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Security researchers have discovered a massive security flaw that could let hackers and cybercriminals listen to private phone calls and read text messages on a potentially vast scale – no matter if the cellular networks use the latest and most advanced encryption available. The critical flaw lies in the global telecom network known as Signal System 7 that powers multiple phone carriers across the world, including AT&T and Verizon , to route calls, texts and other services to each other. The vulnerability has been discovered by the German researchers who will present their findings at a hacker conference in Hamburg later this month. "Experts say it's increasingly clear that SS7, first designed in the 1980s, is riddled with serious vulnerabilities that undermine the privacy of the world's billions of cellular customers," said The Washington Post, which first uncovered flaws in the system earlier this year. NUMBER OF SECURITY FLAWS IN SS7 SS7 or

More than 12 million routers in homes and businesses around the world are vulnerable to a critical software bug that can be exploited by hackers to remotely monitor users' traffic and take administrative control over the devices, from a variety of different manufacturers. The critical vulnerability actually resides in web server " RomPager " made by a company known as AllegroSoft , which is typically embedded into the firmware of router , modems and other " gateway devices " from about every leading manufacturer. The HTTP server provides the web-based user-friendly interface for configuring the products. Researchers at the security software company Check Point have discovered that the RomPager versions prior to 4.34 — software more than 10 years old — are vulnerable to a critical bug, dubbed as Misfortune Cookie . The flaw named as Misfortune Cookie because it allows attackers to control the "fortune" of an HTTP request by manipulating cook

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

Developers running the open source Git code-repository software and tools, like GitHub, on Mac OS X and Windows computers are highly being recommended to install a security update that patches a major security vulnerability in Git clients that leverages an attacker to hijack end-user computers. The critical Git vulnerability affects all versions of the official Git client and all the related software that interacts with Git repositories, including GitHub for Windows and Mac OS X, according to a GitHub advisory published Thursday. HOW GIT BUG WORKS The vulnerability allows an attacker to execute remote code on a client's computer when the client software accesses Git repositories. The GitHub engineering team gave a detailed explanation on how attackers might exploit the vulnerability: "An attacker can craft a malicious Git tree that will cause Git to overwrite its own .git/config file when cloning or checking out a repository, leading to arbitrary command execution

Back in june this year, Google announced an alpha Google Chrome extension called " End-to-End " for sending and receiving emails securely, in wake of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden's revelations about the global surveillance conducted by the government law-enforcements. Finally, the company has announced that it made the source code for its End-to-End Chrome extension open source via GitHub . Google is developing a user-friendly tool for individuals to implement the tough encryption standard known as Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) in an attempt to fully encrypt people's Gmail messages that can't even be read by Google itself, nor anyone else other than the users exchanging the emails. PGP is an open source end-to-end encryption standard for almost 20 years, used to encrypt e-mail over the Internet providing cryptographic privacy and authentication for data communication, which makes it very difficult to break. But implementing PGP is too complicated for m

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has been hacked by unknown attackers that allowed them to gain administrative access to some of the organization's systems, the organization confirmed. The attackers used " spear phishing " campaign to target sensitive systems operated by ICANN and sent spoofed emails disguised as internal ICANN communications to its staff members. The link in the emails took the staff to bogus login page, where they provided their usernames and passwords with the keys to their work email accounts. The data breach began in late November 2014 and was discovered a week later, ICANN, which oversees the Internet's address system, said in a release published Tuesday. ICANN is the organization that manages the global top-level domain system. " We believe a 'spear phishing' attack was initiated in late November 2014 ," Tuesday's press release stated. " It involved email messages that we

Chinese smartphone manufacturers have been criticized many times for suspected backdoors in its products, the popular Chinese smartphone brands, Xiaomi and Star N9500 smartphones are the top examples. Now, the China's third-largest mobile and world's sixth-largest phone manufacturer 'Coolpad' , has joined the list. Millions of Android smartphones sold by Chinese smartphone maker Coolpad Group Ltd. may contain an extensive "backdoor" from its manufacturer that is being able to track users, push unwanted pop-up advertisements and install unauthorized apps onto users' phones without their knowledge, alleged a U.S. security firm. OVER 10 MILLION USERS AT RISK Researchers from Silicon Valley online security firm Palo Alto Networks discovered the backdoor, dubbed " CoolReaper ," pre-installed on two dozens of Coolpad Android handset models, including high-end devices, sold exclusively in China and Taiwan. The backdoor can let attacke

An online "hacktivist" group that calls itself Anonymous has claimed responsibility for hacking into email accounts of Swedish government in response to the seizure of world renowned The Pirate Bay website and server by Swedish police last week. Apart from Sweden government officials, the Anonymous hacktivist group also claimed to have hacked into the government email accounts of Israel, India, Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico, and revealed their email addresses with passwords in plain-text. The Anonymous group also left a message at the end of the leak: " Warning: Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year to all!! Bye :* " The hack was announced by Anonymous group on their official Twitter account. The tweet also shared a link of Pastebin where leaked data has been dumped with the list of the emails. The tweet reads: " BREAKING: Emails from Swedish government were hacked in retaliation for the seizure of servers of The Pirate Bay https://pastebin.c

Credit card frauds are very common these days – today a data breach occurs in retailer's shop, online shopping site or banking site and at the next moment millions of cards appears in the underground black market – how simple is that for cyber criminals nowadays. But imagine if there is no possible way to hack credit cards and ID cards. Seems like next to impossible, but quantum cryptography ensures that stealing people's personal data will soon be very difficult for hackers and cyber thieves due to an extra layer of verification. SECURE FRAUD-PROOF CREDIT CARDS The research at the University of Twente in Enschede, Netherlands has suggested that " fraud-proof " credit cards are possible to develop using Quantum Physics that will protect users' financial and personal information from hackers. Security researchers describe this extra layer of verification as Quantum-Secure Authentication (QSA) of a " classical multiple-scattering key ." With the

The massive hacking attack against Sony Pictures Entertainment has yet exposed about 200 gigabytes of confidential data belonging to the company from upcoming movie scripts to sensitive employees data, celebrities phone numbers and their travel aliases, and also the high-quality versions of five newest films , marking it as the most severe hack in the History. Now, the so-called "Guardians of Peace" (GoP) group who promised to release a big "Christmas gift" for Sony Pictures posted an eighth batch of documents to the Internet on Tuesday of what everyone in Hollywood has been waiting for — Thousands of personal emails stolen from Sony Pictures co-Chairman and CEO Michael Lynton . The personal emails released just one day after Michael Lynton convened a town-hall meeting for Sony employees in the wake of the company's widespread data breach and proclaimed, "Our business has a strong foundation… This won't take us down." Along with Linto

The year is about to end, but serious threats like  Shellshock is " far from over ". Cyber criminals are actively exploiting this critical GNU Bash vulnerability to target those network attached storage devices that are still not patched and ready for exploitation. Security researchers have unearthed a malicious worm that is designed to plant backdoors on network-attached storage (NAS) systems made by Taiwan-based QNAP and gain full access to the contents of those devices. The worm is spread among QNAP devices, which run an embedded Linux operating system, by the exploitation of the GNU Bash vulnerability known as ShellShock or Bash, according to security researchers at the Sans Institute. QNAP vendor released a patch in early October to address the flaw in its Turbo NAS product, but because the patches are not automatic or easy to apply for many users, so a statistically significant portion of systems remain vulnerable and exposed to the Bash bug . Sh

Google is ready to give New Year gift to the Internet users, who are concerned about their privacy and security. The Chromium Project's security team has marked all HTTP web pages as insecure and is planning to explicitly and actively inform users that HTTP connections provide no data security protections. There are also projects like Let's Encrypt , launched by the non-profit foundation EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) in collaboration with big and reputed companies including Mozilla, Cisco, and Akamai to offer free HTTPS/SSL certificates for those running servers on the Internet at the beginning of 2015. This is not the first time when Google is taking initiative to encourage website owners to switch to HTTPS by default. Few months ago, the web Internet giant also made changes in its search engine algorithm in an effort to give a slight ranking boost to the websites that use encrypted HTTPS connections. "We, the Chrome Security Team, propose that

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" Hacking " is not just popular among cyber security experts and criminals, but also is a great interest for movies industries as well. Hollywood movies such as 1995 released Hackers and 2001 released Swordfish are examples of it, and now Chris Hemsworth 's new flick Blackhat . Blackhat – An upcoming cyber thriller, directed and co-written by Michael Mann ( who also directed Tom Cruise' Collateral ), in which actor Chris Hemsworth trades brawn for brains to save the world. The latest trailer for Blackhat has arrived online, and you can watch it below. Hemsworth's character in the upcoming cyber thriller is a former Blackhat hacker, named Nicholas Hathaway , who is serving a 15-year sentence for cyber crimes. He was recruited straight from prison by a mixed team of American and Chinese law enforcement officials to stop high-level cybercrime network from Chicago to Los Angeles to Hong Kong to Jakarta and save the world from global hackers. Hathaway a

The users of WordPress , a free and open source blogging tool as well as content management system (CMS), are being informed of a widespread malware attack campaign that has already compromised more than 100,000 websites worldwide and still counting. The news broke throughout the WordPress community earlier Sunday morning when Google blacklisted over 11,000 domains due to the latest malware campaign , that has been brought by SoakSoak.ru , thus being dubbed the ' SoakSoak Malware ' epidemic. While there are more than 70 million websites on the Internet currently running WordPress, so this malware campaign could be a great threat to those running their websites on WordPress. Once infected, you may experience irregular website behavior including unexpected redirects to SoakSoak.ru web pages. You may also end up downloading malicious files onto your computer systems automatically without any knowledge. The search engine giant has already been on top of this infection a

British government surveillance agency GCHQ – counterpart of NSA – has fired-up another debate over the Internet by launching Android application to encourage teenagers to tackle emerging cybersecurity threats. The newly launched Android app , dubbed " Cryptoy ", was developed by STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) students on an industrial year placement at GCHQ. The Cryptoy app was highly appreciated and liked by GCHQ at the Cheltenham Science Festival that they made it available to download today. The app is designed mainly to tempt youngsters between the ages of 14 and 16 into trying their hand in cryptography and code-breaking, but can be used by anyone interested in cryptography. According to GCHQ , Cryptoy app will help users to understand basic encryption methods, teach the codes of the past, and create their own encrypted messages. The app allows users to share these encoded messages by using four code-breaking techniques – Shift, Subs

Alibaba Group has patched a major security vulnerability in one of its e-commerce portals that exposed account details of tens of millions of Merchants and shoppers to cyber criminals. An Israeli application security firm, AppSec Labs, found a Cross site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in AliExpress, the company's English language e-commerce site that was found vulnerable to similar flaw a week ago that compromised personal information of Alibaba customers. The flaw was fixed shortly after Cybermoon security firm disclosed it to Alibaba. AliExpress is an online marketplace owned by Chinese E-Commerce giant Alibaba.com, also known as Google of China. The company serves more than 300 Million active users from more than 200 countries including the U.S., Russia and Brazil. But the critical vulnerability found by the researcher could allow an attacker to hijack merchant's account. Using AliExpress XSS vulnerability an attacker can inject any malicious payload script as value

Sony Pictures Entertainment hack that started at the end of the last month and so far has caused a severe damage to its reputation as well as resources, from internal system shutdown to upcoming movies and scripts leak. Now, a similar cyber attack against Casino operator Las Vegas Sands Corp has been revealed that occurred on February 2014. The cyber attack occurred on this year's February but the details of damages to the casino was not publicized until Bloomberg Businessweek exposed it in a story on Thursday. Hackers crippled thousands of servers and computers across the network of the giant Las Vegas Sands Corp. by wiping them with highly destructive malware. The hack attack was believed to be in response to the statement given by the chief executive officer and largest shareholder of Las Vegas Sands Corp., Sheldon Adelson . On October 2013, the billionaire made a statement at the Manhattan campus of Yeshiva University that Iran should be bombed to get the country to

We are living in an era of smart devices that we sync with our smartphones and make our lives very simple and easy, but these smart devices that inter-operates with our phones could leave our important and personal data wide open to hackers and cybercriminals. Security researchers have demonstrated that the data sent between a Smartwatch and an Android smartphone is not too secure and could be a subject to brute force hacks by attackers to intercept and decode users' data, including everything from text messages to Google Hangout chats and Facebook conversations. Well this happens because the bluetooth communication between most Smartwatches and Android devices rely on a six-digit PIN code in order to transfer information between them in a secure manner. Six-digit Pin means approx one million possible keys, which can be easily brute-forced by attackers into exposing entire conversations in plain text. Researchers from the Romania-based security firm Bitdefender ca