zero-day Exploit that is currently being exploited in targeted attacks against IE 8 and IE 9, dubbed " CVE-2013-3893 MSHTML Shim Workaround ". Microsoft confirmed that the flaw was unknown before the attacks and that it is already working on an official patch, meantime Microsoft released an emergency software fix for Internet Explorer (IE) Web browser. Advisory noted that Microsoft is investigating public reports of a remote code execution vulnerability in Internet Explorer. This issue could allow remote code execution if an affected system browses to a website containing malicious content directed towards the specific browser type. Victims could be infected despite the adoption of all necessary countermeasures due the nature of the flaw previously unknown. The flaw that has been recently targeted by hackers during attacks is considerable serious and complicated to fix. State-sponsored hackin

Super Low RPO with Continuous Data Protection: Dial Back to Just Seconds Before an Attack Zerto , a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, can help you detect and recover from ransomware in near real-time. This solution leverages continuous data protection (CDP) to ensure all workloads have the lowest recovery point objective (RPO) possible. The most valuable thing about CDP is that it does not use snapshots, agents, or any other periodic data protection methodology. Zerto has no impact on production workloads and can achieve RPOs in the region of 5-15 seconds across thousands of virtual machines simultaneously. For example, the environment in the image below has nearly 1,000 VMs being protected with an average RPO of just six seconds! Application-Centric Protection: Group Your VMs to Gain Application-Level Control   You can protect your VMs with the Zerto application-centric approach using Virtual Protection Groups (VPGs). This logical grouping of VMs ensures that your whole applica

WebView is an essential component in Android and iOS. It enables applications to display content from online resources and simplifies task of performing a network request, parsing the data and rendering it. Today AVG Security expert reported a critical vulnerability in Android's WebView feature that allows an attacker to install malicious software, send SMSs and performing more tasks. WebView uses a number of APIs which can interact with the web contents inside WebView. So this allows the user to view a web application as a part of an ordinary Android application. Users can be infected when they click on a URL link using a vulnerable application that allows opening a Java enabled browser or web page. The commands in the JavaScript code can enable attackers to install malicious software, send SMSs, steal personal information and more. To exploit the flaw, attacker can trick users to click a malicious link from a vulnerable WebView application and which will

Belgacom , the largest telecommunications company in Belgium today announced that their IT Systems were hacked and infected with an unknown Malware . In order to eliminate that virus effectively, they clean up the entire system. The company also highlights that they have no indication of any impact on their telecommunication services, customer and employee data. According to the complexity of the malware, it appears to be the work of a state-sponsored entity. Belgacom which handles some of the undersea cables that carry voice and data traffic around the world, so the NSA or Britain's GCHQ could be behind the intrusion. That traffic would be a likely target for an attacker. The attack reportedly affected a few dozen machines on Belgacom's network, including some servers and the intrusion had been active for as long as two years by the time the Belgian company discovered it. Hacked data might help intelligence agencies to gather data on communications coming from the li

An Anonymous Hacker and Online hacktivist who was  responsible for hacking into the City of Springfield's website and others Police websites has been sentenced to 3 years in federal prison. John Anthony Borell III, a 22-year-old man from Ohio with the online handle @ItsKahuna started advertising his exploits using the Twitter and encouraged other hackers to crack websites as part of campaigns run by an Anonymous offshoot called CabinCr3w . Borell admitted to compromising the websites belongs to various Law Enforcement Agencies from Los Angeles, Syracuse, The official city site for Springfield, Missouri and many more.  He also exposed the names and private details of almost 500 police officers after using an automated script to carry out SQL injection attacks on websites belonging to the Utah Chiefs of Police and the Salt Lake City Police Department. Hacker denied involvement in the attacks on April 2012, but later he pleaded guilty to computer fraud charges and agreed to pay $22

" The truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped ", Edward Snowden.  The National Security Agency isn't just snooping into phone and online communications. It also appears to be keeping a close eye on credit card transactions. New reports published by Der Spiegel exposed that The National Security Agency (NSA) is widely monitoring SWIFT bank transactions, International Credit Card Payments and banking, attained by watching printer traffic from numerous banks. According to the information acquired by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden , Show that in 2011, the NSA possessed 180 million records and spying is conducted by a branch called " Follow the Money. That data then moved to their own   ' Tracfin ' financial databank to track money flows. NSA targets the transactions of various banks via large credit card companies like VISA by doing surveillance in Europe, Middle East and Africa. Some 84 percent of the data are from credit card transactions

Argentinian police have arrested a 19-year-old " superhacker " who was making $50,000 a month,  working from his bedroom in Buenos Aires, by targeting international money transfer and gambling websites. Police say it took them a year to close in on the teenager, who was part of a six-strong gang which planted viruses on a gaming site which infected the computers of website visitors. Police raiding his Buenos Aires residence and identified six more people who were involved in the criminal network. The criminal  is reportedly the son of an IT engineer and officials found high-capacity computers from his room. The hackers used malware to run a Botnet network of thousands of zombie computers, which were then used to illegally divert money from accounts leaving virtually no trace behind. Police seized electronic equipment, including cables, routers and over 14 hard drives. The police department dubbed it Operation Zombie began in 2012. His activities were brought

A few days before the servers of the largest provider of Ultra Anonymous hosting were found to be serving custom malware designed to identify visitors who were using the Tor service to hide their identity online. The javascript code exploited a security vulnerability in the open-source version of Firefox that the Tor network is based on. In an Irish court, FBI agent admitted publicly that the agency had control of Freedom Hosting , a Tor hidden service operator company, in an effort to arrest a suspect behind the largest child porn facilitator on the planet. Eric Eoin Marques, a 28-year-old Irishman, is now awaiting extradition to the US where he could face 100 years in prison on child pornography charges. Marques is the owner and operator of Freedom Hosting , one of the largest web hosts for the Tor network., Hosting many of the darkest hidden services on the Darknet, including criminal hacking site HackBB, money laundering services, and responsible for hosting chi

It's been nearly three months since Edward Snowden started telling the world about the National Security Agency's mass surveillance of global communications. After the last week report that the National Security Agency has leveraged its cooperative relationships with specific industry partners to insert vulnerabilities into Internet security products. Bitcoin , a virtual currency, a peer-to-peer electronic cash system, which is generated on a logarithmic scale by dedicated miners who run software that generate the complex hash codes which make up a Bitcoin.  The integrity of Bitcoin depends on a hash function called SHA-256 , which was designed by the NSA and published by the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST). Is it hard to believe that could the intelligence community have a secret exploit for Bitcoin? While there is no evidence yet to support the speculation. " If you assume that the NSA did something to SHA-256, which no outside resea

A Russian Exploit writer and underground Hacker who goes by the handle " fil9 " put up an Android Firefox Zero-Day Exploit for Sale in an open Exploit Market. Author claims a Zero Day vulnerability in Firefox for Android, which works on Firefox versions 23/24/26 (Nightly). The advertisement was spotted by Joshua, Malware Intelligence Analyst at Malwarebytes. Hacker Selling exploit with a starting price of $460 only. According to the proof of concept video uploaded by the Hacker, the exploit forces the mobile Firefox browser to download and execute a malicious app, on just visiting a malicious link only. What's worrisome is that many major websites are compromised frequently and a large number of visitors of those hacked sites can fall victim to this attack. " The biggest problem in this situation is that Firefox automatically executes certain known files once they're downloaded, and doesn't give users an option to disable this. Without some sort of

Vodafone Germany has been hacked and Personal details of more than two million customers have been compromised, some including banking details. Stole data includes names, addresses, birth dates, and bank account information, but the hacker had no access to credit-card information, passwords, PIN numbers or mobile-phone numbers. According to a blog post on the Vodafone website, The company has already involved law enforcement agencies in the investigation, and it is confirmed that a suspect has been identified and searches conducted in the case, but didn't say whether the suspect was an employee or an outsider. It's unclear when the breach took place, but it appears to have involved a successful compromise of an internal server on Vodafone's network. Vodaphone said it is taking action to prevent this type of incident from occurring again, including reinstalling servers and changing passwords and certificates of all administrators. Vodafone customers outside of Germany aren&#

Russian Security Firm Kaspersky Lab has revealed that it has been following a sustained attack on South Korea by hackers seemingly based in North Korea.,  This new Cyber Espionage campaign dubbed "Kimsuky"  has targeted several South Korean think tanks. R esearchers believe the Kimsuky malware is most likely delivered via spear-phishing e-mails  and used multiple Dropbox email accounts "It's interesting that the drop box mail accounts iop110112@hotmail.com and rsh1213@hotmail.com are registered with the following "kim" names: kimsukyang and "Kim asdfa " The Kaspersky researchers revealed that the operation presents distinctive characteristics in its execution and logistics. The investigation started after the team of experts detected an unsophisticated spy program that communicated with it control server via a public e-mail server, an approach followed by too many amateur malware authors. Victims download a Trojan dropper which is used to download additional malwa

The Fourth Edition of an International Information Security Conference hosted in Romania , The DefCamp 2013  is now open for Call for Papers . Over 300 Security experts, Researchers, and Enthusiasts from Romania and neighboring countries are expected to take part in the event in Bucharest, at the Crystal Palace Ballroom on November 29-30, 2013 . The Crystal Palace Ballroom is hosting one of the most mesmerizing event of Hacking & Information security in Romania, Defcamp.  In its Fourth year, The conference aims - continues to impress its audience with IT knowledge sharing, competition with varying levels of difficulty, Romanian and foreign speakers, surprises and fun. " We have awaited the 48 hours of DefCamp 2013 since the closing moment of the last edition.  It is hypnotizing to exchange ideas, to compete, to expand your knowledge and to meet people  who you know only from the virtual world. DCTF (DefCamp Capture the Flag) - our main  competition of the co

As we reported yesterday that, your Smartphone is a goldmine for the US National Security Agency (NSA), they have the full access to your Data available on your Smartphones including Android , iPhone and Blackberry. But among other Smartphones,  iPhone apparently is the most popular with the National Security Agency. Another NSA presentation leaked by NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden and published by German paper Der Spiegel , describing Steve Jobs as the real Big Brother and iPhone buyers as the "zombies" . By cracking mobile operating systems and eavesdropping on mobile communications, the data obtained in this way includes contacts, call lists, SMS traffic, notes and location information. " Such as a iPhone picture of a foreign government official who took selfies while watching TV, and a picture of an unknown man, apparently an Afghani fighter, in the mountains of Afghanistan. And remember the iPhone's location bug? That enabled tracking of people over exten

Earlier reports based on Snowden 's documents revealed the existence of the NSA's PRISM program , and indicate that the National Security Agency spied on Brazilians. On other End, President Obama said that the Syrian government used chemical weapons on its citizens and The United States may have to take military action against Syria. Against same issues, yesterday various pages on  NASA 's website were hacked by a Brazilian Hacker named " #BMPoC " and the visitors to the pages were first greeted with a pop-up window which reads "DO NOT ATTACK THE SYRIAN " followed by another reading " U.S. SPY STOP THE BRAZIL " before the deface page appears. The complete deface message on the page was: Stop spying on us. The Brazilian population do not support your attitude! The Illuminati is now visibly acting! Obama heartless! Inhumane! You have no family? The point in the entire global population is supporting you. NOBODY! We do not want

Hackers are focusing on vulnerabilities in the PHP web application development platform threatening 80% websites in the world, including many big website i.e. Facebook and Wikipedia. PHP has several predefined variables that are called SuperGlobals i.e. POST, GET, COOKIES, FILES etc. Imperva Releases Hacker Intelligence Initiative Report , particularly concerned about two vulnerabilities that can be used to execute code on servers running PHP and fail to stop PHP SuperGlobal parameter variables being modified by external sources. Dubbed as  CVE-2011-2505 , describes a vulnerability in the authentication feature in PhpMyAdmin (PMA) that enables attackers to modify the  _SESSION  SuperGlobal variable. CVE-2010-3065 describes a problem in the PHP's session serialization mechanism. By injecting malicious value into an internal variable using PHP's Superglobal mechanism, the attacker is able to change the application flow and execute arbitrary commands to take control over

This Tuesday, Microsoft will be releasing its September's Patch Tuesday updates includes 14 bulletins in total, fixing issues in Windows, Office, Outlook, Internet Explorer, SharePoint and FrontPage. In all, there are eight remote code execution flaws in Microsoft Office, Microsoft Server Software, Microsoft Windows, which can allow hackers to gain access to, or take control of an affected system without user prompts or permission. The four critical bulletins affect Sharepoint, Outlook, Internet Explorer and XP and Windows 2003. Bulletien second will address a Remote Code Execution flaw in Microsoft Office that can be triggered simply by previewing an email in Outlook, even without explicitly opening the e-mail. The problem for users is that Outlook automatically displays the content of each email it previews. The remaining 10 bulletins are all rated important by Microsoft, four of them patch remote code execution flaws in Office, while three other privilege escalati

National Security Agency (NSA)  has the capability to access a broad range of data on most Smartphones out there, including iPhone, BlackBerry, and Android devices, according to the  documents provided by former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden to the  German news agency Der Spiegel report. A 2009 NSA document states that it can " see and read SMS traffic ". This data includes Contact, call lists, SMS traffic, notes and location data about where a user has been, the NSA has set up teams to specialize in cracking each operating system. The leaked information also revealed that the NSA has organized a working group for each operating system. The documents also state the NSA has successfully accessed BlackBerry email data, a system previously thought to be very secure. Recently, two Guardian reporters , the Newspaper primarily responsible with leaking NSA documents, discovered a mystery app on their iPhones . It has no title, no identifying image,

Recently, Tor Project Director - Roger Dingledine described a sudden increase in Tor users on the Tor Network after the events related to disclosure of the PRISM surveillance program, Since August 19, 2013, there has been an impressive growth in the number of Tor users. At first, No one knew who or what is responsible for this spontaneous growth of Tor users, but Security researchers at Fox-IT firm found evidence that the spike in Tor traffic is caused by a Mevade Botnet, that hides its Command-and-Control server in the anonymizing network. The security firm documented the presence of the Mevade malware architecture based on the anonymizing network, " The malware uses a command and control connectivity via Tor .Onion links using HTTP. While some bots continue to operate using the standard HTTP connectivity, some versions of the malware use a peer-to-peer network to communicate (KAD based). " " Typically, it is fairly clear what the purpose of malw

Trust is something that's earned, not given. We trusted tech companies with our data because they promised to keep it secure. That trust was called into question after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed that NSA is snooping on us with the help of same tech companies. Today Google announced that they have accelerated their efforts towards encrypting the information that has been flowing through its data centers across the world to thwart snooping by NSA and intelligence agencies, but do can you Trust Google and Other Internet Companies now ? " It's an arms race ," Eric Grosse, Google's vice president for security engineering, tells WP . " We see these government agencies as among the most skilled players in this game. " Google officials declined to provide details on the cost of its new encryption efforts, the numbers of data centers involved, or the exact technology used. According to the report, encrypted information would