What Risk We are Posing! Everyone Can Become Target of the Latest Cyber Security Threats

What Risk We are Posing! Everyone Can Become a Target of the Latest Cyber Security Threats

According to a report by the Washington Post, hackers may soon be setting up a plan to unfold in 2013 that will target 30 different U.S. banking institutions. McAfee Labs, who has compiled a new cyber security report, says that banks should be on the lookout for software that creates false online transactions or targets transfers tied to large dollar amounts.

Sources say that these threats can all be tied back to “Project Blitzkrieg”, which is a program that has been around since 2008. Within the past four years, it has already stolen $5 million and plans to continue for as long as possible. During the past few months, between 300 and 500 victims located within the U.S. have fallen victim to Project Blitzkrieg’s schemes. By the spring of 2013, McAfee says that things could get even worse for U.S. banks and their customers.

Experts note that this scheme may be tied to reports from back in October by security company RSA that mentioned how a hacker out of Russia named “vorVzakone” has been openly discussing his plan to recruit a team to plan the largest Trojan attack tied to banking. McAfee warns that these threats should be taken extremely seriously as the beginning of 2013 is soon to unfold. The software can become extremely dangerous to those doing their banking online because it can replicate transactions and even delete e-mail notifications about certain transfers.

While U.S. banks will no doubt be increasing their security protocols to protect themselves from any unnecessary attacks, most already know that they are continually being cited as targets from hacking groups around the globe. Back in September, both JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America saw their sites crash because of DDoS attacks.

Samsung Smart TV Dangers

The Register has recently reported that Samsung’s newest Smart TV is completely open and vulnerable to hacking because it gives hackers the ability to steal data very quickly. According to security company ReVuln, this vulnerability most notably affects consumers who own and use their Samsung 3D TVs for internet purposes.

Those who use their Smart TVs can rent movies, browse the web for a cheap line rental, go on Facebook, and more. ReVuln claims that they have found an exploit which allows hackers to see everything the user is doing while they are using their TV, retrieve and access information like web history, and hook up an external thumb drive to the TV to conveniently steal all of this information for future use. While ReVuln noticed this exploit while using a Samsung 3D TV, the true problem is that it seems to affect all of the latest Samsung TVs with internet capabilities, which includes many different makes and models.

As these TVs continue to act more as larger PCs, it is only a matter of time until we see even more security vulnerabilities tied to them in the very near future.

Gas Station Bluetooth Skimming

News site KRCA out of Sacramento notes that crooks are using Bluetooth devices in order to steal credit card information from those who are paying for gas at the pump. The biggest issue the cyber security experts noticed is that these thieves do not even have to be near the gas station in order to steal information.

Crooks are using skimming devices that utilize Bluetooth and contain a variety of common security keys that can be used to access gas pumps for maintenance. They don’t simply pull out their device and begin swiping information for oblivious consumers. Thieves will start by installing skimmers on the pumps to collect information from those pumping gas and then pick them back up. Detectives say that these types of devices are impossible to detect.

According to experts, thieves can be up to 100 yards away and continually collect credit card information from unsuspecting users. Because of this, these crooks are impossible to detect, and the problem may only grow larger in the near future.

Troublesome QR Codes

QR codes seem to be everywhere these days. They’re typically on everything from advertisements to products that we purchase on a daily basis. In the Netherlands, hackers are posting QR codes in heavily trafficked areas like airports and major streets. When these QR codes are scanned in by a user’s smart phone, they are taken to a malicious website that may attempt to phish information from the user or possibly infect their smartphone with malware.

Disclaimer:- Before perfection, on behalf of Team VOGH, I would like to personally thank Eve Halton  for sharing this magnificent article with our readers. Eve is a very much passionate Fleet Street, she  has done her graduation in International Business and Journalism. She gained decent experience in writing articles on several fields like global politics, economics, sustainability issues, cyber security & many more.

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BBC Server Compromised! Russian Hackers Broke Into FTP & Tried to Sell Unauthorized Access

BBC Server Compromised! Russian Hackers Hacked Into FTP & Tried to Sell Unauthorized Access on The X-Mass Evening 

Earlier we have seen world renowned media houses like CNN, NBC, Fox News, Washington Post, NY Times, NDTV and so on have fallen victim to hackers and cyber criminals. Now it was the turn for world’s largest and oldest broadcaster -British Broadcasting Corporation, widely known to us as BBC. Sources revealed that cyber criminals have managed to breach the security system of BBC and secretly took over a computer server at the BBC and then launched a Christmas Day campaign to convince other cyber criminals to pay him for access to the system. The attack was first identified by a cyber security firm named Hold Security LLC, in Milwaukee that monitors underground cyber crime forums in search of stolen information. However, it is still not clear whether the hacker stole any information or data or caused any damage to the site. In conversation with press Alex Holden, founder and Chief Information Security Officer of Hold Security told -"So far Hold Security researchers have found no evidence the conversations led to a deal or that data was stolen from the BBC.” So far the identity of hacker has not been confirmed, but the firm researchers observed a notorious Russian hacker known by the monikers "HASH" and "Rev0lver," attempting to sell access to the BBC server on December 25. However, BBC's security team managed to secure the site on Saturday, claims a person close to clean up efforts. One of the BBC spokesman refused to comment on the issue, he said, “We do not comment on security issues.” On the other hand, Justin Clarke, a principal consultant for the cyber security firm Cylance, said that while "accessing that server establishes a foothold within BBC's network which may allow an attacker to pivot and gain further access to internal BBC resources.” So far Hold Security researchers have found no evidence the conversations led to a deal or that data was stolen from the BBC. But we all know that  ftp systems are typically used to manage the transfer of large data files over the Internet. That's why the chances of data breach cant not be denied at this time. For updates on this piece of news and other hot information of the cyber & tech world stay tuned with VOGH. 

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The Washington Post Server Breached! Chinese Hackers Apprehend For This Cyber Attack

The Washington Post Server Hacked! Suspected That Chinese Hackers Are Behind This Cyber Attack 

Last week the story of Chinese eavesdropping on European ministries and diplomats at G20 summit draws the attention of the entire cyber world and made headlines. Yet again another breathtaking issue came in-front where also China found responsible for security breach that effected The Washington Post - the most widely circulated newspaper published in Washington, D.C. Sources reveled that hackers broke into The Washington Post’s servers and gained access to employee user names and passwords. Mandiant, a cyber security contractor that monitors The Washington Post’s networks, said the intrusion was of relatively short duration. The extent of the loss of company data was not immediately clear, still the matter of relief is that the company passwords are stored in encrypted form, hackers in some cases have shown the ability to decode such information. although to avoid any further mishap Washington Post have planned to ask all employees to change their user names and passwords on the assumption that many or all of them may have been compromised. Officials at Washington Post said that they saw no evidence that subscriber information, such as credit cards or home addresses, was accessed by the hackers. Nor was there any sign that the hackers had gained access to The Post’s publishing system, e-mails or sensitive personal information of employees, such as their Social Security numbers. Post officials found that this hack is more-recent than the 2011 one. They also said, began with an intrusion into a server used by The Post’s foreign staff but eventually spread to other company servers before being discovered. “This is an ongoing investigation, but we believe it was a few days at most,” said Post spokeswoman Kris Coratti. 

China not only targeted Washington Post,  If you look at the story of major cyber attacks of this year we will find that the name of China has been involved several times for engaging cyber attacks against several high profile news organization of U.S. including New York Times, NBC and so on. So far Chinese Government have not responded to this issue, also none of Chinese hacker community take the responsibility of this breach. For upcoming updates on this story stay tuned with VOGH. 

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Chinese Hackers Eavesdropping European Diplomats Before G20 Summit

Researchers At FireEye Found -Chinese Hackers Snitching  Europeans Before G20 Summit 

Story of cyber espionage by Chinese hackers used to remain one of most highest pick of breakneck. Yet again another breathtaking issue of  eavesdropping by Chinese hackers get spot light, when  California-based renounced computer security firm FireEye Inc have figured out that a group of Chinese hackers eavesdropped on the computers of five European foreign ministries before last September's G20 Summit, which was dominated by the Syrian crisis. From the detailed analysis we came to know that the hackers have infiltrated the ministries' computer networks by sending emails to staff containing tainted files with titles such as "US_military_options_in_Syria," which sells virus fighting technology to companies. Whenever the targeted recipients opened those documents, they loaded malicious code on to their personal computers. Researchers of FireEye said that they were able to monitor the "inner workings" of the main computer server used by the hackers to conduct their reconnaissance and move across compromised systems for about a week in the late August. But suddenly they lost access to the hackers after they moved to another server shortly before the G20 Summit in St. Petersburg, Russia. 

Though the company has declined in open press to identify the nations whose ministries were hacked, although it said they were all members of the European Union. But FireEye informed the FBI about the whole issue in details. FireEye also confirmed that the hackers where from China, but they did not find evidence which may link those hackers to the Chinese government. Not surprisingly and obviously like earlier the Chinese government has distanced itself from any claim that it might have hacked foreign governments for data. FireEye also successfully monitor several dozen hacking groups operating in China, most of which they suspect of having ties to the government. The firms also suspect the hacking groups of stealing intellectual property for commercial gain. The researchers had been following the hackers behind the Syria-related attack for several years, but this is the first time the group's activities have been publicly documented. The company calls the group "Ke3chang," after the name of one of the files it uses in one of its pieces of malicious software. "The theme of the attacks was U.S. military intervention in Syria," said FireEye researcher Nart Villeneuv. 

On reaction Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said- "U.S. internet companies are keen on hyping up the so-called hacker threat from China, but they never obtain irrefutable proof, and what so-called evidence they do get is widely doubted by experts. This is neither professional nor responsible," 

While talking in this story of Chinese eavesdropping, I also want to dig some points from decent parts where we all became very habituated of seeing Europe & U.S. countries blaming China for engaging cyber attacks; and China also do the same for accusing U.S. like vice versa. I am reviving your memories of last few years where If you look at the story of major cyber attacks of this year we will find that the name of China has been involved several times for engaging cyber attacks against several high profile websites and organization of U.S. including New York Times, Twitter, NBC and so on. And if you refresh our memory then then we will find the scenario of big cyber attack and espionage by Chinese hackers have been spotted several times. In 2012 Chinese hackers had  breached Telvent's corporate network & gained control of US Power Grid. Also in the middle of last year, we have seen that Chinese hackers have broken into Indian Navy's Computer System & stolen sensitive data. Few months before this hack, Tokyo based computer security firm Trend Micro confirmed that Chinese hackers were responsible for biggest cyber-espionage in India, Japan & Tibet. Also the director of National Security Agency (NSA) General Keith Alexander confirmed that hackers from China was responsible for the serious attack on one of the leading IT security & cyber security company RSA. Also in 2011 China was responsible behind the attack on US Chamber of Commerce, Satellite System of U.S, Nortel Network & so on.  But few days ago National Computer Network Emergency Response Coordination Center of China (CNCERT/CC), China's primary computer security monitoring network claimed that China fallen victim of one of biggest cyber attacks originated from US, Japan & South Korea. We must have to say that this statement is truly irrelevant. Cyber crime investigator have found that China was directly responsible for the hack into Japan's Biggest Defense Contractor Mitsubishi, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) & Parliament of Japan. In case of South Korea  more than 13 Million of MapleStory players data has been stolen, there also hackers from China was responsible.  

Before I conclude, I request you to closely look at the above mentioned stories, you will find China majorly responsible for eavesdropping & security breach. On the same side China also been effected by the same way. So in conclusion, we cant put a full stop in this chain of cyber attacks, hacking & eavesdropping, as it comes from both end. So this exciting episode will be continued like it does. If you want to stay updated then don't forget to stay tuned with VOGH. 

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Security Breach Invaded 8,500 Recipients of Unemployment Insurance Agency Michigan (UIA)

Michigan Unemployment Insurance Agency (UIA) Hacked! 8,500 Recipients Personal Data Leaked

A major security breach has invaded Unemployment Insurance Agency of Michigan, widely known as UIA. Sources revealed that the attack was placed in between mid of July to mid of September which affected more than 8,500 unemployment insurance recipients in Michigan with leak of social security numbers, bank account numbers, passwords, phone numbers & few other sensitive data. This security breach was first detected Sept. 17 by contractor JP Morgan Chase. In his reaction the director of the Unemployment Insurance Agency, Shaun Thomas said -“The UIA is deeply concerned about this incident.” But due to some untold reason state official were not notified until this December first week. Dan Lohrmann, the state’s chief security officer in the Department of Technology, Management and Budget, said he has “worked closely with JP Morgan Chase to share our concern about the delayed notification and to ensure that the state receives immediate notice of future problems. “We work around the clock to keep citizen information and data protected, and I feel confident that everyone involved in this event understands the importance of protecting personal information.” Chase, which handles the debit cards Michigan uses to pay unemployment insurance benefits to some recipients, said those who accessed the bank’s website between mid-July and mid-September may have been affected. The 8,500 claimants in Michigan are among about 465,000 cardholders nationwide who may have been affected, the bank said. So far the identity of the hackers & their reasons behind this attack is not been identified, but Chase has notified law enforcement and both the bank and the state will be notifying claimants whose information was potentially compromised. 

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DY365 TV -Popular Satellite Channel of Assam, India Hacked

DY365 TV -Popular Satellite Channel of Assam, India Hacked By Dr41DeY (Nigerian Cyber Army )

Hacker going by the alias name of Dr41DeY, from a hackers community named Nigerian Cyber Army strikes again. After his much discussed hack of Pakistan People's Party (PPP), this time also he targeted what it called yet another high profile website of one of the leading 24-hour satellite channel of Assam, India named 'DY365 TV.' While talking with VOGH representative the hacker confirmed that, manipulating some untold vulnerability he managed to gain administrative access into the official website DY365 TV. But this time without tampering data, the hacker just left a message on the home page saying "Hacked By Dr41DeY @Nigerian Cyber Army." Like earlier this time also Dr41DeY created an image archive as a proof of this hack. This attack taken place on the 3rd of December, and after couple of hours of hack, DY365 authorities have responded to the incident and restored their site, and also sources confirmed that the security hole has also been patched. Though this popular Assamese broadcasting channel refuses to give any statement regarding this issue. 

Brief About DY365:- It is a 24-hour satellite channel of Assam, India. DY365 broadcasts news in Assamese, Hindi, Bengali and English language. It was launched on October 30, 2008. DY365 is a unit of Brahmaputra Tele Productions Pvt. Ltd. Manoj Kumar Goswami is the editor-in-chief of the channel. The channel gained popularity is a very short span of time, and now it's recognized as one of the leading channel of North East India. 

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Customs Services of Ukraine Govt Hacked By Anonymous, 1 GB of Classified Data Stolen

Customs Services of Ukraine Government Hacked By Anonymous, 1 GB of Classified Data Stolen

Anonymous -the world largest hacker community, also known as the infamous hacktivist who is widely known for engaging massive cyber attack against several governments strikes again. This time the target was Ukraine Government. According to multiple relevant sources of Anonymous it has been confirmed that the hackers have launched what it called an organised attack against different servers belongs to Ukrainian Government. During this round of cyber attack the main target was the Customs department of Ukraine. In their press release Anonymous took responsibility of performing onerous attack on CUSTOMS.GOV.UA, and caused what it called a voluminous data leak from it. This is the server that is responsible for the Odessa customs and handling of goods in the region of the Danube and Black Sea. From the press release we came to know that voluble of the stolen data is almost of 1GB, which is pointing a finger of sensational information of illegal operations of oil and gas, corruption schemes, bribes, cargo operations and so on. 

Most of the information is reported on the site, concerning the former head of the State Customs Service of Ukraine Ihor Kaletnik , who left the post after being elected deputy to in 2012 by Communist Party of Ukraine. Now Kaletnyk is the Deputy Speaker

Official Release of Anonymous: -

"Ukraine GOV hacked. CUSTOMS of UKRAINE customs.gov.ua MASSIVE Docs leak.

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 

Greetings Our Fellow lulz. + 

+ 

Time to anchore Our ​​Marie Lulzize in an unstable Harbour + of Odessa in Ukraine. This Great Day We present you 1GB of raw + Data from one of the Servers of CUSTOMS.GOV.UA. To be pricise Ukraine Customs in + Black Sea and Danube - marine Customs. + Inside you Will Find lulz much related to Illegal Operations with + Oil and gas, corruption and Schemes Also much of good eddible Intel + All related to corruption in Ukraine Government controlled marine + Cargo Operations, Bribes and kickbacks gov. + Much of the Inside of the package is related to Ukraine + Former Chief Customs - Ihor Kaletnyk WHO is an active FSB operative + Russian enforcing rules of Engagement in Ukraine. + Also alot of Offshore moneylaundering by this persona and Other Government + Crooks. We undrstand that oil is money and money is power. + But They just do not Realize That one Day + shit happens and this shit pours from Big A Greedy right into Their throats.  + Sneak Peak of 64 Documents ..."

The hacker community has posted all the leaked information on an image archive and made that available for public. The 1 GB of the stolen data has also been made public in three different archive links. 

But on other hand the Ukrainian Government Officials denied the entire issue, according to the spokes man of government "Custom server can not be compromised. Therefore, as at customs.gov.ua a web server. Other documents, as far as I know, this server is not stored."  He also said that "Those documents that have posted allegedly crackers were not extracted from the server to the customs. In this I am 100%. Let me explain. Please note, most of the documents photographed, that is, it is done the person who had physical access to them, perhaps even temporary. Given that the documents from different regions of Ukraine, then they could meet only in the State Customs Service (MinDohodov) or law-enforcement agencies." 

While talking about this recent breach, we would like to remind you that couple of years ago, another infamous hacker community going by the name of Kosovo Hackers Security (KHS) targeted Ukraine govt. That time KHS have successfully penetrated the official website of Ukraine Police, Gazeta.ua (Ukraine Largest News Portal) and many more high profile sites. Now this hack of Anonymous is again another big attack which caused a serious damage to the Ukrainian cyber space. For updates on this hack and also all the other cyber updates stay tuned with VOGH. 

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Drupal.org Hacked ! More Than 967,000 Registered User Details Compromised

Drupal.org Hacked ! More Than 967,000 Registered User Details Compromised 

Drupal, one of the most famous and widely used open-source content management framework have fallen victim to cyber criminals. The Drupal Security Team and Infrastructure Team has discovered unauthorized access to account information on the official Drupal website and another site called groups.drupal.org. This security breach has exposed user names, country, and email addresses along with hashed passwords of more than 967,000 registered users on the Drupal.org. But still a matter of relief is that the breach failed to infiltrate the credit card details which was stored on the same server. According to security release unauthorized access was made via third-party software installed on the Drupal.org server infrastructure, and was not the result of a vulnerability within Drupal itself. Drupal team have worked with the vendor to confirm it is a known vulnerability and has been publicly disclosed. They are still investigating and will share more detail when it is appropriate. Upon discovering the files during a security audit, the security team has already shut down the association.drupal.org website to mitigate any possible ongoing security issues related to the files. The Drupal Security Team then began forensic evaluations and discovered that user account information had been accessed via this vulnerability. The suspicious files may have exposed profile information like username, email address, hashed password, and country. In addition to resetting your password on Drupal.org, it is also recommending a number of measures (below) for further protection of your information, including, among others, changing or resetting passwords on other sites where you may use similar passwords. 

As a precautionary measure of the said security breach, Drupal Security Team has reset all Drupal.org account holder passwords and are requiring users to reset their passwords at their next login attempt. A user password can be changed at any time by taking the following steps. 

1. Go to https://drupal.org/user/password 
2. Enter your username or email address. 
3. Check your email and follow the link to enter a new password. It can take up to 15 minutes for the password reset email to arrive. If you do not receive the e-mail within 15 minutes, make sure to check your spam folder as well.

Counter Measures that Drupal has Taken to avoid such mishap is something followed- as attacks on high-profile sites (regardless of the software they are running) are common, Drupal strive to continuously improve the security of all Drupal.org sites. To that end, Drupal have taken the following steps to secure the Drupal.org infrastructure:

• Staff at the OSU Open Source Lab (where Drupal.org is hosted) and the Drupal.org infrastructure teams rebuilt production, staging, and development webheads and GRSEC secure kernels were added to most servers
• Drupal is scanning and have not found any additional malicious or dangerous files and making scanning a routine job in their process
• There are many subsites on Drupal.org including older sites for specific events. Drupal created static archives of those sites.

This security breach of Drupal which affected more than 967,000 users is giving us a remind of the decent history of breach where we have seen a slew of attacks against the following sites: Scribd, Guild Wars 2, Gamigo, Blizzard, Yahoo, LinkedIn, eHarmony, Formspring, Android Forums, Gamigo,  Nvidia,Blizzard, Philips, Zynga, VMWare, Adobe,  Twitter  New York Times, Apple and so on. 

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LulzSec Hacker Cody Kretsinger Sentenced 1 Year Imprisonment For Sony Breach

LulzSec Hacker Cody Kretsinger Sentenced 1 Year Imprisonment For Security Breach of Sony Pictures Entertainment  

Infamous LulzSec hacker Cody Kretsinger who pleaded guilty last year in front of Federal Court of California for taking part in an extensive computer breach of Sony Pictures Entertainment server has faced judgement. 25 year aged Kretsinger who is also known as "Recursion" was one of the key member of Lulz Security, widely known to us as LulzSec, an offshoot of the international hacking group Anonymous. According to federal prosecutors, Cody Kretsinger has been sentenced to one year in prison in  Los Angeles. This court rule has been followed by home detention. Kretsinger, was also been ordered by a U.S. district judge in Los Angeles to perform 1,000 hours of community service after his release from prison, said Thom Mrozek, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles. Although prosecutors refused to say whether the hacker was co-operating with authorities in return for a softer sentence. 

During last year's plea hearing, Kretsinger told a federal judge that he gained access to the Sony Pictures website and gave the information he found there to other members of LulzSec, who posted it on the group's website and Twitter. "I joined LulzSec, your honor, at which point we gained access to the Sony Pictures website," said Kretsinger in the federal court. Prosecutors said Kretsinger and other LulzSec hackers, including those known as "Sabu" and "Topiary," stole the personal information of thousands of people after launching an "SQL injection" attack on the website; ultimately caused the unit of Sony Corp more than $600,000 in finical damage, along with that the attack caused bad impact and loss of faith for Sony Corporation and it's customers across the globe. 

While talking about this story, we would like to recap the decent history - where the arrest followed by guilty pleading of all the key members of LulzSec including  Ryan Cleary, Jake Davis, Jeremy Hammond, Raynaldo Rivera & Cody Kretsinger came a month after court documents revealed that Anonymous leader "Sabu," whose real name is Hector Xavier Monsegur, turned traitor to his community and became FBI informer and provided all the information on fellow hackers.

-Source (Reuters & Yahoo) 

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'Scribd' World's Largest Document Sharing Website Admits Security Breach

'Scribd' World's Largest Document Sharing Website Admits Security Breach 

Scribd- San Francisco-based document sharing site have fallen victim of cyber attack. Such kind of massacre is no doubt very much shameful for one of the world largest document sharing website which have more than 100 million of registered user. Like other largest companies, Scribd acknowledged the attack. In their official security announcement the company said that the operations team of Scribd have discovered and blocked suspicious activity on Scribd's network that appears to have been a deliberate attempt to access the email addresses and passwords of registered Scribd users. But the matter of relief is that only the 1% of its registered users have been affected during the hack. Immediately after this intrusion get spotted Scribd security team have emailed every user whose password was potentially compromised with details of the situation and instructions for resetting their password.  So, if you are a Scribd user and you did not receive such email from Scribd, then you are most likely unaffected.  If you still wish to check, you can use this web tool to determine if your account was among those affected. From the official announcement of Scribd, we came to know that the inertial investigation have already take place, which indicates that no content, payment and sales-related data, or other information were accessed or compromised. It has been  believed that the information accessed by the hackers was limited to general user information, which includes usernames, emails, and encrypted passwords.  Even though this information was accessed, the passwords stored by Scribd are encrypted (in technical terms, they are salted and hashed). Most of the users were therefore unaffected by this; however, the analysis shows that a small percentage may have had their passwords compromised. In an abundance of caution, it has been highly recommended for those affected users to reset their password and to change their password on any other services they might have used it on. 

At conclusion of the note, Scribd team did serious apology to its users while saying -"we would like to sincerely apologize for our failure to live up to our users' expectations in this instance. We’re incredibly disappointed that this happened and are committed to doing everything we can to prevent this from happening again. We will work harder than ever to ensure that we deserve the trust that our users place in us." 

While talking about big cyber attacks against large companies we would like to remind you in the last year we have been a slew of attacks against the following sites: Guild Wars 2, Gamigo, Blizzard, Yahoo, LinkedIn, eHarmony, Formspring, Android Forums, Gamigo,  Nvidia,Blizzard, Philips, Zynga, VMWare, Adobe,  Twitter  New York Times, Apple and so on. 

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Evernote Security Breached! Causing 50 Million Passwords Reset

Evernote Security Breached! Causing 50 Million Passwords Reset

World famous online information storage firm Evernote, allows millions of people to store and organised personal data on an external server from cross-platform have fallen victim to latest round of cyber attacks where hackers had managed to breach the company network which results a massive data breach effecting more than 50 million of its registered users. The breach on Evernote follows malicious activity at Twitter, NBC, New York Times, Facebook and others in recent weeks. In their blog release the firm has acknowledged the incident while saying "Evernote’s Operations & Security team has discovered and blocked suspicious activity on the Evernote network that appears to have been a coordinated attempt to access secure areas of the Evernote Service." But the matter of relief for the millions of its users are that, whether the hackers have gained access inside Evernote user information, which includes usernames, email addresses associated with Evernote accounts, but due to salted encryption; hackers fail to gain decrypt those  credentials. But to avoid further massacre Evernote did password reset of all it's registered users. Phil Libin, Evernote’s CEO and founder, told press that the services are running, although if you try to access the site things may not work as normal at the moment: “We just pushed out a password reset, so the servers are going to be saturated for a bit,” he wrote. “Everything is up, although response is choppy. There’s no threat to user data that we’re aware of” -said Phil. Evernote also claimed that also have no evidence of any payment information for Evernote Premium or Evernote Business customers was accessed during the hack. 

The security response team of Evernote apologized for the annoyance of having to change your password, but, ultimately, they believed that; this simple step will result in a more secure Evernote experience.

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Hackers Hit Microsoft Windows Azure Causing 12 Hour Outage, Affecting Xbox & 52 Other Services

Hackers Hit Microsoft Windows Azure Causing 12 Hour Outage, Affecting Xbox & 52 Other Services 

Windows Azure the cloud computing platform of Microsoft for building, deploying and managing applications and services through a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters  faced an unwanted disaster due to organized cyber attack which interrupted its service world wide. While looking at the scenario the Redmond based software giant sincerely apologize for the interruption and any issues it has caused and declared that they will  refund Windows Azure customers impacted by the said outage last week caused by an expired SSL certificate. The Windows Azure Storage outage affected at least 52 services, including Xbox Live on Thursday night and Friday. 

In a blog post while describing the situation Microsoft said - "HTTP traffic was unaffected but the event impacted a number of Windows Azure services that are dependent on Storage.  We executed the repair steps to update the SSL certificate on the impacted clusters and availability was restored to >99% worldwide by 1:00 AM PST on February 23.  At 8:00 PM PST on February 23, we completed the restoration effort and confirmed full availability worldwide. Given the scope of the outage, we will proactively provide credits to impacted customers in accordance with our SLA. The credit will be reflected on a subsequent invoice.  Our teams are also working hard on a full root cause analysis (RCA), including steps to help prevent any future reoccurrence."

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NBC.com Compromised, Hackers Exploited The Website to Spread Malware

NBC.com Compromised, Hackers Exploited The Website to Spread Malware

The month of February is still going from bad to worse for the cyber domain, in this very month cyber criminals swallowed the security system of many giant companies like Facebook, Twitter, Apple, New York Times and many more. But the game is not over yet, as we have just passed a few weeks, when the attack on NY Times took place, which stolen the employ database; yet again the cyber criminals have targeted another media giant National Broadcasting Company widely known as NBC. During the attack, hackers have successfully gain access inside the server of NBC and planted malware, in order to harm innocent readers. Famous security expert and blogger Brian Krebs said that the hackers inserted code into the NBC.com homepage. This caused visiting browsers to load pages from third-party sites that were compromised. While explaining the nature of the attacker, Krebs said; "The compromised sites tried to foist the Citadel Trojan, a variant of the Zeus Trojan." The Zeus is a "sophisticated data theft tool that steals passwords and allows attackers to control machines remotely" he added. Not only the NBC’s home page, also several others were affected, including the pages of late night talk show hosts Jay Leno and Jimmy Fallon. Well known security firm Sophos explained how roughly attack played out, and how NBC got sucked into the equation:

• NBC's hacked pages were altered to add some malicious JavaScript that ran in your browser.
• The JavaScript injected an additional HTML component known as an IFRAME (inline frame) into the web page.
• The IFRAME sucked in further malicious content from websites infected with an exploit kit known as RedKit.
• The exploit kit delivered one of two exploit files to try to take control over your browser via a Java vulnerability or a PDF bug.
• If the exploit worked on your computer, financially-related crimeware from the Citadel or ZeroAccess families was installed.

This, of course, is an example of a dreaded drive-by download, where the crooks use a cascade of tricks to download, install and execute software without going through any of the warnings or confirmation dialog you might expect. This, in turn, means that even if you are a careful and well-informed user, you may end up in trouble, since there are no obvious signs that you are doing anything risky, or even unexpected.

As soon as this story get spotted the American commercial broadcasting television network, NBC News reported and confirmed that its site had been attacked. The broadcaster released the following statement regarding the website: "We've identified the problem and are working to resolve it. No user information has been compromised."

The emergency response team immediately take the situation under control and restored the website, and confirmed that the site is back again and completely safe for its visitors. But so far there is no evidence of attackers who were involved in this attack. For the safety of VOGH readers we would like to recommend you to update your operating systems and browser plugins. Also note that the attack on NBC was similar to many that have occurred in recent years in that the malicious sites tried to exploit vulnerabilities in Java. So it will better to disable Java, unless it is that much necessary. So stay tuned with VOGH and be safe in the cyber domain. 

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NASA Sub-domain is Vulnerable Allowing Information Disclosure

NASA Sub-domain is Vulnerable Allowing Serious Information Disclosure

National Aeronautics and Space Administration, widely known as NASA used to fascinate the hackers to come and breach its security system. Many of our readers may be astonished after reading the above lines, but its a fact and history is the witness of that. So far NASA have been targeted several times, where hackers have figured out vulnerability and penetrated the digital security. Yet again same thing happened to NASA, when an ethical hacker from India going by the name of "Zero Cool" find out serious loopholes in one of the sub-domain of NASA, which could lead sensitive information disclosure. The hacker shared a vulnerability report with us, where he has shown that, exploiting the vulnerability one malicious attacker can easily extract lots of confidential data from NASA server, such as source code of various programs (used by NASA), current project information, future research paper, topological graph, license information, several executable files, .dll files, private application software & it's source codes, employ details and many more highly confidential or in other word "Top Secrete" data and files. For security and privacy purpose we are not disclosing those vulnerable links, but exclusively for VOGH readers we are sharing few images to justify the fact. 

This vulnerability report has already been submitted to NASA, and as expected they immediately reacted and promised to path those loopholes with immediate effect. While talking about the ethical hacker "Zero" we would like to remind you that, before this NASA vulnerability disclosure, he exposed several vulnerabilities among many major and high profile websites such as Facebook, Reebok,Indiagames, mtv, lapdonline, UNESCO, Toshiba, Discovery.com, Novell.com, Microsoft Store India, several Pakistani  and Bangladeshi Govt websites and many more.  

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