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Cybersecurity researchers at Check Point today revealed details of a potential dangerous vulnerability in DJI Drone web app that could have allowed attackers access user accounts and synced sensitive information within it, including flight records, location, live video camera feed, and photos taken during a flight.
Thought the vulnerability was discovered and responsibly reported by the security firm Check Point to the DJI security team in March this year, the popular China-based drone manufacturing company fixed the issue after almost six months in September.
The account takeover attack takes advantage of a total of three vulnerabilities in the DJI infrastructure, including a Secure Cookie bug in the DJI identification process, a cross-site scripting (XSS) flaw in its Forum and a SSL Pinning issue in its mobile app.
The first vulnerability, i.e. not having the "secure" and "httponly" cookie flag enabled, allowed attackers to steal login cookies of a user by injecting a malicious JavaScript into the DJI Forum website using the XSS vulnerability.
"To trigger this XSS attack all the attacker need do is to write a simple post in the DJI forum which would contain the link to the payload," the researchers explained in a report published today.
"A user who logged into DJI Forum, then clicked a specially-planted malicious link, could have had his or her login credentials stolen to allow access to other DJI online assets,"
Once captured, the login cookies, which include authentication tokens, can then be re-used to take complete control over the user's DJI Web Account, the DJI GO/4/pilot Mobile Applications and account on its centralized drone operations management platform called DJI Flighthub.
However, to access the compromised account on the DJI mobile apps, attackers have to first intercept the Mobile application traffic after bypassing its implementation of SSL pinning by performing man-in-the-middle (MitM) attack to the DJI server using Burp Suite.
"We also carried out further research and found that by parsing flight logs files we can get much more information such as location and angle of every picture taken during the drone's flight, the drone's home location, last known location and more," researchers said.
DJI classified the vulnerability as "high risk—low probability," because successful exploitation of the flaw required a user "to be logged into their DJI account while clicking on a specially-planted malicious link in the DJI Forum."
DJI also said the company did not find any evidence of the flaw being exploited in the wild.
Check Point researchers reported the vulnerability to the DJI through its bug bounty program, but declined to reveal the financial reward offered to them. The DJI bug bounty program offers up to $30,000 in rewards for single vulnerabilities.
DJI has been facing scrutiny in the United States after the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released a memo late last year accusing the company of sending sensitive information about the U.S. infrastructure to China through its commercial drones and software.
However, the drone maker denied the allegations, saying that the memo from the US government office was based on "clearly false and misleading claims."
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(Reuters)Zhang Zhizhen will be the first Chinese man in the Open Era to play in the main draw at Wimbledon next week after the world No. 178 booked his place by defeating Argentine Francisco Cerundolo 6-0 6-3 6-7(4) 7-6(6) in the qualifiers on Thursday.The 24-year-old is only the fourth Chinese man to play singles in the main draw of a grand slam since the Open Era began in 1968.Wu Di (2013, 2014, 2016), Zhang Ze (2014, 2015) and Li Zhe (2019) have all played at the Australian Open.Wimbledon, the only grand slam to be canceled in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, will return in its usual slot this year with the main draw starting on June 28.
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Are you a T-Mobile prepaid customer? If yes, you should immediately create or update your associated account PIN/passcode as additional protection.
The US-based telecom giant T-Mobile today disclosed a yet another data breach incident that recently exposed potentially personal information of some of the customers using its prepaid services.
What happened? In a statement posted on its website, T-Mobile said its cybersecurity team discovered a "malicious, unauthorized access" to information associated with an undisclosed number of its prepaid wireless account customers.
However, the company did not disclose precisely how the breach happened, when it happened, and how the attackers unauthorizedly managed to access the private information of the company's prepaid customers.
What type of information was accessed? The stolen data associated with customers' prepaid wireless accounts include their:
names,
phone numbers,
billing addresses (if customers provided this data during account establishment),
account numbers, and
rate plans and features, like whether a customer has added an international calling feature.
"Rate plan and features of your voice calling service are 'customer proprietary network information' ('CPNI') under FCC rules, which require we provide you notice of this incident," T-Mobile said.
What type of information was not compromised? The telecommunication giant confirmed that no financial information, social security numbers, and passwords were compromised as a result of the security breach incident.
What is T-Mobile now doing? The company took necessary steps to shut down the unauthorized access upon discovery and immediately notified law enforcement of the security incident.
The company is also notifying affected customers through email and directing them to a customer support page on T-Mobile's website.
T-Mobile also made it clear that if you don't receive an email notification from the company, it's likely your account was not among those impacted by this incident, but "it is possible you didn't hear from [the company] because [it] doesn't have up-to-date contact information for you."
"We are always working to improve security so we can stay ahead of malicious activity and protect our customers. We have a number of safeguards in place to protect your personal information from unauthorized access, use, or disclosure," T-Mobile said.
What Should You Do Now? Affected customers are recommended to update the PIN/passcode to access their accounts.
Do it even if you are not affected—just to be on the safer side.
Affected customers should also be suspicious of phishing emails, which are usually the next step of cybercriminals in an attempt to trick users into giving away their passwords and credit card information.
Although the T-Mobile data breach incident did not expose any financial information, it is always a good idea to keep a close eye on your bank and payment card statements for any unusual activity and report to the bank if you find any.
The incident comes over a year after T-Mobile suffered a significant data breach that exposed names, email addresses, phone numbers, and account information for about 2 million customers.
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Forbes.com Vulnerable to XSS injection
One of the Leading News Company Forbes is Vulnerable. Hacker with name "B1uB3rry" expose that Forbes.com is vulnerable to possible SQL injection but confirmed to be vulnerable to Cross Site Script Injection (XSS) & HTML Injection. According to hacker "One can easily deface the website as other vulnerabilities exist." Live Example of XSS injection on Forbes . Hacker is Admin of B1uB3rry Security Team (San Antonio, TX).
Cross-site scripting (XSS) is a type of computer security vulnerability typically found in web applications that enables attackers to inject client-side script into web pages viewed by other users.
UPDATE:
Another XSS on Subdomain of Forbes. This Vulnerability also exposed by a hacker on Twitter.
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The cyber Security Analyst 'Ebrahim Hegazy' (@Zigoo0) Consultant at Q-CERT has found an "Unvalidated Redirection Vulnerability" in the website of the giant security solutions vendor "Kaspersky".
Ebrahim, who found a SQL Injection in "Avira" website last month, this time he found a Unvalidated Redirection Vulnerability that could be exploited for various purposes such as:
Cloned websites (Phishing pages)
It could also be used by Black Hats for Malware spreading
In the specific case what is very striking is that the link usable for the attacks is originated by a security firm like Kaspersky with serious consequences.
Would you trust a link from your security vendor? Absolutely Yes! But imagine your security vendor is asking you to download a malware!
To explain how dangerous the situation is when your security vendor is vulnerable, Ebrahim Hegazy sent me a video explaining the malware spreading scenario to simulate a Black Hat's exploiting Unvalidated Redirection Vulnerability in Kaspersky website to serve a malware.
"Since I'm working on Cyber security analysis, I've seen many methods of black-hats to spread links, maybe this link is for Exploit kits, Java Applet, flash exploits, or maybe a direct link to their EXE file. Let's take an example on the Facebook spreading techniques of the attackers, you may notice that "Mediafire" website was used lately in wide Malware spreading attack on Facebook.com,Which caused a wide infection, as the infected user will start to send links from Mediafire.com to his friends and since "Mediafire" is a trusted website/source for users so they simply click it and download the file!
But what if the links are coming from a very well known Security solutions vendor such as Kaspersky? For sure people will trust the links. So, through "Unvalidated Redirection Vulnerability" in Kaspersky, attackers will be able to spread a link coming from Kaspersky.com but when the user clicks on that link, he will get redirected to the attacker's website which would download at Malware on their machines or even download a "Rogue Antivirus" to steal financial information such as credit card information!" explained Ebrahim Hegazy.
After the researcher reported the vulnerability to Kaspersky team, it took about 2 months to fix the vulnerability, it is really a long time considering that if a hacker had found this flaw before Hagazy he could spread links using Kaspersky.com.
The consequences of unfixing of such vulnerability are critical
Wide infection - since the redirection is coming from a trusted source especially if the attacker registered a domain name similar to Kaspersky.com
Very bad reputation for Kaspersky company.
Your most trusted resource "Your Antivirus" will be your worst enemy! Would you trust anything else!
And many other consequences. The vulnerability was reported to Kaspersky web-team and is now fixed.
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(CNN)Europe's scorching heat wave expanded across the continent on Saturday, with people from Britain to the Balkans sweltering under abnormally high temperatures after a record-breaking week. France is expecting temperatures of 39 degrees Celsius (103 degrees Fahrenheit) in parts on Saturday, a day after it shattered its record mark multiple times in one day.Spain, which is dealing with the aftermath of a wildfire that tore through 10,000 acres of forest in the country's north-east on Friday, is bracing for temperatures of up to 42 degrees, according to its national meteorological body AEMET. The country is still affected by a "mass of tropical wind coming from Africa'a mass of tropical wind coming from Africa," the agency said.And the UK saw its hottest day of the year by some distance, with the mercury rising to 33 degrees Celsius (91.4 Fahrenheit) and threatening the country's hottest-ever June mark of 35.6 degrees, set in 1976.Climate crisis: Europe's cities dangerously unprepared for heat wave hellThe hot weather is hitting sporting events across Europe, including the first-ever Major League Baseball game to be played in London. In a sign of how unusual the June heat wave is, organizers at Lord's Cricket Ground in the city even allowed spectators at the World Cup match between Australia and New Zealand to remove their jackets at the pavilion. Read MoreAt Glastonbury, revelers ditched the mud-proof boots usually associated with Britain's most famous music festival -- and showers at the event were closed to preserve water at the Worthy Farm site.The continent has been baking in the heat all week, with cities springing into action to prevent it from turning fatal.French authorities have taken a number of radical steps this week to prevent a repeat of the tragic consequences of the 2003 heat wave that left around 14,000 people dead. Around 4,000 schools were closed in the country on Friday and the opening hours of parks and public swimming pools have been extended.Paris activated its heat emergency plan last weekend, put together in the aftermath of the 2003 heat wave. Cooling rooms were opened in some municipal buildings and mist showers were installed in the streets in the city, which is seeing temperatures of over 35 degrees on Saturday.Firefighters put out hot spots on Saturday after a brushfire hit the south on France.Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic all recorded their highest-ever June temperatures during the week.And the heat is set to move east in the coming days, with countries including Croatia, Slovenia and Hungary preparing for marks in the mid-30s at the start of next week. Climate scientists have warned that heat waves such as this one are becoming more frequent and increasingly severe because of the climate crisis. Météo-France, the country's meteorological body, said the frequency of such events is expected to double by 2050.
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Story highlightsReal Madrid salvage 2-2 draw against Atletico in Madrid derbyLos Blancos stay top of La LigaCristiano Ronaldo scores late equalizerBarcelona close gap to one point with 4-1 win over AlmeriaCristiano Ronaldo salvaged a point for Real Madrid in a pulsating and controversial Madrid derby Sunday to keep his side top of the three-way title race in La Liga.Real were trailing Atletico 2-1 with eight minutes remaining when he equalized after an assist from Gareth Bale, firing home from the edge of the area.The draw left Real three points clear of Atletico, but defending champions Barcelona closed to within a point with a 4-1 win over Almeria later Sunday.Read: Emotional Ronaldo collects Ballon d'OrAlexis Sanchez put them ahead after just eight minutes in the Nou Camp before Lionel Messi made it 2-0 with a stunning free kick, his eighth goal in six games.Angel Trujillo pulled one back for the visitors and it took late goals from Carles Puyol and Xavi to seal the victory.Atletico were looking to complete the league double over their capital rivals but were beaten 5-0 on aggregate by Real in the Copa del Rey semifinals last month.JUST WATCHEDCristiano Ronaldo wins 2013 Ballon d'OrReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHCristiano Ronaldo wins 2013 Ballon d'Or 02:15JUST WATCHEDCristiano Ronaldo: A star like no otherReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHCristiano Ronaldo: A star like no other 02:46JUST WATCHEDDoes Ronaldo carry Real Madrid?ReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHDoes Ronaldo carry Real Madrid? 01:45When Karim Benzema put the league leaders in front after just three minutes from an Angel di Maria cross it looked as Los Rojiblancos would be left with red faces again, but it proved the opposite.Sergio Ramos appeared fortunate not to concede a penalty when he tripped star Atletico striker Diego Costa but the home side were in front by half time as Koke and Gabi struck with spectacular long range efforts.A further penalty appeal involving Costa in the second half was also turned away and home assistant coach Mono Burgos was sent to the stands for protesting.Read: Record Champions League win for RealReal pushed for the equalizer and Thibaut Courtois had to be alert again to push away Bale's flicked header.Ronaldo might have leveled when he headed wide from a good position but he made no mistake when presented with a second opportunity in the 82nd minute.The Portuguese star was playing his first La Liga match after serving a three-game ban for being sent off last month.It was the 28th game unbeaten for Carlo Ancelotti's team since a 2-1 reverse to Barcelona last year and they came into the match on a high after a record 6-1 thrashing of Schalke in the Champions League.But the draw did end a run of eight straight wins in all competitions at the Vicente Calderon stadium for Real."I think we can leave here reinforced, we have drawn a game in which we were losing," said Ancelotti."The reaction of the players was good, in general we can be satisfied because Atletico Madrid are a very good team, especially at home," he added.In Serie A, Juventus took a bigger grip on the title with a 2-0 away win at AC Milan, leaving them 11 points clear of Roma, who were held to a goalless draw by Inter Milan Saturday.Fernando Llorente and Carlos Tevez scored either side of halftime for the defending champions in the San Siro.Third-placed Napoli dropped points in a 1-1 away draw at Livorno.
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"Signup or Login with Facebook" ?? You might think twice before doing that next time. A security researcher has discovered a critical flaw that allows hackers take over Facebook accounts on websites that leverage 'Login with Facebook' feature.
The vulnerability doesn't grant hackers access to your actual Facebook password, but it does allow them to access your accounts using Facebook application developed by third-party websites such as Bit.ly, Mashable, Vimeo, About.me, Stumbleupon, Angel.co and possibly many more.
FLAW EXPLOITS THREE CSRFs PROTECTION
Egor Homakov, a researcher with pentesting company Sakurity, made the social network giant aware of the bug a year ago, but the company refused to fix the vulnerability because doing so would have ruined compatibility of Facebook with a vast number of websites over the Internet.
The critical flaw abuses the lack of CSRF (Cross-Site Request Forgery) protection for three different processes —
Facebook log in
Facebook log out
Third-party account connection
The first two issues "can be fixed by Facebook," Homakov said, but have not done yet. However, the third one needs to be fixed by the website owners those who have integrate "Login with Facebook" feature into their websites.
TOOL TO HACK FACEBOOK ACCOUNTS
Therefore, blaming Facebook for dismal security in 'Login with Facebook' feature, the researcher publicly released a tool, dubbed RECONNECT, that exploits the bug and lets hackers to generate URLs that can be used to hijack accounts on third-party websites that use 'Login with Facebook' button.
"Go blackhats, don't be shy!" Homakov wrote on his Twitter, allegedly encouraging hackers and cyber criminals to take benefit from his ready to use tool.
Homakov also published a blog post which gives hackers a step-by-step process for setting up rogue Facebook accounts that victims are redirected to when they tricked into clicking on malicious URLs provided by the attackers.
"Now our Facebook account is connected to the victim account on that website and we can log in that account directly to change email/password, cancel bookings, read private messages and so on," Homakov wrote in a blog post.
RECONNECT Facebook hacking tool can generate malicious URLs to hijack Facebook accounts on third-party website including Booking.com, Bit.ly, About.me, Stumbleupon, Angel.co, Mashable and Vimeo.
However, any website that supports 'Login with Facebook' can be hacked by manually inserting its link into the tool that generates Facebook login requests on behalf of its users.
HOW TO PROTECT YOURSELF ?
One could realize the dangerous consequences of RECONNECT Facebook hacking tool by calculating how many number of websites over Internet use that blue color ' f ' button of Facebook login. And once a hacker makes a way to get into you account, they could access your private information and use them to hack into your other online accounts.
So, in order to prevent your accounts from malicious hackers, Do Not click on any suspicious URLs provided to you via online messages, emails or social media accounts. And always be careful while surfing over the Internet.
FACEBOOK RESPONDS TO THE ISSUE
Facebook says it has been aware of the issue for some time now and that third-party sites can protect their users by utilizing Facebook's best practices when using the Facebook sign-in feature.
A Facebook spokesperson released a statement saying, "This is a well-understood behaviour. Site developers using Login can prevent this issue by following our best practices and using the 'state' parameter we provide for OAuth Login."
The company also added that they have also made various changes in order to help prevent login CSRF and are evaluating others while "aiming to preserve necessary functionality for a large number of sites that rely upon Facebook Login."
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Story highlights Pub patrons remain trapped in the debris, fire officials say"Most of the helicopter appeared to be inside the pub," Jim Murphy saysSearch and rescue efforts are continuing, firefighters say"I know there were a lot of people lying on the ground," a witness saysA police helicopter crashed into the roof of a pub crowded with Friday-night revelers in the Scottish city of Glasgow, trapping a number people under the debris, rescuers and witnesses said. Urban search and rescue specialists were working to make The Clutha Bar safe to access so firefighters can pull victims out, according to the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service. People remained trapped inside the one-story building, and communication was established between those trapped in the debris and rescuers, said Lewis Ramsay of the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service. "I can confirm there are a number of casualties but it is too early at this stage to provide further details," Deputy Chief Constable Rose Fitzpatrick of the Scotland Police said in a written statement. The helicopter, carrying two police officers and a civilian pilot, crashed on the roof of the pub at 10:25 p.m. local time, Scottish police said. "Given an incident of this scale we must all prepare ourselves for the likelihood of fatalities," the head of the Scottish government, Alex Salmond, said in a post on his official Twitter account. The crash occurred as patrons listened to the self-styled ska band Esperanza, which had taken the stage at the pub a short time earlier.Jim Murphy, a member of the UK Parliament, said he arrived at the pub just moments after the crash and saw people trying to get out of the building. "Most of the helicopter appeared to be inside the pub," said Murphy, who represents a portion of Glasgow. Murphy estimated he saw at least 10 people who were injured, including some who were struggling with consciousness and others who were bleeding from head wounds."Until the emergency services got there, everyone who was at the scene just tried to do their best to help all those who were trapped and injured," he said. Grace Maclean and a friend were inside the pub listening to the band when the crash occurred. "We were watching the band and there was kind of like a (roof) panel fell, there was a whoosh of dust, then we laughed that the band said, 'We didn't think we were going to bring the roof down,'" she said. "...The roof didn't come down. ...It didn't come completely down anyway."Maclean said she was sitting at the back of the bar next to an older man, who suffered a cut on his head from the debris when crash occurred. "Everyone was really confused and scared," she said. "No one had a clue. There was no explosion. No bang. It was really quiet. There is no fire," she said.The noise came after the crash, when people began calling out for friends. "Everyone was yelling (for) their friends, but everyone seemed to find everyone," Maclean said. Christina O'Neill, who saw the crash from her apartment across the street, said she heard what sounded like a low-flying airplane. "I thought that didn't sound right for a couple of seconds," O'Neill said. After the sound of impact, she saw smoke and people running from the pub. "I know there were a lot of people lying on the ground kind of getting looked into," she said.On the Facebook page of the band Esperanza, a post indicates the band members all made it out of the club. "It seems that the band are all OK. Not so sure about everyone else," it said.Hours after the crash, the helicopter -- bearing the word "police" on its damaged tail -- was still smoldering. A spokesman for the Scottish Ambulance Service told CNN that there were "multiple ambulances and a special operations team on site."Gordon Smart, editor of The Scottish Sun, took to Twitter after apparently witnessing the crash. "Jesus. Think I just saw a helicopter crash in Glasgow," he tweeted. In another post, he said: "This is genuinely horrible. Spare a thought for those involved. Terrifying experience. Thought it was going to land on me."The Clutha's Facebook page contained numerous posts from people concerned about the incident."Stay with it everybody, now is the time to think of others," wrote one person. "People need help."British Prime Minister David Cameron also tweeted about the situation."My thoughts are with everyone affected by the helicopter crash in Glasgow -- and the emergency services working tonight," he said.
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Story highlightsAncient trash is an important resource for archaeologistsTrash pits or "middens" tell us much about the daily life of our forebears, according to archaeologistsPeabody Museum is staging a series of lectures about the importance of trash to archaeologyScientists are studying our trash right now to find out what it says about our cultureWe may not immediately equate the activities of archaeologists to trash sifting. Or imagine that the glass-encased artifacts in museums might be one-time refuse. But quite often, this is exactly the case. Studying ancient trash from around the world gives archaeologists and historians the chance to understand the habits that defined people's daily lives, said Dr. Richard Meadow, Director of the Peabody Museum's Zooarchaeology Laboratory and Senior Lecturer on Anthropology at Harvard University.It may not be glamorous but, he said, "much of what archaeology knows about the past comes from trash, if trash is defined as the products of human consumption. Trash is a proxy for human behavior."The Peabody Museum is staging a series of talks and events, entitled Trash Talk: The Anthropology of Waste until Spring 2012, on the importance of trash to our understanding of human behavior, both in the past and now. Meadow, who has excavated sites including the ancient Indus city of Harappa in present-day Pakistan, has gleaned much from studying centuries-old trash. Early dumping grounds, or "middens," are often archaeological and anthropological gold-mines, he said, not just for what can be found there but for what they tell us about ancient civilizations, what they consumed and how they organized their urban space to deal with their waste."The way that ancient cities used to grow and change through time is actually very much related to the evolution of trash," Meadow explained. Ancient people, he said, quite literally lived with their trash, usually dumping it in the streets outside their homes when it wasn't collected and deposited in special pits. Sometimes, he said, whole cities would be filled with trash, to the point where the street levels would rise, submerging homes and forcing people to build on top of it. While this might sound revolting and unhygienic to us now, ancient peoples, said Meadow, became acclimatized to it. And they were at least adept at recycling their trash. "I think almost all civilizations recycled in one way or another," Meadow said, explaining that ancient peoples across the world would recycle organic matter as fuel, while inorganic refuse would be used to build the foundations of a house. Precious metals, he said, would be melted down and re-shaped for a variety of tools. "It's only when you get to the modern period of consumerism that you get this culture of obsolescence," he said. Dr. Jose Remesal Rodriguez is a professor of Ancient History at the University of Barcelona and an expert in the social and economic history of the Roman Empire, with a special interest in the production and trade of food in the ancient world.He is the director of excavations at an ancient dump site in Rome called Monte Testaccio. An artificial hill composed of more than 25 million discarded Roman amphorae -- or vase-shaped containers -- it tells us much about the ancient Roman trade in olive oil, which these amphorae were used to transport. "A dump can be a particularly interesting source (for finding out) about the daily life (and) development of the civilization that created it," said Remesal. From the shards found at Monte Testaccio, he said, archaeologists were able to trace the evolution of food policy in the Roman Empire. "Testaccio is a very special dump, which gives us information about a concrete product -- olive oil -- and the relations between the capital of the Empire and one of its provinces," Remesal explained. This prizing of ancient trash may seem at odds with our attitudes to waste today. But according to Meadow, scientists are already at work studying our trash and what it says about us. He cites as an example American archaeologist William Rathje, director of the "Garbage Project" in Arizona, which has sifted through and studied garbage from 1973 to the present day. "Some amazing statistics have come out of this -- how much food gets thrown out in the trash that was probably OK to eat, and other things hardly used that were thrown away," said Meadow."It's an incredible array of material," he concluded.
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Excitement continues .. Rockstar Games schedule the release of latest The Grand Theft Auto series, GTA 5 on September 17, but Cyber Criminals has already released a fake version of GTA 5 contains malware on torrent networks.
Romanian security firm BitDefender issued warning that GTA V hasn't been leaked, and during installation you will be asked to complete a survey and send off a text message to gain the serial number. You will then be charged €1 per day on your phone bill and will be infected by a virus.
The PC version has yet to be announced, so trying to install it on your PC is a ridiculous idea; but that seems to be what a lot of people are doing.
"The survey opens in a web browser and, therefore, is able to perform a geographic redirect to the web page that corresponds to the area you are located in," said, Bitdefender Senior E-Threat Analyst Bogdan Botezatu.
This malware is a generic Trojan Trojan.GenericKDV.1134859, which can steal user information, tamper with system files or draft a computer into a botnet. This will result in you being charged for premium rate text messages sent by bogus firms.
The easiest way to avoid this malicious software is to not illegally download copies of GTA V, especially when the game isn't yet launched.
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A cybersecurity researcher with Google Project Zero has released the details, and a proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit for a high severity vulnerability that exists in Linux kernel since kernel version 3.16 through 4.18.8.
Discovered by white hat hacker Jann Horn, the kernel vulnerability (CVE-2018-17182) is a cache invalidation bug in the Linux memory management subsystem that leads to use-after-free vulnerability, which if exploited, could allow an attacker to gain root privileges on the targeted system.
The use-after-free (UAF) vulnerabilities are a class of memory corruption bug that can be exploited by unprivileged users to corrupt or alter data in memory, enabling them to cause a denial of service (system crash) or escalate privileges to gain administrative access on a system.
Linux Kernel Exploit Takes an Hour to Gain Root Access
However, Horn says his PoC Linux kernel exploit made available to the public "takes about an hour to run before popping a root shell."
Horn responsibly reported the vulnerability to Linux kernel maintainers on September 12, and the Linux team fixed the issue in his upstream kernel tree within just two days, which Horn said was "exceptionally fast, compared to the fix times of other software vendors."
The Linux kernel vulnerability was disclosed on the oss-security mailing list on September 18 and was patched in the upstream-supported stable kernel versions 4.18.9, 4.14.71, 4.9.128, and 4.4.157 on the next day.
There's also a fix in release 3.16.58.
Debian and Ubuntu Linux Left its Users Vulnerable for Over a Week
"However, a fix being in the upstream kernel does not automatically mean that users' systems are actually patched," Horn noted.
The researcher was disappointed knowing that some major Linux distributions, including Debian and Ubuntu, left their users exposed to potential attacks by not releasing kernel updates more than a week after the vulnerability was made public.
As of Wednesday, both Debian stable and Ubuntu releases 16.04 and 18.04 had not patched the vulnerability.
However, the Fedora project already rolled out a security patch to its users on 22 September.
"Debian stable ships a kernel based on 4.9, but as of 2018-09-26, this kernel was last updated 2018-08-21. Similarly, Ubuntu 16.04 ships a kernel that was last updated 2018-08-27," Horn noted.
"Android only ships security updates once a month. Therefore, when a security-critical fix is available in an upstream stable kernel, it can still take weeks before the fix is actually available to users—especially if the security impact is not announced publicly."
In response to the Horn's blog post, the maintainers of Ubuntu says the company would possibly release the patches for the Linux kernel flaw around October 1, 2018.
Horn said that once the patch is deployed in the upstream kernel, the vulnerability and patch becomes public, which, in this case, could allow malicious actors to develop a Linux kernel exploit to target users.
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Did someone just share a random Google Doc with you?
First of all — Do not click on that Google Doc link you might have just received in your email and delete it immediately — even if it's from someone you know.
I, my colleagues at The Hacker News, and even people all around the Internet, especially journalists, are receiving a very convincing OAuth phishing email, which says that the person [sender] "has shared a document on Google Docs with you."
Once you clicked the link, you will be redirected to a page which says, "Google Docs would like to read, send and delete emails, as well access to your contacts," asking your permission to "allow" access.
If you allow the access, the hackers would immediately get permission to manage your Gmail account with access to all your emails and contacts, without requiring your Gmail password.
Beware! New GoogleDocs Phishing Email Scam Spreading Across the World — Here's Everything You Need to Know
CLICK TO TWEET
But How? The "Google Docs" app that requests permissions to access your account is fake and malicious, which is created and controlled by the attacker.
You should know that the real Google Docs invitation links do not require your permission to access your Gmail account.
Anything Linked to Compromised Gmail Accounts is at Risk
Once the app controlled by the attacker receives permissions to manage your email, it automatically sends same Google Docs phishing email to everyone on your contact list on your behalf.
Since your personal and business email accounts are commonly being used as the recovery email for many online accounts, there are possibilities that hackers could potentially get control over those online accounts, including Apple, Facebook, and Twitter.
In short, anything linked to a compromised Gmail account is potentially at risk and even if you enabled two factor authentication, it would not prevent hackers to access your data.
Meanwhile, Google has also started blacklisting malicious apps being used in the active phishing campaign.
"We are investigating a phishing email that appears as Google Docs. We encourage you to not click through & report as phishing within Gmail," Google tweeted.
This Google Docs phishing scheme is spreading incredibly quickly, hitting employees at multiple organizations and media outlets that use Google for email, as well as thousands of individual Gmail users who are reporting the same scam at the same time.
If by anyhow you have clicked on the phishing link and granted permissions, you can remove permissions for the fraudulent "Google Docs" app from your Google account. Here's how you can remove permissions:
Go to your Gmail accounts permissions settings at https://myaccount.google.com and Sign-in.
Go to Security and Connected Apps.
Search for "Google Docs" from the list of connected apps and Remove it. It's not the real Google Docs.
Stay tuned to our Facebook Page for more updates ! Stay Safe!
Update: Google Docs Phishing Scam Hits Nearly One Million Users
Google said that the last night's Google Docs phishing campaign affected "fewer than 0.1%" of Gmail users, which means nearly one million people were affected by it, handing over their email access to attackers.
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THOR : Another P2P Botnet in development with extra stealth features
The research community is now focusing on the integration of peer-to-peer (P2P) concepts as incremental improvements to distributed malicious software networks (now generically referred to as botnets). Because "botnets" can be used for illicit financial gain,they have become quite popular in recent Internet attacks.
A "botnet" is a network of computers that are compromised and controlled by an attacker. Each computer is infected witha malicious program called a "bot", which actively communicates with other bots in the botnet or with several "botcontrollers" to receive commands from the botnet owner. Attackers maintain complete control of their botnets, andcan conduct Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks,email spamming, keylogging, abusing online advertisements, spreading new malware, etc.
However, the first botnets that use peer-to-peer (P2P) networks for remote control of the compromised machines appeared in the wild recently. This new bot has a different code base, it uses the same spreading strategy and also seems to maintain a multi-relay (or peer-to-peer) infrastructure just like its predecessor.
Thor is a decentralised P2P botnet , Coded in C / C++ & Developed by "TheGrimReap3r" that has been in development for some time now and is almost ready to go out on sale.The botnet itself has no central command point, so it will be very difficult to shut down, also, very difficult to track where commands are coming from, because all the nodes pass them on.
Thor uses DLL injection, IAT hooking, ring3 rootkit amongst other things to hide. One more interesting Feature that It have it's own module system so you can write your own modules with our easy API system. It include peer to peer communication uses 256-AES encryption with random key generation at each startup.
Thor works on Win 2000+, Win XP SP0/SP1/SP2/SP3, Win Vista SP0/SP1/SP2, Win 7 SP0/SP1 and Support x86 and x64 systems.
The Developers of Thor going to sale this Botnet openly in underground market and various hacking forums at $8000, the package without modules and the expected modules that anyone can buy will be: advanced botkiller, DDoS, formgrabber, keylogger/password stealer and mass mailer.
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(CNN)Arms and hips not in sync? Struggling with your game? Try carrying an unborn child while you plot your way around the course.Twenty years ago, this is exactly what amateur Brenda Corrie-Kuehn -- eight months pregnant -- did at the US Women's Open at Pine Needles Lodge & Golf Club alongside playing partner Jennifer Greggain, who was well into her second trimester.Their scores were not the best and they were not the quickest around the course -- they were even put on the clock by officials given the number of toilet "pit stop" breaks Corrie-Kuehn had to quite naturally make.Yet the mother-of-three finished with a birdie and defied her obstetrician-gynecologist, who thought she was too close to the due date to be on a golf course in 80-degree heat."I said to her: 'Over my dead body.' I qualified for this, I worked hard to get there, I am going to play," Corrie-Kuehn told CNN Sport.Read MoreA week later, daughter Rachel was born, and her 56-year-old mom will have inspired others to carry on living life when your tummy and your doctors are telling you no.Corrie-Kuehn tees off during the first round of the 56th U.S. Women's Open Championship at Pine Needles Lodge and Golf Club in Southern Pines, North Carolina, on Thursday, May 31, 2001."It was not pretty. I don't remember what I did, but there's a point towards the end of your pregnancy where you just get big very quickly," said the nine-time US Open veteran."I think that happened between the time of qualifying for the Open and the actual event itself, and it's hard to fire the hips with the added weight, so my swing changed and I couldn't hit it very far. But I was glad to be there."A lot of people asked me: 'How could you play that way?' What I was trying to show was it's part of life. I had some physical restrictions and after the US Open I played in a cart at home before Rachel was born."What I was trying to show was just because you're pregnant, and unless you have a medical condition, you can do the same things you did before you were pregnant and after you deliver. That was my message."With such golfing genes -- Corrie-Kuehn's mother was a Venezuelan national champion and so was her dad -- it's little wonder Rachel followed in her mom's footsteps to the renowned Wake Forest University in North Carolina where she also excels at golf, narrowly missing out on the Augusta National Women's Amateur finale at Augusta earlier this year.She has the most avid supporter in her mom, whose advice for any pregnant golfer is to watch how long you spend practicing on the greens."It affected my distance a lot. Imagine having a 30-pound ball in front of you and trying to fire your hips, you would lose your balance. So my swing became very armsy and rhythmical."But there's no reason for the short game not to be good -- although you cannot sit and practice your putting for a long time because your back kills you."READ: Patty Tavatanakit: The golfer who admits it's 'odd' to think she's a major winnerStrong momsThree-time major champion Nancy Lopez has three daughters and won events while pregnant in the 1980s and 1990s. In 2003, France's Patricia Meunier-Lebouc played the Solheim Cup four months pregnant, taking some handy advice from Carin Koch, the Swede having played the 2002 competition at 12 weeks.In 2005, Laura Diaz and Iben Tinning met in the biennial competition, American Diaz six months pregnant and Dane Tinning 16 weeks.In the world of long drive championships, Lisa 'Longball' Vlooswyk became the first competitor in the field to throw her added weight into the biggest drives in the game.In turn, she inspired five-times world champion Sandra Carlborg from Sweden, who was pummeling 300+ yard drives in the 2019 tournament when she was 24 weeks pregnant with her daughter Ebba."We had a medical tent because it was very hot that day, the medical guy was cooling me down with ice between sets," Carlborg told CNN."I felt safe and he said: 'As long as you feel good, it's ok.' I promised him if I felt anything uncomfortable, I would stop competing," said the 37-year-old, who hit 80 balls at full tilt that day and whose longest drive is 401 yards, five shy of the world record.Now expecting her second daughter, due in September, Carlborg has used the Covid-19 lockdowns to start a podcast called PowerMamas in Sweden to help empower new mothers.Carlborg is pictured playing on the World Long Drive Championship in 2016."I'm getting weaker and weaker again so I'm really looking forward to coming back as a strong athlete for next year. My goal is to be my strongest me -- stronger than I've ever been and swing it faster than I ever have."Many people say women are stronger after they've been a mom."Carlborg gets some of her positive outlook from the way her sponsors initially took the news she was having her first baby."It's a big difference nowadays. I was very nervous when I told my sponsors I was pregnant with Ebba, wondering what they were going to say, but I think that's been a big change in the past few years, in all sports."I'm happy that we live not like 10-15 years ago, people always used to say: 'When you have kids. you're out of your sport.' I hope more ladies are thinking that having kids won't stop them from being a high-level athlete."Former Great Britain rower Baz Moffat founded the Well HQ earlier in 2021 with two doctors -- one of whom, Dr Emma Ross, has written a chapter on women and pregnancies in golf as part of a female athlete health book."Pregnancy and post-natal recovery in sport is a really, really new thing. Brenda is a real one-off," Moffat told CNN."It's only really since Serena Williams in 2014 that this has become more of a thing, in terms of more women sandwiching in children within their careers -- as opposed to just pushing their careers right up until the point they want to have children and that being the number one reason they retire from sport."Mother-of-two Moffat, who trained with the Great Britain Olympic team between 2004-08, said the change has been massive from her day as an elite athlete post the Beijing Games."I don't think there were any moms in the world of international sport back then. A few people tried to leave, have children and come back again, within a four-year cycle, but the support systems weren't there. "If the number one reason women are leaving their sport early is to have children, how can we support them throughout that? It's not perfect now, but there are examples of women doing it fantastically."READ: 'Everybody loves to hate the villain,' says Shooter McGavin 25 years on from 'Happy Gilmore'Laura Diaz shelters from the sun on the fifth hole during the friday morning foursomes matches in the 2005 Solheim Cup.Even par one day, a little birdie the nextBack at Wake Forest University, Kuehn's teammate Emilia Migliaccio is the talk of US amateur golf after making the playoff at Augusta but losing to a clutch par from 17-year-old Japanese star Tsubasa Kajitani.Like Kuehn, her mom too was a brilliant talent. Ulrika Migliaccio represented the University of Arizona and also played alongside fellow Swede and 10-time major winner Annika Sorenstam. So when Ulrika donned the famous white Augusta boiler suit to caddie for her daughter in April, it made Emilia gush with pride as she thought back to her mom as a golfer, not least playing the game pregnant."I think the day before my mom had me, she played a round of golf and shot even par," the 22-year-old told CNN, a huge smile breaking out across her face."She was playing with two men who looked at each other and said: 'Really? We're playing this pregnant lady?' Then she totally tore it up!"Migliaccio her caddie and mom, Ulrika after losing on the first playoff hole to Tsubasa Kajitani during the Augusta National Women's Amateur tournament.Migliaccio grew up aspiring to play sport professionally, has rubbed shoulders on team events with the likes of Patty Tavatanakit, Collin Morikawa, Jennifer Kupcho and Viktor Hovland and plays the game to a level most people can only dream about. Yet she has decided to follow her mom's footsteps in not joining the professional ranks."She didn't really like living out of a suitcase, and decided the professional track wasn't going to be for her. When I was questioning my career path, my mom shared her experience and she's given me a lot of guidance."Visit CNN.com/sport for more news, features, and videosLike Ulrika Migliaccio that day on the course, Carlborg has a lesson for some male golfers too."Back in 2019, when I was 30 weeks pregnant, I was telling guys at an event not to complain about their big stomachs, they're not stopping you hitting it far!"So hopefully I can inspire a lot of people from being pregnant."
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A distasteful trend among the cyber crooks have began these days that they left no occasion, either good or bad, to snatch users' financial information in order to make money as well as spread malware to victimize users.
The tragedy of the crashed Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 is no exception for the criminal minds. They are exploiting the disaster that took place last week in the disputed territory.
All related to Malaysian Airline Flight MH17, a Boeing 777 aircraft carrying 283 passengers and 15 crew members, that was shot down over eastern Ukraine on July 17 by a ground-to-air missile. So far, its unclear that who is behind the tragic incident, while Ukraine and the insurgents blamed each other.
Within just a week, at least six bogus Facebook pages that popped up the names of the Boeing 777 victims. According to the Australia's Sydney Morning Herald, three of the fraudulent pages were created in the names of children who were on the plane and died.
The bogus Facebook pages were came out to be click fraudsters, in which the site visitors are served a link to a phony website containing detailed information about the MH17 plane crash. Once clicked, users are then hit with a series of pop-up ads for online gambling sites and other shady services. The pages have since been shut down by Facebook , but this doesn't stop scammers.
I too caught a fake video circulating on Facebook with a fake message that promises to provide a real footage of the missile bringing down the aircraft. It baited people to click on another website with a link purporting to show footage of the MH17 disaster.
'Video Camera Caught the moment plane MH17 Crash over Ukraine.Watch here the video of Crash,' the link read.
As other click fraudsters, when I clicked on the video purporting to provide access to entire footage of the tragic incident, it prompted me to share it with my other Facebook friends in order to play the video, so that the bogus video could spread to other users and so on.
Obviously, I didn't chose that, but even if you do or not , in both cases the site will redirect users to another domain that will prompt users to download a video player (windows executable file) in order to play the video successfully.
People who desires to watch the MH17 Flight's shot down video, it will lead users downloading malware into their systems or potentially unwanted applications (PUPs), similar to what we have seen in many other spam campaigns of the types.
This is neither the first nor will be the last attempt of cyber criminals to leverage the tragedy of MH17 Malaysian airliner. Last week, cyber crooks used Twitter platform to widely spread short links that directed victims to the web pages known to have been linked with a variant of Zeus Trojan and the Sality malware as well, in order to steal financial information of the victims and to infect their systems with the malwares.
We strictly recommend you to do not trust such videos rather follow various reputed news websites in order to get legitimate information about the incidents. Stay Safe!
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If you use Slack, a popular cloud-based team collaboration server, and recently received an email from the company about a security incident, don't panic and read this article before taking any action.
Slack has been sending a "password reset" notification email to all those users who had not yet changed passwords for their Slack accounts since 2015 when the company suffered a massive data breach.
For those unaware, in 2015, hackers unauthorisedly gained access to one of the company's databases that stored user profile information, including their usernames, email addresses, and hashed passwords.
At that time, attackers also secretly inserted code, probably on the login page, which allowed them to capture plaintext passwords entered by some Slack users during that time.
However, immediately following the security incident, the company automatically reset passwords for those small number of Slack users whose plaintext passwords were exposed, but asked other affected users to change their passwords manually.
Keep calm and change your password 😊
Slack is resetting the passwords for all those users (approximately 1% of total) who hadn't changed their passwords since 2015 when the company experienced a #databreach leaking users' credentialshttps://t.co/k6jSBgloAX
Check this thread: https://t.co/Fo7QbI9pOv
— The Hacker News (@TheHackersNews) July 18, 2019
Now in its latest statement released today, the company said they learned about a new list of username and password combinations that match with the login credentials of its users who did not change their password after the 2015 data breach.
"We were recently contacted through our bug bounty program with information about potentially compromised Slack credentials," Slack states.
"We immediately confirmed that a portion of the email addresses and password combinations were valid, reset those passwords, and explained our actions to the affected users."
The latest security incident only affects users, who:
created an account before March 2015,
have not changed their password since the incident, and
accounts that do not require logging in via a single-sign-on (SSO) provider.
The company is not exactly aware of the source of this new leaked plaintext credentials, but suggests it could be the "result of malware attack or password reuse between services."
It is also possible that someone might have successfully cracked hashed passwords that were leaked in the 2015 data breach, even when it was protected using the bcrypt algorithm with a randomly generated salt per-password.
Late last month, Slack also sent a separate notification to all the affected users informing them about the potential compromise of their credentials without providing any details of the incident, but it seems many users ignored the warning and did not change their passwords voluntarily.
Therefore, now Slack has automatically reset passwords on affected accounts, that are about 1% of the total registered users, that haven't been updated since 2015 as a precautionary measure, asking them to set a new password using this guide.
"We have no reason to believe that any of these accounts were compromised, but we believe that this precaution is worth any inconvenience the reset may cause," the company said.
Besides your changing password, you are also recommended to enable two-factor authentication for your Slack accounts, even if you are not affected.
Slack is still investigating the latest security incident and promises to share more information as soon as they are available.
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London (CNN)The UK performed a significant U-turn in its handling of the coronavirus pandemic this week. After days of savage criticism in the press over its laggardly testing strategy, Britain's top health minister made a bold new pledge.By the end of the month, Matt Hancock said, the country would aim to perform 100,000 tests a day, a tenfold increase from the end of March. Get ready for wartime levels of national debt and tough choices aheadThat would be even more than Germany's current stellar performance of 50,000 tests a day. The announcement had the desired effect -- the next day's headlines were a lot more favorable and Hancock took the helm of the daily Downing Street briefing for the second day in a row on Friday.But the question of why the UK fell so far behind on testing -- even as the World Health Organization urged countries to "test, test, test" -- refuses to go away. Hancock tried to explain away the criticism by attributing it to the UK's historically small diagnostics industry. But critics believe that something else had been driving the UK's apparent lack of enthusiasm for the practice. Since the 2016 referendum vote to leave the European Union, the British government has made great efforts to remind the public that the UK's future is as an independent nation in charge of its own destiny. Some observers believe this has muddied the government's thinking, and driven it to take counterproductive steps -- including a confused position on whether the UK should have taken part in an EU-wide effort to procure more ventilators. Related storiesCan you use apps to track coronavirus?Asia may have been right about face masksHow the coronavirus could impact gender equalityUpdates: Coronavirus cases top 1 million globallyRead MoreThe government claimed the reason it missed out on the program was merely due to a breakdown in communication, rather than an ideological opposition to EU-wide initiatives at a time when the UK was forging its own path.Some analysts don't buy that explanation. "Brexit has almost certainly influenced this determination to not look like we're working with European countries. The response to questions about the German testing system has been extremely hostile," says Anand Menon, professor of European and international politics at King's College London. "There would have been no downside to working with the Europeans on procurement, but the government has been floundering on why it didn't. I suspect it partly had something to do with this political position that we don't need the EU."Menon isn't alone in this view. Gabriel Scally, president of epidemiology and public health at the Royal Society of Medicine, believes that the government has "absolute disdain for anything that comes from outside the country," and has "has ignored WHO [World Health Organization] advice, disregarded the European Centre for Disease Control, and ignored the experiences of other countries."Scally also believes that a single-minded approach to the crisis goes part of the way to explain why lessons from abroad have featured so little in the UK's daily press briefings on the coronavirus pandemic. "There's a very clear view it would be unhelpful to the government if there are reported examples of what is working abroad -- and you can see that in their briefings there is very little from the extensive experience abroad."JUST WATCHEDUK's Boris Johnson confirms coronavirus diagnosis on TwitterReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHUK's Boris Johnson confirms coronavirus diagnosis on Twitter 01:27He points to a government report published at the start of March, which stated: "Expectations of how the Government will react will be set by media reports of public health strategies in other countries. This increases the risk of public concern if interventions that are perceived to be effective are not applied."CNN approached Downing Street for comment in response to these criticisms, but had not received a reply by the time of publication.It's no secret that Brexit is making the UK's ability to handle this pandemic uniquely difficult, on both a political and practical level. By the end of June, Johnson's government has a huge decision to make: Whether or not it wishes to extend the Brexit transition period, due to expire on December 31.The advantage of seeking an extension is largely practical. The UK still imports a huge amount of medical supplies, fresh food, toilet paper and other things that are essential in a crisis from EU member states. Because the transition period still allows for frictionless between the UK and the EU, it means that these things can leave ports across Europe in the morning and be on shelves or in hospitals that afternoon. That has proven quite useful during this unprecedented crisis for the UK and given the fact trade talks with the EU are not currently happening, might continue to be useful later down the line. The disadvantage of extending is largely political. The price of frictionless trade is a loss of political dignity. If the UK is forced to extend the transition period until the end of 2021, that's another year in which the UK would still obey EU rules and pay into EU budgets but without any say in policy. A vassal state, if you will. Which is why the government's official position is that virus or no virus, the UK will stick to its Brexit timetable. Which means that the government must make a calculation on what is more important: Ensuring it can still import medical supplies tests and from Europe, or keeping to a timetable that delivers Brexit in full by the end of 2020.The government argues that it is beefing up the UK's ability to deal with the crisis by increasing its testing facilities and encouraging British factories to make ventilators and hand sanitizer rather than cars and drinks. It also claims that whatever deal it finally agrees with the EU will not prevent medical equipment entering the country. The trouble is, life isn't that simple.JUST WATCHEDBoris Johnson issues stay-at-home order for UKReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHBoris Johnson issues stay-at-home order for UK 02:21The first problem is that negotiations over the future relationship with the EU have stalled because of coronavirus. Michel Barnier, the EU's lead negotiator, contracted Covid-19 and had to step back. His British counterpart, David Frost, also quarantined himself after showing symptoms. Even if their teams had been able to continue the talks, they couldn't: Strict social distancing rules enacted in Belgium and the UK made it impossible for the two sides to meet.Both sides admit that it's impossible to have detailed trade talks when you can't physically meet. Right now, no one can say with certainty what a trade deal, if any, will look like come the end of the year. "If there isn't the same seamless trade that's obviously a problem. Friction means delay and delay means money," says James Reade, associate professor of economics at the University of Reading. "This is especially true with medical equipment and medicines, because it needs additional regulatory approval," he adds. The government argues that the UK could press ahead with Brexit and unilaterally decide to remove checks and tariffs on medical equipment, allowing it to flow into the UK with zero friction. But while that's technically possible, it comes with political difficulty for Johnson. "In principle we can say we will take medical equipment with no checks, but it's not an ideal situation and could provide a cover for illegal smuggling," says Menon. "A cynic might argue that if Brexit was all about taking back control, opening up your borders and not imposing checks is a strange way of doing it."In practical terms, it is very hard to deny that refusing to extend the transition period will make the UK's capacity to deal with coronavirus harder. And the government's hardline stance on sticking to its Brexit timetable is alarming some in the medical profession. However, some in Downing Street are now adding caveats to that hardline. "It's 100% not desirable to anyone in government, but it's hard to see much being done before June as the picture radically changes week by week," a government source told CNN.'Complete waste of time.' UK media slam government coronavirus briefings "There are people saying, common sense suggests it's a matter of time before the government has to extend, and Johnson is a man who has changed his mind at the eleventh hour more than once," says Menon. "The problem with transition is that you have to change your mind at the sixth hour," he adds, referring to the fact that if the July 1 deadline is missed, there is no turning back. So while there's a glimmer of hope for those who want to see Brexit delayed, the immediate impact is that frontline services are having to stockpile equipment, gowns, gloves and medicines while they can and have no idea what world they will be operating in come January 2021. It's no one's fault that the Brexit timetable has collided with the onset of coronavirus. But it's made life difficult for a government already navigating its most complicated policy headache since the end of World War II. And while it might be politically convenient for Johnson and his government to not talk about Brexit, nothing changes the reality that the UK is hurtling towards July 1 with nothing substantial happening on what, before coronavirus, was the biggest political and diplomatic challenge facing the UK. Johnson has just weeks to make another huge decision on the fate of his nation. It's a decision that could ultimately play a huge part in defining his political legacy. This story has been updated to correct the number of tests that Germany is carrying out.
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800 Million US based Credit and Debit cards compromised! Really it's a big number and till now it has not been sized by the cyber security officials but a hacker group claims that they had stolen data on hundreds of millions of U.S. card accounts.
Last week, the hacker group called itself Anonymous Ukraine (Op_Ukraine), said it has seized information pertained to 800 million U.S. credit and debit card accounts, including the cards' data belong to U.S. President Obama and other political figures. The group says the intention behind this data theft is to harm the U.S. economy.
The messages posted on March 24 shows clearly that they were by anti-American. The first message read, "After the USA showed its true face when she unilaterally decides which of the peoples to live independently and who under the yoke of the Federal Reserve, we decided to show the world who is behind the future collapse of the American banking system. We own all the financial information of the Fed. And even more than you think."
The post was linked with four text files including the data sets of seven million card account that were from all the four card brands, Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express. On this, the four card companies didn't comment until now, AmericanBanker.com reported.
On March 26, Anonymous Ukraine tweeted that it had released account details for five million more credit cards, and the very next day, it posted the details of 20 million more card accounts. Investigators working for Battelle counted a total of 10.2 million card accounts details in these batches.
"I would continue watching posts from the group, and checking their data dumps for validity," says Ernest Hampson, technical director for Battelle's cyber intelligence and counterintelligence group.
"It's really important to keep an eye on your enemy, find out what they're interested in, what their motivation is, what their capabilities are. You have to have somebody out there watching the adversarial groups, watching inside these forums where they gather, and discuss and trade research back and forth, and discover where they're going next before they get there."
The financial data breach has been investigated by two companies, the security provider Risk Based Security and the world's largest nonprofit research and development organization, Battelle. The companies reported that the records produced as evidence of the breach by the group are incomplete, out of date or are fraudulent.
The investigators were also unable to verify the 800 million accounts that the group claimed to have compromised, including those of the VIPs and political figures.
Till now, the data threat doesn't appear to be as serious as the Target breach that occurred during the last Christmas holidays in which hackers were successfully able to obtain 40 million valid current credit cards' details.
But, yet the claims and any further releases of information by the hacker group is need to be revised and investigated, because these kind of claims serve as a reminder for the financial firms of the constant vigilance and collaboration.
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Severe security flaws uncovered in popular Visual Studio Code extensions could enable attackers to compromise local machines as well as build and deployment systems through a developer's integrated development environment (IDE).
The vulnerable extensions could be exploited to run arbitrary code on a developer's system remotely, in what could ultimately pave the way for supply chain attacks.
Some of the extensions in question are "LaTeX Workshop," "Rainbow Fart," "Open in Default Browser," and "Instant Markdown," all of which have cumulatively racked up about two million installations between them.
"Developer machines usually hold significant credentials, allowing them (directly or indirectly) to interact with many parts of the product," researchers from open-source security platform Snyk said in a deep-dive published on May 26. "Leaking a developer's private key can allow a malicious stakeholder to clone important parts of the code base or even connect to production servers."
VS Code extensions, like browser add-ons, allow developers to augment Microsoft's Visual Studio Code source-code editor with additional features like programming languages and debuggers relevant to their development workflows. VS Code is used by 14 million active users, making it a huge attack surface.
The attack scenarios devised by Snyk bank on the possibility that the installed extensions could be abused as a vector for supply chain attacks by exploiting weaknesses in the plugins to break into a developer system effectively. To that effect, the researchers examined VS Code extensions that had vulnerable implementations of local web servers.
In one case highlighted by Snyk researchers, a path traversal vulnerability identified in Instant Markdown could be leveraged by a nefarious actor with access to the local web server (aka localhost) to retrieve any file hosted on the machine by simply tricking a developer into clicking a malicious URL.
As a proof-of-concept (PoC) demonstration, the researchers showed it was possible to exploit this flaw to steal SSH keys from a developer who is running VS Code and has Instant Markdown or Open in Default Browser installed in the IDE. LaTeX Workshop, on the other hand, was found susceptible to a command injection vulnerability due to unsanitized input that could be exploited to run malicious payloads.
Lastly, an extension named Rainbow Fart was ascertained to have a zip slip vulnerability, which allows an adversary to overwrite arbitrary files on a victim's machine and gain remote code execution. In an attack formulated by the researchers, a specially-crafted ZIP file was sent over an "import-voice-package" endpoint used by the plugin and written to a location that's outside of the working directory of the extension.
"This attack could be used to overwrite files like '.bashrc' and gain remote code execution eventually," the researchers noted.
Although the flaws in the extensions have since been addressed, the findings are important in light of a series of security incidents that show how developers have emerged as a lucrative attack target, what with threat actors unleashing a variety of malware to compromise development tools and environments for other campaigns.
"What has been clear for third-party dependencies is also now clear for IDE plugins — they introduce an inherent risk to an application," Snyk researchers Raul Onitza-Klugman and Kirill Efimov said. "They're potentially dangerous both because of their custom written code pieces and the dependencies they are built upon. What has been shown here for VS Code might be applicable to other IDEs as well, meaning that blindly installing extensions or plugins is not safe (it never has been)."
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London (CNN)London Mayor Sadiq Khan stood up for Rep. Ilhan Omar and the rest of "The Squad" as he joined dozens of British politicians in condemning US President Donald Trump's "blatant unashamed racism" against the four Democratic congresswomen.Writing on Twitter on Thursday, Khan said the four women "represent hope for the future." The Mayor, who like Omar is Muslim, added that "their home is America, but their message crosses borders."Khan, who has clashed with Trump on previous occasions, was also among British politicians who signed an open letter of solidarity along with almost 14,000 other signatories. This was addressed to Omar, the Minnesota representative, and her three colleagues Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.The letter, written by the campaign group Hope Not Hate and circulated on Thursday, said: "We are disgusted by Donald Trump's attack on you. His blatant, unashamed racism has appalled people around the world."Read MoreThe message was also signed by opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn and two trade union general secretaries.London's mayor compared President Trump to an 11-year-old child"You embody the best of America. Its diversity is its strength," the letter said, adding: "Thank you for showing the world that America can still provide leadership to be proud of, even when the White House has abdicated that role. We stand in solidarity with you."The support came after Trump spent significant portion of his Monday campaign rally in Greenville, North Carolina, attacking the congresswomen. As Trump made a litany of accusations against them, the crowd chanted: "Send her back!" Trump made no effort to stop the chant, pausing during his remarks as the chant grew louder.Khan and Trump have repeatedly sparred in public, most recently during the President's state visit to the UK in June. The London mayor wrote it was "un-British to roll out the red carpet" for Trump since his behavior "flies in the face of the ideals America was founded on -- equality, liberty and religious freedom."Trump reacted by calling Khan a "stone cold loser," a remark Khan later told CNN was "the sort of behavior I would expect from an 11-year-old."Love and solidarity will always trump hate. These progressive congresswomen @RashidaTlaib @IlhanMN @AyannaPressley @AOC represent hope for the future - their home is America, but their message crosses borders.https://t.co/PLMwOK0frL— Sadiq Khan (@SadiqKhan) July 18, 2019
Trump has been attacking the four congresswomen since on Sunday when he told them to "go back" to their "crime infested" countries. Three of the four were born in the US, while Omar was born in Somalia and came to the US as a refugee in 2000. She became an American citizen when she was 17, according to the New York Times.Omar responded to the Greenville rally with a tweet on Wednesday evening, quoting poet Maya Angelou."You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes, You may kill me with your hatefulness, But still, like air, I'll rise," she wrote.CNN's Betsy Klein contributed to this report.
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(CNN)It's one of the greatest underdog stories in sport -- Leicester City's run to the English Premier League title in 2016.Leicester had fired manager Nigel Pearson in June and entered the season as a 5,000-1 long shot. Former Chelsea boss Claudio Ranieri replaced Pearson, and the move paid instant dividends.Striker Jamie Vardy set a Premier League record of 13 goals over 11 consecutive matches from August to November. Leicester shocked football by going to the top of the table in November, a full year after finding itself at the bottom of the league.Read MoreIt stayed in contention throughout December and from mid January stayed clear, finally clinching a remarkable title following a 2-2 draw between Tottenham and Chelsea on May 2. "It was pure happiness," Christian Fuchs told CNN in the aftermath of the miraculous achievement. Watch CNN World Sport's 2016 report at the top of the page.
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(CNN)Last year, Sen. Lisa Murkowski was one of just three Republicans who voted to elevate Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the second most important court in the country. Now, in the middle of an election year, she is faced with a new choice: Promoting her to the highest court in the land. Murkowski isn't yet sure what to do. "The difference is, you have nine people who sit on the highest court in the land, who are there for life, and it requires a level of review and scrutiny that is in line with the position," Murkowski told CNN. "So yeah, this is a different game." Murkowski is in a bind. If she votes for Jackson, she's bound to give fresh ammunition to a Trump-backed challenger trying to remove her from the seat she's held for the past two decades. Yet if she opposes Jackson, she'll be accused of reversing course to insulate herself from campaign attacks. The Alaska moderate is widely viewed in the Senate as one of the biggest wild cards in what is expected to be a mostly party-line affair. If she votes no, it's possible that Jackson could win only two GOP votes or perhaps even just one, underscoring how deeply partisan Supreme Court fights have become. Read More"I am serving a term for six years as a senior senator. I'm interviewing somebody who's going to be there for decades, decades and decades. So this is not about me," Murkowski said. "This is about her. This is about the Supreme Court." "You point out the obvious that I've got other considerations that go on, but our reality is this is a really big deal," she added. After decades of escalating fights over the Supreme Court, the Senate hit a new low in the Trump era. As Donald Trump was running for the White House in 2016, Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell refused to move on then-President Barack Obama's Supreme Court pick, an unprecedented move that shifted the court to the right and still infuriates Democrats to this day. Manchin and Murkowski endorse each other during joint interviewTrump's Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch to fill the seat received only three Democratic votes. His next -- Brett Kavanaugh -- received one. And his last -- Amy Coney Barrett, a conservative considered during the 2020 presidential election to replace the late liberal justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg -- was the first justice to be confirmed without bipartisan support since Reconstruction. Unlike Barrett, Jackson's confirmation would not alter the ideological makeup of the Court. Unlike Kavanaugh, Jackson hasn't been accused of sexual assault. And unlike Gorsuch, Jackson would not take a seat held open by the Senate's minority party for eight months. Even though Jackson would be the first Black woman to serve on the court, only a handful of GOP Senate votes are truly in play, including retiring GOP senators, Utah's Mitt Romney and the senators who voted for Jackson to the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit: Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Murkowski. Yet only Collins has clearly signaled she may back Jackson, while others are waiting for her confirmation hearings later this month and some refuse to talk about her at all. "I don't want to talk about it," Graham said, after sharply criticizing President Joe Biden for selecting Jackson rather than a South Carolina district judge he had supported. Democrats recognize winning much GOP support is unlikely, given the polarized nature of modern-era court fights, and unnecessary given they are likely to hold all 50 of their members together to win her confirmation. But they hope that Jackson joins the court with bipartisan credentials, giving a boost to her, Biden and the court's image as a nonpartisan institution."It's a process that I won't be handling alone," said Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, of winning GOP support. "She is actively meeting with senators, and I think she is the most persuasive tool, strategy that we can use. I think she makes an excellent impression, answers questions professionally, and has a resume that is as strong as anyone can ask for." Murkowski has yet to meet with Jackson, waiting for her to finish meetings with members of the Judiciary Committee, on which she does not serve. But Murkowski faces a tough decision: support Jackson and risk a backlash from the right or oppose her and appear like she's flip-flopping in the middle of a reelection campaign. So far, Republicans have criticized Jackson's elite educational background, questioned her views on crime and pointed out the support she holds from left-wing groups. McConnell plots GOP midterm strategy amid Trump's primary influenceAsked why she backed Jackson for the DC Circuit last year, the Alaska Republican told CNN in the interview that the judge was qualified for the promotion. "I looked at her record, as it was at that point, and gave an evaluation and said she's got the qualifications," Murkowski said. Murkowski and her campaign maintained that just because she voted for Jackson in the past does not mean that she will support the nominee for a different position. But Kelly Tshibaka, a former Alaska Department of Administration commissioner and Murkowski's chief Republican rival in the 2022 Senate race, is already attacking the senator over her record on previous judicial nominations. In 2020, Murkowski opposed moving forward with Barrett's nomination since it was so close to the presidential election, although she ultimately voted for Barrett after Republicans decided to push forward the nomination anyway. And in 2018, Murkowski was the only Republican to oppose Kavanaugh after Christine Blasey Ford alleged the nominee sexual assaulted her when they were in high school. Kavanaugh denied the allegation and was confirmed. "Probably the most important votes a senator can cast are those for lifetime appointments for federal judges, and especially for the Supreme Court," Tshibaka told CNN in a statement. "Lisa Murkowski has spent her career being a dependable vote for leftist judges and opposing the nominations of solid, constitutionalist judges like Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.""She has done this over and over to make herself popular with her D.C. insider friends, but it's not what Alaskans want," Tshibaka added. "Her votes have cost Alaska dearly, time and time again." While conservative voters might oppose Murkowski for supporting Jackson, moderate voters could reward her. Alaska has a new election system where candidates run together in a nonpartisan primary, and the top four finishers advance to the general election, when voters rank their preferences. Murkowski's record on judicial nominees Murkowski has been more deferential to Biden's judicial nominees than many of her Republican colleagues. The Senate has voted to confirm 46 of Biden's federal circuit and district judges. Murkowski supported 37, opposed six, and didn't vote on three of them, according to a CNN review. Murkowski was more willing to consider Obama's nominees too, even though she did not support his Supreme Court nominees, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, in 2009 and 2010. She was occasionally the only Republican senator to support advancing Obama's picks, saying she thought all judicial nominations deserved an up-or-down vote, except in "extraordinary circumstances," no matter who was President. Other times, she and Collins were the only Senate Republicans who supported advancing Obama's judicial nominees, paving the way for their confirmations, even if she ultimately opposed confirming them. But Murkowski is no stranger to difficult votes. Tshibaka was endorsed by Trump and the Alaska Republican State Central Committee after Murkowski voted to convict the former President of "incitement of insurrection" in the impeachment trial following the attack on the Capitol last year. She was also a rare Republican vote to doom the party's bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act under Trump. Besides Murkowski, only a handful of Republican senators appear open to the prospect of voting for Jackson."I'm looking to meeting her and we'll see," Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt, who is retiring, told CNN when asked if he's open to backing her. Romney said "sure" he's open to backing her nomination, saying "it will depend on our discussion and judicial philosophy and I'll be looking at her record and seeing how she's decided prior cases. It's a much deeper dive than I took last time."Asked why he voted against her for the DC Circuit last year, Romney said: "We took a review of some of the cases that she decided and felt that they suggested that she was not in the mainstream of judicial thought." GOP leaders say no matter how many of their members vote for Jackson, the outcome will be the same. "She's going to get confirmed," Texas Sen. John Cornyn, a member of GOP leadership, told CNN. "I'll make that wild prediction." CNN's Morgan Rimmer contributed to this story.
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Story highlightsIt's been close to a decade since California executed a death row inmateState's best known convicted criminals are far more likely to die in jail than face execution (CNN)Michael Morales was supposed to be executed February 21, 2006, in California's San Quentin State Prison after a jury found him guilty of killing 17-year-old Terri Winchell. He had been convicted of beating her unconscious with a hammer, crushing her skull, then dragging her to a vineyard where he raped and stabbed her four times -- all part of a love triangle gone bad.The execution, scheduled for 7:30 p.m., never took place.JUST WATCHEDWould he kill for a getaway car?ReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHWould he kill for a getaway car? 01:18An hour before, state officials notified a federal court that it could not provide a licensed physician to assist because physicians were ethically prohibited from participating in executions. No one was able to administer the only legally available lethal chemicals. The case eventually led to the state's current moratorium on all capital punishment.It's been close to a decade since California executed a death row inmate, thanks in large part to significant state and federal legal challenges to its constitutionality as well as the years it takes to resolve each case."A death sentence in this state really means life without parole," says Paula Mitchell, an adjunct professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.Read MoreThere are 751 inmates on death row in California -- more than any other state -- and they've spent an average 17.5 years wading through the legal system. It begins with extensive jury selection for capital crime cases. Defendants often wait up to five years for appeal attorneys to be assigned, and even longer for the state Supreme Court to begin hearing their cases.JUST WATCHEDWhat happens when evidence is destroyed?ReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHWhat happens when evidence is destroyed? 01:27"The average time for the California Supreme Court to decide these death penalty appeal cases is about 15 years, but some cases have lasted 20 to 25 years," Mitchell says. "Other states with the death penalty, like Texas, have an intermediate court of criminal appeals to handle the direct appeals and lighten the caseload for those states' courts of last resort."Death penalty fast factsMany of California's most well-known convicted criminals are far more likely to die in jail than face execution. While the state executed 13 people between 1978 and 2006, 49 died from drug overdoses, suicides and other causes such as cancer since the last execution took place. Richard Ramirez, the serial killer, rapist and burglar known as the "Night Stalker," died in jail after more than 23 years on death row. Other high-profile cases are adding years to the waiting list: Scott Peterson, who was convicted of killing his wife, Laci, and unborn son, has been on death row for 10 years. Richard Allen Davis, who kidnapped and murdered 12-year-old Polly Klaas, has been awaiting execution for 19 years. Kevin Cooper, who was convicted of murdering the Ryen family and whose case is featured on this week's CNN Original Series "Death Row Stories," has been on death row since 1985.Mitchell said she believes the lengthy process exists not just to provide procedural protections for the defendants but also because of the lack of political will at the state Legislature to restart executions."Politicians get to say, 'We have the death penalty, look at all the people we have on death row,' but the delays allow them to spare the public from the gruesome act of an execution," Mitchell said.Statewide support for capital punishment has been steadily declining. A Field Poll in September found 34% opposed to the death penalty, and 56% in favor -- that's the lowest level in nearly 50 years. Voters narrowly defeated Proposition 34 three years ago, which sought to replace the death penalty with life without the possibility of parole. Time to question the sanity of the death penaltyIn July 2014, U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney ruled the state's death penalty unconstitutional because it violates the Eight Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Carney said inmates face sentences that "no rational jury or legislature could ever impose: life in prison with the remote possibility of death."Many families of victims who support the death penalty continue to pressure Gov. Jerry Brown, an opponent of capital punishment, to uphold the law by taking the necessary measures to restart executions. The Supreme Court recently upheld the use of lethal injection drug midazolam that many had argued was "cruel and unusual punishment," causing states such as California to move forward with finding a new court-approved, single-drug lethal injection protocol."The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation should announce the protocol this November. The state will open up the procedure to public comment for a year, and after that district attorneys can go to Superior Court to set execution dates for condemned murderers," says Michael Rushford of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation. That means Morales, who was sentenced to death 32 years ago, could see his execution rescheduled for as early as November 2016."Many of these families have made reaching justice in their case their life's work. They see restoring enforcement of the death penalty in California as something bigger than justice in their particular case," Rushford said.Brown, who voted in favor of the failed Proposition 34's bid to do away with the death penalty in 2012, has pledged to uphold the state's capital punishment law. But as governor, he holds a trump card regarding all death row cases: He can try to spare their lives by commuting their sentences to keep them in jail until they die.That is, of course, if four out of seven state Supreme Court justices agree with him.
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Visiting a website certified with an SSL certificate doesn't mean that the website is not bogus. Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protect the web users in two ways, it uses public key encryption to encrypt sensitive information between a user's computer and a website, such as usernames, passwords, or credit card numbers and also verify the identity of websites.
Today hackers and cyber criminals are using every tantrum to steal users' credentials and other sensitive data by injecting fake SSL certificates to the bogus websites impersonating Social media, e-commerce, and financial websites as well.
DETECTING FAKE DIGITAL CERTIFICATES WIDELY
A Group of researchers, Lin-Shung Huang , Alex Ricey , Erling Ellingseny and Collin Jackson, from the Carnegie Mellon University in collaboration with Facebook have analyzed [PDF] more than 3 million SSL connections and found strong evidence that at least 6;845 (0:2%) of them were in fact tampered with forged certificates i.e. self-signed digital certificates that aren't authorized by the legitimate website owners, but will be accepted as valid by most browsers.
They utilized the widely-supported Flash Player plug-in to enable socket functionality and implemented a partial SSL handshake on our own to capture forged certificates and deployed this detection mechanism on an Alexa top 10 website, Facebook, which terminates connections through a diverse set of network operators across the world.
Generally Modern web browsers display a warning message when encountering errors during SSL certificate validation, but warning page still allows users to proceed over a potentially insecure connection.
Fake SSL connections can argue that certificate warnings are mostly caused by server mis-configurations. According to usability survey, many users actually ignore SSL certificate warnings and trusting forged certificates could make them vulnerable to the simplest SSL interception attacks.
This means that a potential hacker can successfully impersonate any website, even for secure connections i.e. HTTPS, to perform an SSL ma-in-the-middle attack in order to intercept encrypted connections.
FAKE DIGITAL CERTIFICATES SIGNED WITH STOLEN KEYS FROM ANTIVIRUS
Researchers observed most of the forged SSL certificate are using same name as original Digital Certificate issuer organizations, such as VeriSign, Comodo.
Some Antivirus software such as Bitdefender, ESET, BullGuard, Kaspersky Lab, Nordnet, DefenderPro etc., has ability to intercept/Scan SSL connection on Clients' system in order to defend their users from Fake SSL connections. These Antivirus products generate their own certificates that would be less alarming than other Self-signed digital certificates.
"One should be wary of professional attackers that might be capable of stealing the private key of the signing certificates from antivirus vendors, which may essentially allow them to spy on the antivirus users (since the antivirus root certificate would be trusted by the client)," the researchers explained. "Hypothetically, governments could also compel antivirus vendors to hand over their signing keys."
Similar capabilities are observed in various Firewall, Parental Control Software and adware software those could be compromised by hackers in order to generate valid, but fake digital certificates.
DIGITAL CERTIFICATES GENERATED BY MALWARE
Researchers also noticed another interesting self-signed digital certificate, named as 'IopFailZeroAccessCreate', which was generated by some malware on client-end systems and using same name as trusted Certificate issuer "VeriSign Class 4 Public Primary CA."
"These variants provide clear evidence that attackers in the wild are generating certificates with forged issuer attributes, and even increased their sophistication during the time frame of our study," they said.
Detected statistics shows that the clients infected with same malware serving 'IopFailZeroAccessCreate' bogus digital certificates were widespread across 45 different countries, including Mexico, Argentina and the United States.
Malware researchers at Facebook, in collaboration with the Microsoft Security Essentials team, were able to confirm these suspicions and identify the specific malware family responsible for this attack.
DETECTION AND ATTACK MIGRATION TECHNIQUES
Attackers may also restrict Flash-based sockets by blocking Flash socket policy traffic on port 843 or can avoid intercepting SSL connections made by the Flash Player in order to bypass detection techniques used by the researchers. To counter this, websites could possibly serve socket policy files over firewall-friendly ports (80 or 443), by multiplexing web traffic and socket policy requests on their servers.
In Addition, researchers have discussed migration techniques in the paper such as HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS), Public Key Pinning Extension for HTTP (HPKP), TLS Origin-Bound Certificates (TLS-OBC), Certificate Validation with Notaries and DNS-based Authentication of Named Entities (DANE), those could be used by servers to enforce HTTPS and validate digital certificates.
HOW TO REMOVE MALWARE
If you are also infected by any similar malware, please follow below given steps to remove it:
Check your hosts file (C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts) for malicious entries
Check your DNS (Domain Name Server) settings on system and DSL Modem
Verify your proxy settings on browser
Cross-check your installed Browser addons.
Install reputed Antivirus and Firewall Product and Scan for malicious files
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Well, "a friend in need is a friend indeed" goes a long way, but in this case, this phrase hardly makes any sense.
A 27-year-old Michigan man who hacked into the government computer system of Washtenaw County Jail to alter inmate records and gain early release for his friend is now himself facing federal charges after getting caught.
Konrads Voits from Ann Arbor, Michigan, pleaded guilty in federal court last week for hacking into the Washtenaw County government computer system earlier this year using malware, phishing, and social engineering tricks in an attempt to get his friend released early from jail.
Prosecutors say Voits also used phone calls to prison staff claiming to be a manager at the County Jail's IT department and tricking them into downloading and running malware on their computers by visiting a phony website at "ewashtenavv.org," which mimics the Washtenaw official URL, "ewashtenaw.org."
Voit then obtained the remote login information of one of the Jail employees and used that information to install malware on the County's network and gain access to sensitive County's XJail system in March this year.
Gaining access to this system eventually allowed Voits to steal jail records of several inmates, search warrant affidavits and personal details, including passwords, usernames, and email addresses, of over 1,600 employees, along with altering electronic records of at least one inmate for early release.
However, things did not work as Voits wanted them to, and instead, they all backfired on him when jail employees detected changes in their records and alerted the FBI.
No prisoners were then released early.
This incident took place between January 24th, 2017 and March 10th, 2017 and cost Washtenaw County more than $235,000 to fix the whole mess before authorities busted Voits.
"Cyber intrusions affect individuals, businesses and governments. Computer hackers should realize that unlawfully entering another's computer will result in a felony conviction and a prison sentence," said the United States Attorney Daniel Lemisch.
"We applaud the dedication of so many hard-working law enforcement officers to take away this man's [Voits] ability to intrude into the computer systems of others."
Voits was arrested by the authorities a month later and pleaded guilty last week. He is now facing a fine of up to $250,000 and a maximum sentence of ten years prison, though he is unlikely to receive the maximum sentence.
Voits has agreed to surrender his belongings used during the attack, including his laptop, four cellphones and an undisclosed amount of Bitcoin.
Voits is currently in federal custody and is set to face a sentencing hearing on 5 April 2018.
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This Sunday, The Capital , New Delhi plays host to an International The Hackers Conference where blackhat hackers will discuss the challenges of cyber safety with security agencies.
Your Smartphone is an always-on and always-connected digital extension of your life which will be used by attackers to covertly steal your sensitive data and spy on you. Mahesh, An Independent Security Researcher and Android Developer/Hacker will demonstrate "Android Spy Agent".
This application allows us to remotely access the entire victim's personal information and even though the confidential data available in the android cell phone. The type of personal information includes the victim's contacts, call logs, messages, browser's history, GPS location and much more information directly available on the victim's cell phone.
Many-a-times we think that is there any way by which we can read the private sms of anyone. So here is the solution Mr. Mahesh will present in The Hackers Conference 2012 platform with Hundreds of advance features.
This application can also allow the attacker to remotely delete the data available on the victim's phone. In order to perfectly work this application you have to gain access to the victim's android cell phone for at least 20 seconds. You have to install the application and then restart the cell phone. After restart your application gets automatically started on the victim's cell phone. Now you can access the victim's cells information for any normal cell phone and get the response on it. The android spy agent will be hidden in the victim's cell phone and not allows the victim to easily uninstall or delete it from the cell.
In Another Talk Android Hacker Aditya Gupta and Subho Halder will talk about "All your Droids belong to me : A look into Mobile Security in 2012". Researchers have developed and will Demonstrate malware for Android phones that can be used as a spam botnet.
"The talk is about Android Malwares, Botnets and all the crazy stuff you have been hearing in the past. We will give an inside view on how the black hat underground uses this, to earn 5-6 digit income per month . For this, We will start off by creating an Android Malware, and then will gradually move on to the Botnet Part.", Aditya Gupta said.
Maintaining that a wide variety of services are being offered on the mobile platforms without proper security implementation, Anurag Kumar Jain and Devendra Shanbhag from Tata Consultancy Services will deliberate on the topic, "Mobile Application Security Risk and Remediation". They will highlight the need for application security in mobile applications, the threats in a mobile environment, key security issues that can creep in mobile applications, and suggests a secure development approach which can possibly safeguard mobile applications from becoming "sitting ducks" for attackers and mobile malware.
Experts from countries like Iran and Argentina will share space with Indian speakers in the day-long discussion at the India Habitat Centre. Yet another important issue The Hackers Conference 2012 will deliberate on is the Internet censorship in India.
For more details, go to www.thehackersconference.com
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(CNN)Seven of the top 10 in this year's Longines Global Champions Tour (LGCT) rankings will be in action this weekend as the circuit rolls into Cannes, France.Current leader Daniel Deusser will be looking to record consecutive victories after storming to success on home turf in Hamburg last time out. The German sits 10 points ahead of long-time leader Pieter Devos, who will be out to regain his place at the top of the rankings. Hot on their heels is reigning LGCT champion Ben Maher. However, the British rider needs some big performances to close the gap on the top two and keep hopes alive of a second title. Peder Fredricson, who won last year's Cannes Grand Prix, may also be in striking distance of the title should he succeed again on the French Riviera. Read MoreIn the Global Champions League, Shanghai Swans head the standings by just five points from St. Tropez Pirates with Miami Celtics in third, seven points further adrift.READ: Jessica Springsteen on the secrets of her successREAD: Danielle Goldstein on the secrets of her successREAD: Global Champions 2019: Schedule and resultsJUST WATCHEDLGCT New York: The Ben Maher showReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCH (18 Videos)LGCT New York: The Ben Maher showLGCT Saint-Tropez: Springsteen triumphsLGCT Rome: Ben Maher leaps to victoryOlivier Philippaerts: Secrets of My SuccessLGCT Valkenswaard: van der Vleuten triumphsLaura Kraut: Secrets of My SuccessEdwina Tops-Alexander: Secrets of My SuccessLGCT London: Ben Maher and the London Knights on topJennifer Gates: Paris Panthers owner opens upLGCT Berlin: Dani G. Waldman takes the victoryLGCT Chantilly: Darragh Kenny jumps to victoryBen Maher: Secrets of My SuccessLGCT Paris: New dad Ahlmann clinches winLGCT Monaco: Van der Vleuten soars to winDaniel Deusser: Secrets of My SuccessPieter Devos: Secrets of My SuccessLGCT Cascais: Martin Fuchs does the doubleLGCT Stockholm: Fredricson clinches home win Cannes is the first stop in France on the LGCT Tour -- which also incorporates trips to Paris, Chantilly and Ramatuelle near St. Tropez. The City of Stars provides a glittering venue for the riders with the famous La Croisette just moments away from the sparkling Mediterranean.The world's elite showjumpers will compete in the evening, illuminated by multi-colored lights in front of thousands of spectators. Cannes has been a stop on the circuit ever since it was created and it has been one the most popular and historic LGCT events. Visit CNN.com/Equestrian for more news, features and videosThe Global Champions Tour features 20 worldwide stops and culminates in the Prague Playoffs from November 21-24.
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(CNN)An explosion rocked a residential area of The Hague in the western Netherlands on Sunday, trapping several people beneath the rubble, according to the local Fire Brigade. It was not immediately clear what caused the blast, but Dutch police said it was a "presumed gas explosion." According to CNN affiliate RTL, the explosion caused the front of a house to collapse.At least three people have been saved from the rubble, the Dutch city's Fire Brigade tweeted, but at least one person remains trapped. Nine people were injured and sent to seven hospitals, a subsequent tweet said, but it did not say whether more people had been rescued. The Fire Brigade also said that the surrounding homes had been deemed "unstable." Read MoreThe third-most populous city in the Netherlands, The Hague lies on the North Sea and is home to about half a million people.CNN's Dakin Andone contributed to this report.
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(CNN)When asked about his relationship with Rafael Nadal, Australian Nick Kyrgios referred to a watering hole about a 15-minute walk from Wimbledon's grounds. "Not sure that me and Rafa could go down to the Dog & Fox and have a beer together," the ever controversial Kyrgios told reporters Tuesday. "I get along with people, some people I don't get along with. "We have a mutual respect but that's about it I think." READ: Coco Gauff's mom on starlet's meteoric riseRead MoreKyrgios's appraisal of the 18-time grand slam winner was actually a toned down version, two months after labeling him "super salty" in a podcast with tennis journalist Ben Rothenberg and taking aim at his famous uncle, Toni. But for tennis fans craving a little animosity in an era where the Big Four have — mostly — gotten along, they'll be pleased Nadal and Kyrgios square off in the second round at the All England Club. READ: Will Nadal surpass great rival Federer?READ: Roger Federer: The power and presence of the $120 million manNick Kyrgios will take on Rafael Nadal in the second round Thursday.'Very dangerous player'Kyrgios will attempt to upend Nadal five years after he stunned the left-hander as a teen at Wimbledon and only four months after saving three match points in their eventful clash in Acapulco. The crowd jeered Kyrgios in Mexico and afterward Nadal claimed the Canberra native needed to show more respect to opponents, the crowd — and himself. A Kyrgios underarm serve that evening has now become a mainstay in his game, with another one on show Tuesday on set point against compatriot Jordan Thompson in what turned out to be a five-set victory.Kyrgios countered by criticizing Nadal's sometimes slow play between points before that no-holds-barred podcast which aired a day before the 24-year-old was given a game penalty, threw a chair on court and defaulted at the Rome Masters. READ: Kyrgios in fan altercation at Miami OpenRafael Nadal is chasing a third Wimbledon title and first since 2010. If it makes Nadal feel better, Kyrgios slammed world No. 1 Novak Djokovic, too, saying the Serb had a "sick obsession with wanting to be liked."Publicly, Nadal made it sound like Thursday was simply another match for him. "My thoughts are very clear," Nadal began after beating Japanese baseliner Yuichi Sugita in straight sets. "I play against a top talented player, very dangerous player when he wants to play tennis. Normally against the best players, he wants to play tennis. When that happens, he's a very dangerous opponent."READ: Osaka on setbacks, role models and inspiring othersREAD: Naomi Osaka: An icon of the new JapanJUST WATCHEDWimbledon: The original grand slamReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHWimbledon: The original grand slam 01:40'Self belief'Indeed 43rd-ranked Kyrgios admitted he was "super happy" when spotting Nadal in his section of the draw. Motivation never seems to be lacking when confronting Djokovic and Nadal, evidenced by a 5-3 record against the pair combined. Meanwhile, against his pals Andy Murray and Roger Federer— and thus where motivation might be harder to muster — he is a combined 2-10. He also appears to lack motivation for playing at the French Open, citing illness as the reason for his withdrawal in May after saying Nadal's most successful grand slam "sucks." "It's going to be a very interesting match," 2003 Wimbledon finalist Mark Philippoussis succinctly told CNN. "Both want to win. It's the biggest tournament in the world. Rafa is going to look to go out and compete and do what he does. Nothing is going to change. "Nick is someone who has self belief and a belief that he can beat Rafa, and that's what it takes, you need to believe you can beat these top guys." READ: Why Wimbledon represents Britain's two-week tennis love-inREAD: 15-year-old Coco Gauff stuns Venus WilliamsREAD: Coco Gauff: 'I want to be the greatest'JUST WATCHEDRoger Revealed: Time with tennis great FedererReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHRoger Revealed: Time with tennis great Federer 22:09'Unbelievable underdog'Besides the belief and motivation, Kyrgios is getting a grass-rusty Nadal. The first-round match was his first official outing on the surface in 2019. The early-round affair would seem to benefit Kyrgios, given he probably lacks the fitness to go deep at majors even if the motivation is there. No, fitness is not his forte. JUST WATCHEDRoger Federer muses on retirement planningReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHRoger Federer muses on retirement planning 03:18Further, Nadal has a history of struggling against big servers at Wimbledon, losing to Kyrgios, Lukas Rosol, Dustin Brown and Gilles Muller. All of those matches came prior to the quarterfinals. "He's one of the greatest tennis players of all time," Kyrgios said, paying Nadal that respect he says he has for him. "I go into that match as an unbelievable underdog."But he added: "I know if I play the right type of tennis, I can have success against him." If, as some players are saying, the grass is playing a little slower this year — and keep in mind one player will often have a different view from the next — Nadal certainly wouldn't mind. The last of his two Wimbledon titles came in 2010 and he fell in the defining men's match of 2018 in the semifinals against Djokovic in a thrilling five-setter. "Last year I created the chance," Nadal said. "I have been very close. I am here to fight again to produce the chance. I need to find my best tennis."Whatever happens, you probably still won't find Nadal and Kyrgios at a pub together anytime soon.
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(CNN)Quarterback Andrew Luck, the first pick in the 2012 NFL draft and a four-time Pro Bowl selection, announced on Saturday night that he's retiring."This is not an easy decision," the Indianapolis Colts player told reporters. "For the last four years or so I've been in this cycle of injury, pain, rehab, injury, pain, rehab. And it's been unceasing and unrelenting ... and the only way I see out is to no longer play football."Injuries had kept Luck, 29, from playing in the preseason. He was on the Colts' sideline Saturday during a preseason game against the Chicago Bears in street clothes. As news of his retirement spread, Luck was booed as he left the field, a number of videos shared online show. Luck said the pain has taken away his joy for the game and he hasn't been able to live the life he wants to live. He played the 2016 season in pain, he said, and made a vow he wouldn't go down that road again.He missed the entire 2017 season because he was recovering from shoulder surgery, according to the Colts website. When he returned for the 2018 season, he had a 98.7% passer rating, 39 touchdowns and was selected for the 2018 Pro Bowl. As a result of his return to the gridiron, Luck was awarded the AP Comeback Player of the Year that season. Read MoreBut he said Saturday that because he couldn't put his heart into the game; he would have been selling himself and his teammates short.He said he told his teammates earlier that he was retiring. Luck signed a five-year, $122 million contract in 2016, according to spotrac.com. He would have earned a base salary of $9.125 million in 2019 and a roster bonus.The Colts open the season September 8 at Los Angeles against the Chargers. CNN's Homero De La Fuente contributed to this report
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The year is about to end, but serious threats like Shellshock is "far from over". Cyber criminals are actively exploiting this critical GNU Bash vulnerability to target those network attached storage devices that are still not patched and ready for exploitation.
Security researchers have unearthed a malicious worm that is designed to plant backdoors on network-attached storage (NAS) systems made by Taiwan-based QNAP and gain full access to the contents of those devices.
The worm is spread among QNAP devices, which run an embedded Linux operating system, by the exploitation of the GNU Bash vulnerability known as ShellShock or Bash, according to security researchers at the Sans Institute.
QNAP vendor released a patch in early October to address the flaw in its Turbo NAS product, but because the patches are not automatic or easy to apply for many users, so a statistically significant portion of systems remain vulnerable and exposed to the Bash bug.
Shellshock vulnerability was among the critical and serious Internet vulnerabilities uncovered this year, as the vulnerability in Bash, aka the GNU Bourne Again Shell, affects Linux and UNIX distributions to a large extent, but also Windows in some cases. The flaw exploits a bug in GNU Bash that gives attackers the ability to run execute shell commands of their choice remotely on vulnerable systems using specifically crafted variables.
"The attack targets a QNAP CGI script, /cgi-bin/authLogin.cgi, a well known vector for Shellshock on QNAP devices," Johannes B. Ullrich, head of the Internet Storm Center at the SANS Institute, wrote in the blog post published Sunday. "This script is called during login, and reachable without authentication. The exploit is then used to launch a simple shell script that will download and execute a number of additional pieces of malware."
Once the device is infected by the worm, malicious components also execute a script that makes the device to carry out click fraud scam against an online advertising network JuiceADV. A number of other scripts are also installed on the infected system. The worm is dangerous because the "infected devices have been observed scanning for other vulnerable devices," Ullrich said.
According to the researcher, the infected systems are equipped with a secure shell (SSH) server on port 26 and a new administrative user, which gives the attackers a determined backdoor to hide into the device at any time in the future.
"The DNS change is likely made to avoid logging and potentially blacklisting of any affected domains," Ullrich said. "The SSH server is a second SSH server that is being launched, in addition to the normal SSH server on port 22. This second SSH server, and the additional user added to the system, provides the attacker with persistent access to the system."
More interestingly, the worm also patches the notorious Shellshock vulnerability on the infected devices by downloading and applying the security updates from QNAP and reboot the device, in order to prevent other attackers from taking over the compromised device.
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(CNN)Calling a bluff. Predicting a riot. And blaming an app. It's Thursday, and here's what you need to know to Get Up to Speed and Out the Door:SUPREME COURTThe last great showdown: Regarding that open Supreme Court seat, the GOP had told the Prez, 'Don't even bother.' So what does Obama do? He nominates Merrick Garland - stable, sober, conventional ... and someone Republicans have repeatedly praised. Talk about cold-eyed calculation. If GOP leaders refuse to budge, it'll be clear it's for partisan reasons and "not due to any concerns with the nominee's qualifications or record," one analyst said. In other words, take what I am offering or you may rue the day. <Slow clap>JUST WATCHEDHatch: SCOTUS vacancy last November would've made differenceReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHHatch: SCOTUS vacancy last November would've made difference 03:56NORTH KOREABehind bars for a banner: North Korea sentenced a University of Virginia student to 15 years hard labor for allegedly removing a political banner from a Pyongyang hotel. Not the smartest thing to do admittedly, but still "unduly harsh," the State Department says. Otto Frederick Warmbier's crime, according to Pyongyang? Committing a hostile act against the state, encouraged by a secretive university organization and the CIA. The real reason, according to analysts? To use him as leverage.JUST WATCHEDN. Korea sentences U.S. student to 15 years hard laborReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHN. Korea sentences U.S. student to 15 years hard labor 02:33Read MoreHOSPITAL INVESTIGATIONA dose of bad news: Nearly 5,000 patients in four states have been told they could have been exposed to hepatitis or HIV -- all because a surgical tech couldn't help himself from getting a good buzz. The tech, who's tested positive for Hepatitis B, would allegedly inject himself with syringes of fentanyl, fill them with saline and put them back. That, as we all know, is a no-no. You can't use the same syringe twice. The good news so far: The risk is considered "extremely low," but who needs to worry about that?JUST WATCHEDHospitals warn of possible exposure to hepatitis, HIVReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHHospitals warn of possible exposure to hepatitis, HIV 01:16KALAMAZOO SHOOTING SUSPECTUber unbelievable: Jason Dalton has his scapegoat. The man accused of killing six people in the Kalamazoo shooting spree blames Uber. Not just blames Uber, but is suing them for $10 million. The reason? His work as an Uber driver caused him "psychological damage." The app, he says, made him "like a puppet." It would "take over your whole body." Um, where is that under "settings?" Kalamazoo shooting spree suspect Jason DaltonCAMPAIGN 2016Working the ref: Riots. Floods. Locusts. Donald Trump and Ted Cruz predict all of these -- (well, maybe not the last two) -- if the GOP establishment goes for a brokered convention this summer. That's ignoring the will of the voters and doing what you want. After John Kasich took Ohio, the math got harder for The Donald to win the party nomination outright. A convention floor fight is possible. Things could get ugly. But, then again, why stop now?JUST WATCHEDCarson: There will be turmoil if Trump is blockedReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHCarson: There will be turmoil if Trump is blocked 01:48BREAKFAST BROWSEPeople are talking about these. Read up. Join in. If you're happy and you know itThe folks of Denmark top the World Happiness Report for the third time in four years. That should get them smiling. Wait, they already are.Pigeons with backpacksLook! Up in the sky! It's a bird. It's a plane. Oh, should have stopped at it's a bird.Pigeon Air Patrol.Head scratcherIf you're a math professor you have to do something pretty special to make headlines. Andrew Wiles solved a 300-year-old equation.Power upThe next renewable energy source is in the produce aisle: tomatoes!Location, location, locationDid you know your address can predict your premature death? That's a fun thought, isn't it?AND FINALLY ...Are you kitten me?There's a new baby in the house and the cats are curious.Follow @edpaynecnn
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Tokyo (CNN)An unidentified overseas visitor has tested positive for Covid-19 at the Tokyo Olympics athletes' village, organizers said on Saturday -- the first such case amid concerns the Games could become a super-spreader event.Speaking at a news conference, Tokyo 2020 CEO Toshiro Muto confirmed a non-resident of Japan who is involved in organizing the Games had tested positive, adding that the individual has been taken into quarantine outside of the village. He would not reveal the person's nationality, citing privacy concerns.There have now been a total of 45 Covid-19 cases linked to the Games, with athletes, officials and contractors testing positive for the virus. Athletes are just starting to arrive for the Games, which run July 23 through August 8.The Olympic Village for athletes in Chuo Ward, Tokyo on July 13, 2021.The embattled Games have been marred by controversy, with Japan struggling to rein in its Covid outbreak ahead of the opening ceremony on Friday and as critics continue to question whether it is safe for them to go ahead.Organizers already decided in March to ban overseas fans from the stands, but this month the Japanese Olympic Committee said Tokyo venues will not have spectators due to the city's coronavirus state of emergency -- an unprecedented move, according to an International Olympic Committee (IOC) spokesman.Read MoreSome athletes have pulled out of the games altogether, including Australian tennis star Nick Kyrgios and Australian basketball player Liz Cambage. Thousands of Tokyo Olympic volunteers have also quit.Japan's public has been lukewarm about the Games amid a resurgence in new infections and worries that an influx of foreign visitors may help turn the Olympics into a super-spreader event, which in turn could put further strain on Japan's already stretched medical system. More than 11,000 athletes from 205 national Olympic committees are scheduled to compete in the Games. Around 85% will have been vaccinated against Covid-19, according to the IOC.Japan has lagged behind Western countries in rolling out its vaccination drive. Only 20% of its population are fully vaccinated, compared to 48% in the United States and more than 52% in the UK, according to CNN's global vaccine tracker.Additional reporting by Reuters.
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TripAdvisor Inc., a hotel-review website, recently became a victim of the bug, said Trend Micro Inc., an Internet security solutions provider. Many of TripAdvisor's users received spam mail with booking confirmations for hotels they had checked out on the website, 1.89% of Indian Internet Users have already been affected.
The email purporting to be in the name of one of the Hotels has a similar theme to its English counterpart as it contains confirmation and details on an alleged booking reservation. TripAdvisor, which is among India's top five travel brands as per digital market research firm ComScore Inc., globally has 60 million unique monthly visitors and 2.4 million unique users per month in India.
Gamarue is a family of malware that may be distributed by exploit kits, spammed emails or other malware, and has been observed stealing information from an affected user.
Trend Micro reported that one of their manager received the spam at his personal e-mail address but the address mentioned in the mail was false as the actual hotel does not even exist in India. This made it clear that it was spam mail and nothing more than that.
"A lot of e-commerce websites pay the price of being popular. Online travel and hotel market has become an attractive target for cybercriminals given the large volume of transactions on hotel and online sites. A frequent traveler who has done a hotel booking or checked reviews recently, in all probability, would be prompted to click that mail. When a user clicks the attachment in this spam mail, the malware known as Gamarue becomes active. It can steal from an affected user any information left behind on the emails and saved on user's system", said Suchita Vishnoi, Head Corporate Communications, Trend Micro.
The online travel and hotel market has become an attractive target for cyber criminals given the large volume of transactions on hotel and airline sites. One should be very smart and cautious while replying to their mails and should always confirm their source. It is a very easy trick, yet effective.
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Story highlightsForever Unbridled was bred by Canadian diamond magnate Charles FipkeDubai World Cup was created by Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum in 1996Jockey Mike Smith, who won last year's race with Arrogate, will be riding the six-year-old mare this year (CNN)Forever Unbridled, a six-year-old thoroughbred mare bred by a Canadian diamond hunter, is looking to make history at the $10 million Dubai World Cup. No filly or mare has won the annual event, one of the richest days in horse racing, since it was first created by Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum in 1996. Follow @cnnsport
Last year, the Dubai World Cup was won by Arrogate, a half-brother of Forever Unbridled through their sire, the leading North American stallion Unbridled's Song.Forever Unbridled was as short as 7-1 with some bookmakers Friday to claim the $6 million winner's check Saturday. West Coast is the pre-race favorite, followed by Talisman.Jockey Mike Smith celebrates winning the 2017 Dubai World Cup at the Meydan Racecourse with Arrogate."She's as good as any I've ever been around," Forever Unbridled's trainer, Dallas Stewart, told Bloodhorse.com last month. "I've been around some great ones like Winning Colors and Lady's Secret, too. I won't say that she's better because good is good. Read More"It's like Tom Brady or Drew Brees. They're both great quarterbacks who have done great things."Stewart was involved with training 1988 Kentucky Derby winner Winning Colors as well as former Horse of the Year Lady's Secret."She's definitely a quarterback," Stewart said about Forever Unbridled. "She's looking great. Like an Amazon."READ: The female jockey who could be an all-time greatColorful ownerThe bay mare has a colorful owner. Canadian mining millionaire Charles Fipke is a geologist who made his fortune when he discovered Canada's biggest diamond mine, Ekati, close to the Arctic Circle, in 1991 against all odds after almost a decade of exploring.He later named one of his racehorses, Tale of Ekati, after the mine, which turned Canada into the world's third-biggest diamond producer by value after its opening in 1998. JUST WATCHEDQatar's important role in global horse racingReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHQatar's important role in global horse racing 22:20In 2007, the horse finished fourth in the Kentucky Derby. In 2011, Fipke's homebred Perfect Shirl won the Breeders' Cup Filly and Mare Turf.Born in Edmonton, Alberta, Fipke studied geology at the University of British Columbia before working on exploration projects in Papua New Guinea, South Africa and Brazil. He has had a few close calls with death, once overcoming cerebral malaria as well as surviving a helicopter crash. Fipke, who developed a passion for horses when he first learned to ride when he was at high school, has applied the same principles he used prospecting for diamonds in Canada's remote Northwest Territories to breeding the ultimate racehorse. Forever Unbridled and Marcelino in Dubai pic.twitter.com/9bZERZKHc2— DallasStewart (@DallasStewart3) March 22, 2018
Forever Unbridled was bred by Fipke himself, who bought her mother, Kentucky Oaks winner Lemons Forever, at a broodmare sale in Keeneland, Kentucky in 2007 for $2.5 million. "When I saw Lemons Forever, she was absolutely gorgeous," Fipke told Bloodhorse.com. "She was from an Argentine family...I was sold on her pedigree, and then I was sold again when I saw her."READ: Could Brexit handicap the 'mother' of all stud books?Mike SmithForever Unbridled has had 8 wins from 18 starts, earning her owner $3.2 million. Her biggest win came in November, when she triumphed in the Longines Breeders' Cup Distaff.#EclipseAwards Older Dirt Female goes to Forever Unbridled! Winner of the #BC17 @LonginesEq Distaff. #TheBest run at #BreedersCup.Jockey: @ljlmvelTrainer: @DallasStewart3Owner/Breeder: Charles E. Fipke pic.twitter.com/yWL5z6cu1o— Breeders' Cup (@BreedersCup) January 26, 2018
Last year's Dubai World Cup race was won by Arrogate after a dramatic race. Although the four-year-old colt had been the pre-race favorite, a bad start meant he had to come from the back of the field to win the race. Here she is with her owner on the right:Champion Older Dirt Mare FOREVER UNBRIDLED turned in her final local work for the @DubaiWorldCup with a five furlong breeze in 59.60 for trainer @DallasStewart3 pic.twitter.com/ijIpbHBxoU— Fair Grounds (@fairgroundsnola) March 15, 2018
This year, Arrogate's jockey, Mike Smith, will be riding Forever Unbridled and it will be interesting to see if he can strike gold twice."Her last few races have really been tremendous," Smith told Bloodhorse.com. "She's running the kind of races where she can definitely compete with the boys. She's a big filly, too, and pretty much as big as the boys she'll be running against, so I'm very excited about the opportunity to ride her."
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Story highlightsAll-rounder sells for over $2 millionEnglishman Indian Premier League starts on April 5 (CNN)Explosive with the bat, aggressive with the ball and sharp as a tack in the field -- no wonder England cricket star Ben Stokes was a wanted man at the 2017 Indian Premier League (IPL) auction on Monday.The 25-year-old attracted a record $2.16 million fee for an overseas player from the Rising Pune Supergiants -- one of eight teams that take part in the annual Twenty20 limited-overs league. Stokes was one 130 foreign stars out of a total of 359 players going under the hammer in Bangalore for the six-week tournament, which starts April 5. He will be taking part for the first time.The all-rounder wasn't the only English player breaking records. Paceman Tymal Mills became the most expensive specialist bowler in IPL history -- snapped up for $1.8 million by Royal Challengers Bangalore. Left-armer Mills is one of the fastest bowlers in world cricket today with deliveries routinely clocking in excess of 90 mph (145 kph). Read MoreMS Dhoni steps down as India's limited-overs cricket captainHis speed, combined with his economy rate (7.28) in the last five overs of an innings -- when teams are looking to accelerate the scoring rate -- made him an attractive proposition. He only competes in limited-overs competitions due to chronic back problems which prevent him playing in longer formats of the game.Mills and Stokes both overtook the previous records for overseas players in the IPL held by former England stars Kevin Pietersen and Andrew Flintoff, who were bought for $1.55 million in 2014 and 2009 respectively. Debutant Stokes is the fourth most expensive player in IPL history behind Yuvraj Singh and Gautam Ghambir.Veteran India all-rounder Singh was bought by the Delhi Daredevils for $2.7 million in 2015 and $2.3 million by Royal Challengers Bangalore in 2014, while his former international teammate Ghambir -- an opening batsman -- attracted a fee of $2.4 million from the Kolkata Knight Riders in 2011. Visit cnn.com/sport for more news and videosThe IPL has an estimated value of $4.2 billion according to a financial report published in June 2016, with Bangalore rated the most valuable franchise at $67 million.
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Cybersecurity researchers on Thursday took the wraps off a new cyber espionage group that has been behind a series of targeted attacks against diplomatic entities and telecommunication companies in Africa and the Middle East since at least 2017.
Dubbed "BackdoorDiplomacy," the campaign involves targeting weak points in internet-exposed devices such as web servers to perform a panoply of cyber hacking activities, including laterally moving across the network to deploy a custom implant called Turian that's capable of exfiltrating sensitive data stored in removable media.
"BackdoorDiplomacy shares tactics, techniques, and procedures with other Asia-based groups. Turian likely represents a next stage evolution of Quarian, the backdoor last observed in use in 2013 against diplomatic targets in Syria and the U.S," said Jean-Ian Boutin, head of threat research at Slovak cybersecurity firm ESET.
Engineered to target both Windows and Linux operating systems, the cross-platform group singles out management interfaces for networking equipment and servers with internet-exposed ports, likely exploiting unpatched vulnerabilities to deploy the China Chopper web shell for initial access, using it to conduct reconnaissance and install the backdoor.
Targeted systems include F5 BIG-IP devices (CVE-2020-5902), Microsoft Exchange servers, and Plesk web hosting control panels. Victims have been identified in the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of multiple African countries, as well as in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Additionally, telecom providers in Africa and at least one Middle Eastern charity have also been hit.
"In each case, operators employed similar tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), but modified the tools used, even within close geographic regions, likely to make tracking the group more difficult," the researchers said. BackdoorDiplomacy is also believed to overlap with previously reported campaigns operated by a Chinese-speaking group Kaspersky tracks as "CloudComputating."
Besides its features to gather system information, take screenshots, and carry out file operations, ESET researchers said Turian's network encryption protocol is nearly identical to that employed by WhiteBird, a C++ backdoor operated by an Asia-based threat actor named Calypso, that was installed within diplomatic organizations in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, and during the same timeframe as BackdoorDiplomacy.
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It's not so far when Germany confirmed its biggest Data theft in the country's history with the usernames and passwords of some 18 million email accounts stolen and compromised by Hackers, and now German space research center has been reportedly targeted in a cyber attack.
The new story broke by the German press, Der Spiegel on Sunday revealing that the German Aerospace Centre (DLR - Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e. V.), the country's national center for aerospace, energy and transportation research located in Cologne has been reportedly targeted in a cyber attack out "coordinated and systematic", apparently launched by a foreign intelligence agency.
The systems used by administrators and scientists of the space research center have been found to be infected with Malware and spyware software, and as mention in the report, the attack was "co-ordinated and systematic" with the perfection of Trojan used.
SELF-DESTRUCTING MALWARE, WITH LOVE FROM CHINA
The espionage attack appears to be so complex that even the forensic investigators who have analyzed the infections unable to detect the actual malware, as some Trojans used were designed to self-destruct as soon as they discovered, while other malware remain mum for several months before being activated.
The report says all operating systems that are in use at German Aerospace Center (DLR) are affected by the cyber attacks. Yet, it is not at all clear that who is behind the cyber attacks. But, the evidence points towards China, as IT forensic experts of the Federal Office for Security in Information Technology (BSI) discovered "Chinese characters" in the malicious code of some Trojan and "recurring typos" suggest an attacker from the Far East.
Though, it could also be a "simple camouflage", an insider told Der Spiegel. As the U.S. intelligence agency NSA can't be completely ruled out, he added. But China would appear more likely on the first glance, rather than United States, because they are already at foremost position in space exploration.
The federal government categorizes the attack as extremely serious because among other things, the center gathers and reserves information on armament and rocket technologies as well.
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As time goes on, though, the Malware Risk on Mobile Platforms appears to be increasing. A flood of scammy apps that are difficult for Google to detect, and therefore stays available for download for several days before being removed.
The Russia-based firm Dr Web today said it has discovered several malicious Android apps found on Google Play which send SMS to premium numbers and about 25,000 devices are infected by these malwares.
A number of malicious programs have been discovered by Dr Web's analysts belong to the Vietnamese developer AppStoreJsc. These programs are published in the form of audio players and a video player that generally display adult content.
Dr Web explains, "While running these carrier applications, dubbed Android.MulDrop, Android.MulDrop.1, and Android.MulDrop.2 by Dr.Web, can prompt the user to download the content they need, but their consent initiates the installation of another application rather than the downloading of files. For example, the video player program offers to get the user new adult clips."
Dr Web promptly notified Google about the incident. With a larger and larger percentage of the mobile operating system market share, Android is starting to become more and more attractive to programmers and hackers alike.
Cyber Criminals generally take genuine apps, insert the malicious software, and sell them in the app store for free or at a discount. Android phones are more susceptible than iPhones because their app stores are more open.
A majority of the malicious apps sign users up to expensive premium services, charging huge amounts to send or receive text messages According to a report, by the end of the year, there's expected to be over a million malicious apps.
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Story highlightsSerena Williams battling knee injuryFederer, Sharapova also had physical issuesNovak Djokovic heavy favorite in men's draw Victoria Azarenka the hottest women's player (CNN)In 2015, there were two standout players on the tennis tour -- Serena Williams and Novak Djokovic. Follow @cnnsport
Both won three majors, with Williams coming within two victories of becoming the first player since Steffi Graf in 1988 to achieve the calendar year grand slam. Djokovic trumped Williams, however, by playing in all four grand slam finals. Will they continue to dominate at the season-opening Australian Open, which starts Monday? Here are five questions leading into Melbourne. We'll get the answers in two weeks. Is Serena vulnerable? Read MoreHaven't we been here before with Serena Williams? Perhaps at the 2015 French Open? The world No. 1, struck by a virus that she said at one stage made her "collapse," nonetheless battled her way to the crown at Roland Garros in June. Five of her seven matches on the red clay in Paris extended to three sets. Serena Williams and Caroline Wozniacki: Tennis' perfect matchIn the past, Williams has overcome injuries and a life-threatening illness to amass 21 grand slam singles titles. It looks like the American will again need to compete at a major event without being fully healthy. She retired from her opening match at the Hopman Cup in Perth due to a knee injury in the first week of January and then withdrew from the tournament altogether. The knee was one of the reasons, Williams said, she didn't contest another match in 2015 after losing in the U.S. Open semifinals to Roberta Vinci in September. The crafty Italian foiled Williams' quest to land all four majors in one season, but the 34-year-old still has much to play for Down Under -- retaining the title would put her equal with Graf's Open Era record tally of grand slams. Williams could be in for a tricky opening, as she was drawn against one of the hardest hitters on the tour, Camila Giorgi. Ranked 35th, the Italian just missed out on a seeding. Can anyone stop 'stratospheric' Djokovic? Rafael Nadal lavished high praise on the world No. 1 after he was crushed by the Serb 6-1 6-2 in last week's final of the Qatar Open. He even used the term "stratospheric" to describe Djokovic's level. "I know nobody playing tennis like this, ever," Nadal told reporters. JUST WATCHEDNovak Djokovic: The $21M manReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHNovak Djokovic: The $21M man 05:44One can understand why the Spaniard made such a bold comment: Djokovic has claimed 12 consecutive sets versus the 14-time grand slam champion on hard courts. Other rivals have had greater success against Djokovic, either downing him or making things close. Stan Wawrinka defeated him in the French Open final, denying him a collection of grand slam titles; Andy Murray had his opportunity in last year's Australian Open final; Roger Federer went 4-for-23 on break points in losing the U.S. Open final, and the Swiss also stretched Djokovic to four more sets at Wimbledon. Yet Djokovic won all the big points, and has won 45 of his last 51 matches against top-10 opposition. The Australian Open, too, is Djokovic's most successful major, accounting for half of his overall tally of 10. Will Nadal pose a threat? Federer owns a men's record 17 grand slam titles, but how many more would the 34-year-old possess if he didn't have to face Nadal? Similarly, how many majors would Nadal own if Djokovic was out of the way? Seeing Djokovic on the other side of the net is, as the numbers tell us, bad news for Nadal. But what if he didn't have to tangle with the 28-year-old? Then one could argue he is the man to beat. JUST WATCHEDCamera Ready: Backstage with Rafa, Andy & Grigor ReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHCamera Ready: Backstage with Rafa, Andy & Grigor 04:53Nadal's 2015 will be remembered for what he failed to win -- no majors for the first time since 2004 -- but the fifth-ranked Mallorcan ended the campaign in positive fashion, making finals in Beijing and Basel then reaching the semis at the year-end championships before losing to Djokovic. Those who have called for Nadal to lessen his spin-heavy game and hit the ball flatter will be pleased with what they are seeing, as those changes are seemingly being made. He is, too, positioning himself more aggressively on the baseline.If he is to succeed at the Australian Open, Nadal will have to do it the hard way. He was placed in a quarter with several heavy hitters, including 2014 Australian Open champ Stan Wawrinka. Nadal begins against Fernando Verdasco -- who has beaten his compatriot in two of their past three encounters. The two also played one of the most memorable matches in recent Australian Open history when Nadal edged Verdasco in roughly five hours in the 2009 semifinals. The site of some of Nadal's most painful losses, could the Australian Open -- which he won in 2009 -- this year truly mark his revival? Could Azarenka be the women's favorite? While Williams is worrying about her knee, Victoria Azarenka appears fully healthy and ready to make a charge for a third title to add to those in 2012 and 2013. Victoria Azarenka: Tennis champion ... and future video star? Azarenka knows about injuries herself, plummeting in the rankings after a foot injury forced the Belorussian to sit out much of 2014. Though she was still hampered physically in 2015, the former world No. 1 showed her class by almost defeating Williams on clay at the Madrid Open and the French Open. Her match with Williams in the Wimbledon quarterfinals was considered one of the best of 2015. Azarenka started 2016 impeccably, cruising to the title at a warmup in Brisbane by dropping a mere 17 games in five matches. Will Murray stick around if his wife gives birth? Murray's grand slam drought now sits at two and a half years, and during that time Wawrinka has matched his tally of two. He is thus keen to end the skid, and doing so in Melbourne might be sweeter for the Scot since he has lost four finals at the Australian Open -- three to Djokovic. Andy Murray weds Kim Sears in 'royal wedding of Scotland'In last year's title match, Djokovic appeared to be in trouble against Murray at the start of the third set but recovered to triumph in the fourth. However, this year Murray has other distractions -- the world No. 2 said he would fly home if his wife Kim Sears gives birth during the tournament (she is due with their first child the second week of February)."We spoke about it and chatted and obviously it would be disappointing if I was to get to that that position and not be able to play in the final," Murray told Australian television during the Hopman Cup. "But I also said that I think I would be way more disappointed winning the Australian Open and missing the birth of the child."It was actually quite an easy decision in the end. Hopefully it doesn't come to that."Murray is soon to become the third dad among tennis' "Big Four." Nadal is the lone member unmarried and without children. Make your Australian Open predictions on our Facebook pageFor more tennis news, visit CNN's Open Court page
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More than half a million routers and storage devices in dozens of countries have been infected with a piece of highly sophisticated IoT botnet malware, likely designed by Russia-baked state-sponsored group.
Cisco's Talos cyber intelligence unit have discovered an advanced piece of IoT botnet malware, dubbed VPNFilter, that has been designed with versatile capabilities to gather intelligence, interfere with internet communications, as well as conduct destructive cyber attack operations.
The malware has already infected over 500,000 devices in at least 54 countries, most of which are small and home offices routers and internet-connected storage devices from Linksys, MikroTik, NETGEAR, and TP-Link. Some network-attached storage (NAS) devices known to have been targeted as well.
VPNFilter is a multi-stage, modular malware that can steal website credentials and monitor industrial controls or SCADA systems, such as those used in electric grids, other infrastructure and factories.
The malware communicates over Tor anonymizing network and even contains a killswitch for routers, where the malware deliberately kills itself.
Unlike most other malware that targets internet-of-things (IoT) devices, the first stage of VPNFilter persists through a reboot, gaining a persistent foothold on the infected device and enabling the deployment of the second stage malware.
VPNFilter is named after a directory (/var/run/vpnfilterw) the malware creates to hide its files on an infected device.
Since the research is still ongoing, Talos researchers "do not have definitive proof on how the threat actor is exploiting the affected devices," but they strongly believe that VPNFilter does not exploit any zero-day vulnerability to infect its victims.
Instead, the malware targets devices still exposed to well-known, public vulnerabilities or have default credentials, making compromise relatively straightforward.
Talos researchers have high confidence that the Russian government is behind VPNFilter because the malware code overlaps with versions of BlackEnergy—the malware responsible for multiple large-scale attacks targeting devices in Ukraine that the U.S. government has attributed to Russia.
Although devices infected with VPNFilter have been found across 54 countries, researchers believe the hackers are targeting specifically Ukraine, following a surge in the malware infections in the country on May 8.
"The malware has a destructive capability that can render an infected device unusable, which can be triggered on individual victim machines or en masse, and has the potential of cutting off internet access for hundreds of thousands of victims worldwide," Talos researcher William Largent said in a blog post.
The researchers said they released their findings prior to the completion of their research, due to concern over a potential upcoming attack against Ukraine, which has repeatedly been the victim of Russian cyber attacks, including large-scale power outage and NotPetya.
If you are already infected with the malware, reset your router to factory default to remove the potentially destructive malware and update the firmware of your device as soon as possible.
You need to be more vigilant about the security of your smart IoT devices. To prevent yourself against such malware attacks, you are recommended to change default credentials for your device.
If your router is by default vulnerable and cannot be updated, throw it away and buy a new one, it's that simple. Your security and privacy is more than worth a router's price.
Moreover, always put your routers behind a firewall, and turn off remote administration until and unless you really need it.
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Story highlightsBolt retains men's 100-meter titleFirst Olympian to win three in a rowAmerican Justin Gatlin took silver medalRio de Janeiro (CNN)It's become the sporting spectacle of the 21st century -- Usain Bolt arrives at an Olympic Games and walks away with the 100-meter gold medal.While his days of breaking world records over the distance might have passed, he's still able to deliver on the biggest stage.Bolt does his "Lightening Bolt' pose as he celebrates winning the 100 meters.And although it was the slowest time with which Bolt has won a major championship, it was enough to satisfy a crowd who chanted his name from the second he appeared on the big screen through to the moment he paraded the track draped in the Jamaican flag.With fears over security and empty seats threatening to overshadow Rio 2016, he provided the good-news story everybody craved, crossing the line in 9.81 seconds to fend off the challenge of rival Justin Gatlin in Sunday's final.
And while Bolt was saluted as hero, Gatlin was cast in the role of pantomime villain. Read MoreFew Olympians will have experienced a welcome as hostile as the one afforded to the American. A divisive figure in track and field having twice served doping bans, he was booed at every turn.Twelve years after he claimed 100m gold at Athens 2004, Gatlin was unable to dethrone Bolt as the Olympic sprint king. Instead, as Galin tied up in the races closing quarter, he was forced to watch on as Bolt coasted towards the finish line and into the record books.Read: Five things to watch out for on MondayBolt is the first Olympic sprinter to win three successive 100-meter gold medals.Coupled with the scenes of wild celebration was an overwhelming sense of relief. Rio's Games had avoided the awkward prospect of the winner of its blue riband event being booed on the podium.The Olympic movement, it seems, can always rely on Bolt when it needs him the most.He added to his already gilded legacy by becoming the first athlete to win the 100-meters at three different Games. He's now the overwhelming favorite to compete a "triple-triple" by adding the 200-meter and 4 x 100-meter titles to his collection. Photos: Rio Olympics: Day 9 Photos: Rio Olympics: Day 9Usain Bolt of Jamaica wins the men's 100m final, becoming the first Olympic sprinter to win three consecutive 100-meter gold medals.Hide Caption 1 of 39 Photos: Rio Olympics: Day 9Chinese diver Qin Kai proposes to silver medalist diver He Zhi.Hide Caption 2 of 39 Photos: Rio Olympics: Day 9South Africa's Wayde van Niekerk takes the lead in the men's 400-meter final. He went on to claim the gold and set a new world record. Hide Caption 3 of 39 Photos: Rio Olympics: Day 9Angola's Albertina Cruz Kassoma, center, is fouled by Spain's Elizabet Chavez during a women's preliminary handball match.Hide Caption 4 of 39 Photos: Rio Olympics: Day 9Australia's David Andersen drives to the basket past Venezuela's Nestor Colmenares.Hide Caption 5 of 39 Photos: Rio Olympics: Day 9Sarah Elizabeth Robles of the US reacts after winning bronze in the women's +75kg weightlifting.Hide Caption 6 of 39 Photos: Rio Olympics: Day 9Iran's Saeid Morad Abdvali celebrates after winning the bronze medal in the men's Greco-Roman 75 kg competition.Hide Caption 7 of 39 Photos: Rio Olympics: Day 9US goalie Merrill Moses saves a shot against Italy during in a men's water polo preliminary round match. The Americans won 10-7.Hide Caption 8 of 39 Photos: Rio Olympics: Day 9The Finn Class fleet in action during their second race of the day.Hide Caption 9 of 39 Photos: Rio Olympics: Day 9Andy Murray returns to Juan Martin del Potro of Argentina in the men's tennis final. The British player retained his title.Hide Caption 10 of 39 Photos: Rio Olympics: Day 9Bubba Watson's shoes are seen during the final round of men's golf, won by Britain's Justin Rose.Hide Caption 11 of 39 Photos: Rio Olympics: Day 9Brazil's Larissa Franca, center, is hugged by supporters after reaching the semifinals of the women's beach volleyball tournament with partner Talita Antunes. Hide Caption 12 of 39 Photos: Rio Olympics: Day 9Canada's Eric Lamaze on Fine Lady competes during the equestrian's show jumping first qualifier event.Hide Caption 13 of 39 Photos: Rio Olympics: Day 9Brazil's Diego Hypolito competes in the men's floor event final of the artistic gymnastics.Hide Caption 14 of 39 Photos: Rio Olympics: Day 9Simone Biles smiles on the podium after winning the gold medal in the women's vault event final.Hide Caption 15 of 39 Photos: Rio Olympics: Day 9Dorian van Rijsselberghe of the Netherlands celebrates winning the overall Men's RS:X windsurfing class.Hide Caption 16 of 39 Photos: Rio Olympics: Day 9Justin Rose of Great Britain celebrates after winning in the final round of men's golf.Hide Caption 17 of 39 Photos: Rio Olympics: Day 9Chinese diver He Zi enters the water in the Women's 3m Springboard final. She won silver and then received a wedding proposal from her boyfriend.Hide Caption 18 of 39 Photos: Rio Olympics: Day 9Demarcus Cousins, right, shoots against Joffrey Lauvergne of France during a men's preliminary round Group A basketball game, which the US won 100-97.Hide Caption 19 of 39 Photos: Rio Olympics: Day 9Max Whitlock won gold in the men's pommel horse final and also triumphed in the floor exercise -- the first Olympic titles won by a British gymnast.Hide Caption 20 of 39 Photos: Rio Olympics: Day 9American tennis player Bethanie Mattek-Sands celebrates after she and teammate Jack Sock beat compatriots Venus Williams and Rajeev Ram in their mixed doubles gold medal tennis match.Hide Caption 21 of 39 Photos: Rio Olympics: Day 9Jemima Sumgong of Kenya becomes emotional during the podium ceremony for the Women's Marathon on Sunday, August 14. Sumgong is the first woman to win a gold medal in Olympic Marathon running for Kenya.Hide Caption 22 of 39 Photos: Rio Olympics: Day 9Athletes compete in the 50m rifle 3 position qualifying event.Hide Caption 23 of 39 Photos: Rio Olympics: Day 9Russia's duet Natalia Ishchenko and Svetlana Romashina compete in the Duets Free Routine preliminaries during the synchronised swimming event. The Russians would go on to win gold.Hide Caption 24 of 39 Photos: Rio Olympics: Day 9Players compete during Badminton Singles on Sunday, August 14.Hide Caption 25 of 39 Photos: Rio Olympics: Day 9Bronze medalist Arthur Mariano of Brazil salutes during the medal ceremony for Men's Gymnastics Floor Exercise.Hide Caption 26 of 39 Photos: Rio Olympics: Day 9Great Britain's Nick Skelton, riding Big Star, competes during the Equestrian Jumping Individual and Team Qualifier.Hide Caption 27 of 39 Photos: Rio Olympics: Day 9Ukraine's fencing team celebrates after winning the men's team epee quarter-final bout against Russia.Hide Caption 28 of 39 Photos: Rio Olympics: Day 9Colombian synchronized swimming duet Estefania Alvarez Piedrahita and Monica Sarai Arango Estrada perform during the Duets Free Routine preliminaries.Hide Caption 29 of 39 Photos: Rio Olympics: Day 9Facundo Callioni of Argentina celebrates with team mate Manuel Brunet after their 2-1 victory in a field hockey match against Spain.Hide Caption 30 of 39 Photos: Rio Olympics: Day 9Runners compete in the Women's Marathon on Day 9 of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games on Sunday, August 14.Hide Caption 31 of 39 Photos: Rio Olympics: Day 9A Brazilian fan cheers before the start of the Women's Marathon.Hide Caption 32 of 39 Photos: Rio Olympics: Day 9Members of the Brazilian military patrol the course before the start of the Women's Marathon.Hide Caption 33 of 39 Photos: Rio Olympics: Day 9Francielle Rocha of Brazil, center, tries to get past Andela Bulatovic, left, and Katarina Bulatovic of Montenegro during a handball match between their two countries.Hide Caption 34 of 39 Photos: Rio Olympics: Day 9Philippe Rozier of France, riding Rahotep De Toscane, looks ahead during the Jumping Individual and Team Qualifier.Hide Caption 35 of 39 Photos: Rio Olympics: Day 9Mikko Ilonen of Finland takes a shot from the first tee at the Olympic Golf Course.Hide Caption 36 of 39 Photos: Rio Olympics: Day 9Thailand's Ratchanok Intanon returns the birdie to Hong Kong's Yip Pui Yin during their women's singles qualifying badminton match.Hide Caption 37 of 39 Photos: Rio Olympics: Day 9Colombia's Carlos Andres Munoz Jaramillo, in red, is pulled to the ground by Hungary's Peter Bacsi in their men's 75kg greco-roman qualification match during the wrestling event.Hide Caption 38 of 39 Photos: Rio Olympics: Day 9Eunice Jepkirui Kirwa of Bahrain tries to stay cool by pouring water on her head as she runs alongside Visiline Jepkesho of Kenya.Hide Caption 39 of 39"Somebody said I can become immortal," Bolt said moments after his triumph, as the sounds of Bob Marley reverberated around the Olympic Stadium. "Two more medals to go and I can sign off. Immortal."Bolt, meanwhile, was left unimpressed by the reception afforded to Gatlin.Read: A proposal on the podium"That's the first time I've gone into a stadium and they've started to boo," the 29-year-old admitted. "It surprised me."Appearing at his fourth Olympics, Gatlin picked up a fifth medal -- albeit not the one he had hoped for.And despite a less-than-warm reception from the crowd, Gatlin wasn't holding any grudges, instead choosing to focus on the support he received from Americans inside the stadium.Jamaica Stand Up!!! This for you my people— Usain St. Leo Bolt (@usainbolt) August 15, 2016
"At the end of the day you hear everything, but you have to tune that kind of stuff out," admitted Gatlin."They are excited, I understand that. There are a lot Usain Bolt fans, there are a lot of Jamaican fans but they don`t know me, they don't know Justin. I have worked very hard."You can't focus on the boos, today when I looked into the stands I saw the most American flags at any championship."Bolt's golden shoes ahead of a golden performance.He was also effusive in his praise for Bolt, crediting the champion with pushing him to become a better athlete.Read: Justin Rose wins golf gold"I have the utmost respect for Usain off the track," he added. "He is a fun, cool guy. There is no rivalry or bad blood between us. I'm a competitor. He is a competitor and has pushed me to become the athlete I am today."When it comes down to it I have given him his closest races all his career."And after another defeat to Bolt, Gatlin insisted he was pleased to be able to compete alongside -- and beat -- younger sprinters.JUST WATCHEDJennifer Bolt: The gold medal mom ReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHJennifer Bolt: The gold medal mom 03:20"We work 365 days a year to be here for nine seconds," he said. "At the age of 34, to race these young guys and still make the podium feels so good."For Bolt, this medal is the first part of what he hopes will become a landmark trilogy. Next up, the 200-meter heats on Tuesday."It's a good start," he said. "There will always be doubters. But I'm in better shape than last season."
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(CNN)A juror on the Roger Stone trial said she wants to "stand up" for the four prosecutors who withdrew from the case in response to their sentencing recommendation being changed by Department of Justice leadership.Tomeka Hart said she had remained silent about the case for months out of concern for her safety and "politicizing the matter."But the events this week led to her to post on her Facebook account that she "can't keep quiet any longer." A copy of the posting was shared with CNN. Hart confirmed to CNN that she wrote the post but did not want to discuss it further. "I want to stand up for Aaron Zelinsky, Adam Jed, Michael Marando, and Jonathan Kravis -- the prosecutors on the Roger Stone trial," she wrote in the post that was shared with CNN. "It pains me to see the DOJ now interfere with the hard work of the prosecutors. They acted with the utmost intelligence, integrity, and respect for our system of justice."On Tuesday, all four federal prosecutors who took the case against Stone to trial withdrew after top Justice Department officials undercut them and disavowed the government's recommended sentence against Stone. Read MoreThe mass withdrawal was set in motion on Monday when the prosecutors from the DC US Attorney's office, who are Justice Department employees, wrote in a filing that Stone should be sentenced seven to nine years in prison after he was convicted on seven charges last year that came out of Mueller's investigation, including lying to Congress and witness tampering. In the revised sentencing recommendation, filed Tuesday afternoon, federal prosecutors asked for Stone to still be sentenced to prison, but said it should be "far less" than the office had asked for a day earlier. The prosecutors declined to say how much time in prison Stone should serve.CNN's David Shortell, Evan Perez, Katelyn Polantz, Kaitlan Collins and Jeremy Herb contributed to this report.
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An ongoing malware campaign has been found exploiting recently disclosed vulnerabilities in network-attached storage (NAS) devices running on Linux systems to co-opt the machines into an IRC botnet for launching distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and mining Monero cryptocurrency.
The attacks deploy a new malware variant called "FreakOut" by leveraging critical flaws fixed in Laminas Project (formerly Zend Framework) and Liferay Portal as well as an unpatched security weakness in TerraMaster, according to Check Point Research's new analysis published today and shared with The Hacker News.
Attributing the malware to be the work of a long-time cybercrime hacker — who goes by the aliases Fl0urite and Freak on HackForums and Pastebin at least since 2015 — the researchers said the flaws — CVE-2020-28188, CVE-2021-3007, and CVE-2020-7961 — were weaponized to inject and execute malicious commands in the server.
Regardless of the vulnerabilities exploited, the end goal of the attacker appears to be to download and execute a Python script named "out.py" using Python 2, which reached end-of-life last year — implying that the threat actor is banking on the possibility that that victim devices have this deprecated version installed.
"The malware, downloaded from the site hxxp://gxbrowser[.]net, is an obfuscated Python script which contains polymorphic code, with the obfuscation changing each time the script is downloaded," the researchers said, adding the first attack attempting to download the file was observed on January 8.
And indeed, three days later, cybersecurity firm F5 Labs warned of a series of attacks targeting NAS devices from TerraMaster (CVE-2020-28188) and Liferay CMS (CVE-2020-7961) in an attempt to spread N3Cr0m0rPh IRC bot and Monero cryptocurrency miner.
An IRC Botnet is a collection of machines infected with malware that can be controlled remotely via an IRC channel to execute malicious commands.
In FreakOut's case, the compromised devices are configured to communicate with a hardcoded command-and-control (C2) server from where they receive command messages to execute.
The malware also comes with extensive capabilities that allow it to perform various tasks, including port scanning, information gathering, creation and sending of data packets, network sniffing, and DDoS and flooding.
Furthermore, the hosts can be commandeered as a part of a botnet operation for crypto-mining, spreading laterally across the network, and launching attacks on outside targets while masquerading as the victim company.
With hundreds of devices already infected within days of launching the attack, the researchers warn, FreakOut will ratchet up to higher levels in the near future.
For its part, TerraMaster is expected to patch the vulnerability in version 4.2.07. In the meantime, it's recommended that users upgrade to Liferay Portal 7.2 CE GA2 (7.2.1) or later and laminas-http 2.14.2 to mitigate the risk associated with the flaws.
"What we have identified is a live and ongoing cyber attack campaign targeting specific Linux users," said Adi Ikan, head of network cybersecurity Research at Check Point. "The attacker behind this campaign is very experienced in cybercrime and highly dangerous."
"The fact that some of the vulnerabilities exploited were just published, provides us all a good example for highlighting the significance of securing your network on an ongoing basis with the latest patches and updates."
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Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC)—the world's largest makers of semiconductors and processors—was forced to shut down several of its chip-fabrication factories over the weekend after being hit by a computer virus.
Now, it turns out that the computer virus outbreak at Taiwan chipmaker was the result of a variant of WannaCry—a massive ransomware attack that wreaked havoc across the world by shutting down hospitals, telecom providers, and many businesses in May 2017.
TSMC shut down an entire day of production this weekend after several of its factories systems were halted by a computer virus in the middle of the ramp-up for chips to be used by Apple's future lines of iPhones, which could impact revenue by approx $256 million.
According to the semiconductor manufacturer, its computer systems were not direct attacked by any hacker, but instead, were exposed to the malware "when a supplier installed tainted software without a virus scan" to TSMC's network.
The virus then quickly spread to more than 10,000 machines in some of the company's most advanced facilities, including Tainan, Hsinchu, and Taichung—home to some of the cutting-edge fabrication plants that produce semiconductors for Apple.
Although unnamed in its official statement, TSMC reportedly blamed a variant of the 2017 WannaCry ransomware attack for the infection.
"We are surprised and shocked," TSMC CEO C.C. Wei said, "We have installed tens of thousands of tools before, and this is the first time this happened."
Claimed to be developed and spread by North Korea, the WannaCry ransomware shut down hospitals, telecom providers, and many businesses worldwide, infecting hundreds of thousands of computers in over 150 countries within just 72 hours in May 2017.
The WannaCry victims included big names like Boeing, Renault, Honda, FedEx and the UK's National Health Service.
The WannaCry worm was leveraging an NSA's Windows SMB exploit, known as EternalBlue, leaked by the infamous hacking group Shadow Brokers in its April data dump, along with other Windows exploits.
TSMC assured its customers that no confidential information was stolen, and said the company has resumed full operations at its facilities, but shipment delays are expected.
However, the chipmaker declined to discuss the implications for Apple, which is said to be ramping up production of 3 new iPhone models for this fall.
Besides being Apple's sole supplier of SoC components for iPhones and iPads, TSMC also manufactures processors and other silicon chips for many of the industry's biggest tech companies, including AMD, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, and others.
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Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo (CNN)Seismologists in the Democratic Republic of Congo reported 61 earthquakes in a 24-hour period on Saturday around the Mount Nyiragongo volcano, which erupted a week ago, warning residents to keep well away from lava flows. The details were outlined in a daily report prepared for the government by the Goma Volcanic Observatory (GVO), and seen by CNN. It explained that the volcano's crater "continues to collapse, which contributed to the earthquake and caused ash emissions visible from Goma."Over 400,000 people escape Goma as threat of another volcanic eruption in DRC looms The 11,500-foot-high volcano sits around 15 kilometers (9 miles) from Goma, a city with an official population of 670,000, though several NGOs estimate it to be closer to 1 million.A provincial government spokesperson said Friday that around 400,000 people had fled the city as officials warned of a second eruption. The first explosion last Saturday killed at least 31 people. Since then, the area has experienced a series of earthquakes and tremors, some felt as far away as the Rwandan capital of Kigali, more than 100 km from the volcano in the Virunga National Park.Read MoreThe report warned that lava flows "can cause asphyxiation, severe burns or death." Photos: Volcano erupts in the Democratic Republic of Congo Photos: Volcano erupts in the Democratic Republic of CongoThis aerial photo, taken on May 23, shows debris engulfing buildings in the Bushara village near Goma, a day after Mount Nyiragongo erupted in the Democratic Republic of Congo.Hide Caption 1 of 15 Photos: Volcano erupts in the Democratic Republic of CongoGoma residents board boats at the port of Kituku as they flee across Lake Kivu on Friday, May 28.Hide Caption 2 of 15 Photos: Volcano erupts in the Democratic Republic of CongoDisplaced children take shelter in a church on May 28.Hide Caption 3 of 15 Photos: Volcano erupts in the Democratic Republic of CongoResidents flee Goma on Thursday, May 27, after an evacuation order was issued.Hide Caption 4 of 15 Photos: Volcano erupts in the Democratic Republic of CongoChildren look for shelter in Sake on May 27.Hide Caption 5 of 15 Photos: Volcano erupts in the Democratic Republic of CongoGoma residents board a ferry as they evacuate the city on May 27.Hide Caption 6 of 15 Photos: Volcano erupts in the Democratic Republic of CongoSignificant cracks in the ground -- some stretching the entire width of the road, others in the walls of buildings -- have begun to appear following the volcano's eruption. Hide Caption 7 of 15 Photos: Volcano erupts in the Democratic Republic of CongoDisplaced residents wait in line to register for aid on Wednesday, May 26.Hide Caption 8 of 15 Photos: Volcano erupts in the Democratic Republic of CongoThis aerial photo shows smoke rising from Mount Nyiragongo on Tuesday, May 25.Hide Caption 9 of 15 Photos: Volcano erupts in the Democratic Republic of CongoPeople cross a lava-covered field in Buhene, north of Goma, on May 25.Hide Caption 10 of 15 Photos: Volcano erupts in the Democratic Republic of CongoLocals gather around a water point at a lava-covered field in Goma on May 25.Hide Caption 11 of 15 Photos: Volcano erupts in the Democratic Republic of CongoGoma residents walk through smoke from smoldering lava on May 23.Hide Caption 12 of 15 Photos: Volcano erupts in the Democratic Republic of CongoPeople in Goma start to run after the ground trembled briefly on May 23.Hide Caption 13 of 15 Photos: Volcano erupts in the Democratic Republic of CongoA person tries to put out a fire in Goma after the volcano's eruption on May 22.Hide Caption 14 of 15 Photos: Volcano erupts in the Democratic Republic of CongoThe volcano's smoke and flames are seen from Tchegera Island on Lake Kivu, near Goma, on May 22.Hide Caption 15 of 15It laid out four possible scenarios, the best case being that the earthquakes stop and that no second eruption occurs. But it also warned that as magma continued to move through a fissure toward Lake Kivu, there was a possibility of a limnic eruption, where an eruption under the lake could cause it to send debris flying and emit toxic gas. That could be a worst-case scenario."If lava erupts in the Kivu River, keep a considerable distance away, as the explosions could produce dangerous ballistics," the report said.A volcanic eruption, landslide or large earthquake could destabilize the lake's deep waters and emit dissolved gases. Gas emissions are likely to become more frequent in the coming months anyway because of the increase in volume of underground magma. Fissures could release lethal concentrations of gases, the report said, urging people to stay away and supervise children in low-lying areas. The report added that people should take precautions in using water for drinking and washing vegetables as volcanic ash may have contaminated tanks. Larry Madowo reported from Goma, Martin Goillandeau, Sarah Dean and Angela Dewan reported from London.
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Last Friday, we reported that the website of the U.S. Council of Foreign Relations was allegedly compromised by Chinese hackers who exploited the zero-day bug that was only discovered that same day. The CFR website was compromised with JavaScript that served malicious code to older IE browsers and the code then created a heap-spray attack using Adobe Flash Player.
Yesterday former hacker Bryce Case Jr (YTCracker) tweeted about a new zero day exploit threatening all users of IE8, "internet explorer 6-8 0day making the rounds force them toolbar installs and keyloggers on exgf while you still can...".
On Saturday, Microsoft published a security advisory warning users of Internet Explorer 6, 7, and 8 that they could be vulnerable to remote code execution hacks. The vulnerability is a remote code execution vulnerability that exists in the way that Internet Explorer accesses an object in memory that has been deleted or has not been properly allocated.
The vulnerability may corrupt memory in a way that could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code in the context of the current user within Internet Explorer. An attacker could host a specially crafted website that is designed to exploit this vulnerability through Internet Explorer and then convince a user to view the website.
Meanwhile, the software giant will be shipping a software fix, available from its Fix It Solution Center, to protect systems before the patch is ready. Microsoft also has posted several mitigation options for users of Internet Explorer 8 or earlier to protect the Windows operating system from the exploit.
The best measure - of course, switch to Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.
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Here we are with our weekly roundup, briefing this week's top cybersecurity threats, incidents, and challenges, just in case you missed any of them.
Last week has been very short with big news from the theft of over 4,700 Bitcoins from the largest cryptocurrency mining marketplace to the discovery of a new malware evasion technique that works on all versions of Microsoft's Windows operating system.
Besides this, the newly discovered Janus vulnerability in the Android operating system and a critical remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability in Malware Protection Engine (MPE) for which Microsoft released an emergency patch made their places in our weekly roundup.
I recommend you to read the entire news (just click 'Read More' because there's some valuable advice in there as well).
So, here we go with the list of this Week's Top Stories:
Process Doppelgänging: New Malware Evasion Technique
A team of researchers, who previously discovered AtomBombing attack, recently revealed a new fileless code injection technique that could help malware authors defeat most of the modern anti-virus solutions and forensic tools.
Dubbed Process Doppelgänging, the method takes advantage of a built-in Windows function and an undocumented implementation of Windows process loader, and works on all versions of Microsoft Windows operating system, starting from Windows Vista to the latest version of Windows 10.
To know How Process Doppelgänging attack works and why Microsoft refused to fix it, Read More.
Android Flaw Lets Hackers Inject Malware Into Apps Without Altering Signatures
A newly discovered vulnerability, dubbed Janus, in Android could let attackers modify the code of Android apps without affecting their signatures, eventually allowing them to distribute malicious update for the legitimate apps, which looks and works same as the original apps.
Although Google has patched the vulnerability this month, a majority of Android users would still need to wait for their device manufacturers to release custom updates for them, apparently leaving a large number of Android users vulnerable to hackers for next few months.
To know more about the vulnerability, how it works and if you are affected, Read More.
Pre-Installed Keylogger Found On Over 460 HP Laptop Models
Once again, Hewlett-Packard (HP) was caught pre-installing a keylogger in more than 460 HP Notebook laptop models that could allow hackers to record your every keystroke and steal sensitive data, including passwords, account information, and credit card details.
When reported last month, HP acknowledged the presence of the keylogger, saying it was actually "a debug trace" which was left accidentally, and affected users can install updated Synaptics touchpad driver to remove it manually.
To know how to check if your HP laptop is vulnerable to this issue and download compatible drivers, Read More.
New Email Spoofing Flaw Affects Over 30 Popular Email Clients
Researchers discovered a collection of vulnerabilities in more than 30 popular email client applications that could allow anyone to send spoofed emails bypassing anti-spoofing mechanisms.
Dubbed MailSploit, the vulnerabilities affect popular email clients including Apple Mail (for macOS, iOS, and watchOS), Mozilla Thunderbird, Yahoo Mail, ProtonMail, several Microsoft email clients, and others.
To watch the PoC video released by the researchers and know more about the vulnerabilities, Read More.
Largest Crypto-Mining Exchange Hacked; Over $80 Million in Bitcoin Stolen
Last week was the golden week in Bitcoin's history when the price of 1 BTC touched almost $19,000, but the media hype about the bitcoin price diminishes the hack of the largest Bitcoin mining marketplace.
NiceHash mining marketplace confirmed a breach of its website, which resulted in the theft of more than 4,736 Bitcoins, which now worth nearly $80 million.
The service went offline (and is still offline at the time of writing this article) with a post on its website, confirming that "there has been a security breach involving NiceHash website," and that hackers stole the contents of the NiceHash Bitcoin wallet.
To know more about the Bitcoin hack, Read More.
Microsoft Issues Emergency Windows Security Update
A week before its December Patch Tuesday updates, Microsoft released an emergency security patch to address a critical remote code execution vulnerability in its Malware Protection Engine (MPE) that could allow an attacker to take full control of a victim's PC.
The vulnerability (CVE-2017-11937) impacts Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 7, Windows RT 8.1, and Windows Server, and affects several Microsoft's security products, including Windows Defender, Microsoft Security Essentials, Endpoint Protection, Forefront Endpoint Protection, and Exchange Server 2013 and 2016.
To know more about the vulnerability, Read More.
Security Flaw Left Major Banking Apps Vulnerable to MiTM Attacks Over SSL
Scientists discovered a critical implementation flaw in major mobile banking apps—for both iOS and Android—that left banking credentials of millions of users vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks.
Attackers, connected to the same network as the victim, could have leveraged vulnerable banking apps to intercept SSL connection and retrieve the user's banking credentials, like usernames and passwords/pincodes—even if the apps are using SSL pinning feature.
To know how attackers could have exploited this vulnerability to take over your bank accounts, Read More.
Massive Data Breach Exposes Personal Data On 31 Million Users
While downloading apps on their smartphones, most users may not realize how much data they collect on them, and app developers take advantage of this ignorance, wiping off more data on their users than they actually require for the working of their app.
But what if this data falls into the wrong hand?
The same happened last week, when a massive trove of personal data (over 577 GB) belonging to more than 31 million users of the famous virtual keyboard app, called AI.type, leaked online for anyone to download without requiring a password.
To know more about the data breach incident and what information users lost, Read More.
Critical Flaw in Major Android Tools Targets Developers
An easily-exploitable vulnerability discovered in Android application developer tools, both downloadable and cloud-based, could allow hackers to steal files and execute malicious code on vulnerable systems remotely.
The vulnerability was discovered by security researchers at CheckPoint, who also released a proof of concept (PoC) attack, dubbed ParseDroid, along with a video to demonstrate how the attack works.
To watch the video and know how this vulnerability can be exploited, Read More.
Uber Paid Florida Hacker $100,000 to Keep Data Breach News Secret
It turns out that a 20-year-old Florida man, with the help of another, was responsible for the massive Uber data breach in October 2016 and was paid an enormous amount by the ride-hailing company to destroy the data and keep the data breach incident secret.
Last week, Uber announced that a massive data breach last year exposed personal data of 57 million customers and drivers and that it paid two hackers $100,000 in ransom to destroy the information.
To know more about the data breach at Uber and the hackers, Read More.
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Wembley Stadium, London (CNN)It may have rained relentlessly for eight hours leading up to kick off, but the torrential downpour wasn't enough to dampen the spirits of the thousands of Scottish fans -- a conservative estimate -- that had traveled to London for the national team's Euro 2020 match against England.Despite just 3,000 tickets being allocated to away supporters at Wembley, some outlets estimated as many as 20,000 Scots had made the short journey across the border to revel in the festivities.With Trafalgar Square, the usual gathering point for the Tartan Army -- as Scotland fans are known -- closed off to the public due to the pandemic, those without tickets descended on Soho, particularly Leicester Square, to frolic in the fountains and consume their fair share of alcohol, those two things often happening at the same time.Friday's clash was the 115th meeting between the British neighbors and came 149 years after their first, a 0-0 draw in front of around 4,000 fans at Glasgow's West of Scotland Cricket Club, which is recognized by FIFA as football's first ever international fixture.Although a century-and-a-half has passed since that match, for fans of both sides this local derby has lost none of its luster.Read MoreScotland fans gather in Leicester Square, London, before the match."Every single person in the whole of Scotland wants to beat England, because England are the big brother to the little brother of Scotland," Robert Finleyson, a 52-year-old Scotland fan from Glasgow, told CNN outside Wembley Stadium. "Everybody in Scotland is desperate to win every single sporting contest we can against the English."It would mean everything [to beat England]. We don't really care if we qualify from the group. If we were to win today it would be biggest thing ever. We don't really care [if we qualify], it's very unlikely that we will, but we don't care. I don't care if we qualify, I don't care if we get to the final, I don't care if we win the European Championship, we want to be England -- and that's it."England fan Brady Bowles, 24 from Horsham, has Scottish grandparents, but didn't struggle with any divided loyalties ahead of Friday's game."I don't care, honestly," he laughed. "I'd still rather beat them. I've lived in England all my life, I'm English and don't care about Scotland massively. Right now, winning would mean everything, because if we win we're through."Euro 2020How a nation of just 11 million people became world's top-ranked football teamStunning long range goal lights up Euro 2020Christian Eriksen sends message to Danish teammates from hospital after collapsing Euro 2020: 24 teams playing across 51 matches in 11 host citiesDespite the obvious rivalry and deep-rooted desire to get one up on their closest neighbor, the interactions between both sets of fans were amicable on Wembley Way -- the famous road that leads up to England's national stadium -- with many sharing cans of beer on the walk.England may hold a narrow historic advantage over Scotland -- 48 wins to 41 -- but for many years now, the Three Lions have dominated this rivalry.However, no team in history has beaten England on more occasions than Scotland. "We're hoping to repeat that tonight," Finleyson added. "And I'm quite sure if everybody is on form, we'll do it."Scotland has managed just one win over England since 1986, a 1-0 victory at Wembley in 1999 that ultimately counted for nothing as England progressed to Euro 2000 2-1 on aggregate thanks to Paul Scholes' double in the first leg at Hampden Park.'We won't beat them'Both sets of fans are famously self-deprecating, born from decades of underwhelming performances and bitter disappointments."We as Scotland fans, we're used to failure," Michael Hanley, who travelled to Wembley from Falkirk, told CNN. "So we just go to the game, whatever the result is we just accept it and we go home and party."England's route through to the later stages of the competition looks particularly perilous; should Gareth Southgate's side top the group then three of the tournament's best sides await in the round of 16.It's fair to say not all England fans feel particularly good about their team's chances.Scotland fans arrive at King's Cross St. Pancras, London, ahead of the match with England."When we qualify, I know we'll face Germany, Portugal or France and we won't beat them," Bowles adds with resignation. "But to beat Scotland, to be able to get there after what happened at the World Cup [losing in the semifinals], we just want to get as far as we can."Others, however, were feeling decidedly more optimistic."To be honest, I don't see it as a challenge," Tom Willoughby, 19 from Newcastle, said with a wry smile. "Nah, nah, nah, it's a big rivalry and form goes out the window, anything can happen -- but I think we'll win 4-0."Scotland has enjoyed plenty of famous wins at the home of English football over the years -- perhaps the greatest of all coming in 1967, the year after England won its first and only World Cup -- and some fans were feeling surprisingly optimistic about adding another to the list ahead of kick off.England entered the game as the overwhelming favorite and fresh from a comfortable, if not particularly thrilling, 1-0 win against Croatia in its opening match, while Scotland had fallen to a miserable 2-0 defeat at home to the Czech Republic in what was its first match at a major tournament for 23 years."It's the same with football and it's the same with any sport: We want Scotland to win all the time, regardless of what it is, and we hope England get beat," Hanley added. "Beating England would be off the chart. I know we're the underdogs and we had a bad start, but we've got to be optimistic, you know what I mean, never write off the underdog.""Today is the day," added John Watson, who traveled from Lesmahagow in Scotland's Central Belt. "It would be dynamite; I'd be so happy. Pure joy."Scotland's supporters sing the national anthem before the start of the match against England.No goals, plenty of passionThat optimism certainly didn't look misplaced in the opening exchanges of the match as Scotland started much the sharper of the two sides, relentlessly harassing England's players when they had possession.It was the visiting side that created the first chance of the game, with Stephen O'Donnell's cross finding Che Adams completely unmarked inside the box, but the Southampton forward had his shot well blocked by John Stones.Despite being officially outnumbered by more than six to one, the Scottish fans were matching their team's intensity and were by far the louder of the two sets of supporters.Little love was lost on the pitch in a passionate encounter. It took a Stones header -- from Mason Mount's whipped corner -- that crashed off the post to wake up both the England team and their fans, but it proved to be the catalyst for what turned into an electric first half of football.The rain showed no signs of subsiding and was certainly helping England's slick passing, though the players were being met by a solid blue wall of shirts that showed little sign of being broken down.Mount and Harry Kane squandered reasonable chances, but it was once again Scotland that almost found a breakthrough. It took an outstanding save from England goalkeeper Jordan Pickford to stop the Scots going ahead, getting a strong arm down to his right to deny O'Donnell.It was a damning indictment of England's first-half performance that the home side hadn't even managed a shot on target when Spanish referee Antonio Mateu Lahoz blew his whistle to signal half time.When Scotland started the second period still the better side, the 20,000 or so England fans inside Wembley began to get restless.The introduction of Aston Villa midfielder Jack Grealish from the bench, replacing Phil Foden just after the hour mark, drew by far the loudest cheer of the night from the home supporters.Jack Grealish's introduction went down well with the home fans.It would be remiss to describe this match as the plucky Scottish underdog holding firm against superior English opposition, as many expected the theme to be ahead of kick off; instead, both teams were seemingly evenly matched and, in truth, the game could have gone either way.All in all, it was a turgid affair at times -- punctuated by the odd exciting moment -- and a draw was unquestionably a fair result.The point gets Scotland's Euro 2020 campaign up and running at the second attempt, while England remain well placed to qualify top of the group after the 1-1 draw between Croatia and Czech Repubic earlier in the afternoon.The Scotland fans that traveled down may not have got the win they were hoping for but, given victories against England have been hard to come by in recent years, certainly won't be turning their noses up at a draw. As one fan had put it earlier, they'll certainly still "go home and party."
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The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the FBI have issued another joint alert about a new piece of malware that the prolific North Korean APT hacking group Hidden Cobra has actively been using in the wild.
Hidden Cobra, also known as Lazarus Group and Guardians of Peace, is believed to be backed by North Korean government and known to launch cyber attacks against media organizations, aerospace, financial and critical infrastructure sectors across the world.
The hacking group was the same associated with the 2017 WannaCry ransomware menace, the 2014 Sony Pictures hack, and the SWIFT Banking attack in 2016.
Now, the DHS and the FBI have uncovered a new malware variant, dubbed ELECTRICFISH, that Hidden Cobra hackers have been using for secretly tunneling traffic out of compromised computer systems.
The malware implements a custom protocol configured with a proxy server/port and proxy username and password, allowing hackers to bypass the compromised system's required authentication to reach outside of the network.
The ElectricFish malware is a command-line utility whose primary purpose is to quickly funnel traffic between two IP addresses.
The malware allows Hidden Cobra hackers to configure with a proxy server/port and proxy username and password, making it possible to connect to a system sitting inside of a proxy server, which allows the attackers to bypass the infected system's required authentication.
"It will attempt to establish TCP sessions with the source IP address and the destination IP address. If a connection is made to both the source and destination IPs, this malicious utility will implement a custom protocol, which will allow traffic to rapidly and efficiently be funneled between two machines," the alert reads.
"If necessary, the malware can authenticate with a proxy to be able to reach the destination IP address. A configured proxy server is not required for this utility."
Once ElectricFish authenticates with the configured proxy, it immediately attempts to establish a session with the destination IP address, located outside of the victim network and the source IP address. The attack would use command prompts to specify the source and destination for tunneling traffic.
Though the US-CERT website doesn't state whether or if yes, which US organizations have already been infected with this new malware, the joint malware analysis report (MAR) does say that the alert has been issued "to enable network defense and reduce exposure to North Korean government malicious cyber activity."
This is not the very first time the DHS and the FBI have issued a joint alert to warn users and organizations about the Hidden Cobra malware.
Late last year, the U.S. departments warned about the FastCash malware that Hidden Cobra had been using since 2016 to compromise payment switch application servers in banks in Africa and Asia in an attempt to cash out bank ATMs.
Little less than a year ago, the DHS and the FBI also published an advisory alerting users of two different malware—a fully functional Remote Access Trojan (RAT) known as Joanap and a Server Message Block (SMB) worm called Brambul—linked to Hidden Cobra.
In 2017, the US-CERT also issued an alert detailing Hidden Cobra malware called Delta Charlie—a DDoS tool that they believed the North Korean hackers use to launch distributed denial-of-service attacks against its targets.
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Story highlightsNASCAR pit crews are key to a driver's successCrews aim to complete the stop inside 12 secondsHead coach of the 48 pit crew at Hendrick Motorsports explains the art of pit crewDuring a NASCAR race, drivers do hundreds of laps at speeds of more than 300 kilometers per hour. But the seconds spent during a pit stop -- changing tires and refueling the car -- may be the most crucial moments of any race.Greg Morin is head coach of the 48 pit crew at Hendrick Motorsports, the team that helped one of NASCAR's most successful drivers, Jimmie Johnson, win six championships."It is safe to say that if you don't have a well performing pit crew that executes well on pit road, you are going to affect the overall outcome of the race in a potentially hugely negative manner," says Morin.He adds: "Our goal is to hit a 12-second pit stop, hit five lug nuts off, five lug nuts on (on each wheel) ... get it full of fuel and ship it down pit road."Watch the video above to see the Hendrick Motor Sports' 48 pit crew in action.
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There is a very sleek line between hacking and security. The security used to protect the public could be misused by hackers against the public itself, and one shouldn't forget that with the advance in technology, the techniques used by cyber criminals also improves.
Today, What hackers need to conduct a successful cyber attack?
Maybe just a computing device injected under the skin of their bodies, who can bear the pain, would be enough to help complete a successful cyber attack – also known as Biohacking.
This was exactly what presented by the former U.S. Navy petty officer and now engineer at APA Wireless Seth Wahle.
With no malicious intention, Wahle implanted a small NFC chip in his left hand right between his thumb and his pointer finger in order to display the risks of Biohacking.
Hacking Android devices using NFC implants:
For those unaware, NFC (Near Field Communications) chips embedded in our smartphone devices are used for transferring files and in various mobile payment applications.
Wahle's chip has an NFC antenna that is capable to hack Android devices and bypass almost all security measures. The chip can ping a nearby Android smartphone, prompting its user to open a link.
Once the user of the smartphone agrees to open that link, the link installs a malicious piece of software on the phone that allows the phone to connect to a remote computer controlled by the hacker.
The hacker would now be able to carry out further exploits on the victim's device, potentially putting all the important information and sensitive data of victim at risk.
How is NFC implant done?
In order to implant the NFC device, Wahle bought a chip designed to be injected into cattle and implanted the chip by an "unlicensed amateur" for $40 by using a needle which was larger than he had initially expected, Wahle told Forbes during a Skype call.
The worst part about NFC implant:
The chip implant into Wahle hand was almost invisible after few days. The major thing to worry about this technique is that the NFC chip goes completely undetected in almost all kinds of security measures, including the security checkpoints in airports and other high-security locations.
Wahle said that with the chip implanted in himself, he went through daily scans prior to leaving the military and the chip was never detected. But, he also notes that the X-rays would be able to detect the chip.
However, these Implantable NFC chips potentially open up a smart way for hackers to hack Android devices and networks and gain access to victims' sensitive information.
"This implanted chip can bypass pretty much any security measures that are in place at this point and we will show proof of that," said Rod Soto, the event's secretary of the board and security consultant.
Limitations of the attacks:
There are some limitations to methods like this, as Wahle says that the remote connection made by a hacker to the server can only be kept if the affected Android device is not locked or rebooted.
However, these limitations could be overcome by various means. Like if, say, the affected phone is rebooted, a software run as a background service that starts on boot would fix the problem.
Wahle will be presenting his finding at the Hack Miami conference taking place this May, with Rod Soto. Both of them intended to alert about these latest strategies that can be used by hackers to hack terminals and networks.
They also admitted that this NFC implant-based attack could provide hackers and cyber criminals with a particularly useful "tool in their social engineering toolset."
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Story highlightsJustice Department outlines Albuquerque PD's "practice of excessive force"In 2009, officers killed unarmed teen after he'd been shot and was motionless on backIn nonlethal incident, Taser used on man who doused himself in gas, setting him ablazeReport: APD's failure to ensure officers respect Constitution undermines public trustAlbuquerque, New Mexico, police officers killed a 19-year-old as he "lay motionless on his back," an unarmed drugstore robber who was walking away from officers and a 25-year-old veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder who threatened to shoot himself in the head.So says the U.S. Justice Department, which on Thursday issued a report lambasting the Albuquerque Police Department for a longstanding history of police brutality and unnecessary deadly force. The 19-year-old, Andrew Lopez, caught Albuquerque police officers' attention while driving with dim headlights and no taillights; when police tried to pull him over, he led them on a low-speed chase before parking and taking off on foot, the report said. Five officers gave chase, and when Lopez reached a fence and began to turn around, one of the officers fired three times, hitting Lopez once. The nonlethal shot put Lopez on his back, the report said, and the officer approached him and fired a fourth shot into his chest, killing him. The February 2009 incident, which resulted in a $4.25 million payout to Lopez's estate, is one of several incidents the Justice Department cites in concluding that the Albuquerque Police Department "has engaged in a pattern or practice of excessive force, including deadly force."Read the full report (PDF)Requests for comment sent to the police department and New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez's office were not immediately returned, and Phil Sisneros, a spokesman for state Attorney General Gary King, said in an e-mail, "Our office did not have a role in the DOJ's report or investigation. We are looking into a couple of the most recent police-involved shootings, but that is in the nascent stages."Police brutality in New Mexico's most populous city made headlines last month when protesters clashed with police in riot gear for more than 12 hours over the fatal shooting of the homeless James Boyd, 38. After the protests, Kenneth Ellis, the father of the suicidal veteran killed in 2010, told CNN affiliate KOAT that police brutality had reached "crisis" levels in Albuquerque. "Our police department is out of control. They need help with their tactics," Ellis said. Thursday's report did not address the Boyd shooting, which is the subject of a separate federal investigation. "The pattern and practice is the result of serious systemic deficiencies in policy, training, supervision and accountability. The police department's failure to ensure that officers respect the Constitution undermines public trust," the report's summary says.In the Lopez case, police said they thought he was involved in a prior incident involving a gun, and the officer who shot him said that when he confronted Lopez, he believed Lopez was carrying "the biggest handgun he had ever seen." The car Lopez was driving did not match the make, color or type of vehicle used in the previous incident, and Lopez turned out to be unarmed, the Justice Department report says. "For too long, Albuquerque officers have faced little scrutiny from their superiors in carrying out this fundamental responsibility," the report says. "Despite the efforts of many committed individuals, external oversight is broken and has allowed the department to remain unaccountable to the communities it serves."To conduct its review, the Justice Department "reviewed thousands of pages of documents, including written policies and procedures, internal reports, data, video footage, and investigative files," the report says. It also interviewed command staff, rank-and-file officers and community members, and held four community meetings where residents "provided their accounts of encounters with officers."The report had four major findings:• The department's officers "too often used deadly force in an unconstitutional manner," and of the 20 fatal police shootings since 2009, most were not constitutional. Albuquerque police not only use deadly force when there's no imminent threat of bodily harm or death, they also "used deadly force against people who posed a minimal threat, including individuals who posed a threat only to themselves or who were unarmed. Officers also used deadly force in situations where the conduct of the officers heightened the danger and contributed to the need to use force."• The department's officers also use less-than-lethal force unconstitutionally. A review of 200 use-of-force reports since 2009 indicates that officers use Tasers on people who are nonthreatening, posing minimal threat, passively resisting or "unable to comply with orders due to their mental state." In one instance, officers used Tasers on a man who had doused himself in gasoline, setting him on fire and endangering everyone in his vicinity. Officers also use "takedown procedures" in ways that increase harm, and they "escalate situations in which force could have been avoided had they instead used de-escalation measures."• Officers used a "significant amount of force" against people with mental illness and in crisis. "APD's policies, training and supervision are insufficient to ensure that officers encountering people with mental illness or in distress do so in a manner that respects their rights and is safe for all involved."• Instances of officers using excessive force are "not isolated or sporadic." The pattern of police conduct suggests "systemic deficiencies in oversight, training, and policy. Chief among these deficiencies is the department's failure to implement an objective and rigorous internal accountability system. Force incidents are not properly investigated, documented or addressed with corrective measures."To that end, the Justice Department investigators said they found "only a few instances" of supervisors scrutinizing use of force and seeking investigations. In almost all of the cases reviewed, supervisors endorsed their subordinate's version of events even if an officer's account was incomplete, inconsistent with evidence or "based on canned or repetitive language," the report said.The Justice Department lays out several remedies to address the department's "deficiencies," including improving use-of-force policies, training procedures, internal investigations, recruitment protocol and how it deals with individuals suffering from mental illnesses.The U.S. Attorney's Office for New Mexico and the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division launched their probe in November 2012, and then-Police Chief Ray Schultz released a statement saying his department was cooperating with federal investigators. "We know that we are not always perfect and that there is always room for improvement," Schultz said in his statement. Schultz stepped down in 2013 and was replaced by Gordon Eden, a former U.S. marshal and state public safety secretary, this year.
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(CNN)Back on clay and back winning matches, Roger Federer has reached yet another landmark: a 1,200th career victory more than two decades after his first professional win.The 20-time grand slam winner saved two match points against France's Gael Monfils before coming through in a final-set tiebreak to reach the quarterfinals of the Madrid Open, in his first tournament on clay since May 2016.His milestone win comes 21 years on from his first, when he secured his first ever ATP Tour main draw success by beating Monfils' compatriot Guillaume Raoux in Toulouse. Federer's victory puts him just 74 match wins behind Jimmy Connors, who holds the men's record. Martina Navratilova won 1,442 matches on the women's circuit.Of men's players still active, Rafael Nadal is fifth on the list with 936 wins, while Novak Djokovic has 853.Read MoreREAD: Can Federer get the better of the 'King of Clay'The 37-year-old Federer will now face Dominic Thiem, who beat the Swiss legend in the Indian Wells final."Instead of seeing a things bit more cloudy and rainy, you see it more on the sunny side," said Federer after winning 6-0 4-6 7-6 (7-3)."You don't win matches every day saving match points and it makes you feel good, but it is more relief I feel right now."Visit CNN.com/Sport for more news, features and videos Roger Federer is in his first clay-court quarterfinal since 2015.'Panic mode'The triumph also means that Federer keeps up his own personal record of never having lost a match after winning a set 6-0. That run now stands at 90 matches unbeaten.Federer took that first set in just 19 minutes, though Monfils fought back to take the second and a 4-1 lead in the decider. However, he could not close out the match, with Federer successfully defending both on his own serve, rushing to the net to shorten the points."I felt not so confident to win the point from the baseline," he said of his tactics on the match's major moments. "So I said panic mode is switched on and we are coming in."You go to the net as quick as possible so you are as close as possible and I framed the first volley, which ended up being perfect."READ: Wimbledon's 'most sought-after tickets' go on sale for $105,000READ: 'Tennis gave me the ability to be somebody': Julie Heldman on depression and abuseJUST WATCHEDTearful Roger Federer remembers late coach.ReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHTearful Roger Federer remembers late coach. 03:21Federer's return to clay-court competition had initially come as a surprise, having joked in April that he "didn't even remember how to slide anymore".He avoided the surface to manage knee problems and ensure he was fit for the grass-court season where he has long asserted such dominance. With its long rallies and slow courts, clay has never been Federer's favorite surface. However, as his career slowly winds down, he is determined to give it another shot.
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When it comes to cyber security, even big organizations lack the basic knowledge of how to protect company's data from the outside.
Everyday businesses are facing the threat of phishing, ransomware, data breaches and malware attacks that not only results in millions of dollars losses, but also damaged the reputations.
A new study shows that five out of six of the most serious IT security threats directly relate to phishing or the aftermath of a successful phishing attack.
SEA, short for Syrian Electronic Army, is famous for its advanced phishing attack capabilities and with the help of the same technique they fooled many popular organizations, social media and news media, including Twitter, Microsoft, Skype, Forbes, eBay and Paypal.
Where do we lack?
According to the annual Verizon Data Breach Investigations report, about 58% of cyber security incidents were caused by employees, either due to failure in handling data or approving malicious data.
So, in order to cope up with online threats, individuals need to know how to deal with different kinds of Internet threats such as how to identify phishing emails sent by hackers, how to know which software applications are "safe" to install. And…
…this is where your company's employees and, according to me, every individual need a good Cyber Security Awareness training program that can educate them.
Someone said that if you have to catch a thief, you should think like a criminal. In a similar way, if a former World's most wanted hacker gives you training then what could stop you to become a cyber expert.
Yes, KnowBe4 brought you Kevin Mitnick -- the past Most Wanted hacker in the world and now a Fortune 500 Security Consultant -- for proving the Cyber Security Awareness training program.
Kevin Mitnick Security Awareness Training 2015
Kevin Mitnick has 30+ years of first-hand experience with hacking and social engineering, and this is the very first time that his experience is available in a web-based format.
The Kevin Mitnick Security Awareness Training program includes a high quality web-based interactive video training combined with frequent simulated phishing attacks, live demonstration videos, using case-studies and short tests.
The training program specializes in making sure employees understand the mechanisms of phishing, spear phishing, spam, malware and social engineering, and are then able to apply this knowledge in their day-to-day job.
Each case study ends with its own short multiple choice test and after the training, KnowBe4's highly effective scheduled Phishing Security Tests keep your employees aware of threats.
From your Admin Console you are able to schedule regular Phishing Security Tests (PST for short) from our library of known-to-work templates.
In case an employee falls for one of these simulated phishing attacks, you have several options for correction, including instant remedial online training.
Kevin Mitnick Security Awareness Training 2015 is a great service that will help your employees to become aware of the dangers of the Internet.
The unique feature of this training are the frequent simulated phishing attacks that you can send to your employees to keep them on their toes with security top of mind.
Register now for Kevin Mitnick Cyber Security Training
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Merely days after Microsoft sounded the alarm on an unpatched security vulnerability in the Windows Print Spooler service, possibly yet another zero-day flaw in the same component has come to light, making it the fourth printer-related shortcoming to be discovered in recent weeks.
"Microsoft Windows allows for non-admin users to be able to install printer drivers via Point and Print," CERT Coordination Center's Will Dormann said in an advisory published Sunday. "Printers installed via this technique also install queue-specific files, which can be arbitrary libraries to be loaded by the privileged Windows Print Spooler process."
An exploit for the vulnerability was disclosed by security researcher and Mimikatz creator Benjamin Delpy.
#printnightmare - Episode 4
You know what is better than a Legit Kiwi Printer ?
🥝Another Legit Kiwi Printer...👍
No prerequiste at all, you even don't need to sign drivers/package🤪 pic.twitter.com/oInb5jm3tE
— 🥝 Benjamin Delpy (@gentilkiwi) July 16, 2021
Specifically, the flaw allows a threat actor to execute arbitrary code with SYSTEM privileges on a vulnerable Windows machine by connecting to a malicious print server under their control.
While there is no solution to the problem, CERT/CC recommends configuring "PackagePointAndPrintServerList" to prevent the installation of printers from arbitrary servers and blocking outbound SMB traffic at the network boundary, given that public exploits for the vulnerability utilize SMB for connectivity to a malicious shared printer.
The new issue is only the latest evidence of the fallout after the PrintNightmare flaw accidentally became public last month, leading to the discovery of a number of vulnerabilities affecting the Print Spooler service.
Given the lack of details surrounding CVE-2021-34481 — the local privilege escalation (LPE) flaw reported by security researcher Jacob Baines — it's not immediately clear what connection, if any, the vulnerability and this new Print Spooler signature-check bypass that also allows for LPE may have with one another.
When reached for a response, a Microsoft spokesperson told The Hacker News that "we are investigating reports and will take appropriate action as needed to help keep customers protected."
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The investigation into how the attackers managed to compromise SolarWinds' internal network and poison the company's software updates is still underway, but we may be one step closer to understanding what appears to be a very meticulously planned and highly-sophisticated supply chain attack.
A new report published by ReversingLabs today and shared in advance with The Hacker News has revealed that the operators behind the espionage campaign likely managed to compromise the software build and code signing infrastructure of SolarWinds Orion platform as early as October 2019 to deliver the malicious backdoor through its software release process.
"The source code of the affected library was directly modified to include malicious backdoor code, which was compiled, signed, and delivered through the existing software patch release management system," ReversingLabs' Tomislav Pericin said.
Cybersecurity firm FireEye earlier this week detailed how multiple SolarWinds Orion software updates, released between March and June 2020, were injected with backdoor code ("SolarWinds.Orion.Core.BusinessLayer.dll" or SUNBURST) to conduct surveillance and execute arbitrary commands on target systems.
FireEye has not so far publicly attributed the attack to any specific nation-state actor, but multiple media reports have pinned the intrusion campaign on APT29 (aka Cozy Bear), a hacker group associated with Russia's foreign intelligence service.
Sneaky Injection of Malicious Code
Although the first version containing the tainted Orion software was traced to 2019.4.5200.9083, ReversingLabs has found that an earlier version 2019.4.5200.8890, released in October 2019, also included seemingly harmless modifications that acted as the stepping stone for delivering the real attack payload down the line.
Empty .NET class prior to backdoor code addition [ver. 2019.4.5200.8890]
The idea, according to Pericin, was to compromise the build system, quietly inject their own code in the source code of the software, wait for the company to compile, sign packages and at last, verify if their modifications show up in the newly released updates as expected.
Once confirmed, the adversary then took steps to blend the SUNBURST malware with the rest of the codebase by mimicking existing functions (GetOrCreateUserID) but adding their own implementations so as to remain stealthy and invoking them by modifying a separate class called "InventoryManager" to create a new thread that runs the backdoor.
What's more, malicious strings were obscured using a combination of compression and Base64 encoding in hopes that doing so would thwart YARA rules from spotting anomalies in the code as well as slip through undetected during a software developer review.
"The attackers went through a lot of trouble to ensure that their code looks like it belongs within the code base," Pericin said. "That was certainly done to hide the code from the audit by the software developers."
How did the Compromise Happen?
This implies that not only did the attackers have a high degree of familiarity with the software, but also the fact that its existing software release management system itself was compromised — as the class in question was modified at the source code level to build a new software update containing the backdoored library, then signed, and ultimately released to the customers.
This also raises more questions than it answers in that a change of this magnitude could only have been possible if either the version control system was compromised or the trojanized software was placed directly on the build machine.
While it's not immediately clear how the attackers got access to the code base, security researcher Vinoth Kumar's disclosure about SolarWinds' update server being accessible with the password "solarwinds123" assumes new significance given the overlap in timelines.
Kumar, in a tweet on December 14, said he notified the company of a publicly accessible GitHub repository that was leaking the FTP credentials of the company's download website in plaintext, adding a hacker could use the credentials to upload a malicious executable and add it to a SolarWinds update.
"That Github repo was open to the public since June 17 2018," Kumar said, before the misconfiguration was addressed on November 22, 2019.
"SUNBURST illustrates the next generation of compromises that thrive on access, sophistication and patience," Pericin concluded. "For companies that operate valuable businesses or produce software critical to their customers, inspecting software and monitoring updates for signs of tampering, malicious or unwanted additions must be part of the risk management process."
"Hiding in plain sight behind a globally known software brand or a trusted business-critical process, gives this method access that a phishing campaign could only dream to achieve," he added.
Over 4,000 Sub-domains Compromised by SUNBURST
SolarWinds said up to 18,000 of its customers may have been impacted by the supply chain attack while urging Orion platform users to update the software to version 2020.2.1 HF 2 as soon as possible to secure their environments.
According to security researcher R. Bansal (@0xrb), over 4,000 sub-domains belonging to prominent businesses and educational institutions were infected with the SUNBURST backdoor, including those of Intel, NVIDIA, Kent State University, and Iowa State University.
To make matters worse, malicious code added to an Orion software update may have gone unnoticed by antivirus software and other security tools on targeted systems owing to SolarWinds' own support advisory, which states its products may not work properly unless their file directories are exempted from antivirus scans and group policy object (GPO) restrictions.
"Prolific actors are constantly going after high-revenue customers like SolarWinds because they see an increased chance of making larger profits by selling access to ransomware partners and other buyers," cybersecurity firm Intel 471 said, responding to the possibility that criminals were selling access to the company's networks on underground forums.
"Whether it's by exploiting vulnerabilities, launching spam campaigns or leveraging credential abuse, access is typically advertised and auctioned to the highest bidder for a profit. Whether this was the motivation for the current SolarWinds incident remains to be seen."
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Someone just DDoSed one of the most critical organs of the Internet anatomy – The Internet's DNS Root Servers.
Early last week, a flood of as many as 5 Million queries per second hit many of the Internet's DNS (Domain Name System) Root Servers that act as the authoritative reference for mapping domain names to IP addresses and are a total of 13 in numbers.
The attack, commonly known as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, took place on two separate occasions.
The first DDoS attack to the Internet's backbone root servers launched on November 30 that lasted 160 minutes (almost 3 hours), and the second one started on December 1 that lasted almost an hour.
Massive Attacks Knocked Many of the 13 Root Servers Offline
The DDoS attack was able to knock 3 out of the 13 DNS root servers of the Internet offline for a couple of hours.
Also Read: Secure Email Service Paid Hackers $6000 Ransom to Stop DDoS Attacks.
The request queries fired at the servers were valid DNS messages addressed towards a single domain name in the first DDoS attack, and the second day's DDoS attack addressed towards a different domain name.
According to the analysis published by the root server operators on Tuesday, each attack fired up to 5 million queries/second per DNS root name server that was enough to flood the network and cause timeouts on the B, C, G, and H root servers.
There is no indication of who or what was behind the large-scale DDoS attacks because the source IP addresses used in the attacks were very well distributed and randomized across the entire IPv4 address space.
Interesting Read: Record-breaking 1Tbps Speed achieved Over 5G Mobile Connection.
However, the DDoS attacks did not cause any serious damage to the Internet, but a mere delay for some of the Internet users who made DNS queries through their web browser, FTP, SSH, or other clients.
This Smart Design Defends DNS Protocol Infrastructure
The motive for such attacks is still unclear because disabling or knocking down a root server won't have a severe impact on the Internet as there are several thousand of other DNS servers managing DNS queries.
"The DNS Root Name Server system functioned as [it's] designed, demonstrating overall robustness in the face of [massive] traffic floods observed at numerous DNS Root Name Servers," Root Server Operators says (PDF), referring to the backup system employed by DNS servers.
Like the Internet, DNS is constructed on a mesh-like structure, so if one server doesn't respond to a request, other servers step in and provide a DNS query result.
According to the DNS root server operators, the attack was not the result of a reflective DDoS attack in which open and misconfigured DNS is used to launch high-bandwidth DDoS attacks on the target.
Recommended Read: Over 20Gbps DDoS attacks Now Become Common for Hackers.
Despite all the facts, any attack on the critical infrastructure of the Internet is taken extremely seriously.
The DNS root server operators recommended the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to implement Source Address Validation and BCP 38, an Internet Engineering Task Force standard that helps defeat IP address spoofing.
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The Indian Government said it has addressed a critical vulnerability in its secure document wallet service Digilocker that could have potentially let a remote attacker bypass mobile one-time passwords (OTP) and sign in as other users.
Discovered separately by two independent bug bounty researchers, Mohesh Mohan and Ashish Gahlot, the vulnerability could have been exploited easily to unauthorisedly access sensitive documents uploaded by targeted users' on the Government-operated platform.
"The OTP function lacks authorization which makes it possible to perform OTP validation with submitting any valid users details and then manipulation flow to sign in as a totally different user," Mohesh Mohan said in a disclosure shared with The Hacker News.
With over 38 million registered users, Digilocker is a cloud-based repository that acts as a digital platform to facilitate online processing of documents and speedier delivery of various government-to-citizen services. It's linked to a user's mobile number and Aadhar ID—a unique identity number (UID) issued to every resident of India.
According to Mohan, all an attacker needs to know is either victim's Aadhaar ID or linked mobile number or username to unauthorizedly access a targeted Digilocker account, prompting the service to send an OTP and subsequently exploiting the flaw to bypass the sign-in process.
It's worth noting that the mobile app version of Digilocker also comes with a 4-digit PIN for an added layer of security. But the researchers said it was possible to modify the API calls to authenticate the PIN by associating the PIN to another user (identified with a version-5 UUID) and successfully login in as the victim.
This means "you can do the SMS OTP [verification] as one user and submit the pin of a second user, and finally, you will end up logging as the second user," Mohan said.
What's more, the lack of authorization for the API endpoint used to set the secret PIN effectively implies the API can be exploited to reset the PIN linked to a random user using the individual's UUID.
"There is no session-related information on the POST request, so it's not bound to any user," Mohan added.
In addition to the issues mentioned above, the API calls from mobile apps were secured by basic authentication that can be circumvented by removing a header flag "is_encrypted: 1." The application was also found to implement a weak SSL pinning mechanism, making them vulnerable to a bypass using tools like Frida.
After the flaw was reported to CERT-In on May 10 by Mohan and to DigiLocker on 16th May by Ashish, the cyber agency said the issue was fixed on May 28.
"The nature of the vulnerability was such that an individual's DigiLocker account could potentially get compromised if the attacker knew the username for that particular account," Digilocker said in a tweet last week acknowledging the flaw. "It was not a vulnerability that could let anyone get access to [the] DigiLocker account of anyone whose username and other details were not known."
"Upon analysis, it was discovered that this vulnerability had crept in the code when some new features were added recently. The vulnerability was patched on a priority basis by the technical team within a day of getting the alert from CERT-In. This was not an attack on infrastructure, and no data, database, storage, or encryption was compromised," the team added.
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Story highlightsA rebel commander says many of those on MH17 were dead before it was shot downMoscow claims the plane was shot down by a Ukrainian fighter jetClaim: MH17 was traveling along almost the same route as Putin's presidential planeA rebel leader denies a string of evidence pointing to his forces shooting down MH17In the tangled aftermath of the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 disaster, two narratives have emerged -- one that most of the world subscribes to, and another that Russia and the rebels are pushing. In the first, MH17 was shot down by pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine, using a sophisticated Russian-built missile system. In the second, Russia and the rebels suggest several different scenarios for what brought the jetliner down, some of them bordering on the bizarre. JUST WATCHEDMH17: Tragedy, blame and heartacheReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHMH17: Tragedy, blame and heartache 02:22JUST WATCHEDMcCain: Putin 'getting away with murder'ReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHMcCain: Putin 'getting away with murder' 01:59Propaganda is nothing new in world politics. Since the beginning of time, everyone has put their spin on the events of the day. But the word from Washington about Russia's take? Take any information coming out of Moscow "with a very large grain of salt.""I would also say that these aren't competing narratives from two equally credible sources here," said Marie Harf, a U.S. State Department spokeswoman. JUST WATCHEDMedia war over MH17 messagingReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHMedia war over MH17 messaging 03:31JUST WATCHEDWhat's Putin's next move?ReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHWhat's Putin's next move? 05:09JUST WATCHEDRebel leader: I invite international helpReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHRebel leader: I invite international help 04:58"The Russian government has repeatedly put out misinformation and propaganda throughout this conflict in Ukraine, so I would caution you from saying that these are two equally credible sources, although you're happy to report it that way, but I would take issue with it."The Russian mindset, says CNN's former Moscow bureau chief, loves a good story. And the Russian narrative is meant to sway public opinion on who's responsible for the jet's downing."Don't forget, the mentality of Russians is to think of conspiracy theories," said Jill Dougherty. "So when they hear something that is outrageous, they might believe it."Here are some of the stories circulating in the Russian media.THE RUSSIAN TAKE: The passengers were already deadRebel commander Igor Girkin suggested that many of MH17's passengers were corpses -- already dead -- and put aboard the 11-plus-hour flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. Those claims were made on Russia's Russkaya Vessna website."A significant number of the bodies weren't fresh," Girkin said he'd learned, adding, their blood had been drained. He also reportedly claimed a vast amount of blood serum and medications were discovered in the wreckage.THE WORLD'S TAKE: The information contradicts the Malaysia Airlines passenger manifest for Flight 17 that lists the 298 people who were alive when they boarded the regularly scheduled flight. For instance, Dutch passenger Pim de Kuijer was on his way to an International AIDS Conference in Australia -- a trip that was to be followed by a backpacking excursion there. The day of the crash, de Kuijer posted to his Facebook page a picture of him posing beneath aviator sunglasses and sporting a large travelers' backpack.---THE RUSSIAN TAKE: A Ukrainian fighter jet shot it downOn the day of the crash, Russia's radar system spotted a Ukrainian Air Force jet approaching the Boeing, said Russian Army Lt. Gen. Andrey Kartopolov. "Its standard armament includes R60 air-to-air missiles, which are capable of locking and hitting targets from 12 kilometers (7 miles) and which are guaranteed to hit the target from the distance of 5 kilometers (3 miles)," he said. THE WORLD'S TAKE: That's a claim that Ukraine has denied. And the United States and others have said the plane was brought down by a surface-to-air missile. Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in Ukraine Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkraineDebris from Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 sits in a field at the crash site in Hrabove, Ukraine, on September 9, 2014. The Boeing 777 was shot down July 17, 2014, over Ukrainian territory controlled by pro-Russian separatists. All 298 people on board were killed. In an October 2015 report, Dutch investigators found the flight was shot down by a warhead that fit a Buk rocket, referring to Russian technology, Dutch Safety Board Chairman Tjibbe Joustra said.Hide Caption 1 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkraineAustralian and Dutch experts examine the area of the crash on August 3, 2014.Hide Caption 2 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkraineA woman walks with her bicycle near the crash site on August 2, 2014.Hide Caption 3 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkrainePolice secure a refrigerated train loaded with bodies of passengers from Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 as it arrives in a Kharkiv, Ukraine, factory on July 22, 2014. Hide Caption 4 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkraineA pro-Russian rebel passes wreckage from the crashed jet near Hrabove on Monday, July 21, 2014.Hide Caption 5 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in Ukraine – Wreckage from the jet lies in grass near Hrabove on July 21, 2014.Hide Caption 6 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkraineA man covers his face with a rag as members of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and the Dutch National Forensic Investigations Team inspect bodies in a refrigerated train near the crash site in eastern Ukraine on July 21, 2014.Hide Caption 7 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkraineEmergency workers carry a victim's body in a bag at the crash site on July 21, 2014.Hide Caption 8 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkraineA piece of the plane lies in the grass in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk region on July 21, 2014.Hide Caption 9 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkraineAn armed pro-Russian rebel stands guard next to a refrigerated train loaded with bodies in Torez, Ukraine, on Sunday, July 20, 2014.Hide Caption 10 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkraineUkrainian State Emergency Service employees sort through debris on July 20, 2014, as they work to locate the deceased.Hide Caption 11 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkraineA woman covers her mouth with a piece of fabric July 20, 2014, to ward off smells from railway cars that reportedly contained passengers' bodies.Hide Caption 12 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkraineToys and flowers sit on the charred fuselage of the jet as a memorial on July 20, 2014.Hide Caption 13 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkrainePeople search a wheat field for remains in the area of the crash site on July 20, 2014. Hide Caption 14 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkraineA woman walks among charred debris at the crash site on July 20, 2014.Hide Caption 15 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkraineEmergency workers load the body of a victim onto a truck at the crash site on Saturday, July 19, 2014. Hide Caption 16 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkraineEmergency workers carry the body of a victim at the crash site on July 19, 2014. Hide Caption 17 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkraineA large piece of the main cabin is under guard at the crash site on July 19, 2014. Hide Caption 18 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkraineVictims' bodies are placed by the side of the road on July 19, 2014, as recovery efforts continue at the crash site. International officials lament the lack of a secured perimeter.Hide Caption 19 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkraineA man looks through the debris at the crash site on July 19, 2014. Hide Caption 20 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkraineAn envelope bearing the Malaysia Airlines logo is seen at the crash site on July 19, 2014. Hide Caption 21 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkraineArmed rebels walk past large pieces of the Boeing 777 on July 19, 2014. Hide Caption 22 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkraineUkrainian rescue workers walk through a wheat field with a stretcher as they collect the bodies of victims on July 19, 2014.Hide Caption 23 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkraineA woman looks at wreckage on July 19, 2014.Hide Caption 24 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkrainePro-Russian rebels stand guard as the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe delegation arrives at the crash site on Friday, July 18, 2014. Hide Caption 25 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkraineA woman walks through the debris field on July 18, 2014. Hide Caption 26 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkrainePro-Russian rebels stand guard at the crash site.Hide Caption 27 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkraineWreckage from Flight 17 lies in a field in Shaktarsk, Ukraine, on July 18, 2014.Hide Caption 28 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkraineA man covers a body with a plastic sheet near the crash site on July 18, 2014. The passengers and crew hailed from all over the world, including Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Germany and Canada. Hide Caption 29 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkraineA diver searches for the jet's flight data recorders on July 18, 2014.Hide Caption 30 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkraineCoal miners search the crash site.Hide Caption 31 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkraineWreckage from the Boeing 777 lies on the ground July 18, 2014.Hide Caption 32 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkrainePeople search for bodies of passengers on July 18, 2014. Hide Caption 33 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkraineA woman walks past a body covered with a plastic sheet near the crash site July 18, 2014.Hide Caption 34 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkraineBelongings of passengers lie in the grass on July 18, 2014.Hide Caption 35 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkrainePeople inspect the crash site on Thursday, July 17, 2014.Hide Caption 36 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkrainePeople walk amid the debris at the site of the crash.Hide Caption 37 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in Ukraine Debris smoulders in a field near the Russian border. Hide Caption 38 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkraineFire engines arrive at the crash site.Hide Caption 39 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkraineA man stands next to wreckage.Hide Caption 40 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkraineDebris from the crashed jet lies in a field in Ukraine.Hide Caption 41 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkraineFamily members of those aboard Flight 17 leave Schiphol Airport near Amsterdam, Netherlands.Hide Caption 42 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkraineA large piece of the plane lies on the ground.Hide Caption 43 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkraineLuggage from the flight sits in a field at the crash site.Hide Caption 44 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkraineA couple walks to the location at Schiphol Airport where more information would be given regarding the flight.Hide Caption 45 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkraineFlight arrivals are listed at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Sepang, Malaysia.Hide Caption 46 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkraineDebris from the Boeing 777, pictured on July 17, 2014.Hide Caption 47 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkraineA man inspects debris from the plane.Hide Caption 48 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkraineWreckage from the plane is seen on July 17, 2014.Hide Caption 49 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkraineA man talks with security at Schiphol Airport on July 17, 2014.Hide Caption 50 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkraineWreckage burns in Ukraine.Hide Caption 51 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkraineA man stands next to the wreckage of the airliner.Hide Caption 52 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkrainePeople inspect a piece of wreckage believed to be from Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. This image was posted to Twitter.Hide Caption 53 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkrainePeople inspect a piece of wreckage believed to be from Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. This image was posted to Twitter.Hide Caption 54 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkraineA piece of wreckage believed to be from Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. This image was posted to Twitter.Hide Caption 55 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkraineA piece of wreckage believed to be from MH17. This image was posted to Twitter.Hide Caption 56 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkraineAn airsickness bag believed to be from MH17. This image was posted to Twitter.Hide Caption 57 of 58 Photos: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in UkraineA piece of wreckage believed to be from MH17. This image was posted to Twitter.Hide Caption 58 of 58JUST WATCHEDWhen passenger jets become targetsReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHWhen passenger jets become targets 02:49JUST WATCHEDFirth: RT was 'pushing a narrative'ReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHFirth: RT was 'pushing a narrative' 01:33 Photos: MH17: What they left behind Photos: MH17: What they left behindMH17: What they left behind – A birthday card found in a sunflower field near the crash site of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in eastern Ukraine, on Thursday, July 24. The passenger plane was shot down July 17 above Ukraine. All 298 people aboard were killed, and much of what they left behind was scattered in a vast field of debris.Hide Caption 1 of 16 Photos: MH17: What they left behindMH17: What they left behind – A classical music record is seen among the sunflowers on July 24. Hide Caption 2 of 16 Photos: MH17: What they left behindMH17: What they left behind – A shoe, appearing to be brand new, sits under foliage at the crash site. Hide Caption 3 of 16 Photos: MH17: What they left behindMH17: What they left behind – Two Dutch passports belonging to passengers lie in a field at the site of the crash on Tuesday, July 22.Hide Caption 4 of 16 Photos: MH17: What they left behindMH17: What they left behind – Clothing, sunglasses and chocolate are seen on July 22.Hide Caption 5 of 16 Photos: MH17: What they left behindMH17: What they left behind – More sunglasses and a travel guide lie in the field on July 22.Hide Caption 6 of 16 Photos: MH17: What they left behindMH17: What they left behind – A doll is seen on the ground on Saturday, July 19.Hide Caption 7 of 16 Photos: MH17: What they left behindMH17: What they left behind – A single shoe is seen among the debris and wreckage on July 19. There has been concern that the site has not been sealed off properly and that vital evidence is being tampered with. Hide Caption 8 of 16 Photos: MH17: What they left behindMH17: What they left behind – Pieces of a wristwatch lie on a plastic cover at the crash site. Hide Caption 9 of 16 Photos: MH17: What they left behindMH17: What they left behind – A toy monkey.Hide Caption 10 of 16 Photos: MH17: What they left behindMH17: What they left behind – Books, bags, a tourist T-shirt. Ukraine's government said it had received reports of looting, and it urged relatives to cancel the victims' credit cards. But a CNN crew at the scene July 19 said it did not see any signs of looting.Hide Caption 11 of 16 Photos: MH17: What they left behindMH17: What they left behind – Passports were scattered across the large field.Hide Caption 12 of 16 Photos: MH17: What they left behindMH17: What they left behind – Playing cards and euros are seen at the crash site.Hide Caption 13 of 16 Photos: MH17: What they left behindMH17: What they left behind – A travel guide and toiletries.Hide Caption 14 of 16 Photos: MH17: What they left behindMH17: What they left behind – Luggage on Friday, July 18.Hide Caption 15 of 16 Photos: MH17: What they left behindMH17: What they left behind – An empty suitcase is cordoned off near the plane's impact site on Thursday, July 17.Hide Caption 16 of 16"The Russian government has a propaganda machine second to none, as these latest conspiracy theories demonstrate," a U.S. official told CNN.---THE RUSSIAN TAKE: Putin's plane was the targetAccording to some accounts in the Russian media, MH17 was traveling along almost the same route as President Vladimir Putin's presidential plane, which was returning to Moscow from a summit in Brazil. Both planes have red, white and blue markings."The contours of the airplanes are in general similar, the linear dimensions are also very similar and regarding the coloring, from a sufficiently long distance, they are practically identical," an aviation source was quoted as telling the news outlet, RT.THE WORLD'S TAKE: Another Russian media, the online news portal Gazeta.ru, reported that Putin's plane has not flown over Ukrainian airspace for quite some time because of the conflict between the government and rebel forces.---THE RUSSIAN TAKE: Don't believe what you read on the Internet Rebel leader Alexander Borodai has maintained for days that MH17 was shot down, just not by his forces. He said they don't have that capability.Asked about the trail of evidence that contradicted him, Borodai just rolled his eyes."It's very easy to refute it," Borodai told CNN's Chris Cuomo. "Almost all information that comes over the internet is practically all lies."THE WORLD'S TAKE: Western and Ukrainian intelligence say the rebels did have the means to bring down a jetliner. They were in control of a Russian missile system that once belonged to the Ukrainian military. A video reportedly showed the weapons system being carted out of eastern Ukraine into Russia. Intercepted conversations brag of an aircraft being shot down before the debris showed it was a civilian aircraft. A tweet from a rebel defense minister also bragged of the accomplishment -- before it was deleted.---THE RUSSIAN TAKE: Did we mention it was the Ukrainians?JUST WATCHEDRT Reporter quits over MH17 CoverageReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHRT Reporter quits over MH17 Coverage 06:40JUST WATCHEDPaying tribute to the lives lost on MH17ReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHPaying tribute to the lives lost on MH17 01:30 Photos: Photos: Malaysia Flight 17 victims remembered Photos: Photos: Malaysia Flight 17 victims remembered Malaysia Flight 17 victims remembered – The passengers and crew aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 came from around the world and held a wide range of hopes and dreams. While the identities of the 298 people aboard have not been release by the airline, CNN has been able to confirm some of them via family, friends and social media. Hide Caption 1 of 23 Photos: Photos: Malaysia Flight 17 victims remembered Malaysia Flight 17 victims remembered – Karlijn Keijzer, 25, was a champion rower from Amsterdam who showed much passion and leadership in the United States as a member of the team at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. Hide Caption 2 of 23 Photos: Photos: Malaysia Flight 17 victims remembered Malaysia Flight 17 victims remembered – Miguel Calehr, left, and his older brother Shaka were both aboard the flight. They were on their way to Bali to visit their grandmother. Their middle brother, Mika, was supposed to be on the flight as well, but it was fully booked.Hide Caption 3 of 23 Photos: Photos: Malaysia Flight 17 victims remembered Malaysia Flight 17 victims remembered – A 77-year-old teacher and Roman Catholic nun, Sister Philomene Tiernan, was on the flight, according to Australia's Kincoppal-Rose Bay School of the Sacred Heart. The school principal described Tiernan as "wonderfully wise and compassionate."Hide Caption 4 of 23 Photos: Photos: Malaysia Flight 17 victims remembered Malaysia Flight 17 victims remembered – On Friday, President Barack Obama told reporters that an American, Quinn Lucas Schansman, was aboard. His Facebook page said he was a student at International Business School Hogeschool van Amsterdam. Hide Caption 5 of 23 Photos: Photos: Malaysia Flight 17 victims remembered Malaysia Flight 17 victims remembered – The World Health Organization was able to confirm to CNN that their employee Glenneth Thomas was on board and heading to the International AIDS Conference scheduled to begin this weekend in Melbourne, Australia.Hide Caption 6 of 23 Photos: Photos: Malaysia Flight 17 victims remembered Malaysia Flight 17 victims remembered – Shazana Salleh, a Malaysian national, was one of 15 crew members aboard.Hide Caption 7 of 23 Photos: Photos: Malaysia Flight 17 victims remembered Malaysia Flight 17 victims remembered – Prominent Dutch scientist Joep Lange was a pioneer in HIV research and a former president of the International AIDS Society, which organizes the International AIDS Conference.Hide Caption 8 of 23 Photos: Photos: Malaysia Flight 17 victims remembered Malaysia Flight 17 victims remembered – Jacqueline van Tongeren, partner of HIV researcher Joep Lange, was on the flight with him. Hide Caption 9 of 23 Photos: Photos: Malaysia Flight 17 victims remembered Malaysia Flight 17 victims remembered – Medical student Andrei Anghel, 24, boarded Flight 17 on his way to vacation in Bali. Hide Caption 10 of 23 Photos: Photos: Malaysia Flight 17 victims remembered Malaysia Flight 17 victims remembered – Darryl Dwight Gunawan, 20, was traveling home to the Philippines after a summer vacation with his family. His mother, Irene Gunawan, 54, and sister Sheryl Shania Gunawan, 15, were also aboard. Hide Caption 11 of 23 Photos: Photos: Malaysia Flight 17 victims remembered Malaysia Flight 17 victims remembered – John Paulissen, his wife Yuli Hastini and their two children, Martin Arjuna and Sri were all aboard the flight. Hide Caption 12 of 23 Photos: Photos: Malaysia Flight 17 victims remembered Malaysia Flight 17 passengers remembered – Tessa van der Sande, an Amnesty International employee, was on the flight. Hide Caption 13 of 23 Photos: Photos: Malaysia Flight 17 victims remembered Malaysia Flight 17 passengers remembered – Angeline Premila Rajandaran was a flight attendant, one of the 15 crew on board. Hide Caption 14 of 23 Photos: Photos: Malaysia Flight 17 victims remembered Malaysia Flight 17 passengers remembered – A lover of French literature, Adi Soetjipto, 73, was returning home to Jakarta, Indonesia, after her annual visit to her mother in the Netherlands, nephew Joss Wibisono said.Hide Caption 15 of 23 Photos: Photos: Malaysia Flight 17 victims remembered Malaysia Flight 17 victims remembered – Nick Norris and his three grandchildren, Otis, 8, Evie,10 and Mo, 12, were all aboard the flight. Hide Caption 16 of 23 Photos: Photos: Malaysia Flight 17 victims remembered Malaysia Flight 17 victims remembered – Pim de Kuijer was also on his way to the International AIDS Conference.Hide Caption 17 of 23 Photos: Photos: Malaysia Flight 17 victims remembered Malaysia Flight 17 victims remembered – Husband and wife Albert and Maree Rizk were among the passengers on board. Hide Caption 18 of 23 Photos: Photos: Malaysia Flight 17 victims remembered Malaysia Flight 17 victims remembered – Musician Cor Schilfder was on vacation with girlfriend NeeltjeTol, a florist. Hide Caption 19 of 23 Photos: Photos: Malaysia Flight 17 victims remembered Malaysia Flight 17 victims remembered – Shun Poh Fan and wife Jenny Loh were restaurant owners in the Netherlands. Hide Caption 20 of 23 Photos: Photos: Malaysia Flight 17 victims remembered Malaysia Flight 17 victims remembered – Fatima Dycynski was an engineer and the founder and CEO of Xoterra Space. Hide Caption 21 of 23 Photos: Photos: Malaysia Flight 17 victims remembered Malaysia Flight 17 victims remembered – Arjen and Yvonne RyderHide Caption 22 of 23 Photos: Photos: Malaysia Flight 17 victims remembered Malaysia Flight 17 victims remembered – Flight attendant Sanjid Singh Sandu swapped flights at the last moment on Thursday and boarded MH17 in Amsterdam so he could get home early, his parents told CNN.Hide Caption 23 of 23JUST WATCHEDRussian media MH17 conspiracy theoriesReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHRussian media MH17 conspiracy theories 02:34With the stakes so high even basic information online was being changed to shape facts. The Twitter site @RuGovEdits automatically tracks changes made by Russian government sites to Wikipedia. It has tracked dozens of edits from Moscow to Wikipedia entries about MH17.In one case, one edit that said the plane was shot down by the pro-Russian rebels was changed less than an hour later by someone inside the Russian government to say: "The plane was shot down by Ukrainian soldiers."THE WORLD'S TAKE: The Wikipedia entry now says the two sides are accusing each other. ---THE RUSSIAN TAKE: At first, the story didn't require such heavy media coverage.Russian newspapers downplayed the story just after the crash. THE WORLD'S TAKE: The downing of the Malaysia Airlines made headlines instantly around the world."The Kremlin or the people that control the information, networks in Russia, decide how they are going to explain something, what the general narrative will be, and that is given to radio, TV, newspapers to a certain extent, etc.," said Dougherty. "They essentially are told, this is what you should say."It proved too much for one reporter, RT's Sarah Firth, who quit the network last week. "I've had many times over the five years I've been at RT where I had a similar struggle and you've watched the story handled in that way. And you felt very strongly that right away the narrative is being pitched -- a very specific narrative to the detriment to the facts and accuracy in reporting."READ: MH17 black boxes finally handed overREAD: How rebels in Ukraine built up an arsenal capable of reaching the skiesREAD: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17: Five unanswered questions
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Dean Obeidallah, a former attorney, is the host of SiriusXM radio's daily program "The Dean Obeidallah Show" and a columnist for The Daily Beast. Follow him @DeanObeidallah. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion articles on CNN. (CNN)The tributes to the late President George H.W. Bush have been pouring in, even from some progressives who disagreed with many of his policies but expressed "great respect for his lifetime of service" to our nation. There's one more aspect of Bush's life that I believe deserves to be celebrated -- namely, how the late President could laugh at himself. In fact, as President, Bush even invited Dana Carvey, who was then depicting him on "Saturday Night Live," to the White House annual Christmas party in 1992 to tell jokes at his expense. Can you imagine Donald Trump inviting Alec Baldwin to the White House to mock him?! America faces a crossroads after George H.W. Bush's deathThis may seem minor to some, but Bush being able to laugh at himself showed us and the world that he was a secure, well-adjusted person -- qualities you want to see in the leader of the free world. In fact, after Carvey performed at the Christmas party, Bush took to the stage and told the crowd, "Dana has given me a lot of laughs." He then added a line that said so much about the late President: "And the fact that we can laugh at each other is a very fundamental thing." To be clear, when Carvey was on "SNL" and even at the White House holiday party, he was telling jokes that mocked and ridiculed Bush. Carvey often portrayed Bush in an unflattering light -- as a bumbling leader with wild hand gestures who was out of touch with the average American (a caricature that arguably hurt Bush when he lost his race for re-election in 1992). CNN's Original Series, "The Bush Years"Read MoreFor example, in 1989, after the devastating Hurricane Hugo, Bush was criticized by many for the federal relief effort being too slow. On "SNL" the following week, there was Carvey as Bush, telling America in his famously exaggerated Bush cadence, "Hurricane Hugo ... doing that damage down there ... going round and round ... natural disaster." Then, Carvey, over-emphasizing Bush's cadence, added, "Not my fault," to big laughs from the audience. George H.W. Bush showed his character in one phone callAnd, in late 1991, with the economy slowing and Bush facing increasingly challenging re-election prospects, Carvey opened "SNL" as Bush and noted that while the economy was sluggish, he was not afraid to say the word "recession," repeating the word multiple times. Later in that sketch, a Bush desperate to get the economy going turned his address into an infomercial hawking goods that he hoped Americans would buy from the "Salad Shooter" that quickly cuts lettuce to "the Hickory Farms' 'party in a box'...less than $20."Even at the White House Christmas party with Bush only a few feet away, Carvey mocked Bush for vomiting in front of the prime minister of Japan. But Bush laughed at all of jokes -- even though the entire crowd was arguably laughing at him.What a contrast to the painfully thin-skinned Trump, who has not only lashed out at comedians who dare tell jokes about him but has even called for canceling "SNL," likely because he didn't like its jokes at his expense. And, in April, Trump demanded that the White House Correspondents' Association end its 30-plus year practice of featuring a comedian because, again, Trump objected to the jokes directed at him. Stay up to date...Sign up for our new newsletter.Join us on Twitter and FacebookThis past April, Carvey appeared on Conan O'Brien's late-night show and reflected on getting to know Bush and his wife. "We had so many warm moments with them," he said, adding, it was "a different time. It wasn't scorched-earth, angry politics." In response, O'Brien said, "In today's environment, you do an impression of a president, and you're the enemy."But you just can't dismiss the starkly different ways Bush and Trump respond to comedy as being a product of a "different time." I believe it has far more to do more with being a product of a different person. Bush told us that, "politics does not have to be mean and ugly." In contrast, "mean and ugly" sums up Trump. Just look at how a few months ago Trump ridiculed Bush and his famous "thousand points of light" phrase that was intended to encourage volunteerism. Overall, there are many reasons to praise Bush -- as well as to be critical of some of his policies. But no one can deny that Bush could laugh at himself, reminding us of a time when the occupant of the White House was not a petty, insecure person. Hopefully the next president will not only be able to laugh at himself or herself but also share Bush's humanity and belief that politics doesn't have to be mean and ugly.
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(CNN)PSG star Neymar is facing a ban after being charged by UEFA following for his online rant in the wake of his side's Champions League defeat to Manchester United.Follow @cnnsport
Neymar was a helpless bystander, watching the last-16 tie from the stands due to injury, as referee Damir Skomina awarded Manchester United a controversial last-minute penalty after a lengthy consultation with VAR.United striker Marcus Rashford converted the spot-kick to send the English side through to the quarterfinals as PSG suffered yet more Champions League heartbreak.READ: PSG stunned by controversial last-gasp Manchester United penaltyREAD: Is VAR 'killing' football?Read More"This is a disgrace, they put four people who know nothing about football in charge of looking at the replay for VAR," the Brazilian wrote on Instagram after the match. Neymar could only watch on from the stands due to injury."It's just not possible!!! How is a guy going to hold his hand behind his back. Go f**k yourselves."The 27-year-old was furious after Skomina ruled that Presnel Kimpembe handled the ball in the penalty area and reportedly had to be restrained from entering the referee's office after the match.Neymar, the world's most expensive player after his $263 million transfer from Barcelona in 2017, could now face a three-match suspension in the Champions League, according to UEFA regulations."The case will be dealt with by the UEFA Control, Ethics and Disciplinary Body with the date of the hearing yet to be confirmed," the statement read.
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London (CNN)Family, friends and survivors on Thursday joined others remembering the victims of the Grenfell fire at a memorial service at St. Paul's Cathedral in London.Seventy-one people were killed when a blaze engulfed a residential tower block in North Kensington, west London, on June 14.Attendees hold a banner during the service at the London cathedral.The ceremony, six months on from the fire, was attended by Prime Minister Theresa May, the Prince of Wales, Duchess of Cornwall, Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry. It lasted just over an hour. Members of the Kensington and Chelsea council, which was responsible for the management of the building, did not attend after mourners requested they stay away. At the end of the service, a Grenfell banner was held aloft and carried out of the cathedral, followed by mourners, who held white roses and photographs of their loved ones.Read MoreMourners leave St. Paul's Cathedral in London following the service Thursday."It was uplifting, but it was very sad as well," Nelissa Mendy, who lost her cousin at Grenfell, told CNN."There are still no words. I'm struggling for words but I'm really glad there's an acknowledgment. There's still a lot of pain and a lot of unanswered questions but the service itself was comforting if that's the right word."With those who were here today -- national leaders and people like that it was just, I guess, a recognition of national support for Grenfell, families, victims all the support workers. "For those that still don't have closure -- this may have gone some way to try and help but ... I can't find the words."A government-ordered inquiry into the fire is still underway and many of those who lost their homes remain in temporary accommodation.According to a report published by the government, of the 395 households affected by the fire, 300 were living in hotels, 75 were in apartments, nine were living with friends and family on a temporary basis, and 11 had found new permanent accommodation by the end of September.Mourners arrive at St Paul's cathedral for a Grenfell Tower national memorial service.Speaking at the memorial, Bishop of Kensington, the Right Reverend Graham Tomlin, told the survivors and families of the victims that they had not been forgotten."As we come to the end of this difficult year, as we celebrate Christmas, as we move into a new year, nothing can remove the memory of that night, nor do we want to forget those dearly loved people who were lost," he said'It's very, very hard'About 1,500 people gathered inside the cathedral for the multi-faith ceremony that included performances from a number of groups close to Grenfell.A prerecorded montage of voices from the local community was also played during the service."We were lost for words, we did not know what to do, how to react. I have never known anything like it in my life," one voice said.Maria Jafari, whose father Ali Yawar Jafari, died at Grenfell, read a poem by 13th century poet Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi."It's very, very hard," Jafari told the UK Press Association. "Still she (my mother) cries, every day, every second when we are talking about our father, all the memories come out again."It's six months and it's still very hard for us. I wish nobody could have this in the whole life, in the whole world, I wish nobody would have to go through all these things." 'Criminal investigation'Earlier on Thursday, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick said it would be unlikely that the criminal investigation into the deadly blaze would be concluded until 2019.Speaking to CNN's affiliate ITN, Dick said the investigation had gathered 30 million documents, identified thousands of physical exhibits, and had conducted thousands of interviews."We will move as quickly as we possibly can whilst doing a very, very thorough investigation -- using all the expertise that is available to us. We are working closely now with the Crown Prosecution Service and we will move as fast as we possibly can," she said."But I would be very surprised if our criminal investigation was finished, for example, by the end of the next calendar year."
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Story highlightsRussian blacked out in semifinalHe says opponent 'strangled me'Hits out at ban on Russian athletes (CNN)He was choked unconscious during his wrestling semifinal -- but Roman Vlasov came to, picked himself up, dusted himself down and went on to take gold at the Rio Olympics.The Russian -- defending the 75kg Greco-Roman title he won at London 2012 -- battled back after blacking out during his semifinal against Croatian Bozo Starcevic.With Vlasov in a comfortable lead, Starcevic clamped an arm around his neck before pinning him to the mat, with the Russian later claiming his opponent had "strangled" him.Follow @cnnsport
Officials -- who signaled Starcevic's move was legal by awarding him two points -- stopped the bout when they realized Vlasov had blacked out.But within moments, the 25-year-old came round before getting back to his feet and completing victory.Read MoreAnd on Sunday, he rounded off an extraordinary story by comprehensively defeating Denmark's Mark Madsen in the gold medal showdown.Vlasov told reporters he had been motivated to win because "we all understood that we have to get as many gold medals as possible as a consequence of the situation around sports in Russia." He hit out at the ban on Russian athletes, after an investigation into allegations of systematic, state-backed doping, as "unfair."Officials attend Roman Vlasov after he was choked unconscious in his bout against Bozo Starcevic.Looking back on his semifinal, he said: "The opponent even strangled me -- but the judge didn't even give him a warning. "Thank God I was allowed to continue to the end and win this match. I had to pull myself together and I tried to tune it out, because something like that had never happened before."I realized that it was not over yet, and I had to fight on. I was unconscious when he strangled me, but I came out of it right away."Vlasov, a lieutenant in the Russian army, said he had beaten a "very strong" Madsen in the gold medal match and added: "I have fought him six times, and he has studied me thoroughly. "He hit me hard -- I do not know how I managed to stand up but, thank God, I did."And he stressed that he hoped his win would serve as an inspiration to the country's other wrestlers, adding: "I am sure they watched and supported me, and that this victory will give them confidence."
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A cyberespionage group with suspected ties to the Kazakh and Lebanese governments has unleashed a new wave of attacks against a multitude of industries with a retooled version of a 13-year-old backdoor Trojan.
Check Point Research called out hackers affiliated with a group named Dark Caracal in a new report published yesterday for their efforts to deploy "dozens of digitally signed variants" of the Bandook Windows Trojan over the past year, thus once again "reigniting interest in this old malware family."
The different verticals singled out by the threat actor include government, financial, energy, food industry, healthcare, education, IT, and legal institutions located in Chile, Cyprus, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Singapore, Switzerland, Turkey, and the US.
The unusually large variety of targeted markets and locations "reinforces a previous hypothesis that the malware is not developed in-house and used by a single entity, but is part of an offensive infrastructure sold by a third party to governments and threat actors worldwide, to facilitate offensive cyber operations," the researchers said.
Dark Caracal's extensive use of Bandook RAT to execute espionage on a global scale was first documented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Lookout in early 2018, with the group attributed to the theft of enterprise intellectual property and personally identifiable information from thousands of victims spanning over 21 countries.
The prolific group, which has operated at least since 2012, has been linked to the Lebanese General Directorate of General Security (GDGS), deeming it a nation-state level advanced persistent threat.
The concurrent use of the same malware infrastructure by different groups for seemingly unrelated campaigns led the EFF and Lookout to surmise that the APT actor "either uses or manages the infrastructure found to be hosting a number of widespread, global cyberespionage campaigns."
Now the same group is back at it with a new strain of Bandook, with added efforts to thwart detection and analysis, per Check Point Research.
A Three-Stage Infection Chain
The infection chain is a three-stage process that begins with a lure Microsoft Word document (e.g. "Certified documents.docx") delivered inside a ZIP file that, when opened, downloads malicious macros, which subsequently proceeds to drop and execute a second-stage PowerShell script encrypted inside the original Word document.
In the last phase of the attack, this PowerShell script is used to download encoded executable parts from cloud storage services like Dropbox or Bitbucket in order to assemble the Bandook loader, which then takes the responsibility of injecting the RAT into a new Internet Explorer process.
The Bandook RAT — commercially available starting in 2007 — comes with all the capabilities typically associated with backdoors in that it establishes contact with a remotely-controlled server to receive additional commands ranging from capturing screenshots to carrying out various file-related operations.
But according to the cybersecurity firm, the new variant of Bandook is a slimmed-down version of the malware with support for only 11 commands, while prior versions were known to feature as many as 120 commands, suggesting the operators' desire to reduce the malware's footprint and evade detection against high-profile targets.
That's not all. Not only valid certificates issued by Certum were used to sign this trimmed version of the malware executable, Check Point researchers uncovered two more samples — full-fledged digitally-signed and unsigned variants — which they believe are operated and sold by a single entity.
"Although not as capable, nor as practiced in operational security like some other offensive security companies, the group behind the infrastructure in these attacks seems to improve over time, adding several layers of security, valid certificates and other techniques, to hinder detection and analysis of its operations," the researchers concluded.
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Buffer Overflow Vulnerability in GOM Media Player v. 2.1.37
Ucha Gobejishvili (longrifle0x) from The Vulnerability Laboratory Research Team discover Buffer Overflow Vulnerability in GOM Media Player v. 2.1.37. GOM Player (Gretech Online Movie Player) is a 32/64-bit media player for Microsoft Windows, distributed by the Gretech Corporation of South Korea.
A buffer overflow occurs when a program or process tries to store more data in a buffer (temporary data storage area) than it was intended to hold. Since buffers are created to contain a finite amount of data, the extra information - which has to go somewhere - can overflow into adjacent buffers, corrupting or overwriting the valid data held in them. Although it may occur accidentally through programming error, buffer overflow is an increasingly common type of security attack on data integrity.
In this case, The vulnerability can be exploited by local or remote attackers and Vulnerable module is GomU+0x125cb7.
Proof of Concept:
1) Download & open the software client
2) Click open ==> Url..
3) Put vulnerability code
4) now you will see result
In buffer overflow attacks, the extra data may contain codes designed to trigger actions, in effect sending new instructions to the attacked computer that could, for example, damage the user's files, change data, or disclose confidential information.
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This week Corey and Marty over at FixMeStick shared the specs of their recently released FixMeStick PRO with me. This Pro is the best remote malware remediation product we've seen. It retails for $299.99 per year, or $209.99 for the first 50 'The Hacker News' readers (use coupon code 'THNFIX' for 30% Discount), and can be used an unlimited number of times on an unlimited number of PCs per year. The price is per year because the FixMeStick contains three anti-virus engines licensed from three anti-virus companies keeping three malware definition databases up to date etc...
Finds: Three anti-virus engines working together to find the widest range of infections.
Removes: 'Computer on a stick' architecture provides a separate and clean operating system to fix Windows operating systems.
Delivers: Highest confidence remediation.
Remote Access: Remote access independent of the host operating system, i.e. out-of-band remote management, like a remote access card for PCs.
Easy-to-use
The FixMeStick® is a Linux-based device that runs before Windows boots enabling it to remove infections without the infection being able to block it.
Contains a built-in multi-scanner composed of three anti-virus engines: Kaspersky Lab®, Sophos®, and GFI's VIPRE®.
The technology is integrated behind a single full-screen application (the user can use CTRL-T to launch a terminal).
The FixMeStick is set-up and ready to go right out of the box. No additional installation or downloading is required.
Any user can start with 2 steps: 1- insert key, and 2- double-click "Run FixMeStick".
Automatic updates are fetched and stored directly on the FixMeStick.
Easy to support: Any removal operation is 100% reversible with the click of a button.
Systems supported: Any PC; A minimum of 512 MB of RAM.
Bootability: The FixMeStick uses a bootloader menu system to provide multiple boot configuration options, one of which will work on essentially any PC (as of December 2012).
Detection, Cleaning, Quarantine: Three anti-virus scanners provide the super-set of all three scanners's detections. Each scanner is loaded into RAM, and files are fetched from disk once and passed to each scanner in parallel. The result is a scan time on par with desktop "on-demand" full system scans. Only if each of the scanners fail to clean an infected file is that file quarantined.
Connectivity: The FixMeStick automatically seeks an Internet connection when it starts. It has built-in Ethernet drivers that support essentially all PC Ethernet hardware. It also contains built-in WiFi drivers that support most PC WiFi hardware. If the FixMeStick is booted from Windows (versus directly from the BIOS) the FixMeStick will automatically use the default WiFi SSID and password active on the Windows operating system (except on Vista). If an auto-connection is not possible the user can select their network from the WiFi picker that is displayed within FixMeStick. Once a connection is established, the FixMeStick downloads program and malware definition updates and stores them on the FixMeStick. The FixMeStick will work without a network connection, but it won't be able to fetch the latest malware definition updates.
Authentication: Each FixMeStick has a unique serial number in its firmware. This serial number identifies the FixMeStick to the FixMeStick Management Server. Each FixMeStick also has a tag etched into its outside. This unique tag maps to the unique serial number in the FixMeStick Management Server. Users identify their specific FixMeStick unit to their solution provider (or FixMeStick technical support) by providing this tag.
Remote Remediation: FixMeStick Management Server has a record of every FixMeStick's usage (for users who have permitted this information retrieval). This usage information includes:
Scan start timestamp
Scan end timestamp
An endpoint identifier (e.g. answers the question "which PC is this scan from?")
FixMeStick serial number, tag, and comment (text field that can be written by the solution provider to, for example, identify the primary owner\user of the FixMeStick)
The version of the FixMeStick software
Number of files scanned
Number of files total on the PC
Number of malware found
The name and path to the malware found
Each FixMeStick also contains a TeamViewer® client. The FixMeStick user enters the key-combination "CTRL-ALT-R" and the TeamViewer client will display. The user provides the endpoint id and passcode to the solution provider, and the solution provider can remotely login to the FixMeStick, i.e. login to the Ubuntu-based operating system that is FixMeStick, from which they can manage the local device.
If you want to check it out you can go to their website, and contact them directly with any technical questions you may have. Don't forget to use the coupon THNFIX to get the 30% discount on the Pro if you're interested in buying.
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Story highlightsFactory workers strike the medal mold with 550 tons of force"I'll feel like I'm getting a medal myself," the sculptor saysRio de Janeiro (CNN)The making of the 2016 Rio Olympic and Paralympic medals is a mix of art and science. A team of about 100 people, including sculptors and machine operators, have been working in secret inside the Brazilian Mint to produce more than 5,000 medals ahead of the Games. And while the athletes will be earning the medals, the makers of the medals feel an equal connection to their shiny masterpieces."Seeing them on the podium, I'll know I made that medal," said Nelson Neto Carneiro, the sculptor who made the mold for the 2016 medals. "I'll feel like I'm getting a medal myself." A close-up of a gold medal for the Rio Olympics. Carneiro has made many coins during his 41-year tenure at the Brazilian Mint, but he said sculpting the Olympic medals is one of the most exciting projects he has done. Read MoreWhile the mold can be made using a computer, Carneiro worked on it for two weeks by hand with precision tools that, he says, gave him more control over the design.Once the hand-sculpted mold is scanned into a computer a CNC router, or a computer-controlled cutting machine, etches the metallic mold. Then the mold is put under a microscope for quality control before heading to the factory. Factory workers then use a loud press machine to strike the mold with 550 tons of force -- three times -- to create the coveted round symbols of victory.The gold medals go through an extra step called the "bath of gold." The gold medal is actually made of 494 grams of silver and 6 grams of gold. The Games kick off August 5 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.The melted gold and silver of a gold medal is worth about $587 in current market prices. The last time Olympic medals were made of pure gold was during the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden.
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Security researchers have discovered several severe zero-day vulnerabilities in the mobile bootloaders from at least four popular device manufacturers that could allow an attacker to gain persistent root access on the device.
A team of nine security researchers from the University of California Santa Barbara created a special static binary tool called BootStomp that automatically detects security vulnerabilities in bootloaders.
Since bootloaders are usually closed source and hard to reverse-engineer, performing analysis on them is difficult, especially because hardware dependencies hinder dynamic analysis.
Therefore, the researchers created BootStomp, which "uses a novel combination of static analysis techniques and underconstrained symbolic execution to build a multi-tag taint analysis capable of identifying bootloader vulnerabilities."
The tool helped the researchers discover six previously-unknown critical security bugs across bootloaders from HiSilicon (Huawei), Qualcomm, MediaTek, and NVIDIA, which could be exploited by attackers to unlock device bootloader, install custom malicious ROM and persistent rootkits.
Five of the vulnerabilities have already been confirmed by their respective by the chipset vendors. Researchers also found a known bug (CVE-2014-9798) in Qualcomm's bootloaders, which was previously reported in 2014, but still present and usable.
In a research paper [PDF], titled "BootStomp: On the Security of Bootloaders in Mobile Devices," presented at the USENIX conference in Vancouver, the researchers explain that some of the discovered flaws even allow an attacker with root privileges on the Android operating system to execute malicious code as part of the bootloader or to perform permanent denial-of-service attacks.
According to the researchers, the vulnerabilities impact the ARM's "Trusted Boot" or Android's "Verified Boot" mechanisms that chip-set vendors have implemented to establish a Chain of Trust (CoT), which verifies the integrity of each component the system loads while booting the device.
Overview: Discovered Bootloader Vulnerabilities
The researchers tested five different bootloader implementations in Huawei P8 ALE-L23 (Huawei / HiSilicon chipset), Nexus 9 (NVIDIA Tegra chipset), Sony Xperia XA (MediaTek chipset) and two versions of the LK-based bootloader, developed by Qualcomm.
The researcher discovered five critical vulnerabilities in the Huawei Android bootloader:
An arbitrary memory write or denial of service (DoS) issue when parsing Linux Kernel's DeviceTree (DTB) stored in the boot partition.
A heap buffer overflow issue when reading the root-writable oem_info partition.
A root user's ability to write the nve and oem_info partitions, from which configuration data and memory access permissions governing the smartphone's peripherals can be read.
A memory corruption issue that could allow an attacker to install a persistent rootkit.
An arbitrary memory write bug that lets an attacker run arbitrary code as the bootloader itself.
Another flaw was discovered in NVIDIA's hboot, which operates at EL1, meaning that it has equivalent privilege on the hardware as the Linux kernel, which once compromised, can lead to an attacker gaining persistence.
The researchers also discovered a known, already patched vulnerability (CVE-2014-9798) in old versions of Qualcomm's bootloader that could be exploited to cause a denial of service situation.
The researchers reported all the vulnerabilities to the affected vendors. Huawei confirmed all the five vulnerabilities and NVIDIA is working with the researchers on a fix.
The team of researchers has also proposed a series of mitigations to both limit the attack surface of the bootloader as well as enforce various desirable properties aimed at safeguarding the security and privacy of users.
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(CNN)American figure skater Timothy LeDuc is set to become the first openly non-binary athlete to compete at an Olympic Winter Games.US Figure Skating announced Saturday that 31-year-old LeDuc has been paired with Ashley Cain-Gribble to compete in Beijing in February."My hope is that when people see my story, it isn't focused on me and saying, 'Oh, Timothy is the first out non-binary person to achieve this level of success in sport,'" LeDuc said during a news conference Saturday, according to NBC Sports."My hope is that the narrative shifts more to, queer people can be open and successful in sports. We've always been here, we've always been a part of sports. We just haven't always been able to be open."There may be more Olympians who identify as LGBTQ than ever before. But there are limits to inclusion In 2019, LeDuc became the first openly gay athlete to win gold in a US pairs' event, according to the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee.Read MoreCain-Gribble and LeDuc are the 2019 and 2022 US champions and will make their first Olympic appearance next month."I think we want to dedicate these performances and this title to all the people that felt like they didn't belong -- or were told that they didn't belong -- in this sport," Cain-Gribble said during the news conference. "Many times we were told that, even when we teamed up."Alexa Knierim and Brandon Frazier will join LeDuc and Cain-Gribble as the other pairs team that will represent the US in Beijing.The two pairs "join previously nominated athletes Mariah Bell, Karen Chen and Alysa Liu on the 2022 US Olympic Figure Skating Team," US Figure Skating said in a news release.The games are scheduled to take place from February 4 to 20 in Beijing. Beijing, which played host to the Summer Olympics in 2008, is the first city ever to host both the Summer and Winter Olympic Games.
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(CNN)Maia Chaka made history on Sunday, as she became the first Black woman to officiate an NFL game."This historic moment to me is an honor and it's a privilege that I've been chosen to represent women and women of color in the most popular sport in America," said Chaka in a video tweeted by the NFL.Officiating in Sunday's New York Jets at Carolina Panthers in Charlotte, North Carolina, Chaka is the third on-field female official in the NFL, joining Sarah Thomas, the first permanent female game official, and Shannon Eastin, who was the first woman to officiate an NFL game. Chaka, a health and physical education teacher, spent time as a referee in the NCAA's Pac-12 conference and Conference USA, as well as in the short-lived Alliance of American Football in 2019. She entered the NFL's Officiating Development Program in 2014, a program designed to offer top officiating prospects in the collegiate ranks "exposure to in-game experiences that NFL officials face, to determine if they have the ability to succeed," according to the NFL. Read MoreThe NFL announced in March that it was adding Chaka to its roster of game officials for 2021. "Hopefully, that just gives somebody else some inspiration and empowers them to step outside the box and do something different," Chaka said in the video.
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(CNN)The Golden Globes were reduced to a footnote this year -- chased from TV and their usual NBC showcase by questions about the organization's membership and its integrity, relegated to announcing winners Sunday by Twitter and press release.Yet the group's choice of "The Power of the Dog" as the year's best drama reflect what feels like a message to other award shows -- a major nod to the power of streaming -- as the entertainment industry wrestles with the shift away from theatrical viewing to at-home consumption, especially for prestige films.Simply put, box-office dollars, the most obvious metric for weighing a movie's popularity, no longer tell the whole story. And if award voters have any interest in recognizing movies that people have seen -- and will thus harbor some rooting interest in the choices -- the calculus needs to shift to how many watched them, not strictly how many have directly paid for the privilege.Netflix and other streaming services don't provide much help in issuing clear data that possesses the simplicity of perusing a box-office chart. But films like "Power of the Dog," the slow-burn western starring Benedict Cumberbatch, and the star-studded satire "Don't Look Up" have clearly become favorites among Netflix subscribers, producing the kind of chatter and debates in social media that televised award shows, foremost among them the upcoming Oscars, desperately need.Media outlets, notably, have been slow to catch on to this shifting reality, a trend made significantly worse during the pandemic. The New York Times, for example, recently fretted about what sluggish box-office figures mean for award shows, in an article headlined, "The Oscars Want Crowd-Pleasers, but Where Are the Crowds?"Read MoreThe "crowds," pretty obviously, are at home, scattered from communal viewing to consume entertainment on their schedules. And that has produced "crowd-pleasers," or at least movies that have generated buzz, just as Netflix intended when it embarked on the mission of seeking to establish its movies as credible award candidates, after growing to rival HBO in TV's awards race.Tom Holland and Benedict Cumberbatch in 'Spider-Man: No Way Home.'Indeed, the only genuine "crowd-pleaser" to speak of this year, in the conventional sense, is "Spider-Man: No Way Home," the $1-billion-plus international hit, which appears destined to join the rarefied $700-million club in terms of domestic box-office grosses occupied by "Star Wars: The Force Awakens," "Avengers: Endgame," "Avatar" and "Black Panther."After flirting in 2018 with introducing a "popular film" category to bring such blockbusters into the Oscar ceremony, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences took the next best step, expanding the field of best-picture contenders to 10, theoretically opening up slots for more widely-seen movies.Such plans don't always work out, but with "Spider-Man" propping up the theatrical movie business almost single-handedly, if ever there was a year to invite a superhero to Hollywood's biggest party, it's this one.Otherwise, the power in this year's awards race resides in movies that have made a splash in streaming, including others that notched significant Globes wins: Amazon's "Being the Ricardos" for star Nicole Kidman, Will Smith in "King Richard" (which surely fared better on HBO Max than it did at the box office), and Andrew Garfield for his role in Netflix's musical "Tick, Tick ... Boom!"Whether that math persists forever is unknown, but for now, "The Power of the Dog" is the sort of "hit," however fuzzy the streaming data, which could help bring additional sizzle to an awards system challenged on multiple fronts.The Golden Globes have been a mess, and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association that presents them remains enmeshed in the process of cleaning up its collective act. Nevertheless, in assembling their nominees and winners for 2022, they seem to have embraced a reality that much of Hollywood has been slow -- and perhaps understandably reluctant -- to grasp.
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If your Social Security number gets hacked in any data breaches, including recently hacked T-Mobile, then there's a way to prevent hackers from misusing your identity (i.e. identity theft).
The solution here is that you can institute a security freeze at each of the three credit bureaus, Equifax, Experian, or TransUnion.
Once frozen, nobody will be allowed to access your credit report, which will prevent any identity thieves from opening new accounts in your name.
Because most creditors required to see your credit report before approving a new account. But, if they are restricted to see your file, they may not extend the credit or open a new account in your name.
However, there are some disadvantages of doing so.
1. Cost
The cost of a security freeze differs by state (check yours here). However, it is often free for already affected people, but the issue is – if you want to let anyone check your credit, you will need to pay a fee every time to lift the freeze.
This happens not just for your credit applications, but your credit report also gets pulled when you register for a mobile phone contract or apply for a new job or a new apartment as well.
The credit agencies will provide you a unique password to lift the freeze and charge up to $12 each time you lift the freeze. So this option can get costly.
2. Once Used, Nobody can Help
Moreover, if an identity thief has already used your stolen data to open accounts in your name, then a credit freeze will not help you out.
You can check your credit report for free three times a year at annualcreditreport.com. If you suspect any fraud, change your passwords, notify your financial institutions, keep an eye on your financial statements, and report to police.
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Story highlightsDefending champion Maria Sharapova eases into quarters against Sloane StephensRussian to meet Jelena Jankovic of Serbia in last eightFormer doubles partners Azarenka and Kirilenko set for quarterfinal clashDefending champion Maria Sharapova predicted a bright future for Sloane Stephens despite beating the American in straight sets on Monday to reach the quarterfinals of the French Open. The world No. 2 overcame windy conditions to beat the 17th seed 6-4 6-3 and earn a last eight clash with Serbia's Jelena Jankovic. "I think Sloane has a tremendous amount of potential and she has a lot of things in her game in which there is a lot of room for even more improvement," the Russian told reporters after the match. Read: The secrets of French Open champions"There are some players you play against and you're not quite sure if they will be able to develop something to a different level, but I think she will. "She has a big game already - big strokes, pretty good serve. She has a lot of time to develop. If she's in the right hands at the right time, I'm sure she's going to have a great career." Stephens, who turned 20 in March, was in the second week of a grand slam for only the third time, having eclipsed her fourth round appearance in Paris last year when reaching the semifinals of the Australian Open in January. JUST WATCHEDCan Sharapova retain French Open title?ReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHCan Sharapova retain French Open title? 01:51JUST WATCHEDSharapova prepares for Roland GarrosReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHSharapova prepares for Roland Garros 01:52JUST WATCHEDSloane Stephens hoping for patienceReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHSloane Stephens hoping for patience 03:06JUST WATCHEDWomen's tennis top stars talk personalReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHWomen's tennis top stars talk personal 01:14JUST WATCHEDKuznetsova's 2009 French Open winReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHKuznetsova's 2009 French Open win 01:14JUST WATCHEDThe first diva of women's tennisReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHThe first diva of women's tennis 02:34"There's always room for improvement," the American said on Monday. "Maria's obviously a really great competitor if she's No.2 in the world, so it's tough. You've just got to keep improving. "I wouldn't say there's a drastic difference - you just have to keep getting better. Some things I can improve on, so I'll do that. Overall I've done pretty well, though.""I enjoyed myself here at Roland Garros this year." Next up for Sharapova is Jankovic, with the 18th seed defeating Jamie Hampton 6-0 6-2, and although the Russian leads their meetings 7-1 the pair have yet to meet on clay."We know each other quite well," Sharapova said. "We played against each other quite a bit in the juniors all the time. We spent a lot of time together." "I think the clay really suits her game. She's a great retriever and gets a lot of balls back. She's playing much more consistent I believe than she's done in the last couple of years, which is nice to see, because she was at that level and maintained that level for quite a bit of time. "She's a really tough opponent. I look forward to it."Earlier in the day, third seed Victoria Azarenka enjoyed a similarly routine victory as the double Australian Open champion beat Francesca Schiavone 6-3 6-0. The Belarus star next faces former doubles partner Maria Kirilenko after the Russian 12th seed reached the quarterfinals for the first time with a 7-5 6-4 win over world number 66 Bethanie Mattek-Sands of the United States. "I've played Maria a lot of times. I think the last time was the Olympics," said Azarenka, who took a bronze medal from their London 2012 encounter. "She's definitely improved a lot over the last couple years since she's a very motivated player (and a) good friend of mine, also." The most notable result for Azarenka and Kirilenko as doubles partners was at the 2011 Australian Open, where they finished runners-up. Read: Serena's date with destinyKirilenko, who trails her friend 3-2 from their previous meetings, has never reached the semifinals of a grand slam. In the opening quarterfinals on Tuesday, Serena Williams takes on 2009 French Open champion Svetlana Kuznetsova while fourth seed Agnieszka Radwanska continues her bid for a first grand slam when facing last year's Roland Garros runner-up, Sara Errani.
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London (CNN)One of the world's oldest universities is embroiled in scandal after dozens of women alleged they were sexually assaulted or raped on its campus, with several claiming they were attacked by members of a controversial US-style fraternity.The University of St Andrews in Scotland has said it will work with police to investigate scores of claims, made anonymously on an Instagram page entitled "St Andrews Survivors." The feed includes more than 20 allegations of rape, and several more allegations of sexual assault, physical assault and coercion by students at the prestigious university. Many of the allegations centered on one fraternity, the St Andrews chapter of Alpha Epsilon Pi -- a popular US-based student group that has also faced several allegations and police investigations into sexual misconduct at some of its United States chapters. The St Andrews-based branch of the frat has suspended several of its members following the allegations. Read MoreStudents including Prince William and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge have attended St Andrews, which is the third-oldest university in the English-speaking world and regularly ranks near the top of global rankings of higher education facilities.Ex-Temple University fraternity president convicted of attempted sexual assault after victim testimonyA spokesman for the institution said Monday that it had reached out to the owners of the Instagram page and offered its assistance to those making claims, including offers of counseling and help reporting claims to the university or police. CNN has contacted Police Scotland for comment.He added that the university would introduce a compulsory orientation module for the upcoming academic year, focusing on consent."We welcome the 'St Andrews Survivors' account's efforts to provide people of all genders a space to voice their experiences of sexual misconduct," the university said in a statement. "The University's primary concern is to ensure Survivors know that we are ready and willing to support their decisions and take action, facilitate Police reporting, and provide ongoing support accordingly."More allegations against Alpha Epsilon Pi The university's chapter of Alpha Epsilon Pi has found itself facing particular scrutiny, after a number of alleged victims said members of the group attacked them. Neither the St Andrews chapter nor the US-based national fraternity have responded to CNN's requests for comment, but the former said in a July 3 statement: "We find the contents of these allegations abhorrent, and are taking them extremely seriously." The fraternity is not an official university society. "The chapter immediately suspended members who acknowledged any role in the alleged incidents and entered them into Alpha Epsilon Pi's expulsion process, which allows for thorough investigation," it said, adding it would "conduct a review of our chapter leadership to hold them accountable for the actions of our members." Alpha Epsilon Pi is a global fraternity group with a predominantly Jewish membership and an extensive group of well-known alumni.People walk past a fountain in St Andrews, Scotland. But the organization has faced allegations of sexual abuse and assault at other universities. The Penn State chapter of the fraternity was suspended by that university in January amid a police investigation into sexual assault allegations, and in February its former Temple University president Ari Goldstein was convicted on three counts for his role in an attempted sexual assault of another student.A number of Instagram posts specifically accusing the St Andrews chapter were subsequently removed from the "St Andrews Survivors" page, but Alpha Epsilon Pi St Andrews said in a statement that it "had no involvement" in that move. The university spokesman told CNN that St Andrews advised the creators of the page about the legal risks of specifically naming organizations in posts, but both the university and the account's creators said the institution did not attempt to suppress the allegations. US-style college fraternities are far less popular at UK universities, which usually favor societies funded by a students' union, but some do have small chapters in Britain.
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Whenever an important event takes place, new opportunities for cyber criminals, especially for those who develop attacks based on social engineering, arise. Currently, the whole world has its eyes glued to TV screens watching the London 2012 Olympic Games.
Anti-malware and anti-virus solutions provider Webroot has issued a warning that an app app called "London Olympics Widget," which is described as an app that displays aggregated Olympic news coverage. In fact, it's really just harvesting the user's contact list and device ID while reading up on SMS messages too.
The package name is 'com.games.London.Olympics.widget'. This app has a digital certificate claiming it was developed in New Delhi, India.
For this scam, cybercriminals create websites that are very appealing; some even look very professional that they make it seem that you are close to having access to live programming. Researchers explain that the crooks rely on black hat SEO techniques to make sure that their malicious websites show up among the first in search engine results.
The security firm has determined that close to 10,000 clicks have already been redirected to the fraudulent Olympics website.Overall, a number of 38,000 clicks have been redirected to such sites, the victims being spread out across 100 countries.
Webroot advises that consumers should take a close look at the author of the app and then search the name to see if it is in fact a reputable company and/or developer, as seen in the photo above. A way that consumers can protect themselves from becoming a victim of these types of online scams is by learning about social engineering so they can recognize it and avoid falling into these traps.
The official London 2012 mobile app can be downloaded from the site.
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Story highlightsMuirfield finally allows female membersClub voted against women joining in 2016New ballot after losing British Open rights (CNN)They finally voted to accept women as members, but Rory McIlroy says the need for Muirfield golfers to have a second ballot on the issue was "obscene" and "horrendous." The Honorable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, the club based at the East Lothian links, voted 80.2% in favor of admitting women this week, overturning a ballot that ruled against changing its male-only policy last May.Follow @cnnsport
The course was removed from the British Open rota as a result, but reinstated again this week."In this day and age, where you've got women that are like the leaders of certain industries and women that are heads of state and not to be able to join a golf course? I mean, it's obscene. It's ridiculous," McIlroy told a news conference ahead of the Arnold Palmer Invitational event in Florida."So, they sort of saw sense. I still think that it got to this stage, is horrendous."Read More'No tea'McIlroy addressed the issue at his Bay Hill press conference.The postal ballot returned 498 votes in favor of admitting women members, with 123 votes (19.8%) against.World No. 3 McIlroy was still aghast that some members voted against updating its policy, and said returning to Muirfield would leave a bad taste in the mouth. "I just don't get it," added the 27-year-old, who is targeting a career grand slam of all four majors at the Masters early next month. "So, anyway, we'll go back there for the Open Championship at some point and I won't be having many cups of tea with the members afterwards."The club told CNN it had "no comment" to make in relation to McIlroy's reaction. READ: Historic vote allows women members at MuirfieldREAD: Muirfield banned from hosting British Open READ: Muirfield seeks new female membership vote'Excited'American golfer Stacy Lewis, a two-time major champion on the LPGA Tour, is less concerned with how the club arrived at the decision, just that it did at all."Just the fact things are finally changing is really more the issue," she told CNN.JUST WATCHEDHistoric venue welcomes top golfersReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHHistoric venue welcomes top golfers 05:26JUST WATCHEDMickelson wins thriller at Muirfield ReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHMickelson wins thriller at Muirfield 01:31"It's a great thing for kind of catching up with the times. For a prestigious course like Muirfield, they're the type of place that can make a difference with a lot of other courses going forward for women. People are excited about it."The International Olympic Committee has warned the golf course set to host the Tokyo 2020 Olympic golf tournament it could lose the event if it does not award women equal playing rights. Muirfield club captain Henry Fairweather said after announcing the result of Tuesday's vote: "We look forward to welcoming women as members who will enjoy, and benefit, from the great traditions and friendly spirit of this remarkable club."He added that the waiting list for new members, male or female, was "two to three years, or longer."Visit CNN.com/golf for more news and videosThe R&A, the organizer of the Open Championship -- the only one of golf's four major events to be held in Britain -- reinstated the course to the tournament rotation, although not before 2021.Responding to Tuesday's announcement, Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon tweeted: "Well done, Muirfield -- decision to admit women members emphatic and the right one. Look forward to seeing you host the Open again in future."
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Earlier this month, Oracle patched a highly critical Java deserialization remote code execution vulnerability in its WebLogic Server component of Fusion Middleware that could allow attackers to easily gain complete control of a vulnerable server.
However, a security researcher, who operates through the Twitter handle @pyn3rd and claims to be part of the Alibaba security team, has now found a way using which attackers can bypass the security patch and exploit the WebLogic vulnerability once again.
WebLogic Server acts as a middle layer between the front end user interface and the backend database of a multi-tier enterprise application. It provides a complete set of services for all components and handles details of the application behavior automatically.
Initially discovered in November last year by Liao Xinxi of NSFOCUS security team, the Oracle WebLogic Server flaw (CVE-2018-2628) can be exploited with network access over TCP port 7001.
If exploited successfully, the flaw could allow a remote attacker to completely take over a vulnerable Oracle WebLogic Server. The vulnerability affects versions 10.3.6.0, 12.1.3.0, 12.2.1.2 and 12.2.1.3.
Since a proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit for the original Oracle WebLogic Server vulnerability has already been made public on Github and someone has just bypassed the patch as well, your up-to-date services are again at risk of being hacked.
Although @pyn3rd has only released a short GIF (video) as a proof-of-concept (PoC) instead of releasing full bypass code or any technical details, it would hardly take a few hours or days for skilled hackers to figure out a way to achieve same.
Currently, it is unclear when Oracle would release a new security update to address this issue that has re-opened CVE-2018-2628 flaw.
In order to be at least one-step safer, it is still advisable to install April patch update released by Oracle, if you haven't yet because attackers have already started scanning the Internet for vulnerable WebLogic servers.
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10 year old girl hacker CyFi reveal her first zero-day in Game at #DefCon 19
Another awesome day at DefCon 19 . Today a 10 year old Girl hacker - pseudonym CyFi revealed her zero-day exploit in games on iOS and Android devices that independent researchers have confirmed as a new class of vulnerability. The 10-year-old girl from California first discovered the flaw around January 2011 because she "started to get bored" with the pace of farm-style games.
About CyFi :
She is cofounder of DEFCON Kids. CyFi is a ten-year-old hacker, artist and athlete living in California. She has spoken publicly numerous times, usually at art galleries as a member of "The American Show," an underground art collective based in San Francisco. CyFi's first gallery showing was when she was four. Last year she performed at the SF MOMA Museum in San Francisco. DEFCON Kids will be her first public vulnerability disclosure. CyFi's has had her identity stolen twice. She really likes coffee, but her mom doesn't let her drink it.
CyFi said, "It was hard to make progress in the game, because it took so long for things to grow. So I thought, 'Why don't I just change the time?'" Most of the games she discovered the exploit in have time-dependent factors. Manually advancing the phone or tablet's clock forced the game further ahead than it really was, opening up the exploit.
CyFi said that she discovered some ways around those detections. Disconnecting the phone from Wi-Fi made it harder to stop, as did making incremental clock adjustments. CyFi's mother, who must remain anonymous to protect her daughter's identity, told at the end of CyFi's presentation at DefCon Kids that they would offer a $100 reward to the young hacker who found the most games with this exploit over the following 24 hours. The reward is sponsored by AllClearID, a identity protection company that is also sponsoring the DefCon Kids.
CyFi revealed that she was only a little bit nervous about having to speak in front of the 100 or so expected attendees. She admitted that while it was probably different publicly speaking about a topic with such a specific focus, it would be hard for her to imagine what those differences might be. "Well, I haven't done it yet," she said.
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Cybersecurity researchers today uncovered a new advanced version of ComRAT backdoor, one of the earliest known backdoors used by the Turla APT group, that leverages Gmail's web interface to covertly receive commands and exfiltrate sensitive data.
"ComRAT v4 was first seen in 2017 and known still to be in use as recently as January 2020," cybersecurity firm ESET said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "We identified at least three targets: two Ministries of Foreign Affairs in Eastern Europe and a national parliament in the Caucasus region."
Turla, also known as Snake, has been active for over a decade with a long history of the watering hole and spear-phishing campaigns against embassies and military organizations at least since 2004.
The group's espionage platform started off as Agent.BTZ, in 2007, before it evolved to ComRAT, in addition to gaining additional capabilities to achieve persistence and to steal data from a local network.
It is now known that earlier versions of Agent.BTZ were responsible for infecting US military networks in the Middle East in 2008. In recent years, Turla is said to have been behind the compromise of French Armed Forces in 2018 and the Austrian Foreign Ministry early this year.
Newer versions of ComRAT backdoor have since ditched Agent. BTZ's USB-stick infection mechanism in favor of injecting itself into every process of the infected machine and executing its primary payload in "explorer.exe."
What's New in ComRAT v4?
The ComRAT v4 (or "Chinch" by the malware authors), as the new successor is called, uses an entirely new code base and is far more complex than its earlier variants, according to ESET. The firm said the first known sample of the malware was detected in April 2017.
ComRAT is typically installed via PowerStallion, a lightweight PowerShell backdoor used by Turla to install other backdoors. In addition, the PowerShell loader injects a module called ComRAT orchestrator into the web browser, which employs two different channels — a legacy and an email mode — to receive commands from a C2 server and exfiltrate information to the operators.
"The main use of ComRAT is discovering, stealing, and exfiltrating confidential documents," the researchers said. "In one case, its operators even deployed a .NET executable to interact with the victim's central MS SQL Server database containing the organization's documents."
What's more, all the files related to ComRAT, with the exception of the orchestrator DLL and the scheduled task for persistence, are stored in a virtual file system (VFS).
The "mail" mode works by reading the email address and the authentication cookies located in the VFS, connecting to the basic HTML view of Gmail, and parsing the inbox HTML page (using Gumbo HTML parser) to get the list of emails with subject lines that match those in a "subject.str" file in the VFS.
For each email that meets the above criteria, the comRAT proceeds by downloading the attachments (e.g. "document.docx," "documents.xlsx"), and deleting the emails to avoid processing them a second time.
Despite the ".docx" and ".xlsx" format in the filenames, the attachments are not documents themselves, but rather encrypted blobs of data that include a specific command to be executed: read/write files, execute additional processes, and gather logs.
In the final stage, the results of the command execution are encrypted and stored in an attachment (with the double extension ".jpg.bfe"), which is then sent as an email to a target address specified in the "answer_addr.str" VFS file.
The "legacy" mode, on the other hand, makes use of the already existing C2 infrastructure (ComRAT v3.x) to issue remote commands, the results of which are compressed and transmitted to a cloud service such as Microsoft OneDrive or 4Shared.
The exfiltrated data comprises user details and security-related log files to check if their malware samples were detected during a scan of the infected systems.
Based on the Gmail email distribution patterns over a one-month period, ESET said the operators behind the campaign are working in the UTC+3 or UTC+4 time zones.
"Version four of ComRAT is a totally revamped malware family released in 2017," ESET researcher Matthieu Faou said. "Its most interesting features are the Virtual File System in FAT16 format and the ability to use the Gmail web UI to receive commands and exfiltrate data. Thus, it is able to bypass some security controls because it doesn't rely on any malicious domain."
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Indian shopping website Groupon leaks Email/Passwords of 300,000 Users
Groupon subsidary – Sosata.com leak the e-mail addresses and plain-text passwords for 300,000 users and also the sql file is index on Google.
SoSasta.com offers its services in 11 cities - Kolkata, Hyderabad, Pune, Ahmedabad, Delhi/NCR, Chandigarh, Jaipur, Nagpur, Mumbai, Chennai and Bengaluru - and has mailed customers stating that they were made aware of a security breach.
The email sent to the customers says:
"Over this weekend, we've been alerted to a security issue potentially affecting subscribers of Sosasta. We wanted to let you know that the issue has been brought under control and your accounts are secure. However, as a precautionary measure, we recommend that you change your SoSasta password immediately, by visiting the SoSasta website (Sign-In using your existing password, then click on Profile followed by Change Password). If you use the same email/password combination at other websites, we recommend you change those passwords as soon as possible, too.
Please be aware that none of your financial information (Credit Card, Debit Card, NetBanking etc) has been compromised since this information is not stored on SoSasta, as per law.
You should know that we are working aggressively to prevent this from happening again. Sosasta takes security and privacy very seriously -- it's important to us to provide you with a safe shopping experience of the highest quality, and we will do everything possible to keep your trust. Please accept our apology for any inconvenience or concern we've caused."
The leak was discovered by Australian security consultant Daniel Grzelak .
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(CNN)He might be known as the "Pep Guardiola" of African football, but Al Ahly coach Pitso Mosimane's mantra is one coined by the iconic Nelson Mandela."It always looks impossible until somebody does it," Mosimane tells CNN Sport. The 56-year-old coach is sitting in his office at the Cairo giants, with Al Ahly's famed red, black and white colors emblazoned on the walls around him.Mosimane won a record five league titles in seven years with South African club Mamelodi Sundowns, was part of the Bafana Bafana coaching staff at the inaugural FIFA World Cup hosted on the continent and became Al Ahly's first ever Black coach in 2020.He will now have an opportunity to prove his mettle to the world after leading the Egyptian outfit to the promised land of club football as Al Ahly is set to participate at FIFA's Club World Cup, which begins in Qatar on February 4, when it plays Al Duhail SC.If Al Ahly win that match, the Egyptian club will face Bayern Munich for a place in final. Bayern will be the favorite to win the semifinal, but expectations are always high at a club like Al Ahly, which says it has 60 million fans in the Arab world and has won 140 trophies.Pitso John Mosimane, coach of Al Ahly, looks on during the final match between Zamalek and Al Ahly at Cairo stadium on 27 November, 2020 in Cairo, Egypt. Read MoreMosimane grew up in apartheid South Africa, so he is understandably proud of his coaching achievements, given his humble roots. And it's Mandela's own legacy that rightly inspires him. "Have you ever thought, in our time, that South Africa can have a Black president as Nelson Mandela?" enthuses Mosimane as he reflects on the life of a man who was incarcerated for 27 years. "That is an amazing story."Mosimane himself has reached great heights, and his gilded touch has seen all of the club teams he's coached claim silverware. His proudest achievements came when he conquered the Confederation of African Football (CAF) Champions League on two separate occasions -- firstly with Sundowns in 2016 and then Al Ahly four years later. "Can you believe that somebody from the township like me, from the background of apartheid, from the humble beginnings, can be the first person to win the Champions League in South Africa? And win it twice and become coach of the year on the continent," he says with almost a sense of disbelief.Al-Ahly player Hussein El Shahat (L) and head coach Pitso Mosimane (R) celebrate after winning the CAF Champions League final soccer match Zamalek vs Al-Ahly at Cairo International Stadium in Cairo, Egypt, 27 November 2020.'Club of the century'Last season, Mosimane did what nobody in world football has achieved to date. He was a part of two teams that secured trebles in their respective countries. First, he won three trophies in South Africa, including the league, in what is widely regarded as the strongest African domestic competition.And then he followed this up with Al Ahly, leading it to the continental crown as it beat arch-rival Zamalek 2-1 in the CAF Champions League final.Al Ahly had in fact wrapped up the league title under René Weiler, who departed late in the season to be with his family in Switzerland, but Mosimane received a winner's medal as he took over the team for the final two league games of the campaign and then guided the Red Devils to another triumph in the Egyptian Cup. "Al Ahly is a club that demands success, and in Egypt and Africa, it's known as the club of the century," explained former Egyptian international turned pundit Yaser Elshanawany. "There's only one other club that's won more trophies than Al Ahly in the world and that's Real Madrid, so when you get this job there's lots of expectation.""From the people I've spoken to at the club, they all tell me technically he's very strong and knows how to analyze other teams. But he's really loved by the players and his staff because psychologically he knows how to connect with them, and build relationships with them," Elshanawany added. South Africa head coach Pitso Mosimane looks on during a South Africa training session at Sturrock Park on August 09, 2010 in Johannesburg, South Africa. Mosimane masterminded Sundowns' 5-0 drubbing of the Red Devils in the 2019 CAF Champions League quarterfinals.It was a signature win that showcased Mosimane's ability and also persuaded Al Ahly that it didn't need to look outside the continent for a coach.One of Sundowns' stars over the last few years has been South African midfielder Hlompho Kekana. He has seen first hand what makes Mosimane the coach that he is, as he's been part of the Sundowns dynasty including that first CAF Champions League title. "Pitso is obsessed with the game, that's what gives him the edge," Kekana says. "He digs deeper than anyone I've worked with in football. "I'm not surprised to see his achievements. He's instilled that mentality with the players and we are told not to see football as just a career, but something that can change the world."We're more than just football players, and he's told us we can use football to get an education and we can uplift our own lives and those around us."Sundowns' coach Pitso Mosimane reacts after winning the CAF Champions League following the final between Zamalek and Mamelodi Sundowns on October 23, 2016 at the Borg el-Arab Stadium near Alexandria.Kekana also understands why there have been comparisons with two-time UEFA Champions League winner Guardiola, famed for the stylish, attacking football he's coached at Barcelona, Bayern Munich and now Manchester City. "I've not met Pep, but I can see why they have similarities," says Kekana. "Both play a possession-based game, but are always looking for perfection. Pitso was always looking for us to win matches, but he always wanted us to go out and express ourselves within our structures, never to sit back. To press high and keep the pressure on, never to let off, play with high intensity" the Bafana Bafana player said. It's this type of philosophy that Al Ahly President and club great Mahmoud El Khatib had admired from afar, and when Weiler departed at short notice, "Bibo," as he's affectionately known, moved for Mosimane."He's a legend ... it's like having Kenny Dalglish becoming president of Liverpool," explains Mosimane, referring to the former Scot who played and managed the English club."His head was on the block for appointing the first sub-Saharan coach to lead Al Ahly ... Now, he's proven right. We won the trophy and everything is good."Head coach Pitso Mosimane of Mamelodi Sundowns holds the trophy as the team arrives at the Tambo Airport after they were crowned 2016 CAF Champions League champions, in Johannesburg, South Africa on October 26, 2016. 'Taken too long'Al Ahly hadn't won the CAF Champions League in seven years and had lost two of the previous three finals."So we need to take a different approach and let's get somebody who knows the continent -- who lives in it."Coaches from Egypt, Europe and South America had been previously appointed at Ah Ahly, but Mosimane was a step in a new direction -- the South African became the first Black and sub-Saharan to take charge of the Egyptian team.Mosimane admits it's probably "taken too long" for a Black coach to be appointed at the club, but said, "I don't want to dwell so much on why. But it has happened now. I'm the one. I'm the 'Chosen One.' And what brought me here was not a political movement."I was brought here because of the titles that I won because I've defeated Al Ahly twice and one of the top teams here in Zamalek. And they know me. They know my name ... it has nothing to do with color or politics."Despite Mosimane's trophy-laden season, he was not recognized by FIFA on its coach of the season shortlist, as Liverpool's Jurgen Klopp secured the prize for his sterling work with Liverpool as the Reds lifted the Premier League trophy for the first time -- the club's first domestic league title in 30 years."FIFA must also consider coaches outside of European nominees because these are world awards," said Mosimane of FIFA's Best Football Awards, suggesting that the Confederation of African Football (CAF) could lobby the world governing body to create a more "inclusive" shortlist of coaches, players and clubs.Al-Ahly supporters celebrate in Cairo after their team beat Zamalek on 27 November 2020, Cairo, Egypt.Mosimane also referenced former Flamengo coach Jorge Jesus' success in the 2018/2019 season when he guided the Rio-based club to the Brazilian league title and also South America's prized club cup competition the Copa Libertadores, but was not recognized by FIFA for his success. "Jesus, he's the coach of Benfica now. He was the coach at Flamengo, he won lots of trophies and also deserved to be nominated. It's not just about me. But it's okay, we have to move on," added Mosimane. In response to Mosimane's criticism, FIFA said: "The shortlist of candidates for the awards was selected by two expert panels: one for women's football and one for men's football."The two expert panels include high profile representatives from all regions with the aim of ensuring that the awards reflect the views of world football. That being said, we appreciate Mr. Mosimane's comments as it is important that the protagonists express their views about the process."CNN did reach out to CAF for comment, but they did not respond to multiple requests."Our lives should not be about awards as coaches, we need to change people's lives," Mosimane says, backing up what Kekana had said about his former mentor.Al Ahly coach Pitso Mosimane oversees his team's training session in Cairo. 'Things do change' Mosimane's success has created a stir on the African continent and many have debated if he can be the first African to move from the continent to coach in one of Europe's major leagues."Is this a possibility? Yes," says Mosimane, before adding: "We have to be realistic to say Europe doesn't have a lot of African coaches. "I don't want to politicize this and make it a case of playing the race card, but some things need to be told as they are."But I just believe that a medical doctor who is from South Africa, is the same medical doctor who is in Europe. I believe an architect who has qualified in South Africa, is an architect in Europe. So I just don't understand when it comes to football coaching, why these things get looked at differently."I mean, you cannot tell me all these big players, African players, who won the Champions League in Europe, who are living there and none of those Africans can have an opportunity to coach."Maybe in our children's generation, things can change. Things do change ... But first, Europe must accept and give chances to the European-born Africans, before we can talk about getting a chance ... so it's a long way."Mosimane needs no reminding that apartheid lasted almost five decades in South Africa, or that Al Ahly took over 100 years to appoint their first Black coach.While he is realistic about getting an opportunity in the biggest leagues in the world, having survived apartheid and carved out success across the African continent, Mosimane draws strength from this: "Never, ever, ever underestimate a Black South African who comes from the township."And having seen what Mosimane's done, perhaps it's just a matter of time before the "Chosen One" shatters another glass ceiling.
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Libssh2, a popular open source client-side C library implementing the SSHv2 protocol, has released the latest version of its software to patch a total of nine security vulnerabilities.
The Libssh2 library is available for all major distributors of the Linux operating systems, including Ubuntu, Red Hat, Debian, and also comes bundled within some distributions and software as a default library.
According to an advisory published Monday, all the below listed vulnerabilities that were patched with the release of libssh2 version 1.8.1 lead to memory corruption issues which could result in arbitrary code execution on a client system in certain circumstances.
Here's the list of security vulnerabilities patched in Libssh:
1. CVE-2019-3855: Possible integer overflow in transport read that could lead to an out-of-bounds write. A malicious server, or a remote attacker who compromises an SSH server, could send a specially crafted packet which could result in executing malicious code on the client system when a user connects to the server.
2. CVE-2019-3856: Possible integer overflow in keyboard interactive handling allows out-of-bounds write. A malicious or a compromised SSH server can exploit client system by sending a value approaching unsigned int max number of keyboard prompt requests.
3. CVE-2019-3857: Possible integer overflow issue leads to zero-byte allocation and out-of-bounds write. A malicious server could send an SSH_MSG_CHANNEL_REQUEST packet with an exit signal message with a length of max unsigned integer value.
4. CVE-2019-3858: Possible zero-byte allocation leading to an out-of-bounds. Attacking server can send a specially crafted partial SFTP packet with a zero value for the payload length, allowing attackers to cause a Denial of Service or read data in the client memory.
5. CVE-2019-3859: Out-of-bounds reads with specially crafted payloads due to unchecked use of "_libssh2_packet_require and _libssh2_packet_requirev." A server could send a specially crafted partial packet in response to various commands such as: sha1 and sha226 key exchange, user auth list, user auth password response, allowing attackers to cause a Denial of Service or read data in the client memory.
6. CVE-2019-3860: Out-of-bounds reads with specially crafted SFTP packets that also lead to Denial of Service or read data in the client memory attacks.
7. CVE-2019-3861: Out-of-bounds reads with specially crafted SSH packets that occurs when the padding length value is greater than the packet length, resulting in the parsing of the corrupted packet.
8. CVE-2019-3862: An out of bounds read issue occurs when the server sends specially crafted SSH_MSG_CHANNEL_REQUEST packets with an exit status message and no payload, resulting in Denial of Service or read data in the client memory.
9. CVE-2019-3863: Integer overflow in the user authenticated keyboard interactive allows out-of-bounds writes.
These security vulnerabilities affect all versions of Libssh2 prior to version 1.8.1, and fortunately, there is reportedly no known exploits of these flaw at this time on the Internet.
Chris Coulson of Canonical Ltd. was credited for discovering all the nine security vulnerabilities and responsibly disclosing them to the Libssh developers.
If you are using Libssh, install the updated version of Libssh as soon as possible.
This is not the first time when the popular library has been found vulnerable to security issues. Late last year, its developers patched a four-year-old severe vulnerability in Libssh that allowed unauthenticated attackers to gain unfettered administrative control over a vulnerable server without requiring a password.
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Story highlightsRoger Federer ruled out with back injuryHas endured an Injury-filled 2016 season The Swiss last missed a grand slam in 1999 (CNN)Of all the records Roger Federer holds -- they include the most major titles among the men at 17 and 23 grand slam semifinals in a row -- the one that may last indefinitely is the Swiss' streak of consecutive appearances at the sport's four biggest tournaments.Follow @cnnsport
But Federer's run of 65 straight majors came to an end on Thursday when he pulled out of the French Open."I regret to announce that I have made the decision not to play in this year's French Open," the former world No. 1 announced on his Facebook page. "I have been making steady progress with my overall fitness, but I am still not 100% and feel I might be taking an unnecessary risk by playing in this event before I am really ready.Read: Can Rafael Nadal regain his Roland Garros 'aura'?Read More"This decision was not easy to make, but I took it to ensure I could play the remainder of the season and help to extend the rest of my career. I remain as motivated and excited as ever and my plan is to achieve the highest level of fitness before returning to the ATP World Tour for the upcoming grass court season. "I am sorry for my fans in Paris but I very much look forward to returning to Roland Garros in 2017."The last time Federer didn't compete in a grand slam main draw was at the U.S. Open in 1999, when his fitness wasn't a consideration. He lost in the second round of qualifying to countryman Ivo Heuberger before commencing his impressive, unblemished stretch at the 2000 Australian Open. Federer's participation at the French Open was in doubt after he skipped the Madrid Masters this month with the back problem. Even though Federer played at the following week's Rome Masters, just hours prior to his opening encounter he wasn't sure if he would be able to take to the court. JUST WATCHEDFederer on rivalry with king of clay Rafael Nadal ReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHFederer on rivalry with king of clay Rafael Nadal 03:55Federer won a round over Alexander Zverev but then exited to Dominic Thiem, looking uncomfortable on court."Clearly the way I'm playing right now is never going to be enough for any good run in Paris," he told reporters after the match. Federer, perhaps, has an eye on the grass-court swing and August's Rio Olympics. His best opportunity to win a record-extending 18th major -- and first grand slam title since 2012 -- continues to come at Wimbledon, where he is a seven-time champion. Less than a month after Wimbledon concludes, Rio begins. Federer has never won an Olympic gold in singles and he is expected to partner Martina Hingis in mixed doubles. Healthy for the majority of his career, if there's one part of his body that has let Federer down, it has been the back. Issues noticeably took a toll on Federer in 2013 and he bailed from the final of the 2014 World Tour Finals because of the back, giving world No. 1 Novak Djokovic a walkover. JUST WATCHEDDjokovic's big day in the Big AppleReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHDjokovic's big day in the Big Apple 05:36This season, Federer also underwent knee surgery, sustaining an injury while running a bath for his twin daughters the day after he lost to Djokovic at the Australian Open. Having recovered in time for March's Miami Masters, he pulled out with a stomach illness. Federer's omission from the French Open means two of the most recognizable names in sports won't be at the clay-court tournament -- Maria Sharapova, long the world's richest female athlete, is serving a provisional ban after testing positive for meldonium at the Australian Open. Caroline Wozniacki, the former No. 1, pulled out in the aftermath of an ankle injury and Belinda Bencic, one of tennis' youngest stars, is missing thanks to a back injury. Australian Open winner Angelique Kerber and two-time grand slam champion Victoria Azarenka, meanwhile, enter the event with their fitness in question. Azarenka has been women's tennis' most in-form player in 2016, compiling a 26-2 record. How will Federer's absence impact the French Open? Have your say on CNN's Sport Facebook pageJUST WATCHEDMartina Hingis' golden comebackReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHMartina Hingis' golden comeback 02:27
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U.S. graphics chip specialist NVIDIA has released software updates to address a total of 26 vulnerabilities impacting its Jetson system-on-module (SOM) series that could be abused by adversaries to escalate privileges and even lead to denial-of-service and information disclosure.
Tracked from CVE‑2021‑34372 through CVE‑2021‑34397, the flaws affect products Jetson TX1, TX2 series, TX2 NX, AGX Xavier series, Xavier NX, and Nano and Nano 2GB running all Jetson Linux versions prior to 32.5.1. The company credited Frédéric Perriot of Apple Media Products for reporting all the issues.
The NVIDIA Jetson line consists of embedded Linux AI and computer vision compute modules and developer kits that primarily caters to AI-based computer vision applications and autonomous systems such as mobile robots and drones.
Chief among the vulnerabilities is CVE‑2021‑34372 (CVSS score: 8.2), a buffer overflow flaw in its Trusty trusted execution environment (TEE) that could result in information disclosure, escalation of privileges, and denial-of-service.
Eight other critical weaknesses involve memory corruption, stack overflows, and missing bounds checks in the TEE as well as heap overflows affecting the Bootloader that could lead to arbitrary code execution, denial-of-service, and information disclosure. The rest of the flaws, also related to Trusty and Bootloader, could be exploited to impact code execution, causing denial-of-service and information disclosure, the company noted.
"Earlier software branch releases that support this product are also affected," NVIDIA said. "If you are using an earlier branch release, upgrade to the latest 32.5.1 release. If you are using the 32.5.1 release, update to the latest Debian packages."
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Tails, a Linux-based highly secure Operating System specially designed and optimized to preserve users' anonymity and privacy, has launched its new release, Tails version 1.1.2.
Tails, also known as 'Amnesiac Incognito Live System', is a free security-focused Debian-based Linux distribution, which has a suite of applications that can be installed on a USB stick, an SD card or a DVD. It keeps users' communications private by running all connectivity through Tor, the network that routes traffic through various layers of servers and encrypts data.
The operating system came into limelight when the global surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden said that he had used it in order to remain Anonymous and keep his communications hidden from the law enforcement authorities.
The new version 1.1.2 addresses a single but critical vulnerability which arises because the Network Security Services (NSS) libraries parser used by Firefox and other browsers is capable of being tricked into accepting forged RSA certificate signatures.
"We prepared this release mainly to fix a serious flaw in the Network Security Services (NSS) library used by Firefox and other products allows attackers to create forged RSA certificates," reads the Tails official website.
"Before this release, users on a compromised network could be directed to sites using a fraudulent certificate and mistake them for legitimate sites. This could deceive them into revealing personal information such as usernames and passwords. It may also deceive users into downloading malware if they believe it's coming from a trusted site."
Cyber criminals may use Man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks by impersonating as a bank or webmail provider and tricking online users into handing over their login credentials that can be then passed on to the legitimate organisation.
Tails 1.1.2 comes with the following security updates:
Updated TOR version (based on Firefox 24.8.0 ESR+tails3~bpo70+1)
New Linux kernel has been added, 3.16-1
Numerous other software upgrades that fix security issues in GnuPG, APT, DBus, Bash, and packages built from the bind9 and libav source packages
Mozilla Firefox also released a quick security patches for its Firefox versions and Thunderbird, as its open source browser is vulnerable to SSL man-in-the-middle attacks due to RSA certificate forgery. The patches are already available.
Firefox ESR 31.1.1, Firefox ESR 24.8.1, Thunderbird 31.1.1, and Thunderbird 24.8.1 have been updated to NSS 3.16.2.1. Also Firefox 32.0.3 and SeaMonkey 2.29.1 have been updated to NSS 3.16.5.
Users can download Tails 1.1.2 latest release from Tails official website.
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Bad news for Apple.
The Chinese hacking team Pangu is back and has once again surprised everyone with a jailbreak for iOS 12 running on the brand-new iPhone XS.
Well, that was really fast.
Pangu jailbreak team has been quiet for a while, since it last released the untethered jailbreak tool for iOS 9 back in October 2015.
Jailbreaking is a process of removing limitations on Apple's iOS devices so users can install third-party software not certified by Apple.
Today, Android and iOS security researcher Min(Spark) Zheng shared a Tweet with two screenshots showing a working jailbreak on Apple's newly released iPhone XS with A12 Bionic chip achieved by one of the Pangu researchers.
The Tweet also revealed that the iOS 12 jailbreak works by bypassing a functional PAC (Pointer authentication codes) mitigation implemented in the new Apple's A12 Bionic chip.
Moreover, since the hardware of iPhone XS is very much identical to iPhone XS Max, the new iOS 12 jailbreak exploit should also work on both Apple's latest flagship iPhones.
Since the Pangu jailbreak team has not made any official announcement regarding the new jailbreak, it is not clear whether or not the team will release the iOS 12 jailbreak to the public.
Also, before jailbreaking your Apple devices, just keep in mind that this will violate your End User License Agreement with Apple and also exposes your iOS device to security bugs, putting your personal data at risk, for which you won't be getting Apple's help if anything goes wrong.
Jailbreaking your iPhones also opens up your device to iOS malware such as KeyRaider and YiSpector that specifically targeted iOS users with jailbroken devices.
So, how are you feeling right now about the new jailbreaking? Let us know in the comments below.
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Story highlightsThe lashings are scheduled to be doled out 50 at a time, for 20 weeksWatchdog: Whipping man for sharing ideas sends "ugly message of intolerance"Raif Badawi has been in prison since 2012, charged with insulting Islam (CNN)Saudi Arabia's Supreme Court upheld a sentence of 10 years imprisonment and 1,000 lashes for blogger Raif Badawi, his sister, Samar Badawi, said Monday.Badawi's sister went to the Jeddah court Monday to follow up on a local media report that an appeal was denied. There, she received confirmation from the court that the sentence was upheld. Badawi who has been imprisoned since 2012, was charged with violating Saudi Arabia's information technology law and insulting Islam through his website "Saudi Arabian Liberals." The lashings are to be carried out 50 lashes at a time, 20 weeks in a row. Badawi endured the first 50 of the 1,000 lashes stoically in January, arching his back in pain. The flogging provoked an outcry from human rights groups and U.S. officials."Publicly lashing a peaceful activist merely for expressing his ideas sends an ugly message of intolerance," Human Rights Watch said at the time.Read MoreAnd Said Boumedouha, Amnesty International's deputy director for the Middle East, called for Badawi's immediate release.JUST WATCHEDSaudi Blogger becomes a human rights icon ReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHSaudi Blogger becomes a human rights icon 06:11"Raif Badawi is a prisoner of conscience; his only 'crime' was to exercise his right to freedom of expression by setting up a website for public discussion," Boumedouha said in a statement.In a statement posted on the Amnesty website, Badawi's wife, Ensaf Haidar, called for the sentence to be lifted."Raif told me he is in a lot of pain," Haidar said. "He said that when he was being flogged he took the pain silently and rose above it, so that history will know that he did not react to their punishment. His health is poor and he cannot take another round of lashes."U.S. officials have called on Saudi officials to withdraw the sentence and review Badawi's case.On his "Saudi Arabian Liberals" site, Badawi, hosted political debates and advocated secularism, which he said "respects everyone and does not offend anyone."Amnesty reported that eight days after the initial flogging, doctors determined that Badawi had not healed sufficiently to be flogged for the second time. The lashes have been postponed at least three times."A medical committee of around eight doctors carried out a series of tests on Raif on 21 January at a Jeddah hospital, and found that wounds sustained from the 50 lashes dealt to him by Saudi officials nearly a fortnight before hadn't healed enough for him to be lashed again without serious risk to Raif's health," the rights group said.CNN's Zahraa Alkhalisi and Eliott C. McLaughlin contributed to this report.
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Indian Security Researcher Jiten Jain from Xebia Architects today revealed that one of the Largest Private Banks in India, HDFC Bank's e-Banking website could be easy target of Unique type of Denial of Service Attack which could result in blocking of e-banking accounts of all its customers. Here is the detailed report of vulnerability submitted by him.
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The NetBanking service of HDFC Bank, Which is one of the largest and most reputed Banks in India, is completely vulnerable to ID theft, Targeted phishing and Mass Account Blockade. HDFC bank has implemented an extra security solution called 'Secure Access' on its website but instead it has given a hidden door to hackers to block all HDFC NetBanking accounts. 'Secure Access' is an additional layer of security implement on HDFC Bank website is essentially a solution protecting your account from hackers and fraudsters. Secure Access, an online security initiative is intended to make NetBanking transactions safer by protecting users from phishing websites and Hackers and help users authenticate original HDFC website. HDFC Bank's NetBanking login is now a two-step process with Secure Access image and text verification. Let us take you through the steps involved in Secure Access and how it intends to protect NetBanking account of HDFC customers.
Let us take you through the steps involved in Secure Access and how it intends to protect NetBanking account of HDFC customers.
1) In First Step User has to provide his customer-id (User Id) on the first screen
2) User is then taken to the next screen where he is shown his personalized picture and message and asked to enter his IPIN (password).
Demo presentation of secure access work can be seen on HDFC website at following URL https://www.hdfcbank.com/assets/demo/secure_access.swf Secure Access which is claimed to be Multi-layered Authentication Process mandatory requires HDFC NetBanking users to register for it if they want to conduct ANY Third Party Transactions like Transferring Money, booking movie tickers, recharging phone.
During the research on HDFC Mobile Banking application and NetBanking Portal it was discovered that while implementing Secure Access HDFC Bank has compromised on the first and foremost principle of user authentication on any Banking website i.e. Never reveal whether its User Name or the password which is incorrect in case wrong combination is entered.
Since Secure access implementation requires user to only enter his Customer ID (The fixed user name in case of HDFC bank NetBanking users. The system then checks at the backend if the user is registered for Secure Access or NetBanking, if user is not a registered or valid user, Customer id is asked again. But in case if the customer id is found to be correct and registered, User is taken to second step and shown his secure access image and text he selected and asked to enter is password.
1.) 1 Now this 1st step of verifying customer id and showing personalized secure access image and text has made HDFC Bank vulnerable to Blind customer id collection. We exploited this vulnerability by running an automated suite with by generating random customer ids in a sequence (example from 434XXXX to 515XXXXXX) and logged on HDFC NetBanking website using them. The customer ids which showed secure access and image and text were noted and rest was discarded. The secure Access images and text which was shown for valid customer ids were also saved. Now by the process above we were able to achieve 3 things. It was shocking to see that secure text was displayed as simple text and not a text image.
By this automated first step of Login, we were able to create a Database of several customer Ids of HDFC NetBanking users. We could have made a complete database of every NetBanking users but since this trial was conducted with a motive of checking security on banking site, only a sample data was collected. We decided to destroy this data later after completing this Demonstration.
HDFC Phishing Mobile App using our database of secure Access images and Text
Customer Id, Personalized Image and Text of Customer in above Screenshots has been hidden for security
2) We then setup a phishing portal for HDFC Net banking and created a fake HDFC NetBanking Mobile app and tried it on some people. In our fake HDFC mobile application and phishing portal we were able to replicate exactly same Secure Access behavior like on original HDFC website using the database of Customer IDs of NetBanking users and their secure Access image and text we had created earlier. Since our site was showing the same secure Access images and text on entering customer ids we used their security feature to provide more authentic look to our phishing website and Mobile application. The Situation was worse for fake mobile app since Mobile users could not even see the URL, setting aside any chance of doubt in mind of user. Several users trusted our phishing site and mobile app and tried to log in with their passwords.
3) Now in a third Killing step we launched denial of service attack on website the by blocking some user accounts. Since Secure Access authentication vulnerability has helped us create the database of customer ids of HDFC NetBanking users we launched another program which simple went on HDFC NetBanking website and provided customer id from our database on HDFC NetBanking login page.
As we were providing valid Customer Id's, when asked for IPIN/Password we entered it incorrectly 5 times which resulted in those customers being blocked from NetBanking. We used chain proxy to bypass time and Sequence checks but were surprised to find out that HDFC site had NONE and we were able to easily block several user accounts.
Since we were guided by ideology of ethical hacking we conducted above research on a sample data But This flaw in authentication can be easily used by anyone to generate a Database of Customer Ids of HDFC NetBanking Users and completely Block all NetBanking accounts of all HDFC NetBanking users. The same may be the used by the miscreants or competitors of HDFC bank to hold literally entire NetBanking service of HDFC bank for ransom by repeatedly blocking accounts even if they are enabled again. This vulnerability also raises a big question, Are We forgetting basic principles of Security in race of trying security solution?
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While Speaking to "The Hacker News" ,Mr. Jiten disclosed that had shared the above vulnerability report with the HDFC Bank in February itself to provide them ample time to fix the above vulnerability. The report about lacking security on HDFC online banking website is another blow to HDFC Bank which is already facing flak for its shady deals and is currently under a Black Money investigation by Indian Government.
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Sudoku is one such game that I believe will benefit your brain, but now not for your system. Peter Szabo from SophosLabs have identified a piece of malware that resides behind a Microsoft Excel-based Sudoku generator.
The Malware developed in Visual Basic requires macros, a scripting language that allows users to create equations based on values in different columns and rows.
Microsoft disable macros by default , because in past macros were the weapon of choice for cyber criminals . But in order for the generator to work, the user must activate macros. Unfortunately, while the user is enjoying the Sudoku, the macro is installing malware in the targeted machine.
Keyboard and mouse macros allow sequences of keystrokes and mouse actions to be transformed into shorter commands and also it can easily gathers system information by using the ipconfig, systeminfo like commands.
Once the bug has collected a machine's IP address, running processes, installed applications and a host of other details, it encodes and sends the information to an email address with an aol.com suffix.
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(CNN)The investigation of the murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till, barbarous even in an era in which blacks in the South were subjected to untold viciousness, has been reopened based on "new information," according to a US Justice Department report to Congress. The 1955 slaying was listed in a March report among "activities" the department was pursuing under the 2007 unsolved civil rights crime act that bears Emmett's name. The act paves the way for the department to "expeditiously investigate" unsolved pre-1980 civil rights murders. An undated photo of Emmett Louis Till, who was savagely killed in Mississippi at age 14."Several interested parties" asked the Justice Department in 2004 whether any surviving suspects could be prosecuted. After reviewing available information, the department determined that the statute of limitations prevented any federal prosecution, according to the report. Three years later, a Mississippi grand jury declined to issue new charges. "The Till case has been reopened by DOJ based upon the discovery of new information," the department said in March. It did not elaborate. The department declined to comment on the matter.The murder and acquittalRead MoreKnown as "Bobo" to those who loved him, Emmett's savage murder jolted a nation, spurring it to action on civil rights. Gruesome photos of the boy's mutilated body spread across the globe, lending jarring visuals to the stories of violence and discrimination coming out of the South.Hundreds gather outside a Chicago church as pallbearers carry the casket of Emmett Till. Ninety-five days after the attack, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Emmett's crime? He had been accused -- we now know, falsely -- of flirting with and making advances at then-21-year-old Carolyn Bryant, who, along with her husband, Roy, owned a grocery store in Money, Mississippi. Emmett had traveled there from Chicago to visit his great-uncle, who lived in the area. Four days later, on August 28, 1955, Roy Bryant and his half-brother, J.W. Milam, rousted Emmett from his bed in the middle of the night, ordered him into the bed of a pickup and eventually beat him viciously before shooting him in the head. His murderers then strapped a 75-pound cotton gin fan to his neck with barbed wire so it would weigh him down when they tossed him in the Tallahatchie River.Not a month after the boy's body was pulled from the river, an all-white jury acquitted Bryant and Milam of Emmett's murder, despite eyewitnesses identifying the defendants and the men confessing to kidnapping the teen. Testifying for the defense, Carolyn Bryant offered incendiary testimony accusing Emmett of grabbing and verbally threatening her. Deliberations took barely an hour, with one juror claiming the acquittal could've come sooner had they not stopped to have a soda. In closing arguments, the defense team appealed to jurors' heritage, saying their ancestors would turn in their graves if they didn't free these fine, white men. Weeks later, a grand jury would decline to indict Bryant and Milam on kidnapping charges. The confessionBryant and Milam told a reporter the following year how they killed Emmett and dumped his body in the Tallahatchie, but because of double jeopardy laws, they couldn't be tried again. In this September 1955 photo, J.W. Milam, left, and Roy Bryant, right, sit with their wives, Juanita and Carolyn, in a Sumner, Mississippi, courtroom.In a January 1956 Look magazine article, titled, "The shocking story of approved killing in Mississippi," Bryant and Milam said they went looking for the "Chicago boy" with the initial intent of scaring him and putting him in his place. But Emmett didn't scare. He was unflappable; he wouldn't even "holler" when they pistol-whipped him -- and that just couldn't stand, Milam said, according to a copy of the article archived by PBS. At one point, the men recalled, Emmett told them, "You bastards, I'm not afraid of you. I'm as good as you are. I've 'had' white women. My grandmother was a white woman."Milam said Emmett's insolence in the face of their attempts to frighten him left them with no choice, the magazine reported:"Well, what else could we do? He was hopeless. I'm no bully; I never hurt a n***** in my life. I like n*****s -- in their place -- I know how to work 'em. But I just decided it was time a few people got put on notice. As long as I live and can do anything about it, n*****s are gonna stay in their place. N*****s ain't gonna vote where I live. If they did, they'd control the government. They ain't gonna go to school with my kids. And when a n***** gets close to mentioning sex with a white woman, he's tired o' livin'. I'm likely to kill him. Me and my folks fought for this country, and we got some rights. I stood there in that shed and listened to that n***** throw that poison at me, and I just made up my mind. 'Chicago boy,' I said, 'I'm tired of 'em sending your kind down here to stir up trouble. Goddam you, I'm going to make an example of you -- just so everybody can know how me and my folks stand.'"Bryant and Milam took Emmett out to the river bank and made him strip, and his final moments went like this, according to the magazine:"Milam: 'You still as good as I am?'"Bobo: 'Yeah.'"Milam: 'You still "had" white women?'"Bobo: 'Yeah.'"That big .45 jumped in Big Milam's hand. The youth turned to catch that big, expanding bullet at his right ear. He dropped."Open casketEmmett's mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, was horrified to see the state of her son's body when it was returned to her. Against advice, she demanded that his funeral be open casket. She wanted "all the world" to see what she saw, how her boy had been maimed beyond recognition. Tens of thousands witnessed his injuries over four days, and Jet magazine published images of Emmett's swollen and disfigured face for the world to see. His mother had forbidden the mortician from any attempts to touch up his injuries. Mamie Till-Mobley weeps at her son's funeral on September 6, 1955, in Chicago.Milam died in 1980. Roy Bryant died in 1994. Emmett's death remains a symbol of "enduring American injustice" to this day, said Duke University scholar Timothy Tyson, author of "The Blood of Emmett Till." The book included the bombshell admission from Carolyn Bryant -- by then, Carolyn Bryant Donham -- that she made up the damning allegations of Emmett's verbal and physical advances.In a news conference Thursday, Tyson said he spoke to Carolyn Bryant twice in 2008 at the invitation of her family. They didn't want her to die without saying a word about it, and she seemed to be in a "sorrowful state of mind" about what happened to Emmett, he said.Tyson surmised that the newly discovered evidence cited by DOJ could be her admission. But it was hardly new, he said. He handed over records of the interview as well as other research for his book to the FBI in 2017, after his book published.Even so, her admission "wasn't the morning news to me," Tyson said. "I think everybody's known that since 1955. Nobody thought she was telling the truth to begin with and they didn't choose to prosecute her then."Besides, more damning evidence was obtained by the FBI before then, including an interview with one of Emmett's killers, he said. He suggested that the timing of the announcement had more to do with creating a distraction from controversy over the Trump administration's policies related to immigration and other civil rights issues. And with the main perpetrators dead, no one living will have to suffer consequences, he said."It makes a good announcement and yet there's no one to prosecute," he said. "This is a low-cost thing and they're in desperate need of political cover for their essentially neo-Confederate race politics."Who could face consequences?Priscilla Sterling, a cousin of Emmett and founder of the Emmett Till Justice for Families Foundation, said she did not find out that the case had been reopened until Thursday, when friends and relatives called her. They had the same question: Would Carolyn Bryant be prosecuted for lying?Sterling said she hopes so, or at least that she faces obstruction of justice charges, she said. The Till family has been calling for charges against Carolyn Bryant since Tyson's book came out. Since then, Sterling said she has been "harassed and stalked by white supremacists." And while she's happy to hear the case is under review again, she's worried about further harassment."I'm glad it's being talked about and discussed, with the division this country is experiencing and white supremacist guys thinking they can do everything. If this case is talked about and discussed maybe they will be stopped." Another cousin, Wheeler Parker, said he hopes Emmett's name can be cleared soon and prove that "he didn't die in vain."Correction: Earlier versions of this story mistakenly indicated Carolyn Bryant has died.CNN's Laura Jarrett, Kaylee Hartung and Michelle Krupa contributed to this report.
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Today Vodafone Iceland was hacked by the Turkish group of hackers Maxn3y (@AgentCoOfficial) who in the past has stolen data from airports' systems, electronic giants and fast food company.
The hackers announced via Twitter that he has successfully compromised Vodafone Iceland server and defaced the official website (Vodafone.is), including various other sub-domains including the company mobile site.
The hackers disclosed a compressed 61.7MB rar file which is locked with password TURKISH and that contains a collection of files including one titled users.sql that appears to contain the 77,000 user accounts.
The file includes user names, social security numbers, encrypted passwords as many other encrypted information. The portal CyberWarNews posted the list of files disclosed and provided information on their content.
Following the complete list of files leaked:
v2.sql
Multimedia database, nothing critical, 400K of user tracking and logging with user agents, refers etc.
greind.sql
Sms history with what appears to be full text messages to a from numbers with timestamps, all dated 2011-08-19
SMS logger sender id, sms id, user IP, date.
900k rows of user contact details related to an SMS plan.
users.sql
User names, ids, encrypted passwords, email addresses, social security numbers, dates, bank details (alot is incomplete)
77,25
sso_vodafone.sql
Account manager's details
Full names, phone numbers, email addresses.
sms_history.sql and signup.sql explained above.
XLS files
6stodvar_signup.xls
kennitala (social security numbers), dates, ticket numbers, campaign ids(unknown campaign), email addresses
Count: 23,494
100mb_pakkar.xls
id, code(unknown), msisdn, sms, timestamp(ts)
Count: 1001
aukalykill_signup.xls
Id, full name (nafn), kennitala (SSN), pnr, confirmed, date, ticket, email, senda, receiver.
Count: 4305
env_users.xls
Id, IP addresses, user name, encrypted passwords, email addresses, first name, last name, phone, fax, Reg date, last active, user level, notes
Count: 334
ev_users.xls
Id, school. login. Clear text passwords, names, isadmin, active
Count: 18
gagnamaga_account.xls
Id, timestamp, IP, session id, social security numbers, email addresses
Count: 1491
registeration.xls
Id, phone, social security numbers, email addresses, ticket id, registration status, date, IP
Count: 1247
ris_site_users.xls
User names, clear text passwords, names, email addresses and permissions
Count: 12
shop_order.xls
cart_id, names, social security numbers, postal codes, email addresses, credit card names, nulled credit card numbers and dates, sale amounts.
Count: 3086
signup_buika.xls
Real name, email addresses, company's, chairman name.
Count: 31
survey_registration.xls
Id, content, date, email addresses
Count: 1929
um_clients.xls
usernames, clear text passwords, active, company's, full addresses, contact numbers, websites, nulled locations.
Count: 767
vodafonecup2010
User names, 5x full names, phone numbers, social security numbers
Count: 71
ris_world_zones.xls
Names, partner countries, to Iceland (nothing important)
Count: 10
shop_cart.xls
Session id and details encrypted, (nothing important)
Count: 49, 468
shop_cart_items.xls
File name says all, nothing of importance here.
shop_cart_plan
File name says all, nothing of importance here.
Vodafone Iceland website was rapidly restored, but at the time I'm writing it is not reachable.
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A critical remote code execution vulnerability has been discovered in the popular open-source Exim email server software, leaving at least over half a million email servers vulnerable to remote hackers.
Exim maintainers today released Exim version 4.92.2 after publishing an early warning two days ago, giving system administrators a heads-up on its upcoming security patches that affect all versions of the email server software up to and including then-latest 4.92.1.
Exim is a widely used, open source mail transfer agent (MTA) software developed for Unix-like operating systems such as Linux, Mac OSX or Solaris, which runs almost 60% of the internet's email servers today for routing, delivering and receiving email messages.
Tracked as CVE-2019-15846, the security vulnerability only affects Exim servers that accept TLS connections, potentially allowing attackers to gain root-level access to the system "by sending an SNI ending in a backslash-null sequence during the initial TLS handshake."
SNI, stands for Server Name Indication, is an extension of the TLS protocol that allows the server to safely host multiple TLS certificates for multiple sites, all under a single IP address.
According to the Exim team, since the vulnerability doesn't depend on the TLS library being used by the server, both GnuTLS and OpenSSL are affected.
Moreover, though the default configuration of the Exim mail server software doesn't come with TLS enabled, some operating systems bundled the Exim software with the vulnerable feature enabled by default.
The vulnerability was discovered by an open source contributor and security researcher who goes by the online alias Zerons and analyzed by cybersecurity experts at Qualys.
Just three months ago, Exim also patched a severe remote command execution vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2019-10149, that was actively exploited in the wild by various groups of hackers to compromise vulnerable servers.
The Exim advisory says that a rudimentary proof of concept (PoC) exists for this flaw, but currently there is no known exploit available to the public.
Server administrators are highly recommended to install the latest Exim 4.92.2 version immediately, and if not possible, can mitigate the issue by not allowing unpatched Exim servers to accept TLS connections.
The team says, "If you can't install the above versions, ask your package maintainer for a version containing the backported fix. On request and depending on our resources we will support you in backporting the fix."
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(CNN)The House passed two measures Tuesday aimed at sending a strong message to the Turkish government amid deteriorating relations between American lawmakers and the country.The House of Representatives first voted on a bipartisan basis Tuesday evening to approve a resolution that would "commemorate the Armenian Genocide through official recognition and remembrance" of "the killing of 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1923." 8 things to know about the mass killings of Armenians 100 years agoThe designation as a genocide by the US House of Representatives is a significant political development as Turkey maintains to this day the killings did not constitute genocide and disputes the death toll, putting the figure closer to 300,000.The House-passed resolution has existed in various forms for decades, but congressional leaders from both parties had avoided taking action on it because of Turkey's strategic importance to American interests in the Middle East and its membership in NATO. The resolution, spearheaded by California Democrat Adam Schiff, passed 405-11. As a standalone House resolution, it does not need approval from the White House.Read More"Too often, tragically, the truth of this staggering crime has been denied," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. "Today, let us clearly state the facts on the floor of this House to be etched forever in the congressional record: The barbarism committed against the Armenian people was a genocide.""It is a great mistake that we have not passed this long before this," House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told reporters ahead of the vote. Turkey summoned US Ambassador David Satterfield after the measure was passed, according to the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In a statement issued Wednesday, the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the bill, saying the recognition "lacks historical and legal basis and issued for domestic consumption" and is "null and void in the eyes of Turkish people."Lawmakers on Tuesday night also approved a firm sanctions bill to punish Turkey for its military offensive against Kurdish forces in northern Syria."It's important for us to make sure that we're sending a very clear signal, both with the sanctions resolution and in the genocide resolution, that we do not support what the Turks have done and that they need to withdraw," Rep. Liz Cheney, the hawkish Wyoming Republican who chairs the House GOP conference, said before the vote.The sanctions bill, introduced by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel alongside GOP Rep. Michael McCaul, passed on a vote of 403-16. It would punish senior Turkish officials involved in the decision to launch an offensive against Kurdish forces in northern Syria and those committing human rights abuses, block the sale of arms to Turkey for use in Syria, and require a series of reports to examine the consequences of the Turkish offensive in Syria.Engel's proposal goes well beyond the administration's response to Turkey's actions — Trump placed limited sanctions on Turkey a few days after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan began the offensive, but lifted them after claiming that Turkey had agreed to a ceasefire. "The United States needs to make sure that Turkish President Erdogan faces consequences for his behavior, because President Trump has failed to demonstrate American leadership in this regard," Engel said on the House floor. "It's now on Congress to step up and impose consequences on Turkey."Despite its bipartisan support, the sanctions bill is unlikely to advance in the Republican-held Senate. Competing sanctions proposals regarding Turkey already exist in the Senate, but there has been little movement on the issue in recent days, and it is not clear that Republican leaders plan to bring such a response to the floor.Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has cautioned against "developing a reflex to use sanctions as our tool of first, last, and only resort in implementing foreign policy." He said last week that sanctions could play an important role in responding to Turkey, but "we need to think extremely carefully before we employ the same tools against a democratic NATO ally that we would against the worst rogue states."Fahrettin Altun, a spokesman for Erdogan, said on Twitter, "The U.S. House of Representatives vote on the Armenian Resolution is deeply troublesome for anyone who cares about the US-Turkey relationship." He also called the sanctions bill a "direct contradiction to the spirit of strategic alliance."Senators from both parties will receive a briefing from Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, as well as other officials, on the situation in Syria on Wednesday afternoon.CNN's Ted Barrett and Isil Sariyuce contributed to this report.
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(CNN)The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 vote, late Wednesday denied a request from Texas abortion providers to block a new state law that bans most abortions after six weeks.Read the order and dissents below:
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Apple introduces a new privacy feature for all new MacBooks that "at some extent" will prevent hackers and malicious applications from eavesdropping on your conversations.
Apple's custom T2 security chip in the latest MacBooks includes a new hardware feature that physically disconnects the MacBook's built-in microphone whenever the user closes the lid, the company revealed yesterday at its event at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York.
Though the new T2 chip is already present in the 2018 MacBook Pro models launched earlier this year, this new feature got unveiled when Apple launched the new Retina MacBook Air and published a full security guide for T2 Chip yesterday.
"This disconnect is implemented in hardware alone, and therefore prevents any software, even with root or kernel privileges in macOS, and even the software on the T2 chip, from engaging the microphone when the lid is closed," Apple explained in the guide [PDF].
The tech giant further added that "the camera is not disconnected in hardware because its field of view is completely obstructed with the lid closed."
Is It Helpful? Not Much
This feature is excellent as it makes impossible for malware to access your built-in microphone when the lid is closed, but honestly, it doesn't help when you are most vulnerable, i.e. while working.
Mac users will be still prone to malware, like the infamous FruitFly malware, that can secretly turn on your MacBook camera and microphone to record video and audio when your laptop lid is not closed.
In my opinion, such physical hardware disconnect feature would be more helpful if manufacturers could offer a manual switch using which users can turn on or off their device's microphone or camera, whenever required.
More About Apple T2 Security Chip
Anyway, besides this, Apple's T2 chip also offers other security features that are impressive like including the Secure Enclave coprocessor that protects your MacBook's encryption keys, fingerprint data, and secure boot features.
Along with the security and convenience of Touch ID, MacBooks with the T2 chip provide "a level of privacy and security protections never before seen on Mac," according to Apple.
The T2 chip offers some non-security features as well, like an image signal processor that enables enhanced tone mapping, controls the ambient sensor, the system management controller (SMC), white balancing to the FaceTime HD camera, Apple video encoder, audio controller, and enables "Hey Siri."
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Hey Android users! I am quite sure that you must be syncing your Smartphone with your PCs for transferring files and generating backup of your device.
If your system is running a windows operating system, then it's a bad news for you. Researchers have discovered a new piece of windows malware that attempts to install mobile banking malware on Android devices while syncing.
Last year in the month of February, Kaspersky Lab revealed an Android malware that could infect your computer when connected to Smartphone or tablets.
Recently, Researchers at Symantec antivirus firm discovered another interesting windows malware called 'Trojan.Droidpak', that drops a malicious DLL in the computer system and then downloads a configuration file from the following remote server:
https://xia2.dy[REMOVED]s-web.com/iconfig.txt
The Windows Trojan then parses this configuration file and download a malicious APK (an Android application) from the following location on the infected computer.
%Windir%\CrainingApkConfig\AV-cdk.apk
To communicate with the mobile device a command line tool Android Debug Bridge (ADB) is required, that allows the malware to execute commands on Android devices connected to the infected computer. ADB is a legitimate tool and part of the official Android software development kit (SDK).
In the next step, the trojan downloads all the necessary tools including Android Debug Bridge and the moment you connect an android device having USB debugging Mode enabled, it initiates the installation process and repeats it until it ensure that the connected device has been infected and install an app that will appear as a fake Google App Store.
Such Windows Malware is first of its own kind, since attackers prefer to use the social engineering techniques to spread their fake malicious apps hosted on third-party app stores. The installed malware dubbed as "Android.Fakebank.B", able to intercept victim's SMS messages and then send them to the attacker's server located at:
https://www.slmoney.co.kr[REMOVED]
Anyway Relax, if you are not a Korean citizen, because the malicious APK actually looks for certain Korean online banking applications on the compromised device.
If you want to protect your Mobile and system from such Malware attack, Please consider a few points while connecting to a windows based computer:
Turn off USB debugging on your Android device, when you are not using it
Avoid connecting your droid with public computers
Only Install reputable security software
Keep your System, Softwares and Antivirus up-to-date.
Stay Safe!
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Story highlightsCagliari striker, 18, makes historyScores against TorinoIs Serie A's first North Korean goalscorer (CNN)Cagliari striker Han Kwang-Song made history Sunday, becoming the first North Korean player to score in Italy's Serie A, just a week on from his professional debut. Follow @cnnsport
Han, a native of North Korea's capital Pyongyang, had only eight minutes of regulation time remaining when Cagliari coach Massimo Rastelli sent him into the fray during Sunday's 3-2 defeat by Torino. But that didn't stop him beating England goalkeeper Joe Hart in the fifth minute of injury time, powering home a deft header and wheeling away in celebration."I am very happy with my first Serie A goal," Han enthused, revealing his footballing hero is Cristiano Ronaldo."I thank the team, the manager and my teammates. I feel at home in Cagliari."Read MoreREAD: Ronaldo airport bust draws mirthREAD: North Korea at the 2010 World CupREAD: Why was Prince Albert Monaco's secret weapon?UFFICIALE: Kwang Song #Han firma per il @CagliariCalcio 🔴🔵 https://t.co/09hICUu1h2 pic.twitter.com/yUEUo7tUlY— Cagliari Calcio (@CagliariCalcio) March 10, 2017
The 18-year-old only made his Serie A debut for the Sardinian club on April 2 -- becoming the division's first ever North Korean player when he replaced Marco Sau in the dying embers of the match.He now has a goal to his name for Cagliari despite playing fewer than 20 minutes of top-flight football.Introducing today's top five articles is a Serie A history maker:18-year-old Kwang-Song Han.🇰🇵 pic.twitter.com/2Z8IX7MJ9D— Squawka Football (@Squawka) April 9, 2017
'Eye for goal'Han's rise has been swift, but that's not to say he hasn't always shown considerable promise. After captaining North Korea to glory at the Under-16 Asian Championship in 2014 -- finishing second top scorer to Barcelona's South Korean prodigy Lee Seung-woo -- Han also shone at the FIFA Under-17 World Cup, helping his country reach the round of 16 against the odds. Those performances caught the attentions of European clubs and earned him a trial at Cagliari, over 9,000 kilometers (5,600 miles) from home. There, playing for the Italian club's Under-19 squad in March, he impressed immediately at the Torneo di Viareggio, an annual youth tournament held in Tuscany.Cagliari didn't waste any time putting a deal on the table, describing Han -- the first Asian in the club's 96-year history -- as "a versatile striker with good dribbling, vision and an eye for goal."North Koreans abroadHan may be hitting the headlines but he isn't the first North Korean footballer to appear in European football.Japanese-born North Korean Jong Tae-Se -- famed for breaking down in tears during the national anthems ahead of North Korea's match against Brazil at the 2010 World Cup -- later appeared for VFL Bochum and FC Köln in Germany. A North Korean has also played in the UEFA Champions League, with Pak Kwang-Ryong, 24, coming on for FC Basel against Romanian side FC Oțelul Galați in 2011 before appearing in the 3-3 draw against Manchester United at Old Trafford. Arguably Han has some way to go before he emulates the most famous North Korean player in Italian football historyPak Doo-Ik, now 73, scored the goal that eliminated the Azzurri at the 1966 World Cup, sending his country into the quarterfinals for the first time ever.In one of football's great upsets, North Korea beat Italy in the 1966 World Cup.To recognize his services, Pak was the first person to bear the Olympic torch as it passed through Pyongyang ahead of the Beijing 2008 Games.
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Albertson's and SuperValu - Two nation's most popular supermarket store chains announced last weekend that a data breach may have revealed the credit and debit card information of their customers at a number of grocery store locations in more than 18 states.
Minnesota-based Supervalu announced that an unknown number of its customers who used their payment cards in around 180 stores between June 22 and July 17 may have had payment card data compromised by attackers who gained access to the Supervalu computer network that processes card transactions.
The affected information may includes names, payment card numbers, expiration dates, and other numerical information from cards used at POS devices.
"The Company has not determined that any such cardholder data was in fact stolen by the intruder, and it has no evidence of any misuse of any such data, but is making this announcement out of an abundance of caution," SuperValu said in a statement.
The massive data breach impacted Supervalu's other brands operating under the names Cub Foods, Farm Fresh, Hornbacher's, Shop 'n Save, and Shoppers Food and Pharmacy in various parts of the country, including several in Minnesota, Virginia, Illinois, Missouri, Maryland and North Carolina.
In addition to Supervalu, the breach also hit the Albertsons, Acme Markets, Jewel-Osco, Shaw's and Star Markets brands in about 24 states.
AB Acquisition LLC – the parent company of Albertsons, ACME Markets, Jewel-Osco, and Shaw's and Star Market – announced a similar breach on Thursday that, according to company, occurred between the same timeframe.
The company has notified the appropriate law enforcement agencies and is working with Supervalu, who it identifies as "its third party IT services provider," to investigate the data breach.
"Third-party data forensics experts are supporting an ongoing investigation. AB Acquisition has not determined that any cardholder data was in fact stolen, and currently it has no evidence of any misuse of any such data," AB Acquisition LLC said in a statement.
According to AB Acquisition LLC, Albertsons stores in Southern California, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Wyoming and Southern Utah were impacted by this data breach. However, stores in Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Louisiana, New Mexico, Texas and our two Super Saver Foods Stores in Northern Utah were not affected.
Moreover, ACME Markets in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware and New Jersey; Jewel-Osco stores in Iowa, Illinois and Indiana; and Shaw's and Star Markets stores in Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and Rhode Island were all affected by this incident.
The companies did not revealed how the card data were stolen, but given the recent outbreak of point-of-sale (POS) hacks at the third-largest U.S. Retailer Target and other major retailers such as Neiman Marcus, Michaels Store, the POS systems would be a likely attack vector.
Still, it is unclear exactly how many number of payment cards were impacted in the data breaches, but both companies are taking necessary steps to notify the affected customers, as well as offering them one year of free credit monitoring services, as of the data breach standard.
SuperValu said in a statement that the company "took immediate steps to secure the affected part of its network. Supervalu believes the intrusion has been contained and is confident that its customers can safely use their credit and debit cards in its stores."
Both companies say they have no evidence that stolen payment card information is being misused at this time, but if the data was indeed stolen, it likely would turn up on underground markets for sale.
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