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A nine-year-old critical vulnerability has been discovered in virtually all versions of the Linux operating system and is actively being exploited in the wild. Dubbed " Dirty COW ," the Linux kernel security flaw (CVE-2016-5195) is a mere privilege-escalation vulnerability, but researchers are taking it extremely seriously due to many reasons. First, it's very easy to develop exploits that work reliably. Secondly, the Dirty COW flaw exists in a section of the Linux kernel, which is a part of virtually every distro of the open-source operating system, including RedHat, Debian, and Ubuntu, released for almost a decade. And most importantly, the researchers have discovered attack code that indicates the Dirty COW vulnerability is being actively exploited in the wild. Dirty COW potentially allows any installed malicious app to gain administrative (root-level) access to a device and completely hijack it within just 5 seconds. Earlier this week, Linus Torvalds admi

Almost two months ago, the FBI quietly arrested NSA contractor Harold Thomas Martin III for stealing an enormous number of top secret documents from the intelligence agency. Now, according to a court document filed Thursday, the FBI seized at least 50 terabytes of data from 51-year-old Martin that he siphoned from government computers over two decades. The stolen data that are at least 500 million pages of government records includes top-secret information about "national defense." If all data stolen by Martin found indeed classified, it would be the largest NSA heist, far bigger than Edward Snowden leaks. According to the new filing, Martin also took "six full bankers' boxes" worth of documents, many of which were marked "Secret" and "Top Secret." The stolen data also include the personal information of government employees. The stolen documents date from between 1996 through 2016. "The document appears to have been printed by the

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

2016 is the year of data breaches that has made almost every major companies victims to the cyber attacks, resulting in compromise of over billion of online users accounts. Weebly and Foursquare are the latest victims of the massive data breach, joining the list of "Mega-Breaches" revealed in recent months, including LinkedIn , MySpace , VK.com , Tumblr , Dropbox , and the biggest one -- Yahoo . Details for over 43 Million users have been stolen from the San Francisco-based website building service Weebly, according to breach notification site LeakedSource, who had already indexed a copy of the stolen data that it received from an anonymous source. In addition, LeakedSource posted details of the cyber attack in its blog post on Thursday explaining what happened. The attack believed to have been carried out in February 2016. "Unlike nearly every other hack, the Co-founder and CTO of Weebly Chris Fanini fortunately did not have his head buried deeply in the san

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

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

When Hillary Clinton's private email server was hacked earlier this year, she was criticized for her bad security practices that exposed top secret documents stored in emails on that private server. The FBI called her behavior 'extremely careless.' Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his supporters are continuously criticizing Clinton's use of a private email server. And here's what Trump lectured in a debate about cybersecurity: "The security aspect of cyber is very, very tough. And maybe it's hardly doable. But I will say, we are not doing the job we should be doing. But that's true throughout our whole governmental society. We have so many things that we have to do better, Lester, and certainly, cyber is one of them." Forget Clinton; Trump has so worryingly insecure internet setup that anyone with little knowledge of computers can expose almost everything about Trump and his campaign. Security researcher Kevin Beaumont,

Don't believe everything you read on Facebook. Despite so many awareness about Facebook hoaxes, online users fall for them and make them viral. One such viral post is circulating on Facebook that suggests everything that you have ever posted on the social media platform will become public tomorrow. Don't worry — it's a hoax. Yes, it's still a hoax. The latest Facebook privacy hoax message looks like this: Deadline tomorrow !!! Everything you've ever posted becomes public from tomorrow. Even messages that have been deleted or the photos not allowed. It costs nothing for a simple copy and paste, better safe than sorry. Channel 13 News talked about the change in Facebook's privacy policy. I do not give Facebook or any entities associated with Facebook permission to use my pictures, information, messages or posts, both past, and future. With this statement, I give notice to Facebook it is strictly forbidden to disclose, copy, distribute, or take any oth

After TrueCrypt mysteriously discontinued its service, VeraCrypt became the most popular open source disk encryption software used by activists, journalists, as well as privacy conscious people. First of all, there is no such thing as a perfect, bug-free software. Even the most rigorously tested software, like the ones that operate SCADA Systems, medical devices, and aviation software, have flaws. Vulnerabilities are an unfortunate reality for every software product, but there is always space for improvements. Due to the enormous popularity of VeraCrypt, security researchers from the OSTIF (The Open Source Technology Improvement Fund) agreed to audit VeraCrypt independently and hired researchers from QuarksLab in August to lead the audit. And it seems like VeraCrypt is not exactly flawless either. Now after one month of the audit, researchers have discovered a number of security issues, including 8 critical, 3 medium, and 15 low-severity vulnerabilities in the popular

Early Monday, Whistleblowing site WikiLeaks tweeted that the internet connection of its co-founder, Julian Assange, was intentionally cut down , for which it blamed an unidentified " state party ." But most surprisingly, it was Ecuador who was behind the act. WikiLeaks has confirmed that its founder Julian Assange 's Internet access was cut down in its London embassy by the government of Ecuador on Saturday. The move was in response to the organization's publication of another batch of leaked emails related to US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. "We can confirm Ecuador cut off Assange's internet access Saturday, 5 pm GMT, shortly after [the] publication of Clinton's Goldman Sachs [speeches]," WikiLeaks tweeted . Assange has been living in Ecuador's London embassy since June 2012, when he was granted asylum by the Ecuador government after a British court ordered his extradition to Sweden to face questioning on a rape allegation.

Don't worry — Julian Assange is alive and kicking! But his Internet connection is dead. Earlier today, Wikileaks tweeted that its co-founder, Julian Assange, had his internet connection intentionally cut by an unidentified " state party ." The non-profit organization said it had " activated appropriate contingency plans ," giving no further explanation. The tweet came after Wikileaks posted a series of three cryptic tweets , each containing a 64-character code. In no time, the tweets sparked bizarre rumors that Julian Assange has died. The tweets referenced Ecuador, Secretary of State John Kerry and the United Kingdom's Foreign Commonwealth Office. What exactly are those Mysterious Wikileaks Tweets? Some users on Twitter, Reddit, and various discussion forums speculated that the tweets in question were the result of a " dead man's switch " that has been triggered in the event of Julian Assange's untimely death. Users on Twitter a

The UK's Signals Intelligence and Cyber Security agency GCHQ has launched its first ever puzzle book, challenging researchers and cryptographers to crack codes for charity. Dubbed " The GCHQ Puzzle Book ," the book features more than 140 pages of codes, puzzles, and challenges created by expert code breakers at the British intelligence agency. Ranging from easy to complex, the GCHQ challenges include ciphers and tests of numeracy and literacy, substitution codes, along with picture and music challenges. Writing in the GCHQ Puzzle Book's introduction, here's what GCHQ Director, Robert Hannigan says: "For nearly one hundred years, the men and women of GCHQ, both civilian and military, have been solving problems. They have done so in pursuit of our mission to keep the United Kingdom safe. GCHQ has a proud history of valuing and supporting individuals who think differently; without them, we would be of little value to the country. Not all are geniuses

Over two months ago, the world's third largest Bitcoin Exchange Bitfinex lost around $72 Million worth of Bitcoins in a major hack. Shortly after the company encountered a $72,000,000 Bitcoin theft, an unnamed Bitfinex user from Cambridge, Massachusetts, filed a police report in September, alleging that $1.3 Million of funds were stolen from his account. Since then the Cambridge police have handed the case over to the FBI, which is working with the Bitcoin exchange as well as European authorities to recover funds stolen from the Bitfinex user, Coindesk reports . The individual claimed that he held $3.4 Million in Bitcoin in his personal wallet hosted by the Bitfinex Bitcoin exchange. But following the August's Bitfinex breach, he was left with $2.1 Million in his account. Bitfinex then notified the individual of his initial loss of approximately $1.3 Million in Bitcoin, but after the company issued IOU tokens as an emergency measure to keep the exchange operating, the l

While some payment card companies like Mastercard have switched to selfies as an alternative to passwords when verifying IDs for online payments, hackers have already started taking advantage of this new security verification methods. Researchers have discovered a new Android banking Trojan that masquerades primarily as a video plugin, like Adobe Flash Player, pornographic app, or video codec, and asks victims to send a selfie holding their ID card, according to a blog post published by McAfee. The Trojan is the most recent version of Acecard that has been labeled as one of the most dangerous Android banking Trojans known today, according to Kaspersky Lab Anti-malware Research Team. Once successfully installed, the trojan asks users for a number of device's permissions to execute the malicious code and then waits for victims to open apps, specifically those where it would make sense to request payment card information. Acecard Steals your Payment Card and Real ID det

Are your internet-connected devices spying on you? Perhaps. We already know that the Internet of Thing (IoT) devices are so badly insecure that hackers are adding them to their botnet network for launching Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks against target services. But, these connected devices are not just limited to conduct DDoS attacks ; they have far more potential to harm you. New research [ PDF ] published by the content delivery network provider Akamai Technologies shows how unknown threat actors are using a 12-year-old vulnerability in OpenSSH to secretly gain control of millions of connected devices. The hackers then turn, what researchers call, these " Internet of Unpatchable Things " into proxies for malicious traffic to attack internet-based targets and 'internet-facing' services, along with the internal networks that host them. Unlike recent attacks via Mirai botnet , the new targeted attack, dubbed SSHowDowN Proxy , specifically ma

U.S. drones are again in news for killing innocent people. The Air Force is investigating the connection between the failure of its classified network, dubbed SIPRNet, at Creech Air Force Base and a series of high-profile airstrikes that went terribly wrong in September this year. Creech Air Force Base is a secret facility outside Las Vegas, where military and Air Force pilots sitting in dark and air-conditioned rooms, 7100 miles from Syria and Afghanistan, remotely control their " targeted killing " drone campaign in a video-game-style warfare. From this ground zero, Air Force pilots fire missiles just by triggering a joystick on a targeted areas half a world away, as well as operate drones for surveillance and intelligence gathering. Drone operation facility at Creech Air Force Base -- a key base for worldwide drone and targeted killing operations -- has been assigned as ' Special Access Programs ', to access SIPRnet. What is SIPRnet? SIPRNet, or Secret Int

UPDATE: The site is back and working. Blockchain team released a statement via Twitter, which has been added at the end of this article. If you are fascinated with the idea of digital currency, then you might have heard about BlockChain.Info. It's Down! Yes, Blockchain.info, the world's most popular Bitcoin wallet and Block Explorer service, has been down from last few hours, and it's believed that a possible cyber attack has disrupted the site. The site is down at the time of writing, and the web server reports a bad gateway error, with a message on the website that reads: "Looks like our site is down. We're working on it and should be back up soon." With more than 8 million Digital Wallet customers, BlockChain is users' favorite destination to see recent transactions, stats on mined blocks and bitcoin economy charts. A few hours ago, BlockChain team tweeted about the sudden breakdown of the site, saying: "We're researching a DNS

In the year 2014, we came to know about the NSA's ability to break Trillions of encrypted connections by exploiting common implementations of the Diffie-Hellman key exchange algorithm – thanks to classified documents leaked by ex-NSA employee Edward Snowden. At that time, computer scientists and senior cryptographers had presented the most plausible theory: Only a few prime numbers were commonly used by 92 percent of the top 1 Million Alexa HTTPS domains that might have fit well within the NSA's $11 Billion-per-year budget dedicated to "groundbreaking cryptanalytic capabilities." And now, researchers from University of Pennsylvania, INRIA, CNRS and Université de Lorraine have practically proved how the NSA broke the most widespread encryption used on the Internet. Diffie-Hellman key exchange (DHE) algorithm is a standard means of exchanging cryptographic keys over untrusted channels, which allows protocols such as HTTPS, SSH, VPN, SMTPS and IPsec to negotia