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If you have installed any of the below-mentioned Ad blocker extension in your Chrome browser, you could have been hacked. A security researcher has spotted five malicious ad blockers extension in the Google Chrome Store that had already been installed by at least 20 million users. Unfortunately, malicious browser extensions are nothing new. They often have access to everything you do online and could allow its creators to steal any information victims enter into any website they visit, including passwords, web browsing history and credit card details. Discovered by Andrey Meshkov, co-founder of Adguard, these five malicious extensions are copycat versions of some legitimate, well-known Ad Blockers. Creators of these extensions also used popular keywords in their names and descriptions to rank top in the search results, increasing the possibility of getting more users to download them. "All the extensions I've highlighted are simple rip-offs with a few lines of co

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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,

A new job opening post on Facebook suggests that the social network is forming a team to build its own hardware chips, joining other tech titans like Google, Apple, and Amazon in becoming more self-reliant. According to the post , Facebook is looking for an expert in ASIC and FPGA—two custom silicon designs to help it evaluate, develop and drive next-generation technologies within Facebook—particularly in artificial intelligence and machine learning. The social media company is seeking to hire an expert who can "an end-to-end SoC/ASIC, firmware and driver development organization, including all aspects of front-end and back-end standard cell ASIC development," reads the job listing on Facebook's corporate website. SoC (system-on-a-chip) is a processor typically used in mobile devices with all the components required to power a device, while ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit) is a customized piece of silicon designed for a narrow purpose that companie

Be careful while plugging your iPhone into a friend's laptop for a quick charge or sharing selected files. Researchers at Symantec have issued a security warning for iPhone and iPad users about a new attack, which they named " TrustJacking ," that could allow someone you trust to remotely take persistent control of, and extract data from your Apple device. Apple provides an iTunes Wi-Fi sync feature in iOS that allows users to sync their iPhones to a computer wirelessly. To enable this feature, users have to grant one-time permission to a trusted computer (with iTunes) over a USB cable. Once enabled, the feature allows the computer owner to secretly spy on your iPhone over the Wi-Fi network without requiring any authentication, even when your phone is no longer physically connected to that computer. "Reading the text, the user is led to believe that this is only relevant while the device is physically connected to the computer, so assumes that disconnecti

It's time to update your Drupal websites, once again. For the second time within a month , Drupal has been found vulnerable to another critical vulnerability that could allow remote attackers to pull off advanced attacks including cookie theft, keylogging, phishing and identity theft. Discovered by the Drupal security team, the open source content management framework is vulnerable to cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability that resides in a third-party plugin CKEditor which comes pre-integrated in Drupal core to help site administrators and users create interactive content. CKEditor is a popular JavaScript-based WYSIWYG rich text editor which is being used by many websites, as well as comes pre-installed with some popular web projects. According to a security advisory released by CKEditor, the XSS vulnerability stems from the improper validation of " img " tag in Enhanced Image plugin for CKEditor 4.5.11 and later versions. This could allow an attacker to

If you have installed a network-attached storage device manufactured by LG Electronics, you should take it down immediately, read this article carefully and then take appropriate action to protect your sensitive data. A security researcher has revealed complete technical details of an unpatched critical remote command execution vulnerability in various LG NAS device models that could let attackers compromise vulnerable devices and steal data stored on them. LG's Network Attached Storage (NAS) device is a dedicated file storage unit connected to a network that allows users to store and share data with multiple computers. Authorized users can also access their data remotely over the Internet. The vulnerability has been discovered by the researcher at privacy advocate firm VPN Mentor, the same company that last month revealed severe flaws in three popular VPNs —HotSpot Shield, PureVPN, and ZenMate VPN. The LG NAS flaw is a pre-authenticated remote command injection vulnera

Remember the " Big bitcoin heist " we reported last month when a group of thieves stole around 600 powerful bitcoin mining devices from Icelandic data centers? Icelandic Police had arrested 11 suspects as part of the investigation, one of which has escaped from prison and fled to Sweden on a passenger plane reportedly also carrying the Icelandic prime minister Katrin Jakobsdottir. Sindri Thor Stefansson , who is suspected of masterminding the whole theft of almost $2 million worth of cryptocurrency-mining equipment, traveled under a passport of someone else but identified through surveillance footage. Stefansson had recently been transferred to a low-security Sogn prison, located in rural southern Iceland (just 59 miles away from Iceland's international airport in Keflavik), from where he escaped through a window early Tuesday and boarded the flight to Sweden. Prime minister Jakobsdottir was on her way to Sweden to take part in India-Nordic Summit and meet Indi

The Drupal vulnerability (CVE-2018-7600), dubbed Drupalgeddon2 that could allow attackers to completely take over vulnerable websites has now been exploited in the wild to deliver malware backdoors and cryptocurrency miners. Drupalgeddon2, a highly critical remote code execution vulnerability discovered two weeks ago in Drupal content management system software, was recently patched by the company without releasing its technical details. However, just a day after security researchers at Check Point and Dofinity published complete details, a Drupalgeddon2 proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit code was made widely available, and large-scale Internet scanning and exploitation attempts followed. At the time, no incident of targets being hacked was reported, but over the weekend, several security firms noticed that attackers have now started exploiting the vulnerability to install cryptocurrency miner and other malware on vulnerable websites. The SANS Internet Storm Center spotted so

Last year, the popular system cleanup software CCleaner suffered a massive supply-chain malware attack of all times, wherein hackers compromised the company's servers for more than a month and replaced the original version of the software with the malicious one. The malware attack infected over 2.3 million users who downloaded or updated their CCleaner app between August and September last year from the official website with the backdoored version of the software. Now, it turns out that the hackers managed to infiltrate the company's network almost five months before they first replaced the official CCleaner build with the backdoored version, revealed Avast executive VP and CTO Ondrej Vlcek at the RSA security conference in San Francisco on Tuesday. 6-Months Timeline of CCleaner Supply Chain Attack Vlcek shared a brief timeline of the last year's incident that came out to be the worst nightmare for the company, detailing how and when unknown hackers breached Pi

Global chip-maker Intel on Tuesday announced two new technologies—Threat Detection Technology (TDT) and Security Essentials—that not only offer hardware-based built-in security features across Intel processors but also improve threat detection without compromising system performance. Intel's Threat Detection Technology (TDT) offers a new set of features that leverage hardware-level telemetry to help security products detect new classes of threats and exploits. It includes two main capabilities—Accelerated Memory Scanning and Advanced Platform Telemetry. Accelerated Memory Scanning allows antivirus programs to use Intel's integrated GPU to scan and detect memory-based malware attacks while reducing the impact on performance and power consumption. "Current scanning technologies can detect system memory-based cyber-attacks, but at the cost of CPU performance," says Rick Echevarria, Intel security division Vice President. "With Accelerated Memory Scanni

Finally, it's happening. Microsoft has built its own custom Linux kernel to power " Azure Sphere ," a newly launched technology that aims to better secure billions of " Internet of things " devices by combining the custom Linux kernel with new chip design, and its cloud security service. Project Azure Sphere focuses on protecting microcontroller-based IoT devices, including smart appliances, connected toys, and other smart gadgets, Microsoft announced during the security-focused RSA Conference in San Francisco Monday. It is basically a security package consists of three main components: Azure Sphere-certified microcontrollers (MCUs) Azure Sphere OS Azure Sphere Security Service "Azure Sphere provides security that starts in the hardware and extends to the cloud, delivering holistic security that protects, detects, and responds to threats—so they're always prepared," Microsoft said. Internet of Things (IoT) devices are 'ridicu

Security researchers have been warning about an ongoing malware campaign hijacking Internet routers to distribute Android banking malware that steals users' sensitive information, login credentials and the secret code for two-factor authentication. In order to trick victims into installing the Android malware, dubbed Roaming Mantis , hackers have been hijacking DNS settings on vulnerable and poorly secured routers . DNS hijacking attack allows hackers to intercept traffic, inject rogue ads on web-pages and redirect users to phishing pages designed to trick them into sharing their sensitive information like login credentials, bank account details, and more. Hijacking routers' DNS for a malicious purpose is not new. Previously we reported about widespread DNSChanger and Switcher —both the malware worked by changing the DNS settings of the wireless routers to redirect traffic to malicious websites controlled by attackers. Discovered by security researchers at Kaspersk

Internet-connected technology, also known as the Internet of Things (IoT), is now part of daily life, with smart assistants like Siri and Alexa to cars, watches, toasters, fridges, thermostats, lights, and the list goes on and on. But of much greater concern, enterprises are unable to secure each and every device on their network, giving cybercriminals hold on their network hostage with just one insecure device. Since IoT is a double-edged sword, it not only poses huge risks to enterprises worldwide but also has the potential to severely disrupt other organisations, or the Internet itself . There's no better example than Mirai , the botnet malware that knocked the world's biggest and most popular websites offline for few hours over a year ago. We have another great example that showcases how one innocent looking insecure IoT device connected to your network can cause security nightmares. Nicole Eagan, the CEO of cybersecurity company Darktrace, told attendees at

Hackers have started exploiting a recently disclosed critical vulnerability in Drupal shortly after the public release of working exploit code. Two weeks ago, Drupal security team discovered a highly critical remote code execution vulnerability, dubbed Drupalgeddon2 , in its content management system software that could allow attackers to completely take over vulnerable websites. To address this vulnerability the company immediately released updated versions of Drupal CMS without releasing any technical details of the vulnerability, giving more than a million sites enough time to patch the issue. Two days ago, security researchers at Check Point and Dofinity published complete technical details about this vulnerability (CVE-2018-7600), using which, a Russian security researcher published a proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit code for Drupalgeddon2 on GitHub. The Drupalgeddon2 vulnerability that affects all versions of Drupal from 6 to 8 allows an unauthenticated, remote attack

While performing in-depth analysis of various malware samples, security researchers at Cyberbit found a new code injection technique, dubbed Early Bird , being used by at least three different sophisticated malware that helped attackers evade detection. As its name suggests, Early Bird is a "simple yet powerful" technique that allows attackers to inject malicious code into a legitimate process before its main thread starts, and thereby avoids detection by Windows hook engines used by most anti-malware products. The Early Bird code injection technique "loads the malicious code in a very early stage of thread initialization, before many security products place their hooks—which allows the malware to perform its malicious actions without being detected," the researchers said. The technique is similar to the AtomBombing code injection technique that does not rely on easy-to-detect API calls, allowing malware to inject code into processes in a manner that no a

Android ecosystem is highly broken when it comes to security, and device manufacturers (better known as OEMs) make it even worse by not providing critical patches in time. According to a new study, most Android vendors have been lying to users about security updates and telling customers that their smartphones are running the latest updates. In other words, most smartphone manufacturers including big players like Samsung, Xiaomi, OnePlus, Sony, HTC, LG, and Huawei are not delivering you every critical security patch they're supposed to, a study by Karsten Nohl and Jakob Lell of German security firm Security Research Labs (SRL) revealed. Nohl and Lell examined the firmware of 1,200 smartphones from over a dozen vendors, for every Android patch released last year, and found that many devices have a "patch gap," leaving parts of the Android ecosystem exposed to hackers. "Sometimes these guys just change the date without installing any patches. Probably for m