The Hacker News | #1 Trusted Cybersecurity News Site — Index Page

Another popular WordPress plugin by Yoast has been found to be vulnerable to a critical flaw that could be exploited by hackers to hijack the affected website. The critical vulnerability actually resides in the highly popular Google Analytics by Yoast plugin, which allows WordPress admins to monitor website traffic by connecting the plugin to their Google Analytics account. The Google Analytics by Yoast WordPress plugin has been downloaded nearly 7 Million times with more than 1 million active installs, which makes the issue rather more serious. A week back, we reported that all the versions of ' WordPress SEO by Yoast ' was vulnerable to Blind SQL Injection web application vulnerability that allowed an attacker to execute arbitrary payload on the victim WordPress site in order to take control of it. However, the Google Analytics by Yoast plugin is vulnerable to persistent cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability that allows hackers to execute malicious PHP code on the server, whic

If you're currently on a Mac computer and using a Chrome browser then a weird little Apple's OS X quirk, just a special thirteen-characters string could cause your tab in Chrome to crash instantly. A string of 13 characters (appear to be in Assyrian ), shown below in an image, is all needed to crash any tab in Chrome for OS X, however, this text has no impact on Windows, Android, or iOS operating systems. This Chrome crash vulnerability has already been reported by an open-source project Chromium project, which means that Google is likely aware of this troublesome issue. What steps will reproduce the problem? Any page with [ that special character ] will crash the chrome tab on a Mac. Just create any dummy page with the unicode characters, and the Mac Chrome tab will crash hard. What is the expected result? Expect it not to crash What happens instead? It crashes Warning : Do not click on this link , which actually points to the bug report on the Chromiu

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

Drupal , one of the widely used open source content management system is recommending its users to update their software to the latest versions 6.35 and 7.35 after the company discovered two moderately critical vulnerabilities that may allow an attacker to hack Drupal websites. According to a security advisory published yesterday, a flaw found in the Drupal core could allow a potential hacker under certain circumstances to bypass security restrictions by forging the password reset URLs. ACCESS BYPASS / PASSWORD RESET URLs VULNERABILITY Successful exploitation of this Access Bypass vulnerability could leverage the hacker to gain unauthorized access to user accounts without knowing their password. This vulnerability is considered as moderately critical in which an attacker can remotely trick a registered user of Drupal based website, such as an administrator, into launching a maliciously crafted URL in an attempt to take control of the target server. AFFECTED DRUPA

China finally admits it has special cyber warfare units — and a lot of them. From years China has been suspected by U.S. and many other countries for carrying out several high-profile cyber attacks, but every time the country strongly denied the claims. However, for the first time the country has admitted that it does have cyber warfare divisions – several of them, in fact. In the latest updated edition of a PLA publication called The Science of Military Strategy , China finally broke its silence and openly talked about its digital spying and network attack capabilities and clearly stated that it has specialized units devoted to wage war on computer networks. An expert on Chinese military strategy at the Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis, Joe McReynolds told TDB that this is the first time when China has explicit acknowledged that it has secretive cyber-warfare units, on both the military as well as civilian-government sides. CHINESE CYBER WARFARE UNI

Despite anti-skimmer ATM Lobby access control system available in the market, we have seen a number of incidents in recent years where criminals used card skimmers at ATM doors. Few years back, cyber criminals started using card skimmers on the door of the ATM vestibule , where customers have to slide their credit or debit cards to gain access to the ATM. The typical ATM Skimming devices are used by fraudsters capture both magnetic stripe data contained on the back of a debit or credit card as well as the PIN number that is entered by the customer when using the ATM. In recent case discussed by Brian, cyber criminal installed the card skimming device on the ATM Lobby Card Access Control and a pinhole hidden camera pointed at the ATM's keyboard. Basically, it's an ATM skimmer that requires no modification to the ATM. The card skimmer hidden on the ATM door records the debit and credit card information , and the pinhole camera records the PIN number the

If you have enabled automatic Facebook Photo Sync feature on your iPhone, iPad or Android devices, then Beware ! Hackers can steal your personal photographs without your knowledge. In 2012, the social network giant introduced Facebook Photo Sync feature for iPhone, iPad and Android devices which, if opt-in, allows Facebook to automatically sync all your photos saved on your mobile device with your Facebook account. The photos that you have synced from your phone are automatically uploaded in the background to a private Facebook album, which is not visible to any of your Facebook friends or other Facebook users. However, you may can choose then to share photos from the album on your Facebook timeline or send them as a message to a friend. A bug bounty hunter, Laxman Muthiyah , discovered a critical flaw in the Facebook Photo Sync feature and Facebook API that could allow any third-party app to access your personal photos from the hidden Facebook Photo Sync album. It

Evolution -- The largest Deep Web drugs marketplace, disappeared suddenly overnight from the Internet. But unlike Silk Road, there is no indication that the law enforcement took down the Evolution marketplace. The Darknet's most popular markets for drugs and bespoke carjacking services is mysteriously offline Wednesday with rumours circulating over the Internet that its own administrators may have just scammed its huge user base and stole $12 Millions in Bitcoin. The Evolution black marketplace opened in January 2014, and gained popularity after the shutdown of Silk ​Road and arrest of its unassuming founder, Ross U​lbricht , with a promise of less fraud. Like Silk Road , Evolution also dealt in drugs, as well as illegal weapons, counterfeit goods, stolen credit cards and guides to committing fraud. Evolution was only accessible through anonymity Tor network. At the time of its apparent vanish, Evolution was home to nearly 20,000 drug sales, far more than Silk Road

Google has changed the way it managed apps on the Google Play Store . After years of depending on the automated app check process, the company just made some changes to its Play Store policies  that will successfully weed out malicious and undesirable apps from Google Play store. Google has introduced an update for developers and users that's sure to make some parents happy and some developers sad. The new features are — Better App Review Process Age-Based Rating System BETTER APP REVIEW PROCESS The search engine giant announced on Tuesday that it has started employing humans to review apps before they go live on the Google Play Store , a move intended to " better protect the community " and " improve the app catalog ." The new approach would definitely affect app developers, as they'll have to wait for their apps to be approved by Google after they submit them to the Play Store. But, it would keep users safe from harmful malware or offensive content.

An often overlooked feature of log management software is the ability to conduct forensic analysis of historical events. If your network goes down, your network monitoring tool can tell you what happened, but knowing why it happened is even more valuable. SolarWinds Log & Event Manager has cutting-edge IT search for fast and easy forensic analysis. Here are six ways that the forensic analysis feature of Log & Event Manager can help you piece together what really happened. You can download a free, fully functional 30-day trial of Log & Event Manager from here. 1) ID file changes When collecting logs, you're going to see millions of file changes. How do you know which ones to isolate? It's best to isolate file changes against critical files (protected docs, financial information, personal documents, HR records, etc.). Look at file changes from a forensic approach to determine if suspicious activity has occurred. Often times, a virus will affect file attrib

The OpenSSL Foundation is set to release a handful of patches for undisclosed security vulnerabilities in its widely used open source software later this week, including one that has been rated " high " severity. In a mailing list note published last night, Matt Caswell of the OpenSSL Project Team announced that OpenSSL versions 1.0.2a , 1.0.1m , 1.0.0r , and 0.9.8zf will be released Thursday. " These releases will be made available on 19th March ," Caswell wrote. " They will fix a number of security defects. The highest severity defect fixed by these releases is classified as "high" severity. " OpenSSL is an open-source implementation of the SSL and TLS protocols. It's a technology that's widely used by almost every websites to encrypt web sessions, even the Apache web server that powers almost half of the websites over the Internet utilizes OpenSSL. Further details on the mystery security vulnerabilities ( CVE-2015-02

Are you aware of everything that your users are accessing from your environment? While most of the time, non-work-related Internet browsing is harmless (looking at pictures of cats, online shopping, social media, etc.) there are some instances where you could be an unknowing and unwilling participant in criminal activity. That is, when users hide that activity via the Tor network , or the Dark Net . The Onion Router , better known as " Tor ", an open source project, launched in 2002, is designed to allow a user to browse the Internet anonymously via a volunteer network of more than 5000 relays. It doesn't share your identifying information like your IP address and physical location with websites or service providers. A user that navigate Internet using Tor , it's quite difficult to trace its activities ensuring his online privacy. There are arguably legitimate uses for this technology, such as providing Internet access in repressively regulated countri

Yahoo! has offered $24,000 to a security researcher for finding out and reporting three critical security vulnerabilities in its products including Yahoo! Stores and Yahoo!-hosted websites. While testing all the company's application, Mark Litchfield , a bug bounty hunter who often works with different companies, discovered three critical vulnerabilities in Yahoo!'s products. All the three vulnerabilities have now been fixed by Yahoo!. THREE CRITICAL SECURITY VULNERABILITIES The first and most critical vulnerability gives hackers full administrator access to Yahoo!'s e-commerce platform, Yahoo! Small Business , a portal that allows small business owners to create their own web stores through Yahoo! and sell merchandise. According to the researcher, the flaw in the service allowed him to fully administrator any Yahoo store and thereby gain access to customers' personally identifiable information, including names, email addresses, telephone numbers.

Banks have tried every effort, from providing Magnetic Stripes based Credit and Debit Cards to Chip-and-Pin Cards , in order to secure its users from credit card cloning and card Skimmers. It has been known from years that Magnetic stripe are incredibly hackable, but  Chip-n-Pin cards have also been hacked and successfully cloned by a group of security researchers. A unit of Canada's Bank of Montreal, BMO Harris Bank is  launching  the U.S.'s biggest cardless ATM network that allows its customers to withdraw cash within seconds, using nothing but their smartphones. NO CARD, NO PIN, JUST YOUR SMARTPHONE According to the bank, there is no need to enter PIN and instead of swiping the card, customers have to sign into mobile banking app " Mobile Cash ", hold their smartphones over the QR code on the ATM screen and the cash gets delivered. This cardless cash withdrawal technology will boost security, speed up transactions and reduce frauds because no card informat

Does downloading Windows updates from Microsoft's servers and waiting too long really annoy you? It might not be with the arrival of Windows 10 . Microsoft seems to make a major change in Windows 10 to the way it delivers updates for the software. The leaked version of Windows 10 build 10036 (the current version is build 9926) allows you to grab OS updates from Microsoft as well as other computers, whether they're on your local network or on the Internet. Yeah, it's a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) technology Microsoft is going to use in order to deliver both app and operating system updates. Peer-to-Peer , or P2P Technology is usually associated with file sharing services like BitTorrent to download illicit copies of movies and albums, and of course, those endless Linux ISOs you've been downloading. However, Redmond is embracing the technology as an efficient means to deliver software updates to its users around the globe. Peer-to-Peer downloads will be o

Good news for all Android Lollipop-ers! Google appears to be secretly working on a Virtual Private Network (VPN) service, dubbed ' Google VPN '. The news is still not confirmed, but the folks at Pocketables discovered an interesting hidden app called " Google Connectivity Services " under " All Apps " in the app manager, while digging through settings and apps after installing the latest version, Android 5.1 Lollipop on a Nexus 6 phone. After clicking on the created shortcut, the app greeted with a pop-up message that reads,  " Google VPN:  To help protect you on open Wi-Fi networks, your data will be transmitted securely through a Google VPN." The pop-up also has the " learn more " and " got it " options. However, since Google VPN feature is currently not in a functional state, you get redirected to a support page from Google if you click on " learn more " option. But if you click on the "

After the latest Microsoft Patch Tuesday updates that came with important patches for Stuxnet and FREAK encryption-downgrade attack , now its time to update your Adobe Flash Player. Adobe has rolled-out an update for its popular Flash Player software that patches a set of 11 critical security vulnerabilities in its program, most of which potentially allow hackers to remotely execute arbitrary code on vulnerable systems. AFFECTED SOFTWARE All versions prior to the latest version 17.0.0.134 of the Flash Player are affected on Windows and Mac OS X machines. Therefore, Adobe Flash Player installed with Google Chrome, as well as Internet Explorer 10 and 11 on Windows 8 and Windows 8.1, should automatically update to the newest version 17.0.0.134. In addition, Adobe Flash Player 11.2.202.442 for Linux and Flash Player Extended Support Release 13.0.0.269 for Windows and Mac OS X are also affected by the vulnerabilities. So, users of Flash Player on Linux should update

Can Hackers turn a remote computer into a bomb and explode it to kill someone, just like they do in hacker movies? Wait, wait! Before answering that, Let me tell you an interesting story about Killer USB drive: A man walking in the subway stole a USB flash drive from the outer pocket of someone else's bag. The pendrive had "128" written on it. After coming home, he inserted the pendrive into his laptop and instead discovering any useful data, he burnt half of his laptop down. The man then took out the USB pendrive, replaced the text "128" with "129" and put it in the outer pocket of his bag… Amen! I'm sure, you would really not imagine yourself being the 130th victim of this Killer perdrive, neither I. This above story was told to a Russian researcher, nicknamed Dark Purple, who found the concept very interesting and developed his own computer-frying USB Killer pendrive. He is working with electronic manufacturing company from where

It has been known from year 2013 that commands we have been whispering to Siri are being stored on Apple servers for up to two years for analysis, but this news might be the most shocking development yet. Apple admits that its Siri — an intelligent personal assistant for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch devices — is collecting and also transmitting users voice data to 3rd party companies, which was disclosed in an unsurprising revelation two weeks back on Reddit. FallenMyst , a Reddit user claimed to had recently started a new job with a company called Walk N' Talk Technologies, where job profile requires her to listen voice data collected from Apple, Microsoft users and check for incorrect interpretations. " I get to listen to sound bites [sic] and rate how the text matches up with what is said in an audio clip and give feedback on what should be improved. " Fallenmyst wrote. " Guys, I'm telling you, if you've said it to your phone, it's been recorded…and