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US police department pays $750 Ransom to retrieve their files from CryptoLocker Malware

US police department pays $750 Ransom to retrieve their files from CryptoLocker Malware

Nov 23, 2013
The  CryptoLocker Malware continues to spread, infected more than 12,000 U.S computers in one week and threatening millions of computers in the UK. Just last week, The UK National Crime Agency urge people afflicted by CryptoLocker not to pay ransom, not least because there is no guarantee that they will even receive an unlock key. Not even Police departments are immune to CryptoLocker. In November second week, Massachusetts' Swansea Police Department paid a 2 Bitcoin ($750 that time) ransom to decrypt images and Word documents encrypted by CryptoLocker ransomware . " It gave us 100 hours to pay and it was literally a timer, " said Police Department. " A big red screen comes up with a timer that says you have 100 hours to pay or your files will be encrypted forever. " Malware usually distributed through spam emails, encrypting the user's files on the infected machine and also the local network it is attached to. However, Police Depar
Facebook vulnerability allows to view hidden Facebook Friend List

Facebook vulnerability allows to view hidden Facebook Friend List

Nov 22, 2013
Facebook is one of the most powerful and reliable social networking website. It allows users to interact with other users after being friends with one another. Facebook allows users to make the friend list public or private. If it is made private, your friend list won't appear on your publicly viewable profile. Irene Abezgauz , a security researcher from the Quotium Seeker Research Center has found a vulnerability in Facebook  website that allows anyone to see a users' friends list, even when the user has set that information to private. v The exploit is carried out by abusing the ' People You May Know ' feature on Facebook , which suggests new friends to users. It suggests friends to you based on mutual connections and other criteria such as work or education information. This Hack is really very simple! All a hacker would have to do would be to create a fake Facebook profile and then send a friend request to their target. Even if the targeted user ne
Hacking Gmail accounts with password reset system vulnerability

Hacking Gmail accounts with password reset system vulnerability

Nov 22, 2013
Oren Hafif , a security researcher has discovered a critical vulnerability in the Password reset process of Google account that allows an attacker to hijack any account. He managed to trick Google users into handing over their passwords via a simple spear-phishing attack by leveraging a number of flaws i.e. Cross-site request forgery (CSRF), and cross-site scripting (XSS), and a flow bypass. In a proof of concept video demonstration, the attacker sends his victim a fake " Confirm account ownership " email, claiming to come from Google. The link mention in the mail instructs the recipient to confirm the ownership of the account and urged user to change their password. The link from the email apparently points to a HTTPS  google.com URL, but it actually leads the victim to the attacker's website because of CSRF attack with a customized email address. The Google HTTPS page will will ask the victim to confirm the ownership by entering his last password and then will ask to res
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How to Make Your Employees Your First Line of Cyber Defense

How to Make Your Employees Your First Line of Cyber Defense

May 01, 2024Security Awareness Training
There's a natural human desire to avoid threatening scenarios. The irony, of course, is if you hope to attain any semblance of security, you've got to remain prepared to confront those very same threats. As a decision-maker for your organization, you know this well. But no matter how many experts or trusted cybersecurity tools your organization has a standing guard, you're only as secure as your weakest link. There's still one group that can inadvertently open the gates to unwanted threat actors—your own people. Security must be second nature for your first line of defense For your organization to thrive, you need capable employees. After all, they're your source for great ideas, innovation, and ingenuity. However, they're also human. And humans are fallible. Hackers understand no one is perfect, and that's precisely what they seek to exploit. This is why your people must become your first line of defense against cyber threats. But to do so, they need to learn how to defend thems
New Banking malware 'i2Ninja' being sold via underground Russian Cybercrime Market

New Banking malware 'i2Ninja' being sold via underground Russian Cybercrime Market

Nov 21, 2013
Researchers at Trusteer   spotted a new banking malware program on the underground Russian cybercrime market , that communicates with attackers over the I2P anonymity network is for sale on underground Russian cybercrime forums. Dubbed ' i2Ninja ', malware has most of the features found in other financial malware including the ability to perform HTML injections and form grabbing in Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome. i2Ninja can also steal FTP and e-mail credentials. It also has a PokerGrabber module feature that targets poker sites. The traffic between the malware and the command server cannot be easily blocked by intrusion prevention systems or firewalls because it's encrypted and transmitting over the Invisible Internet Project (I2P). Everything from delivering configuration updates to receiving stolen data and sending commands is done via the encrypted I2P channels. I2P communication can make it much harder for security researchers to find and take
The Pirate Bay Cofounder 'Gottfrid Svartholm Warg' will be extradited to Denmark

The Pirate Bay Cofounder 'Gottfrid Svartholm Warg' will be extradited to Denmark

Nov 21, 2013
Sweden today has announced the extradition of 30-year-old  The Pirate Bay Cofounder ' Gottfrid Svartholm Warg ' to Denmark where he is wanted for questioning on alleged hacking charges. He was living in Cambodia last year but was later arrested and deported to Sweden. Currently he is serving a one-year sentence in Sweden for hacking into the computer systems of contractors working for the national tax authority. His extradition will take place on 27th November . Along with a 20-year-old Dane, they are accused of hacking into the servers of a Denmark government contractor and stealing police files files between April and August 2012. The motivation for the hacks remains unknown, but the police say it can't be ruled out that changes were made to the records. There are, however, no indications that any of the downloaded files have been exploited. Even, The Pirate Bay may no longer be safe to use. It is no longer in the hands of the original owners. An Anonymous act
Java based Cross platform malware targeting Apache Tomcat servers in the wild

Java based Cross platform malware targeting Apache Tomcat servers in the wild

Nov 21, 2013
Takashi Katsuki, a researcher at Antivirus firm Symantec has discovered a new cyber attack ongoing in the wild, targeting an open-source Web server application server Apache Tomcat with a cross platform Java based backdoor that can be used to attack other machines. The malware, dubbed as " Java.Tomdep " differs from other server malware and is not written in the PHP scripting language. It is basically a Java based backdoor act as Java Servlet that gives Apache Tomcat platforms malicious capabilities. Because Java is a cross platform language, the affected platforms include Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris, and most supported versions of Windows. The malware was detected less than a month ago and so far the number of infected machines appears to be low. You may think that this type of attack only targets personal computers, such as desktops and laptops, but unfortunately that isn't true. Servers can also be attacked. They are quite valuable targets, since they are usu
Github accounts compromised in massive Brute-Force attack using 40,000 IP addresses

Github accounts compromised in massive Brute-Force attack using 40,000 IP addresses

Nov 21, 2013
Popular source code repository service GitHub has recently been hit by a massive Password Brute-Force attack that successfully compromised some accounts,  GitHub has urged users to set up two-factor authentication for their accounts and has already reset passwords for compromised accounts. " We sent an email to users with compromised accounts letting them know what to do ," " Their passwords have been reset and personal access tokens, OAuth authorizations, and SSH keys have all been revoked. "  However, GitHub uses the  bcrypt  algorithm to hash the passwords , which is extremely resilient against brute force attacks because it takes an inordinate amount of time to encrypt each password. In a blog post , GitHub engineer Shawn Davenport said that a brute force attack from around 40,000 IP addresses revealed some commonly used passwords . These addresses were used to slowly brute force weak passwords. In addition to normal strength requirements like length or cha
Two-year-old vulnerability in JBoss Application Servers enables Remote Shell for Hackers

Two-year-old vulnerability in JBoss Application Servers enables Remote Shell for Hackers

Nov 21, 2013
Cyber security of many organizations being attacked at an extremely high rate this month, well another alarming cyber crime report become public today. A widely unpatched and two years old critical vulnerability in JBoss Application Server (AS) that enable an attacker to remotely get a shell on a vulnerable web server. JBoss Application Server is an open-source Java EE-based application server very popular, it was designed by JBoss, now a division of Red Hat. In late 2012, JBoss AS was named as " wildFly ", since disclosure of the exploit code many products running the affected JBoss Application Server have been impacted, including some security software. Tens of thousands of enterprise data center servers are vulnerable to this attack, with at least 500 actively compromised, according to the Imperva report. Many systems administrators have yet to properly configure their servers to mitigate the threat, and the number of potential targets has increased over
Your TV now watching you too! LG Smart TV caught collecting owners' Habits and USB file names

Your TV now watching you too! LG Smart TV caught collecting owners' Habits and USB file names

Nov 20, 2013
Now your TV is also watching you, and is smart enough to spy on you. A UK blogger, developer and Linux enthusiast, known only as  DoctorBeet  has discovered that LG's smart TVs are sending personal information back to the company's servers about what channels you watch and viewing habits. Actually, LG conducts the data collection for its Smart Ad function, which advertisers can use to see when it is best to target their products at the most suitable audience. LG Smart Ad analyses users favorite programs, online behavior, search keywords and other information to offer relevant ads to target audiences. For example, LG Smart Ad can feature sharp suits to men, or alluring cosmetics and fragrances for women. After inspecting the outgoing traffic from his smart TV, DoctorBeet noticed that a unique device ID, along with the TV channel name was being transmitted each time he changed channels. His investigation also indicated that the TVs uploaded information about th
How to protect your computer from CryptoLocker ransomware malware ?

How to protect your computer from CryptoLocker ransomware malware ?

Nov 18, 2013
CryptoLocker is an especially insidious form of Ransomeware malware that was first detected in the wild in September 2013, restricts access to infected computers and requires victims to pay a ransom in order to regain full access. What makes CryptoLocker so bad is the way it encrypts the user data on your hard drive using a strong encryption method. This makes it literally impossible to access your own data without paying the ransom amount to the criminals between $100 and $300 or two  Bitcoins , even now more. Once affected you will be locked out of your computer and unless you pay the ransom amount in 72 hours , the virus will delete the decryption key to decrypt all the files on your PC . The malware lands on PCs the same way other malware does and a few sensible precautions will help minimize the chances of a CrytoLocker attack. Yesterday, we reported that - UK's National Crime Agency has given out an urgent national alert that a mass spamming event target
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