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Remember Killer USB stick ? A proof-of-concept USB prototype that was designed by a Russian researcher, Dark Purple, last year, to effectively destroy sensitive components of a computer when plugged in. Now, someone has actually created the Killer USB stick that destroys almost anything – such as Laptops, PCs, or televisions – it is plugged into. A Hong Kong-based technology manufacturer is selling a USB thumb drive called USB Kill 2.0 that can fry any unauthorized computer it's plugged into by introducing a power surge via the USB port. It costs $49.95 . How does USB Kill 2.0 work? As the company explains, when plugged in, the USB Kill 2.0 stick rapidly charges its capacitors via the USB power supply, and then discharges – all in a matter of seconds. The USB stick discharges 200 volts DC power over the data lines of the host machine and this charge-and-discharge cycle is repeated several numbers of times in just one second, until the USB Kill stick is removed. &

Although over three months remaining, Google has planned a New Year gift for the Internet users, who're concerned about their privacy and security. Starting in January of 2017, the world's most popular web browser Chrome will begin labeling HTTP sites that transmit passwords or ask for credit card details as " Not Secure " — the first step in Google's plan to discourage the use of sites that don't use encryption. The change will take effect with the release of Chrome 56 in January 2017 and affect certain unsecured web pages that feature entry fields for sensitive data, like passwords and payment card numbers, according to a post today on the Google Security Blog . Unencrypted HTTP has been considered dangerous particularly for login pages and payment forms, as it could allow a man-in-the-middle attacker to intercept passwords, login session, cookies and credit card data as they travel across the network. In the following release, Chrome will flag

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

US authorities have arrested two North Carolina men on charges that they were part of the notorious hacking group " Crackas With Attitude ." Crackas with Attitude is the group of hackers who allegedly was behind a series of audacious and embarrassing hacks that targeted personal email accounts of senior officials at the CIA, FBI, the White House, Homeland Security Department, and other US federal agencies. Andrew Otto Boggs, 22, of North Wilkesboro, N.C., who allegedly used the handle " INCURSIO ," and Justin Gray Liverman, 24, of Morehead City, who known online as " D3F4ULT ," were arrested on Thursday morning on charges related to their alleged roles in the computer hacking, according to a press release by Department of Justice. A 16-year-old British teenager suspected of being part of the group was arrested in February by the FBI and British police. Although court documents did not name the victims, the hacking group had allegedly: Hacked

Unlike specially crafted malware specifically developed to take advantage of Windows operating system platform, cyber attackers have started creating cross-platform malware for wider exploitation. Due to the rise in popularity of Mac OS X and other Windows desktop alternatives, hackers have begun designing cross-platform malware modularly for wide distribution. Cross-platform malware is loaded with specialized payloads and components, allowing it to run on multiple platforms. One such malware family has recently been discovered by researchers at Kaspersky Lab, which run on all the key operating systems, including Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. Stefan Ortloff, a researcher from Kaspersky Lab's Global Research and Analysis Team, first discovered the Linux and Windows variants of this family of cross-platform backdoor, dubbed Mokes , in January this year. Now, the researcher today confirmed the existence of an OS X variant of this malware family, explaining a technical breakd

A Security researcher has discovered a unique attack method that can be used to steal credentials from a locked computer ( but, logged-in ) and works on both Windows as well as Mac OS X systems. In his blog post published today, security expert Rob Fuller demonstrated and explained how to exploit a USB SoC-based device to turn it into a credential-sniffer that works even on a locked computer or laptop. Fuller modified the firmware code of USB dongle in such a way that when it is plugged into an Ethernet adapter, the plug-and-play USB device installs and acts itself as the network gateway, DNS server, and Web Proxy Auto-discovery Protocol (WPAD) server for the victim's machine. The attack is possible because most PCs automatically install Plug-and-Play USB devices, meaning "even if a system is locked out, the device [dongle] still gets installed," Fuller explains in his blog post . "Now, I believe there are restrictions on what types of devices are allowed to