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Researchers found critical vulnerabilities in three popular VPN services that could leak users' real IP addresses and other sensitive data. VPN, or Virtual Private Network , is a great way to protect your daily online activities that work by encrypting your data and boosting security, as well as useful to obscure your actual IP address. While some choose VPN services for online anonymity and data security, one major reason many people use VPN is to hide their real IP addresses to bypass online censorship and access websites that are blocked by their ISPs. But what if when the VPN you thought is protecting your privacy is actually leaking your sensitive data and real location? A team of three ethical hackers hired by privacy advocate firm VPN Mentor revealed that three popular VPN service providers—HotSpot Shield, PureVPN, and Zenmate—with millions of customers worldwide were found vulnerable to flaws that could compromise user's privacy. The team includes applicat

A massive malware outbreak that last week infected nearly half a million computers with cryptocurrency mining malware in just a few hours was caused by a backdoored version of popular BitTorrent client called MediaGet . Dubbed Dofoil (also known as Smoke Loader), the malware was found dropping a cryptocurrency miner program as payload on infected Windows computers that mine Electroneum digital coins for attackers using victims' CPU cycles. Dofoil campaign that hit PCs in Russia, Turkey, and Ukraine on 6th March was discovered by Microsoft Windows Defender research department and blocked the attack before it could have done any severe damages. At the time when Windows Defender researchers detected this attack, they did not mention how the malware was delivered to such a massive audience in just 12 hours. However, after investigation Microsoft today revealed that the attackers targeted the update mechanism of MediaGet BitTorrent software to push its trojanized version (m

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

A critical vulnerability has been discovered in Credential Security Support Provider protocol (CredSSP) that affects all versions of Windows to date and could allow remote attackers to exploit RDP and WinRM to steal data and run malicious code. CredSSP protocol has been designed to be used by RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) and Windows Remote Management (WinRM) that takes care of securely forwarding credentials encrypted from the Windows client to the target servers for remote authentication. Discovered by researchers at Cybersecurity firm Preempt Security, the issue (CVE-2018-0886) is a logical cryptographic flaw in CredSSP that can be exploited by a man-in-the-middle attacker with Wi-Fi or physical access to the network to steal session authentication data and perform a Remote Procedure Call attack. When a client and server authenticate over RDP and WinRM connection protocols, a man-in-the-middle attacker can execute remote commands to compromise enterprise networks. "A

Security researchers claimed to have discovered 13 critical Spectre/Meltdown -like vulnerabilities throughout AMD's Ryzen and EPYC lines of processors that could allow attackers to access sensitive data, install persistent malware inside the chip, and gain full access to the compromised systems. All these vulnerabilities reside in the secure part of the AMD's Zen architecture processors and chipsets—typically where device stores sensitive information such as passwords and encryption keys and makes sure nothing malicious is running when you start your PC. The alleged vulnerabilities are categorized into four classes—RYZENFALL, FALLOUT, CHIMERA, and MASTERKEY—and threaten wide-range of servers, workstations, and laptops running vulnerable AMD Ryzen, Ryzen Pro, Ryzen Mobile or EPYC processors. Discovered by a team of researchers at Israel-based CTS-Labs, newly disclosed  unpatched vulnerabilities defeat AMD's Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV) technology and could

Samba maintainers have just released new versions of their networking software to patch two critical vulnerabilities that could allow unprivileged remote attackers to launch DoS attacks against servers and change any other users' passwords, including admin's. Samba is open-source software (re-implementation of SMB networking protocol) that runs on the majority of operating systems available today, including Windows, Linux, UNIX, IBM System 390, and OpenVMS. Samba allows non-Windows operating systems, like GNU/Linux or Mac OS X, to share network shared folders, files, and printers with Windows operating system. The denial of service vulnerability, assigned CVE-2018-1050 , affects all versions of Samba from 4.0.0 onwards and could be exploited "when the RPC spoolss service is configured to be run as an external daemon." "Missing input sanitization checks on some of the input parameters to spoolss RPC calls could cause the print spooler service to crash.

Nothing comes for free, especially online. Would you be okay with allowing a few paid services to mine cryptocurrencies using your system instead of paying the subscription fee? Most free websites and services often rely on advertising revenue to survive, but now there is a new way to make money—using customers' computer to generate virtual currencies. It was found that a scheduling app, dubbed Calendar 2, was embracing cryptocurrency mining in exchange for free access to its app premium features, but the developer has to take it down from the Apple App Store following reports that it's not working as intended. Cryptocurrency mining is not a new concept, but the technology has recently exploded after hackers found it a great way to make millions of dollars by hijacking computers to secretly perform cryptocurrency mining in the background without users' knowledge or consent. Due to this cryptocurrency mining has emerged as one of the biggest threats in recent mon

The team of security researchers—who last month demonstrated how attackers could steal data from air-gapped computers protected inside a Faraday cage—are back with its new research showing how two (or more) air-gapped PCs placed in the same room can covertly exchange data via ultrasonic waves. Air-gapped computers are believed to be the most secure setup wherein the systems remain isolated from the Internet and local networks, requiring physical access to access data via a USB flash drive or other removable media. Dubbed MOSQUITO , the new technique, discovered by a team of researchers at Israel's Ben Gurion University, works by reversing connected speakers (passive speakers, headphones, or earphones) into microphones by exploiting a specific audio chip feature. Two years ago, the same team of researchers demonstrated how attackers could covertly listen to private conversations in your room just by reversing your headphones (connected to the infected computer) into a micr

Security researchers at Kaspersky have identified a sophisticated APT hacking group that has been operating since at least 2012 without being noticed due to their complex and clever hacking techniques. The hacking group used a piece of advanced malware—dubbed Slingshot —to infect hundreds of thousands of victims in the Middle East and Africa by hacking into their routers. According to a 25-page report published [ PDF ] by Kaspersky Labs, the group exploited unknown vulnerabilities in routers from a Latvian network hardware provider Mikrotik as its first-stage infection vector in order to covertly plant its spyware into victims' computers. Although it is unclear how the group managed to compromise the routers at the first place, Kaspersky pointed towards WikiLeaks Vault 7 CIA Leaks , which revealed the ChimayRed exploit , now available on GitHub , to compromise Mikrotik routers. Once the router is compromised, the attackers replace one of its DDL (dynamic link libraries)

Governments in Turkey and Syria have been caught hijacking local internet users' connections to secretly inject surveillance malware, while the same mass interception technology has been found secretly injecting browser-based cryptocurrency mining scripts into users' web traffic in Egypt. Governments, or agencies linked to it, and ISPs in the three countries are using Deep Packet Inspection technology from Sandvine (which merged with Procera Networks last year), to intercept and alter Internet users' web traffic. Deep packet inspection technology allows ISPs to prioritize, degrade, block, inject, and log various types of Internet traffic, in other words, they can analyze each packet in order to see what you are doing online. According to a new report by Citizen Lab, Turkey's Telecom network was using Sandvine PacketLogic devices to redirect hundreds of targeted users (journalists, lawyers, and human rights defenders) to malicious versions of legitimate progra

Memcached reflections that recently fueled two most largest amplification DDoS attacks in the history have also helped other cybercriminals launch nearly 15,000 cyber attacks against 7,131 unique targets in last ten days, a new report revealed. Chinese Qihoo 360's Netlab, whose global DDoS monitoring service ' DDosMon ' initially spotted the Memcached-based DDoS attacks, has published a blog post detailing some new statistics about the victims and sources of these attacks. The list of famous online services and websites which were hit by massive DDoS attacks since 24th February includes Google, Amazon, QQ.com, 360.com, PlayStation, OVH Hosting, VirusTotal, Comodo, GitHub ( 1.35 Tbps attack ), Royal Bank, Minecraft and RockStar games, Avast, Kaspersky, PornHub, Epoch Times newspaper, and Pinterest. Overall, the victims are mainly based in the United States, China, Hong Kong, South Korea, Brazil, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the Netherlands.

Microsoft has confirmed that the company is planning to convert Windows 10 S from a dedicated operating system to a special " S Mode " that will be available in all versions of Windows. Windows 10 S, a new operating system designed for simplicity, security, and speed, was released by Microsoft last year. It locks a computer down to run applications only downloaded from official Windows Store, but the slimmed-down and restricted flavor of Windows did not exactly turn out to be a success. Therefore, the company has now decided Windows 10 S be offered as an optional mode rather than a dedicated operating system. Windows 10 S was developed to simplify administration for school or business sysadmins that want the 'low-hassle' guaranteed performance version. It has been designed to deliver predictable performance and quality through Microsoft-verified apps via the Microsoft Store. However, in a blog post published Wednesday, the corporate VP of Microsoft's

Two days ago, Microsoft encountered a rapidly spreading cryptocurrency-mining malware that infected almost 500,000 computers within just 12 hours and successfully blocked it to a large extent. Dubbed Dofoil , aka Smoke Loader , the malware was found dropping a cryptocurrency miner program as payload on infected Windows computers that mines Electroneum coins, yet another cryptocurrency, for attackers using victims' CPUs. On March 6, Windows Defender suddenly detected more than 80,000 instances of several variants of Dofoil that raised the alarm at Microsoft Windows Defender research department, and within the next 12 hours, over 400,000 instances were recorded. The research team found that all these instances, rapidly spreading across Russia, Turkey, and Ukraine, were carrying a digital coin-mining payload, which masqueraded as a legitimate Windows binary to evade detection. However, Microsoft has not mentioned how these instances were delivered to such a massive audienc

A medium yet critical vulnerability has been discovered in Cisco Prime Collaboration Provisioning software that could allow a local attacker to elevate privileges to root and take full control of a system. Cisco Prime Collaboration Provisioning (PCP) application allows administrators to remotely control the installation and management of Cisco communication devices (integrated IP telephony, video, voicemail) deployed in the company and services for its subscribers. The vulnerability (CVE-2018-0141) is due to a hard-coded password for Secure Shell (SSH), which could be exploited by a local attacker to connect to the PCP's Linux operating system and gain low-level privileges. Cisco PCP Hard-Coded Password Flaw According to an advisory released by Cisco, with low-level privileges, an attacker could then elevate its privileges to root and take full control of the affected devices. Although this vulnerability has been given a Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) bas

Security researchers have discovered a "kill switch" that could help companies protect their websites under massive DDoS attack launched using vulnerable Memcached servers. Massive Memcached reflection DDoS attacks with an unprecedented amplification factor of 50,000 recently resulted in some of the largest DDoS attacks in history . To make matter even worse, someone released proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit code for Memcached amplification attack yesterday, making it easier for even script kiddies to launch massive cyber attacks. Despite multiple warnings, more than 12,000 vulnerable Memcached servers with UDP support enabled are still accessible on the Internet, which could fuel more cyber attacks soon. However, the good news is that researchers from Corero Network Security found a technique using which DDoS victims can send back a simple command, i.e., "shutdown\r\n", or "flush_all\r\n", in a loop to the attacking Memcached servers in order

Two separate proofs-of-concept (PoC) exploit code for Memcached amplification attack have been released online that could allow even script-kiddies to launch massive DDoS attacks using UDP reflections easily. The first DDoS tool is written in C programming language and works with a pre-compiled list of vulnerable Memcached servers. Bonus—its description already includes a list of nearly 17,000 potential vulnerable Memcached servers left exposed on the Internet. Whereas, the second Memcached DDoS attack tool is written in Python that uses Shodan search engine API to obtain a fresh list of vulnerable Memcached servers and then sends spoofed source UDP packets to each server. Last week we saw two record-breaking DDoS attacks— 1.35 Tbps hit Github and 1.7 Tbps attack against an unnamed US-based company—which were carried out using a technique called amplification/reflection attack. For those unaware, Memcached-based amplification/reflection attack amplifies bandwidth of th

A years ago when the mysterious hacking group ' The Shadow Brokers ' dumped a massive trove of sensitive data stolen from the US intelligence agency NSA, everyone started looking for secret hacking tools and zero-day exploits . A group of Hungarian security researchers from CrySyS Lab and Ukatemi has now revealed that the NSA dump doesn't just contain zero-day exploits used to take control of targeted systems , but also include a collection of scripts and scanning tools the agency uses to track operations of hackers from other countries. According to a report published today by the Intercept, NSA's specialized team known as Territorial Dispute (TeDi) developed some scripts and scanning tools that help the agency to detect other nation-state hackers on the targeted machines it infects. NSA hackers used these tools to scan targeted systems for 'indicators of compromise' (IoC) in order to protect its own operations from getting exposed, as well as to fin

Great news for hackers. Now you can download and install Kali Linux directly from the Microsoft App Store on Windows 10 just like any other application. I know it sounds crazy, but it's true! Kali Linux, a very popular, free, and open-source Linux-based operating system widely used for hacking and penetration testing, is now natively available on Windows 10, without requiring dual boot or virtualization. Kali Linux is the latest Linux distribution to be made available on the Windows App Store for one-click installation, joining the list of other popular distribution such as Ubuntu , OpenSUSE and SUSE Enterprise Linux . In Windows 10, Microsoft has provided a feature called " Windows Subsystem for Linux " (WSL) that allows users to run Linux applications directly on Windows. "For the past few weeks, we've been working with the Microsoft WSL team to get Kali Linux introduced into the Microsoft App Store as an official WSL distribution, and today we&#

The bar has been raised. As more amplified attacks were expected following the record-breaking 1.35 Tbps Github DDoS attack , someone has just set a new record after only four days — 1.7 Tbps DDoS attack. Network security and monitoring company Arbor Networks claims that its ATLAS global traffic and DDoS threat data system have recorded a 1.7Tbps reflection/amplification attack against one of its unnamed US-based customer's website. Similar to the last week's DDoS attack on GitHub, the massive bandwidth of the latest attack was amplified by a factor of 51,000 using thousands of misconfigured Memcached servers exposed on the Internet. Memcached, a popular open source distributed memory caching system, came into news earlier last week when researchers detailed how attackers could abuse it to launch amplification DDoS attack by sending a forged request to the targeted Memcached server on port 11211 using a spoofed IP address that matches the victim's IP. A few b