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China is very strict about censorship, which is why the country has become very paranoid when it comes to adopting foreign technologies. The country banned Microsoft's Windows operating system on government computers in 2014 amid concerns about security and US surveillance. Even in the wake of that, China had been pushing its custom version of Windows XP and its forked version of Ubuntu Linux . To deal with this issue and target the world's largest market, Microsoft's CEO for the Greater China region last year confirmed that the company was working on a Chinese version of Windows 10 that included "more management and security controls" and less bloatware. Now, Microsoft has just announced a new version of its Windows 10, which is now ready for Chinese government agencies to use. In its event in Shanghai on Tuesday, Microsoft announced Windows 10 China Government Edition specifically designed for the Chinese government.The OS is based on Windows 1

Samsung recently launched its new flagship smartphones, the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus, with both Facial and IRIS Recognition features, making it easier for users to unlock their smartphone and signing into websites. We already knew that the Galaxy S8's facial unlock feature could be easily fooled with just a simple photograph of the device owner, but now hackers have also discovered a simple way to bypass the iris-based authentication, which Samsung wants you to think is unbeatable. All it took for German hacking group Chaos Computer Club (CCC) to break the Galaxy S8's iris-recognition system was nothing but a camera, a printer, and a contact lens. The white hat hacking group also published a video showing how to defeat Samsung's iris scanner. Video Demonstration — Bypassing Iris Scanner The process was very simple. The CCC group simply used the night mode setting on a Sony digital camera to capture a medium range photo of their subject. Since the iris

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,

Do you watch movies with subtitles? Just last night, I wanted to watch a French movie, so I searched for English subtitles and downloaded it to my computer. Though that film was excellent, this morning a new research from Checkpoint scared me. I was unaware that a little subtitle file could hand over full control of my computer to hackers, while I was enjoying the movie. Yes, you heard that right. A team of researchers at Check Point has discovered vulnerabilities in four of the most popular media player applications, which can be exploited by hackers to hijack " any type of device via vulnerabilities; whether it is a PC, a smart TV, or a mobile device " with malicious codes inserted into the subtitle files. " We have now discovered malicious subtitles could be created and delivered to millions of devices automatically, bypassing security software and giving the attacker full control of the infected device and the data it holds, " he added. These

The Russian Interior Ministry announced on Monday the arrest of 20 individuals from a major cybercriminal gang that had stolen nearly $900,000 from bank accounts after infecting over one million Android smartphones with a mobile Trojan called "CronBot." Russian Interior Ministry representative Rina Wolf said the arrests were part of a joint effort with Russian IT security firm Group-IB that assisted the massive investigation. The collaboration resulted in the arrest of 16 members of the Cron group in November 2016, while the last active members were apprehended in April 2017, all living in the Russian regions of Ivanovo, Moscow, Rostov, Chelyabinsk, and Yaroslavl and the Republic of Mari El. Targeted Over 1 Million Phones — How They Did It? Group-IB first learned of the Cron malware gang in March 2015, when the criminal gang was distributing the Cron Bot malware disguised as Viber and Google Play apps. The Cron malware gang abused the popularity of SMS-banking

After the discovery of a critical vulnerability that could have allowed hackers to view private Yahoo Mail images, Yahoo retired the image-processing library ImageMagick. ImageMagick is an open-source image processing library that lets users resize, scale, crop, watermarking and tweak images. The tool is supported by PHP, Python, Ruby, Perl, C++, and many other programming languages. This popular image-processing library made headline last year with the discovery of the then-zero-day vulnerability, dubbed ImageTragick , which allowed hackers to execute malicious code on a Web server by uploading a maliciously-crafted image. Now, just last week, security researcher Chris Evans demonstrated an 18-byte exploit to the public that could be used to cause Yahoo servers to leak other users' private Yahoo! Mail image attachments. 'Yahoobleed' Bug Leaks Images From Server Memory The exploit abuses a security vulnerability in the ImageMagick library, which Evans dubbed

A security researcher has identified a new strain of malware that also spreads itself by exploiting flaws in Windows SMB file sharing protocol, but unlike the WannaCry Ransomware that uses only two leaked NSA hacking tools , it exploits all the seven. Last week, we warned you about multiple hacking groups exploiting leaked NSA hacking tools, but almost all of them were making use of only two tools: EternalBlue and DoublePulsar. Now, Miroslav Stampar, a security researcher who created famous 'sqlmap' tool and now a member of the Croatian Government CERT, has discovered a new network worm, dubbed EternalRocks , which is more dangerous than WannaCry and has no kill-switch in it. Unlike WannaCry, EternalRocks seems to be designed to function secretly in order to ensure that it remains undetectable on the affected system. However, Stampar learned of EternalRocks after it infected his SMB honeypot . The NSA exploits used by EternalRocks, which Stampar called " Do

Is your router collects data on your network? Netgear last week pushed out a firmware update for its wireless router model NightHawk R7000 with a remote data collection feature that collects router's analytics data and sends it to the company's server. For now, the company has rolled out the firmware update for its NightHawk R7000, but probably other router models would receive the update in upcoming days. The Netgear's alleged router analytics data collects information regarding: Total number of devices connected to the router IP address MAC addresses Serial number Router's running status Types of connections LAN/WAN status Wi-Fi bands and channels Technical details about the use and functioning of the router and the WiFi network. The company said it is collecting the data for routine diagnostic to know how its products are used and how its routers behave. "Technical data about the functioning and use of our routers and their WiFi network

In order to keep its billions of users safe, Google has introduced another security defense for its Android devices, called Google Play Protect . Google Play Protect , which is part of the Google Play Store app, uses machine learning and app usage analysis to weed out the dangerous and malicious apps, which have always been albatross around the tech giant's neck. Since Google Play Protect actually comes with the Google Play Store, users do not need to install or activate this security feature separately. Google Play Protect for Android devices consists: App scanning Anti-Theft Measures Browser Protection Play Protect's App Scanning Feature Google Play Protect is an always-on service on devices which said to scan 50 billion apps each day across a billion Android devices to ensure they are safe. Google already has a number of security measures in place to help keep your smartphones safe, including Verify Apps and its Bouncer service, but once apps are uploa

Since the Shadow Brokers released the zero-day software vulnerabilities and hacking tools – allegedly belonged to the NSA's elite hacking team Equation Group – several hacking groups and individual hackers have started using them in their own way. The April's data dump was believed to be the most damaging release by the Shadow Brokers till the date, as it publicly leaked lots of Windows hacking tools , including dangerous Windows SMB exploit. After the outbreak of WannaCry last week, security researchers have identified multiple different campaigns exploiting Windows SMB vulnerability (CVE-2017-0143), called Eternalblue , which has already compromised hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide. I have been even confirmed by multiple sources in hacking and intelligence community that there are lots of groups and individuals who are actively exploiting Eternalblue for different motives. Moreover, the Eternalblue SMB exploit ( MS17-010 ) has now been ported to  Met

WikiLeaks has published a new batch of the ongoing Vault 7 leak , detailing a spyware framework – which "provides remote beacon and loader capabilities on target computers" – allegedly being used by the CIA that works against every version of Microsoft's Windows operating systems, from Windows XP to Windows 10. Dubbed Athena/Hera , the spyware has been designed to take full control over the infected Windows PCs remotely, allowing the agency to perform all sorts of things on the target machine, including deleting data or uploading malicious software, and stealing data and send them to CIA server. The leak, which includes a user manual of Athena, overview of the technology, and demonstration on how to use this spyware, reveals that the program has two implications: Primary: Athena for XP to Windows 10  Secondary: Hera for Windows 8 through Windows 10 According to the whistleblower organization, Athena has the ability to allow the CIA agents to modify its co

If your PC has been infected by WannaCry – the ransomware that wreaked havoc across the world last Friday – you might be lucky to get your locked files back without paying the ransom of $300 to the cyber criminals. Adrien Guinet, a French security researcher from Quarkslab, has discovered a way to retrieve the secret encryption keys used by the WannaCry ransomware for free, which works on Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003 and 2008 operating systems. WannaCry Ransomware Decryption Keys The WannaCry's encryption scheme works by generating a pair of keys on the victim's computer that rely on prime numbers, a "public" key and a "private" key for encrypting and decrypting the system's files respectively. To prevent the victim from accessing the private key and decrypting locked files himself, WannaCry erases the key from the system, leaving no choice for the victims to retrieve the decryption key except paying the ransom to

If you ever ordered food from Zomato, You should be Worried! India's largest online restaurant guide Zomato confirmed today that the company has suffered a data breach and that accounts details of millions of its users have been stolen from its database. In a blog post published today, the company said about 17 Million of its 120 Million user accounts from its database were stolen. What type of information? The stolen account information includes user email addresses as well as hashed passwords. Zomato claims that since the passwords are encrypted, it cannot be decrypted by the attackers, so the "sanctity of your password is intact." It seems Zomato is downplaying the threat or unaware of the fact that these days hackers are using cloud computing, which enables them to decrypt even a 15-18 character passwords within a few hours. So there's no guarantee your passwords will not eventually get cracked. Update: As shown in the above screenshot taken

After the shutdown of Kickass Torrents and Torrentz.eu , it's time for the torrent community to say goodbye to the second most popular torrent site in the world, ExtraTorrent. Yes, the popular torrent site ExtraTorrent has permanently shut down. So, stop searching for ' extratorrents unblock ' and ' extratorrents proxy ' websites. In a short but clear message on its homepage , the ExtraTorrent portal announced Wednesday that it has shut down for good, saying "farewell" to its millions of users. The ShutDown Message Reads: " ExtraTorrent has shut down permanently " "ExtraTorrent with all mirrors goes offline.. We permanently erase all data. Stay away from fake ExtraTorrent websites and clones. Thx to all ET supporters and torrent community. ET was a place to be...." The message does not mention the reason of shutdown of the torrent site but indicates that the popular torrent index will not return. Launched in November

If your website is based on the popular Joomla content management system, make sure you have updated your platform to the latest version released today. Joomla, the world's second popular open source Content Management System, has reportedly patched a critical vulnerability in its software's core component. Website administrators are strongly advised to immediately install latest Joomla version 3.7.1, released today, to patch a critical SQL Injection vulnerability (CVE-2017-8917) that affects only Joomla version 3.7.0. " Inadequate filtering of request data leads to a SQL Injection vulnerability ." release note says. The SQL Injection vulnerability in Joomla 3.7.0 was responsibly reported by Marc-Alexandre Montpas, a security researcher at Sucuri last week to the company. According to the researcher , ' The vulnerability is easy to exploit and doesn't require a privileged account on the victim's site ,' which could allow remote hackers to steal sensitive inf

While we all were busy in the WannaCry ransomware menace, two separate data breaches have been reported, one in DocuSign, a major provider of electronic signature technology, and another in BELL , Canada's largest telecommunications company. In a notice on its website on Tuesday, DocuSign confirmed a breach at one of its email systems when investigating the cause of an increase in DocuSign-impersonating phishing emails. "A malicious third party had gained temporary access to a separate, non-core system that allows us to communicate service-related announcements to users via email," DocuSign said in the announcement. What Happened? An unknown hacker or group of hackers managed to breach one of the electronic signature technology provider's email systems and steal a database containing the email addresses of DocuSign customers. The attackers then used the stolen data to conduct an extensive phishing campaign to target the DocuSign's users over the past w

While we all were busy in the WannaCry ransomware menace, two separate data breaches have been reported, one in DocuSign , a major provider of electronic signature technology, and another in BELL, Canada's largest telecommunications company. Canadian mobile phone, TV, and internet service provider Bell on Monday confirmed that the company had been hit by an unknown hacker who has managed to access its customer information illegally. In a brief statement released by Bell Canada, the company said an unknown hacker managed to have his hands on data of millions of Bell customers. However, the company did not mention the compromised customer details stolen in the hack were pulled from which particular service. The company said email addresses, names and telephone numbers of its customers had been accessed in the breach. How many victims Affected? Bell confirmed the hack and said the unknown hacker has managed to gain access to information on nearly 2 million customers. &qu

A security researcher has discovered a serious vulnerability in the default configuration of the latest version of Google's Chrome running on any version of Microsoft's Windows operating system, including Windows 10, that could allow remote hackers to steal user's login credentials. Researcher Bosko Stankovic of DefenseCode has found that just by visiting a website containing a malicious SCF file could allow victims to unknowingly share their computer's login credentials with hackers via Chrome and the SMB protocol. This technique is not new and was exploited by the Stuxnet — a powerful malware that specially designed to destroy Iran's nuclear program — that used the Windows shortcut LNK files to compromise systems. What's make this attack different from others is the fact that such SMB authentication related attacks have been first time demonstrated on Google Chrome publicly, after Internet Explorer (IE) and Edge. Chrome + SCF + SMB = Stealing Windows