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Ransomware threat has risen exponentially so much that ransomware authors have started abusing the MBR in their attacks to lock down your entire computer instead of just encrypting your important files on hard drive. Talos team at Cisco Systems has released a free, open-source tool that protects the master boot record (MBR) sector of computers from modification by bootkits, ransomware, and other malicious attacks. Master Boot Record (MBR) is the first sector (512 bytes) on your Hard drive that stores the bootloader, a piece of code that is responsible for booting the current Operating System. Technically, Bootloader is first code that gets executed after system BIOS that tells your computer what to do when it start. An advanced malware program, such as rootkit and bootkit, leverages this process to infect computers by modifying the MBR. A boot malware or bootkits has the ability to install ransomware or other malicious software into your Windows kernel, which is almost i

India is undergoing the biggest data breaches to date with as many as 3.2 Million debit card details reportedly stolen from multiple banks and financial platforms. The massive financial breach has hit India's biggest banks including State Bank of India (SBI), HDFC Bank, Yes Bank, ICICI Bank and Axis, and customers are advised to change their ATM PIN immediately. Hackers allegedly used malware to compromise the Hitachi Payment Services platform — which is used to power country's ATM, point-of-sale (PoS) machines and other financial transactions — and stole details of 3.2 Million debit cards, reports The Economic Times. Of 3.2 Million debit cards, 2.6 Million are powered by Visa or Mastercard and rest 600,000 work on top of India's own RuPay platform. Hacked Debit Cards Reportedly Used in China It is not yet clear who is behind the cyber attack, but the report adds that a number of affected customers have observed unauthorized transactions made by their cards in v

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

The alleged Russian hacker arrested by the FBI in collaboration with the Czech police is none other than the hacker who was allegedly responsible for massive 2012 data breach at LinkedIn , which affected nearly 117 Million user accounts. Yevgeniy N , 29-year-old Russian hacker was arrested in Prague on October 5 suspected of participating in conducting cyber-attacks against the United States, according to Reuters . Earlier it was suspected that the hacker could be involved in hacking against the  Democratic National Committee  (DNC), or its presidential candidate Hillary Clinton , intended to influence the presidential election. However, the latest statement released by LinkedIn suggests that the arrest was related to a 2012 data breach at the social network that exposed emails and hashed password of nearly 117 Million users. "We are thankful for the hard work and dedication of the FBI in its efforts to locate and capture the parties believed to be responsible for this

UPDATE — It Turns out that the Russian Hacker arrested by the FBI is responsible for 2012 LinkedIn Data Breach. ( Read latest update here ) Czech police, in cooperation with the FBI, has arrested a Russian citizen in Prague suspected of participating in conducting cyber-attacks against the United States. Czech police announced the arrest on its official website Tuesday evening, without giving any further details about the man and for what he is wanted for. Yevgeniy N , 29-year-old, alleged Russian Hacker, was arrested after Interpol issued a warrant. Police detained the individual at a hotel in the city's center 12 hours after receiving the order. Officials say he was living in the country with his girlfriend and enjoying a lavish lifestyle, driving expensive cars. Neither the Czech police nor the FBI has issued any details on the charges that led to the arrest of the suspect. "Czech police carried out a successful joint operation with the US Federal Bureau of

Your driver's license photo could be scarier than it actually looks — Well, here's why: With the help of state driver's license data, U.S. law enforcement agencies have created a huge a face-recognition database of more than 117 Million American adults that are regularly scanned in the course of police investigations. What's even worse? Most of those people who are scanned by police without prior knowledge are law-abiding citizens. According to a 150-page study published Tuesday by the Center for Privacy & Technology at the Georgetown University, ID photographs of more than 117 Million adult US citizens — that's about half of the US population — are now part of the " Perpetual Line-up ," which can be searched using facial-recognition software. In the past few years, Facial Recognition technology has improved enormously. Even big technology companies like Facebook have developed so powerful facial recognition software that they can even ide