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A 5-year-old serious privilege-escalation vulnerability has been discovered in Linux kernel that affects almost every distro of the Linux operating system, including Redhat, and Ubuntu. Over a month back, a nine-year-old privilege-escalation vulnerability, dubbed " Dirty COW ," was discovered in the Linux kernel that affected every distro of the open-source operating system, including Red Hat, Debian, and Ubuntu. Now, another Linux kernel vulnerability ( CVE-2016-8655 ) that dates back to 2011 disclosed today could allow an unprivileged local user to gain root privileges by exploiting a race condition in the af_packet implementation in the Linux kernel. Philip Pettersson, the researcher who discovered the flaw, was able to create an exploit to gain a root shell on an Ubuntu 16.04 LTS system (Linux Kernel 4.4) and also defeated SMEP/SMAP (Supervisor Mode Execution Prevention/Supervisor Mode Access Prevention) protection to gain kernel code execution abilities. In

If you have visited any popular mainstream website over the past two months, your computer may have been infected — Thanks to a new exploit kit discovered by security researchers. Researchers from antivirus provider ESET released a report on Tuesday stating that they have discovered an exploit kit, dubbed Stegano , hiding malicious code in the pixels of banner advertisements that are currently in rotation on several high profile news websites. Stegano originally dates back to 2014, but since early October this year, cyber crooks had managed to get the malicious ads displayed on a variety of unnamed reputable news websites, each with Millions of daily visitors. Stegano derived from the word Steganography , which is a technique of hiding messages and content inside a digital graphic image, making the content impossible to spot with the naked eye. In this particular malvertising campaign, operators hide malicious code inside transparent PNG image's Alpha Channel, which def

Identities now transcend human boundaries. Within each line of code and every API call lies a non-human identity. These entities act as programmatic access keys, enabling authentication and facilitating interactions among systems and services, which are essential for every API call, database query, or storage account access. As we depend on multi-factor authentication and passwords to safeguard human identities, a pressing question arises: How do we guarantee the security and integrity of these non-human counterparts? How do we authenticate, authorize, and regulate access for entities devoid of life but crucial for the functioning of critical systems? Let's break it down. The challenge Imagine a cloud-native application as a bustling metropolis of tiny neighborhoods known as microservices, all neatly packed into containers. These microservices function akin to diligent worker bees, each diligently performing its designated task, be it processing data, verifying credentials, or

North Korea's own homegrown computer operating system, that's supposed to be fully hacker proof and more secure than foreign OS, like Microsoft's Windows, can easily be hacked remotely. A group of hackers managed to break into Red Star OS — North Korea's government sanctioned Linux-based OS — using just a link. Red Star OS is North Korea's own homegrown OS that looks remarkably just like Apple's OS X and gives North Korean authorities more control over the computers, providing not only security but also spying tools that help track files in a way that if the government wants, every bit of user's data can be traced easily. According to the information security company Hacker House , Red Star OS contains a critical vulnerability that makes it possible for hackers to gain remote access to any PC running North Korea's OS just by tricking victims into opening a hyperlink. The latest version of Red Star OS ships with a Firefox-based web browser cal

Another day, another data breach. This time a popular video sharing platform DailyMotion has allegedly been hacked and tens of millions of users information have been stolen. Breach notification service LeakedSource announced the data breach on Monday after the company obtained 85.2 Million records from Dailymotion. According to LeakedSource, the DailyMotion data breach appears to have taken place on October 20, 2016, which means it is possible that hackers have been circulating the data for over a month. The stolen data consists of 85.2 Million unique email addresses and usernames and around 20 percent of the accounts (more than 18 Million users) had hashed passwords tied to them. The passwords were protected using the Bcrypt hashing algorithm with ten rounds of rekeying, making it difficult for hackers to obtain user's actual password. Bcrypt is a cryptographic algorithm that makes the hashing process so slow that it would literally take centuries to actual brute-

Hacking multiple computers across the world just got easier for the United States intelligence and law enforcement agencies from today onwards. The changes introduced to the Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure by the United States Department of Justice came into effect on Thursday, after an effort to block the changes failed on Wednesday. The change grants the FBI much greater powers to hack into multiple computers within the country, and perhaps anywhere in the world, with just a single warrant authorized by any US judge (even magistrate judges). Usually, magistrate judges only issue warrants for cases within their jurisdiction. That's the same the FBI did in its 2015 investigation into child pornography site Playpen, in which the agency hacked into some 8,700 computers across 120 different countries. The Supreme Court approved the changes to Rule 41 in April, allowing any U.S. judge to issue search warrants that give the FBI and law enforcement agenc