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Texas-based Encrypted Email Service ' Lavabit ,' that was forced to shut down in 2013 after not complying with a court order demanding access to SSL keys to snoop on Edward Snowden's emails , is relaunching on Friday. Lavabit CEO Ladar Levison had custody of the service's SSL encryption key that could have helped the government obtain Snowden's password. Although the FBI insisted it was only after Snowden's account, that was the key to the kingdom that would have helped the FBI agents obtain other users' credentials as well. But rather than complying with the federal request that could compromise the communications of all of its customers, Levison preferred to shut down his encrypted email service, leaving its 410,000 users unable to access their email accounts. Now, Levison has announced that he is reviving Lavabit with a new architecture that fixes the SSL problem — which according to him, was the biggest threat — and includes other privacy-enhancin

Recently Apple released a new Feature for iPhone and iPad users, but it was so buggy that the company had no option other than rolling back the feature completely. In November, Apple introduced a new App Store feature, dubbed " Notify " button — a bright orange button that users can click if they want to be alerted via iCloud Mail when any game or app becomes available on the App Store. Vulnerability Lab's Benjamin Kunz Mejri discovered multiple vulnerabilities in iTunes's Notify feature and iCloud mail, which could allow an attacker to infect other Apple users with malware. "Successful exploitation of the vulnerability results in session hijacking, persistent phishing attacks, persistent redirect to external sources and persistent manipulation of affected or connected service module context," Mejri wrote in an advisory published Monday. Here's How the Attack Works? The attack involves exploitation of three vulnerabilities via iTunes and th

It comes as no surprise that today's cyber threats are orders of magnitude more complex than those of the past. And the ever-evolving tactics that attackers use demand the adoption of better, more holistic and consolidated ways to meet this non-stop challenge. Security teams constantly look for ways to reduce risk while improving security posture, but many approaches offer piecemeal solutions – zeroing in on one particular element of the evolving threat landscape challenge – missing the forest for the trees.  In the last few years, Exposure Management has become known as a comprehensive way of reigning in the chaos, giving organizations a true fighting chance to reduce risk and improve posture. In this article I'll cover what Exposure Management is, how it stacks up against some alternative approaches and why building an Exposure Management program should be on  your 2024 to-do list. What is Exposure Management?  Exposure Management is the systematic identification, evaluation,

Carbanak – One of the most successful cybercriminal gangs ever that's known for the theft of one billion dollars from over 100 banks across 30 countries back in 2015 – is back with a BANG! The Carbanak cyber gang has been found abusing various Google services to issue command and control (C&C) communications for monitoring and controlling the machines of unsuspecting malware victims. Forcepoint Security Labs researchers said Tuesday that while investigating an active exploit sent in phishing messages as an RTF attachment, they discovered that the Carbanak group has been hiding in plain site by using Google services for command and control. "The Carbanak actors continue to look for stealth techniques to evade detection," Forcepoint's senior security researcher Nicholas Griffin said in a blog post . "Using Google as an independent C&C channel is likely to be more successful than using newly created domains or domains with no reputation." Th

A newly discovered bug in Apple's iOS mobile operating system is being exploited in a prank that lets anyone crash your iPhone or iPad by just sending an emoji-filled iMessage, according to several reports. YouTube star EverythingApplePro published a video highlighting a sequence of characters that temporarily freeze and restart an iPhone, which people can send to their iPhone buddies to trouble them. You can watch the video demonstration below. Here's the first troublesome text: A white Flag emoji, the digit "0" and a Rainbow emoji. This simple numeric character, flag, and rainbow emojis confuse iOS 10 devices when it tries to combine them into a rainbow flag. As soon as this text is received, the iPhone's software attempts to combine the emojis but fails, and the messaging app crashes and eventually reboots in a few minutes. The recipients do not even have to open or read the message. Video Demonstration Another iPhone-crashing method involves

Security researchers have discovered a rare piece of Mac-based espionage malware that relies on outdated coding practices but has been used in some previous real-world attacks to spy on biomedical research center computers. Dubbed Fruitfly , the malware has remained undetected for years on macOS systems despite using unsophisticated and "antiquated code." Infosec firm Malwarebytes discovered Fruitfly, detected as 'OSX.Backdoor.Quimitchin,' after one of its IT administrators spotted some unusual outgoing activity from a particular Mac computer. According to the researchers, the recently discovered what they're calling "the first Mac malware of 2017" contains code that dates before OS X, which has reportedly been conducting detailed surveillance operation on targeted networks, possibly for over two years. Fruitfly uses a hidden pearl script to communicate back to two command-and-control (C&C) servers and has the ability to perform actions l

It's not necessary to break into your computer or smartphone to spy on you. Today all devices in our home are becoming more connected to networks than ever to make our lives easy. But what's worrisome is that these connected devices can be turned against us, anytime, due to lack of stringent security measures and insecure encryption mechanisms implemented in these Internet of Things (IoTs) devices. The most recent victim of this issue is the Samsung's range of SmartCam home security cameras. Yes, it's hell easy to hijack the popular Samsung SmartCam security cameras, as they contain a critical remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability that could let hackers gain root access and take full control of these devices. SmartCam is one of the Samsung's SmartThings range of devices, which allows its users to connect, manage, monitor and control "smart" devices in their home using their smartphones or tablets. Back in 2014, the hacking group Exploiteer

If you want to get the most out of your computer, you need to get the most out of your hard drive, where all your data is stored. Today hard drives are larger than ever, so it makes sense for you to partition your hard disk to effectively use all of its space and manage all your important information. Partitioning is also useful if you intend to install and use more than one operating system on the same computer. There is a vast business of partition manager software out there, and today we are reviewing one of the most popular partition management tools available in the market: EaseUS Partition Master Professional . EaseUS Partition Master Professional offers you the complete package with capabilities for organizing and resizing your drive, restoring and backing up your information, improving system performance, installing and managing several operating systems on the same computer, along with recovering and cloning data files. Let's dig deep into the capabilities pro

It's 2017, and we're not any further along with Wi-Fi security than we were 10 years ago. There are Intrusion Detection Systems and 2nd generation antivirus apps to protect us from some vulnerabilities but the simple fact that some people and businesses still don't set their network up well in the first place. Installing WiFi is like running Ethernet to your parking lot. It's a cliche thing to say, but it is often true. If I can attack your network sitting in my car from the parking lot, what chance do you have? And 99% of the time I'm successful. Lots of companies are moving to new offices that have wide open office layouts. Some may not have BYOD policies or wireless security plans in place, and anyone can bring their own device to work that you may not know about. I've even seen some companies installing IoT devices like smart led light bulbs and thermostats. Even some security camera systems which are always running unsecured and default passwords. So what can you

Security researchers have discovered a new phishing campaign targeting Gmail users, which is so convincing and highly effective that even tech-savvy people can be tricked into giving away their Google credentials to hackers. The attackers first compromise a victim's Gmail account, and once they are in, they start rifling through inboxes to launch secondary attacks in order to pass on the attack. The hackers first look for an attachment that victims have previously sent to their contacts and a relevant subject from an actual sent email. Then the criminals will start gathering up contact email addresses, who become the new targets of the attackers. After finding one, the hackers create an image (screenshot) of that attachment and include it in reply to the sender with the same or similar subject for the email, invoking recognition and automatic trust. What makes this attack so effective is that the phishing emails come from someone the victim knows. This new Gmail phishi

It's not always necessary to break into your computer or smartphone to spy on you. Today all are day-to-day devices are becoming more connected to networks than ever to add convenience and ease to daily activities. But here's what we forget: These connected devices can be turned against us because we are giving companies, hackers, and law enforcement a large number of entry points to break into our network. These connected devices can also be a great boon for law enforcement that can listen and track us everywhere. Let's take the recent example of 2016 Arkansas murder case where Amazon was asked to hand over audio recordings from a suspect's Echo. However, that was not the first case where feds asked any company to hand over data from a suspect's connected device, as they have long retrieved such information from connected cars. According to court documents obtained by Forbes , United States federal agencies have a 15-year history of " Cartapping &qu

A 21-year-old former Langley High School student, who won a Programmer of the Year Award in high school, pleaded guilty on Friday to charges of developing and selling custom key-logging malware that infected thousands of victims. Zachary Shames from Virginia pleaded guilty in a federal district court and now faces a maximum penalty of up to 10 years in prison for his past deeds. Shames was arrested this summer while he was working as a technical intern at Northrop Grumman, a security and defense government contractor, developing front-end site code and backend Java software and managing a MySQL database, according to what appears on his Linkedin page. According to a press release from the U.S. Department of Justice, Shames developed a keylogger in 2013 that allowed users to steal sensitive information, including passwords and banking credentials, from a victim's computer, while he was still a high school student in 2013. Keylogger is malicious software designed to recor

What is a backdoor? By definition: "Backdoor is a feature or defect of a computer system that allows surreptitious unauthorized access to data, " either the backdoor is in encryption algorithm, a server or in an implementation, and doesn't matter whether it has previously been used or not. Yesterday, we published a story based on findings reported by security researcher Tobias Boelter that suggests WhatsApp has a backdoor that "could allow" an attacker, and of course the company itself, to intercept your encrypted communication. The story involving the world's largest secure messaging platform that has over a billion users worldwide went viral in few hours, attracting reactions from security experts, WhatsApp team, and Open Whisper Systems, who partnered with Facebook to implement end-to-end encryption in WhatsApp. Note: I would request readers to read complete article before reaching out for a conclusion. And also, suggestions and opinions are

Important Update — Most Security Experts argued, " It's not a backdoor, rather it's a feature ," but none of them denied the fact that, if required, WhatsApp or a hacker can intercept your end-to-end encrypted chats. Read detailed explanation on arguments in my latest article. Most people believe that end-to-end encryption is the ultimate way to protect your secret communication from snooping, and it does, but it can be intercepted if not implemented correctly. After introducing " end-to-end encryption by default " last year, WhatsApp has become the world's largest secure messaging platform with over a billion users worldwide. But if you think your conversations are completely secure in a way that no one, not even Facebook, the company that owned WhatsApp, can intercept your messages then you are highly mistaken, just like most of us and it's not a new concept. Here's the kick: End-to-end encrypted messaging service, such as WhatsApp and Te

Former New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani has been appointed as a cyber security advisor for the President-elect Donald Trump, but it appears that he never actually checked the security defenses of his own company's website. Giuliani is going to head a new Cybersecurity Working group for the President-elect, and "will be sharing his expertise and insight as a trusted friend concerning private sector cyber security problems and emerging solutions developing in the private sector," the Trump's Transition Team announced Thursday. Trump administration has appointed Giuliani after citing his 16 years of experience "providing security solutions in the private sector," but the news met online criticism with many users on Twitter asking: 'What does the former New York mayor know about cyber security?' As the news broke, online users started scanning his website " www.giulianisecurity.com " and found that the site for Giuliani Sec

The company that sells digital forensics and mobile hacking tools to others has itself been hacked. Israeli firm Cellebrite , the popular company that provides digital forensics tools and software to help law enforcement access mobile phones in investigations, has had 900 GB of its data stolen by an unknown hacker. But the hacker has not yet publicly released anything from the stolen data archive, which includes its customer information, user databases, and a massive amount of technical data regarding its hacking tools and products. Instead, attackers are looking for possible opportunities to sell the access to Cellebrite system and data on a few selected IRC chat rooms, the hacker told Joseph Cox, contributor at Motherboard , who was contacted by the hacker and received a copy of the stolen data. Meanwhile, Cellebrite also admitted that it recently experienced "unauthorized access to an external web server," and said that it is "conducting an investigation

Just like most of you, I too really hate filling out web forms, especially on mobile devices. To help make this whole process faster, Google Chrome and other major browsers offer "Autofill" feature that automatically fills out web form based on data you have previously entered in similar fields. However, it turns out that an attacker can use this autofill feature against you and trick you into spilling your private information to hackers or malicious third parties. Finnish web developer and whitehat hacker Viljami Kuosmanen published a demo on GitHub that shows how an attacker could take advantage of the autofill feature provided by most browsers, plugins, and tools such as Password Managers. Although, this trick was first discovered by Ricardo Martin Rodriguez , Security Analyst at ElevenPaths, in the year 2013, but it seems Google haven't done anything to address weakness in Autofill feature. The proof-of-concept demo website consists of a simple online

Recent data breaches have taught us something very important — online users are spectacularly bad at choosing their strong passwords. Today majority of online users are vulnerable to cyber attacks, not because they are not using any best antivirus or other security measures, but because they are using weak passwords that are easy to remember and reuse same passwords on multiple accounts and reusable passwords to secure their online accounts. Ideally, your password should be at least 16 characters long and should contain a combination of digits, symbols, uppercase letters and lowercase letters. Most of us know about this good password practice, but we just ignore it because it is really painful for us to memorize complex password strings for different accounts. Here comes the need of a Password Manager OR  Password Management Software . Password Manager can significantly reduce your password memorizing problem, along with the cure for your bad habit of setting weak password