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A wave of excitement in The Pirate Bay lovers. After almost two months of untimely and unexpected outage, the infamous torrent-indexing website The Pirate Bay (TPB) made a defiant return on Saturday. The Pirate Bay — a widely popular file-sharing website predominantly used to share copyrighted material free of charge — went dark from the Internet following a raid in Sweden late last year. In response to a complaint from Swedish anti-piracy group Rights Alliance, the police raided The Pirate Bay's server room in Stockholm and seized several servers and other equipment. Though, its almost impossible to keep The Pirate Bay offline for too long, last took down was the longest outage the torrenting site has ever experienced. The site is back one day early based on the countdown timer that was running on the official domain of TPB, i.e. thepiratebay.se . Anyone visiting thepiratebay.se domain today will be welcomed with a functioning site. People are already uploading and downloa

WhatsApp is again in news but this time not for any security holes, but for its all new and, of course, much-awaited Free Voice Calling feature — similar to other instant messaging apps like Skype and Viber allow users to make voice calls using Internet. After launching its much-awaited Web client (dubbed WhatsApp Web ) to Android users, the most popular mobile messaging application WhatsApp has started rolling out the promised free voice calling feature, and this time again to Android users first. Late last night, some screenshots of WhatsApp's new voice calling feature appeared on Reddit. Reportedly, this new feature will allow WhatsApp users to make free voice calls to their online pals by simply tapping your phone icon to call their WhatsApp friends. The report broke when a Reddit user ( pradnesh07 ) received a WhatsApp call from a friend, and this is how the feature get activated. The free voice calling feature, for now, seems to be invite-only. So, if you still have to

It comes as no surprise that today's cyber threats are orders of magnitude more complex than those of the past. And the ever-evolving tactics that attackers use demand the adoption of better, more holistic and consolidated ways to meet this non-stop challenge. Security teams constantly look for ways to reduce risk while improving security posture, but many approaches offer piecemeal solutions – zeroing in on one particular element of the evolving threat landscape challenge – missing the forest for the trees.  In the last few years, Exposure Management has become known as a comprehensive way of reigning in the chaos, giving organizations a true fighting chance to reduce risk and improve posture. In this article I'll cover what Exposure Management is, how it stacks up against some alternative approaches and why building an Exposure Management program should be on  your 2024 to-do list. What is Exposure Management?  Exposure Management is the systematic identification, evaluation,

Facebook users just Beware!! Don't click any porn links on Facebook. Foremost reason is that you have thousands of good porn sites out there, but there's an extra good reason right now. Rogue pornography links on the world's most popular social network have reportedly infected over 110,000 Facebook users with a malware Trojan in just two days and it is still on the rise, a security researcher warned Friday. The Facebook malware disguised as a Flash Player update and spreads itself by posting links to a pornographic video from the Facebook accounts of previously infected users. The malware generally tags as many as 20 friends of the infected user . "In the new technique, which we call it ' Magnet ,' the malware gets more visibility to potential victims by tagging the friends of the victim in the malicious post," said Mohammad Faghani, a senior consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers, in a mailing list post to the Full Disclosure infosec hangout.  "A tag may

After the disclosure of extremely critical GHOST vulnerability in the GNU C library (glibc) — a widely used component of most Linux distributions, security researchers have discovered that PHP applications, including the WordPress Content Management System (CMS), could also be affected by the bug. " GHOST " is a serious vulnerability ( CVE-2015-0235 ), announced this week by the researchers of California-based security firm Qualys, that involves a heap-based buffer overflow in the glibc function name - "GetHOSTbyname()." Researchers said the vulnerability has been present in the glibc code since 2000. Though the major Linux distributors such as Red Hat , Debian and Ubuntu , have already updated their software against the flaw, GHOST could be used by hackers against only a handful of applications currently to remotely run executable code and silently gain control of a Linux server. As we explained in our previous article, heap-based buffer overflow was found

Last week, the most popular mobile messaging application WhatsApp finally arrived on the web — dubbed WhatsApp Web , but unfortunately it needs some improvements in its web version. An independent 17-year-old security researcher Indrajeet Bhuyan reported two security holes in the WhatsApp web client that in some way exposes its users' privacy. Bhuyan called the first hole, WhatsApp photo privacy bug and the other WhatsApp Web Photo Sync Bug. Bhuyan is the same security researcher who reported us the vulnerability in the widely popular mobile messaging app which allowed anyone to remotely crash WhatsApp by sending a specially crafted message of just 2kb in size, resulting in the loss of conversations. Whatsapp Photo Privacy Bug According to him, the new version of WhatsApp Web allows us to view a user's profile image even if we are not on the contact list of that user. Even if the user has set the profile image privacy setting to " Contacts Only ," the pro

Back in November, Mozilla teamed-up with Tor Project under a new initiative called Polaris , in order to help reduce finite number of Tor connections occurring at the same time by adding high-capacity Tor middle relays to the Tor network , and now the company is ready with its first Tor Middle relays. The Firefox maker has given the Tor network a high-capacity middle relays with the launch of 12 relays , all located in the United States, that will help distribute user traffic; the Tor browser is a great way to keep prying eyes from tracking you. Mozilla is one of the most trusted companies on the internet, particularly when it comes to user privacy. The partnership of Mozilla and Tor aimed at providing more privacy features to Firefox browser, and increased Tor network support. The Polaris Privacy Initiative was an effort of Mozilla, the Tor Project and the Center of Democracy and Technology — an advocacy group for digital rights, in order to help build more privacy

The makers of ultra secure BlackPhone titled by Silent Circle as, " world's first Smartphone which places privacy and control directly in the hands of its users ," have recently fixed a critical vulnerability in the instant messaging application that allows hackers to run malicious code on the handsets. BlackPhone was also hacked last year at the BlackHat security conference , but the interesting factor about the recent hack was that the attackers only needed to send just a message on a targeted phone number in order to compromise the device. The vulnerability was first discovered and disclosed by Mark Dowd , a principal security researcher at the Australia-based consultancy firm Azimuth Security. Dowd discovered the issue late in 2014, but waited to disclose it until Blackphone got their patches and fixes in place. The flaw actually resides in Silent Text application — the secure text messaging application bundled with the BlackPhone handsets, which is al

​Researchers have uncovered a new evidence that a powerful computer program discovered last year, called " Regin ", is "identical in functionality" to a piece of malware used by the National Security Agency  (NSA) and its Five Eyes allies . REGIN MALWARE "Regin" is a highly advanced, sophisticated piece of malware the researchers believe was developed by nation state to spy on a wide-range of international targets including governments, infrastructure operators and other high-profile individuals since at least 2008. Regin was first discovered in November 2014 by the researchers at antivirus software maker Symantec and was said to be more sophisticated than both Stuxnet and Duqu . The malware alleged to have been used against targets in Algeria, Afghanistan, Belgium, Brazil, Fiji, Germany, Iran, India, Indonesia, Kiribati, Malaysia, Pakistan, Russia and Syria, among others. The recent evidence comes from the journalists at Der Spiege

A highly critical vulnerability has been unearthed in the GNU C Library (glibc) , a widely used component of most Linux distributions, that could allow attackers to execute malicious code on servers and remotely gain control of Linux machines. The vulnerability, dubbed " GHOST " and assigned CVE-2015-0235 , was discovered and disclosed by the security researchers from Redwood Shores, California-based security firm Qualys on Tuesday. CRITICAL AS HEARTBLEED AND SHELLSHOCK GHOST is considered to be critical because hackers could exploit it to silently gain complete control of a targeted Linux system without having any prior knowledge of system credentials (i.e. administrative passwords). Also Read:  Top Best Password Managers . The flaw represents an immense Internet threat, in some ways similar to the Heartbleed ,   Shellshock   and Poodle   bugs that came to light last year. WHY GHOST ? The vulnerability in the GNU C Library (glibc) is dubbed GHOST b

The very popular Pop star Taylor Swift became the latest celebrity to have their social media accounts hacked on Tuesday. The 25-year-old " Shake It Off " singer, who has the fourth-most popular Twitter account with 51.4 million followers, appeared to be asking her millions of followers to follow @veriuser and @lizzard. Swift confirmed that her Twitter and Instagram accounts were hacked on Tuesday afternoon, and also that the rogue posts were quickly removed from the social media websites. " My Twitter got hacked but don't worry, Twitter is deleting the hacker tweets and locking my account until they can figure out how this happened and get me new passwords ," said a statement posted on Swift's personal Tumblr page. The accounts were taken for just 15 minutes, but when it belongs to Taylor Swift, that makes it a big hit. At the time, a Tweet went out from @TaylorSwift13 to her millions of fans, saying, " go follow my boy, @lizzard :) " Yes Li

Apple has rolled out iOS 8.1.3 for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad devices, after weeks of extensive testing. The iOS 8.1.3 update contains bug fixes, stability enhancements and performance improvements. Among the new features, it reduces the amount of storage space required to perform a software update. The update can be downloaded by going to Settings > General > Software Update . The download size of iOS 8.1.3 is 246MB . Apple users with 8GB and 16GB devices will definitely appreciate the reduced storage requirements for updating to iOS 8. In addition to bug fixes, iOS 8.1.3 also includes a number of security improvements which can be viewed in detail on Apple's security page for the update. Apple is also preparing to release OS X Yosemite 10.10.2 beta update , which contains a patch for the Thunderstrike vulnerability that allows malware to be injected into Macs via the Thunderbolt port.

Apple is preparing to release the second update to OS X Yosemite in the coming days to its customers. The upcoming beta update OS X Yosemite 10.10.2 contains a patch for the Thunderstrike vulnerability that allows malware to be injected into Macs via the Thunderbolt port. Earlier this month, Reverse engineer Trammell Hudson revealed technical details and proof-of-concept of Thunderstrike attack . Thunderstrike, an undetectable bootkit, works by injecting an Option ROM into a Mac's EFI. It is possible because hardware attached to a system through Thunderbolt port are not as secure as a Mac itself. Once installed using Thunderstrike attack, the malware would be almost impossible to detect and remove. Because the firmware used on Macs doesn't always apply to the security of attached hardware. So "Apple had to change the code to not only prevent the Mac's boot ROM from being replaced, but also to prevent it from being rolled back to a state where the at

With the rise in technology, the need of ultrafast quantum computer has also increased that can work on huge numbers and calculations at the same time. Quantum technology has long been a scientific dream, but now it is a step closer to becoming a reality after a team of scientists has figured out a way for a standard silicon chip to tackle quantum entanglement. Entanglement — a phenomenon in which multiple particles are connected to each other and act in uniform no matter their distance apart — is the key ingredient that promises to make ultrafast quantum computers and secure communications ( encryption ) far more powerful than conventional computing devices. The new research, detailed in The Optical Society's (OSA's) new high-impact journal Optica, describes how a multinational collaboration of boffins, for the first time, have created a new Micro-Ring Resonator that can generate a continuous supply of entangled photons; photons are essentially the particles that mak

Security researchers from Core Security has reportedly found a Denial of Service ( DoS ) attack vulnerability in Android WiFi-Direct. Android's WiFi-Direct is a wireless technology that allows two devices to establish a direct, peer-to-peer Wi-Fi connection without requiring a wireless router. Smartphones have been able to support Wi-Fi Direct for a while now. According to the advisory , the remotely exploitable denial-of-service vulnerability is affecting a wide number of Android mobile devices when it scans for WiFi Direct devices. If exploited, the vulnerability would let an attacker force a reboot of a device. " An attacker could send a specially crafted 802.11 Probe Response frame causing the Dalvik subsystem to reboot because of an Unhandle Exception on WiFiMonitor class ," advisory states. The Android WiFi-Direct vulnerability (CVE-2014-0997) affects: Nexus 5 - Android 4.4.4 Nexus 4 - Android 4.4.4 LG D806 - Android 4.2.2 Samsung SM-T310 - Android

The use of small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) called Drones is rapidly transforming the way we go to war. Drones were once used for land surveillance, Delivering Pizza's, then equipped with bombs that changed the way nations conduct war and last year, these hovering drones were also used to hack Smartphones. Recently, a security researcher has found a backdoor in the Parrot AR Drones manufactured by a French-based company, that could allow a malicious hacker to remotely hijacked the radio controlled flying quadcopter helicopter. The Parrot AR Drone, revealed at the International CES 2010 in Las Vegas, is a quadricopter helicopter which you can control with your smartphone or tablet. It features two built-in cameras, is easy to fly, and can be controlled without too much danger of it flipping over or smashing into things. FIRST EVER MALWARE FOR DRONES Security researcher, Rahul Sasi claimed to have developed the first ever backdoor malware for AR drone ARM L

The Pirate Bay — an infamous Torrent website predominantly used to share copyrighted material free of charge — could be relaunched on 1st February, the date the website has long been expected to return. The website went dark from the Internet following a raid in Sweden last month. After a complaint was filed by a group called the Rights Alliance, Swedish Police officers raided The Pirate Bay's server room in Stockholm and seized several servers and other equipment. Last month's raid comes almost a month after the arrest of Fredrik Neij, the third and final founder of The Pirate Bay, at the border between Laos and Thailand on November 3. He was convicted by Swedish courts for sharing copyrighted material more than five years ago. The Pirate Bay homepage is displaying a logo of Phoenix once again with a timer counting down to 1 February. The search box and categories are back under the flag, but are not active yet. At the bottom of the page, a pirate ship sails tow

A database containing details of more than 20 Million users of a Russian-based online dating website has been allegedly stolen by a hacker and made publicly available for sale through an online forum. A hacker using the online alias " Mastermind " on an online forum used by cybercriminals claims the responsibility of the hack into an unnamed online dating website, according to recent reports. The leaked credentials are claimed to be 100% valid in a posting to a paste site, and Daniel Ingevaldson, chief technology officer of Easy Solution, said that the list included email addresses from Hotmail, Yahoo and Gmail. " The list appears to be international in nature with hundreds of domains listed from all over the world ," Ingevaldson said in a blog post on Sunday. " Hackers and fraudsters are likely to leverage stolen credentials to commit fraud not on the original hacked site, but to use them to exploit password re-use to automatically scan and c

Bad news for AT&T customers! You all are vulnerable to phishing scams – thanks to AT&T's text protocols. The actual problem lies in the way AT&T handles its customer alerts via text messages, as it's very easy for cybercriminals to mimic. In "Phishing" attacks , scammers attempt to trick victims into revealing their personal and financial information by sending email or text messages that appear to be from legitimate companies. Instead of emails, here hackers have targeted AT&T users with the text messages. According to Dani Grant , the computer programmer who discovered the flaw and reported to the company, AT&T is making use of plethora for short codes, due to which its customers unable to distinguish between the legitimate and phishing messages . The second issue is that some of AT&T's real links directs its users to att.com while others take you to dl.mymobilelocate.com. " Another problem is that AT&T directs cu

Ready to patch your Adobe Flash software now. Adobe has patched one after one two zero-day vulnerabilities in its Adobe Flash that are being actively exploited by the cyber criminals. PATCH FOR FIRST ZERO-DAY On Thursday, the company released an emergency update for one of the critical vulnerabilities in Flash Player. However, the flaw was not the one that security researcher Kafeine reported. Adobe focused on another zero-day, identified as CVE-2015-0310 , that was also exploited by Angler malicious toolkit. PATCH FOR SECOND ZERO-DAY Today, Adobe released an updated version of its Flash player software that patches a zero-day vulnerability , tracked as CVE-2015-0311, spotted by French security researcher Kafeine at the beginning of the week. The vulnerability is " being actively exploited in the wild via drive-by-download attacks against systems running Internet Explorer and Firefox on Windows 8.1 and below, " Adobe said in a security advisory . The com

We are all aware of the mass surveillance conducted by the government agencies on us. From our phone calls, emails to web activities, chats and social network activities, everything has been interrupted by the law enforcements. And now they have crossed every limits by using a new way to spy on you. Guess What? Dozens of US law enforcement agencies are quietly taking advantage of the technology that allows them to effectively "see" through walls of buildings to monitor people's activity . This has once again raised privacy questions. Privacy has become just a word as there's nothing private left, not even our homes. According to a recent report from USA Today , over 50 law enforcement agencies, including Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and U.S. Marshals, have secretly been using the new radars for the past two years, but it came to light just last month during a court hearing in Denver . The device, dubbed Range-R , sends out radio waves that can d