Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Black Hat. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Black Hat. Sort by date Show all posts

Black Hat, the World's Leading Security Conference, on Abu Dhabi



IT security professionals will be delighted to learn the UAE Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA), represented by the UAE Computer Emergency Response Team (aeCERT), in cooperation with Khalifa University of Science and Technology, has partnered with UBM again to bring the second edition of the world's leading information security conference, Black Hat to Abu Dhabi.
This year's Black Hat Abu Dhabi will take place from the 12th to 15th December 2011 at the luxurious Emirates Palace and will concentrate on 2 days of training sessions and 2 days of briefings which will discuss and demonstrate the latest and most important security issues faced in the market today.  Last year, this included among others, a new Android attack demonstration, new web attack and password cracking tool, a new chip was broken, new code released, a new ID card was broken and new Stuxnet conclusions were presented.
The event fits with aeCERT policy to assist the process of identifying, preventing and responding to cyber security attacks; coming up with operating mechanisms for the TRA's strategy to increase cyber security in the UAE.
His Excellency Mohamed Nasser Al Ghanim, Director General of the TRA, said: "We have decided to partner with UBM to hold Black Hat Abu Dhabi for a second time because of the increasing need to protect our IT systems from attack, because of the enormous success of the first Black Hat Abu Dhabi and partnership fostered between UBM, the TRA, aeCERT and Khalifa University.  The event continues to support the TRA vision to make the UAE's ICT sector a leader in the global market place.  As such, the TRA is proud to be the leading partner of Black Hat Abu Dhabi for the second time."
UBM is inviting potential sponsors, exhibitors and delegates to take part in Black Hat Abu Dhabi, which will attract only the highest-placed security professionals from government entities, academia and private companies with the power to make security buying decisions.  


Jeff Moss, founder and Conference Chair of Black Hat, stated: "We are excited to be able to bring Black Hat back to the Middle East. Our partners are continuing thevisionto establish a culture of cybersecurity within their public and private sector organizations and Black Hat is supporting those endeavours by bringing the best trainings and latest research to Abu Dhabi and the Middle East. We will to continue to build upon the foundation from last year's event and once again showcase the commitment of the UAE ICT sector to being a leader in the globalmarkets for security."


Black Hat Abu Dhabi will offer a full range of sessions, including ten training programmes running on 12th and 13th December, followed by three briefing tracks running simultaneously on the 14th and 15th alongside the exhibition.
Companies, government agencies, associations, institutions and individuals who wish to get involved as a sponsor or delegate should contact the organiser UBM Middle East.  
For more information or to register your interest please visit: http://www.blackhat.com or contact becky.crayman@ubm.com.
Notes to the editor
For more information please see http://www.blackhat.com  
Individuals, associations, government bodies, academic institutions and companies interested in finding out more about Black Hat Abu Dhabi should contact the organisers, UBM Middle East for information, on +971-2-406-4471 or email becky.crayman@ubm.com
Black Hat briefings and training is the largest and most important security conference series in the world.  Black Hat Abu Dhabi is organised by UBM Middle East on behalf of TechWeb, a division of United Business Media.

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Black Hat 2012- Key-Card of Hotel Door Can Be Bypassed With An Open-Source Tool "Arduino"


Black Hat 2012- Key-Card of Hotel Door Can Be Bypassed With An Open-Source Tool "Arduino"

For millions of travelers the ubiquitous hotel key card is the primary and essentially the only way to access their rooms at the end of day. But when you will heard that the key card, you use to access your private room is no longer safe then its very much possible that you will shock. And trust me this happened in Black Hat 2012. A security researcher, Cody Brocious believes the current systems used to secure hotel doors throughout the United States and elsewhere are severely flawed. Speaking at the Black Hat security conference here, Brocious demonstrated how locks from Onity a company that sells security products to hotels and other businesses can easily be bypassed. At the show, Brocious detailed the primary security flaws that allowed him to bypass Onity locks and gain access to rooms.
According to eWEEk -Brocious used an open-source tool known as Arduino, a portable programming platform. Arduino was used as a substitute for the commercial portable programmer that an Onity lock would typically require. Brocious explained that the Onity locks have a serial hardware connection that is easily accessible, as well. In addition to the Arduino tool, Brocious used an oscilloscope that allowed him to see what was happening in the lock whenever a key card was put in and the door opened or closed. He was able to determine through his research that the underlying firmware on the lock does not require any form of authentication to arbitrarily access the memory of the lock. This means it is possible to read out every bit of information that is on the lock, which makes it possible for anyone to gain access or make a key.
In theory, programming for the lock should go over a secure channel, rather than doing direct unencrypted memory access, said Brocious. The problem, according to his research, is that the existing Onity lock design does not easily allow for that, and there is no easy way to update the firmware. Another potential option is to actually provide physical security on the door lock. For example, the company could make the serial port harder to access. However, with 5 million of these locks in use today, Brocious said this would be an expensive and challenging way to add additional security. The actual door locks are only half the problem exposed by Brocious. The card keys are also at risk. Typical card keys in the Onity system use only 32-bit key encryption making them easy to decrypt, according to Brocious. "The system is broken at every layer," said Brocious.
The severity of the issue and its high impact is what led Brocious to choose to release his research at Black Hat. In addition to his research, he is also releasing a software tool so that others can continue or expand on his efforts. "Something needs to be done about this problem, and I didn't want to put it out there in a way that could be defeated by process," said Brocious. "No doubt, this vulnerability has been found before, and it has been in the locks for years."
Brocious added: “I'd be surprised if this hasn't been used by malicious actors in the past.” What Brocious is hoping to achieve from this disclosure is not a mass string of hackers getting unauthorized access to hotel rooms, but rather some kind of fix and industry response. "I'm saying that this is what you're vulnerable [to], so come up with a way to solve the problem," said Brocious.




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Vasilis Pappas Won 'Blue Hat' Security Contest & Grand Prize of $200,000 From Microsoft

Vasilis Pappas Won 'Blue Hat' Security Contest & Grand Prize of $200,000 From Microsoft

Earlier in last year software giant Microsoft started Blue Hat security contest. BlueHat Prize was globally  announced by the company at the 2011 Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, offers a grand prize of $200,000, a runner-up purse of $50,000, and a third-place award of a one-year subscription to MSDN Universal--a developer's platform for Microsoft products--worth $10,000--to security researchers who design the most effective ways to prevent the use of memory safety vulnerabilities. 
This year Microsoft awarded a bunch of hackers and gave away an amount of  $260,000. 'Hackers' in the good sense here, the clever programmers who won its Blue Hat security contest, including a grand prize of $200,000

The big prize was awarded to a PhD student at Columbia University, Vasilis Pappas, who was handed the check in an American Idol-style contest finale complete with loud music and confetti. The winners were announced during a party at the Black Hat hackers conference 2012 that just happened this week in Las Vegas. Two other guys took home significant prizes, too. Ivan Fratric, a researcher at the University of Zagreb in Croatia, got $50,000 and Jared DeMott, a Security Researcher for Harris Corp. won $10,000.
They all submitted ideas to help solve a really hard security problem called Return-Oriented Programming. ROP is a hacker technique that is often used to disable or circumvent a program's computer security controls. Twenty people submitted ideas in the contest. Without getting into too much technical detail, Pappas came up with something called kBouncer which blocks anything that looks like an ROP attack from running. It's become popular these days to pay security researchers bounties. But what's cool about the Blue Hat contest is that it paid the researcher for actually coming up with a fix to a problem. Not only Microsoft, other compaines- GoogleFacebook, Paypal & many more already have their "Bug Bounty" program, where they reward researchers for simply identifying flaws in thier system. But by contrast Microsoft and Adobe don't pay bounties. Here Microsoft promised that this first Blue Hat prize won't be its last, So this may be a sign of a smart new approach to engaging with security researchers for the software giant. 


-Source (Microsoft & Business Insider)







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Microsoft Started "BlueHat" Contest for Better Security


As any Jedi knight knows, the temptation to turn to the Dark Side is difficult to resist. The same can be true for White Hat hackers--malware fighters who discover vulnerabilities in software.
The black market prices for those kinds of security flaws are as tantalizing to ethical hackers as the malevolent side of The Force was to Luke Skywalker. Microsoft wants to temper those temptations, though, and has announced a contest that offers more than $250,000 in prizes for developing better solutions to counter security threats.
Microsoft's "BlueHat Prize," announced by the company at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas Wednesday, offers a grand prize of $200,000, a runner-up purse of $50,000, and a third-place award of a one-year subscription to MSDN Universal--a developer's platform for Microsoft products--worth $10,000--to security researchers who design the most effective ways to prevent the use of memory safety vulnerabilities. Those kinds of vulnerabilities can create problems like buffer overflows that can be exploited by Net miscreants to compromise computers.
“As the risk of criminal attacks on private and government computer systems continues to increase, Microsoft recognizes the need to stimulate research in the area of defensive computer security technology," Matt Thomlinson, Microsoft’s General Manager of Trustworthy Computing Group, said.
“Our interest is to promote a focus on developing innovative solutions rather than discovering individual issues," Thomlinson continued. "We believe the BlueHat Prize can catalyze defensive efforts to help mitigate entire classes of attacks."

Top Experts Needed:-

In offering the prize, Microsoft hopes to attract the world's top experts to focus their "little gray cells" on a major security problem. “Microsoft wants to encourage more security experts to think about ways to reduce threats to computing devices," observed Katie Moussouris, senior security strategist lead for the Microsoft Security Response Center.
“We’re looking to collaborate with others to build solutions to tough industry problems," she added. "We believe the BlueHat Prize will encourage the world’s most talented researchers and academics to tackle key security challenges and offer them a chance to impact the world."

The Origin of the Concept:-

According to Microsoft, it got the idea for the BlueHat prize from a previously launched security information-sharing program. That initiative, the Microsoft Active Protections Program (MAPP), allows Microsoft to share information with security vendors around the world so they can release protection technologies to their customers much faster. The success of that program got Microsoft thinking about mounting a similar effort for the security research community.
One vendor with praise for BlueHat was Adobe, a company that's no stranger to software with vulnerabilities. “The Microsoft BlueHat Prize announced at Black Hat [on August 3] is an exciting new initiative and a great example of encouraging community collaboration in the defense against those with malicious intent," observed Adobe's Senior Director for Product Security and Privacy Brad Arkin.
“This call for entries promises to stimulate research activity within the broader security community on how to mitigate entire classes of attacks, rather than thinking about software security as a challenge best addressed one bug at a time," he continued. "This research has the potential to lower costs for third-party developers and increase the level of security assurance for end users."
Here are the official rules and guidelines for the competition. Contest submissions will be accepted until Sunday, April 1, 2012, Microsoft said. A panel of Microsoft security engineers will judge submissions based on the following criteria: Practicality and functionality (30 percent); robustness--how easy it would be to bypass the proposed solution (30 percent); and impact (40 percent). The winners will be announced at Black Hat USA conference in 2012.

-News Source (PC World)

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Kids (Age Between 8-16 Years) Conference to Teach "White Hat" Skills



DEFCON was started in 1993, and has grown into the largest annual gathering of hackers. Attendees to this year’s conference, DEFCON19, will include cyber-criminals, hackers, computer security professionals, security personnel, US Federal agents, and any one else with interest in anything that can be hacked. Activities at the event include speakers on different subjects of interest to hackers, social events and contents. In August the first ever DEFCON kid’s conference will take place. This conference will be run as part of the main DEFCON conference, and is meant to teach kids between 8 and 16 years “white hat” hacker skills. As opposed to “black hat” hacking, the DEFCON Kids will be taught “white hat” hacker skills that will give them the ability to protect themselves against cyber crime. Black hat involves the dark side of internet hacking, including looting of money and destruction of hardware or software. The aim is to convince kids that it is cool to fight crime by being an ethical hacker.
The courses will be run by some of the world’s most elite hackers. According to the DEFCON Kids website, the training and demonstrations will include “learning how to open Master locks, Google Hacking, making Electronics, Social Engineering, coding in Scratch and Communicating in Code.”

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Google Chrome OS Has Security Hole (Black Hat 2011)


Black Hat Google has billed its Chrome operating system as a security breakthrough that's largely immune to the threats that have plagued traditional computers for decades. With almost nothing stored on its hard drive and no native applications, there's no sensitive data that can pilfered and it can't be commandeered when attackers exploit common software vulnerabilities.
But according to two researchers who spent the past few months analyzing the Chrome-powered Cr-48 beta released in December, the browser-based OS is vulnerable to many of the same serious attacks that afflict people surfing websites. As a result, users remain susceptible to exploits that can intercept email, documents, and passwords stored on centralized servers, many of which are maintained by Google.
“Even though they put these awesome security protections in place, we're just moving the security problems to the cloud now,” Matt Johansen, a researcher with WhiteHat Security, told The Register. “We're moving the software security problem that we've been dealing with forever to the cloud. They're doing a lot of things right, but it's not the end all and be all for security.”
Virtually all of the threats identified by Johansen and his WhiteHat colleague Kyle Osborn stem from Chrome's reliance on extensions, which are essentially web-based applications. A fair number of the extensions they analyzed contain XSS, or cross-site scripting, bugs, which have the potential to inject malicious code and content into a visitor's browser and in some cases steal credentials used to authenticate user accounts.
As they went about testing what kind of attacks various XSS vulnerabilities could allow, Johansen and Osborn noticed something curious: a bug in one extension often allowed them to hijack the communications of a second extension, even when the latter one had no identifiable security flaws. At the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday, they demonstrated this weakness by exploiting an XSS hole in one extension to steal passwords from an otherwise secure account on cloud password storage service LastPass.
“If any of the other vulnerable extensions have an XSS hole, we can utilize JavaScript to hijack that communication,” Johansen said. “LastPass is doing absolutely nothing wrong here. You can have an extension that's perfectly fine, but if you have another that has a cross-site scripting error in it we can still access information in secure applications.”
The discovery has generated a quandary for the researchers.
“Whose problem is this to fix?” Johansen continued. “We don't really have an answer for that. LastPass did everything correctly. It's the other extension developers that developed an extension with a vulnerability in it.”
After being informed of the specific attack, LastPass made changes to its Chrome extension that prevented it from being carried out, so it's reasonable to assume extension makers foot some of the responsibility for preventing their apps from being compromised by others. But Johansen couldn't rule out the possibility that vulnerabilities and other apps could probably make LastPass vulnerable again. He said Google might be able to fix the problem by overhauling the application programming interfaces extension developers use.
The researchers also demonstrated an XSS vulnerability in Scratchpad, a text-editor extension that's bundled with Chrome. By sharing files with names containing JavaScript commands stored on Google Docs they were able to obtain the Google session cookies of anyone who used a Chromebook to view the documents. An attacker could exploit the vulnerability to read a victim's email, or to send instant messages to everyone on the victim's contact list. If any of the contacts are using Chromebooks, they could be similarly vulnerable to booby-trapped filenames stored on Google Docs.
A Google spokeswoman defended the security of Chromebooks and said the vulnerabilities enumerated by the researchers weren't unique to the cloud-based OS. In an email, she issued the following statement:
This conversation is about the web, not Chrome OS. Chromebooks raise security protections on computing hardware to new levels. They are also better equipped to handle the web attacks that can affect browsers on any computing device, thanks in part to a carefully designed extensions model and the advanced security available through Chrome that many users and experts have embraced.
The researchers stressed Google engineers were extremely quick to fix the Scratchpad vulnerability and awarded them a $1,000 bounty for their report. But they remain convinced that the security of Chrome OS in many cases is only as strong as its' weakest extensions. They also pointed out that penetration-testing tools such as the Browser Exploitation Framework could be used to help streamline attacks in much the way Metasploit is used to manage exploits for traditional machines.
And, Johansen said, Chrome hacking through XSS may be only the beginning, since the flaws are among the easiest to find and exploit.
“Who knows what we're going to be looking for months or years from now when Google can figure out a way to thwart the cross-site scripting threat,” he said. “Why would we be trying to write buffer overflows when we can just write a simple JavaScript command.” 
-News Source (The Register)

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Hackers, Crackers, Tramps & Thieves


Recently, we have saw a “hacker group,”, loosely known as Anonymous wage a denial of service attack (DDoS) against various companies that withdrew services to WikiLeaks. This was done in a supposed noble defense of WikiLeaks. Now it appears the same group has taken credit for attacks against Sony. Why attack Sony? Because Anonymous believes individuals should be able to modify PlaySation3 consoles and Sony’s says they no they shouldn’t be and are fighting the copyright infringement with legal action. It is sort of like I disagree with you and we end up in court and you then throw a rock through my window (funny…. I didn’t mean to bring Microsoft into the mix…LOL). Well apparently, more then a rock got thrown through Sony’s “window".It now appears that 2.2 million credits cards with CVV were stolen as well . Anonymous is now only claiming they broke the window, not that they stole anything. Who exactly are “hackers”?
Initially the term came to refer to individuals who pushed technology to its limits. Hacking was making technology (hardware/software) do more, more efficiently, etc. However, somewhere along the mix it began to be used as a term to describe individuals exploiting technology for illegal purposes. Latter the term crackers came to refer to hackers who did bad things, such as breaking into systems, causing damage, stealing data, etc. We also had the “color” system if you will, in part no doubt due to the old adage in Western movies, good and bad guys wear different colored hats. Yep you guessed it you have White Hat hackers (good guys) and Black Hat Hackers (bad guys). Of course, you also then have the Grey Hat Hackers (good or bad, depending upon what they are doing). As an old John Wayne fan I never really paid much attention to what hat he was wearing but that is beside the point.
In my opinion, hackers have come to enjoy a unique position in our society. For instance, there is no such thing as a “white hat” embezzler, drug dealer, or bank robber. The closest think I can think of is maybe Robin Hood, where he was a criminal but his ends justified his means (steal from the rich and give to the poor). I suppose there was some romanticizing about train/bank robberies, Jessie James or even Bonnie and Clyde. But in the end we still consider them criminals when all is said and done. We just don’t have other offender groups being described by their head apparel. I also am amazed being a hacker is viewed by some as the best pathway to becoming an IT security expert. It is sort of like someone being a burglar or robber as a path to a career as security professional. I guess these folks think honest hard work and education just doesn’t look as good as I was a criminal on a resume.
So what does this have to do with corrections? Well, many of these folks do get caught. They go before a judge and someone has to look at what was done and make a call. Answering it was illegal is easy. What do you do with them? Some would argue they are Robin Hoods, making information free for the world. Some believe they are just really smart and the corporations are the real corrupt ones. (See The Conscience of a Hacker)
Here is the problem I have. My Robin Hood didn’t burn Sherwood Forrest to help the poor. He also did not use the poor as pawns in his fight with the rich. Take a look at the Sony case. They have a right to protect their intellectually property. They were pursing the matter in court, following the law. A group of offenders breaks into Sony, allegedly to embarrass them. However, someone during the break-in, (more then likely the same folks that broke in) stole 2.2 million credits cards with CVV. There are reports that those card number are being sold. Sony looks bad for the security breach. But was it really necessary to harm Sony’s customers in the fight to make right? So, are hackers misguided “Robin Hoods”, out to defend us against the big bad corporations out there? Or are they what we normally call, common criminals?
On the other hand some of these “criminals” are what we call in the business, “success” stories. “rtm”who released the first Internet worm, later went on to get a doctorate and is a respected expert in the field. The “Condor” is an author and runs a successful information security consulting firm (not withstanding my comment about criminals becoming future security experts). The “Dark Dante” is a senior editor for a major publication as well as an accomplished author.
The bottomline to this discussion, is corrections must do what we always do. Condemn the acts but not the individuals. Hackers, whatever the reasons, are offenders, not modern Robin Hoods. They can be rehabilitated. They are however not modern day technological heroes. Making them sound like a quarter pounder with cheese does not change the fact they have no meat between the buns. Take care and be safe. Time for a cigar! 

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Trinamool Congress Official Website Hacked

Trinamool Congress Official Website Hacked By Bangladesh Black-hat Hackers
All India Trinamool Congress official website get hacked. Hackers from Bangladesh take responsibility of this hack. This attack on the AITMC website is yet another out put of the ongoing cyber war between Bangladesh & India. This ongoing cyber war indeed causing lots of damages for India. Till more than 20K Indian websites get hacked including 30+ Indian Govt Sites, National Informatics Center (NIC), Indian Railways, Passport Dept, MIT, NDTV, Indian Stock Market and many more high profile websites. According to party resources the site was hacked on the 14th February evening and later restored to its original format. The site was hosted on a US server and during this attack the security has been penetrated. Party spokes man also confirmed that the vulnerability has been fixed. MP and party's cyber team head Derek O' Brien said "It was blocked for a few hours but there was no damage to the site. We have lodged a complaint with the cyber cell of the Kolkata Police to get to the bottom of the truth" 
In a statement Bangladesh Black-hat Hackers said that Mamata Banerjee had broken her promise on sharing of Teesta river water with the country. Which effect Bangladesh so they have performed the attack. In short it was a type of revenge.
This is not the first time earlier in 2011 hackers from Pakistan have hacked the official website of All India Congress, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and so on. Also in an attack another Pak Hacker named KhantastiC haXor penetrated the official site of Indian Congress and defaced the Profile page of Party President Sonia Gandhi. Still Indian Govt is very careless about this burning issue. The rise of cyber crime is almost kissing the sky. And the status of Indian cyber security is in the disaster. The very out put is in front of us. Since the last week every day BD hackers penetrating Indian cyber fence very badly which is indeed causing lots of damage for the country not only reputation but also the country has caused lost of economical damage.If such things continues then in very coming future India have to face a massive disaster of National security including defense, army, secrete research areas and in many other sensitive sectors. 



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Apple’s Based Networks are More Vulnerable to Attack than Windows (BH 2011)


For many years, Apple enjoyed security through obscurity. The market share for Mac computers was so small that malware creators bypassed it to go after the much bigger target, Microsoft Windows. Not anymore.
Apple’s market share has been slowly rising and the popularity of the iPhone has put Apple’s products into the spotlight. Hackers are taking notice and they’re figuring out that Apple’s computers have security vulnerabilities, some of them more severe than Windows machines, according to a talk by the iSEC Partners security consulting team at the Black Hat security conference today.
Alex Stamos (pictured), Paul Youn, and B.J. Orvis of iSEC Partners said in their talk that it is possible for hackers to penetrate a network of Apple Mac computers and lurk undetected while gathering data. They concluded that there were so many vulnerabilities on the networking level that Mac machines could be considered more vulnerable than Windows machines.
Apple has not yet responded to a request for comment. At Black Hat, there will also be talks about the vulnerabilities of other operating systems, including Windows. In years past, security researchers have blamed Microsoft for producing vulnerable Windows code. And immediately following the Apple talk, security researchers had another talk about hacking Google’s Chrome operating system.
“This is all changing,” Stamos said. “If [recent hacking events] tell us anything, it’s that any computer is vulnerable to attack.”
The iSEC team said they looked at attacks on the Mac and its latest operating system, code-named Lion, or OS X version 10.7, from the perspective of Advanced Persistent Threats, or long-term security break-ins on networks of computers. They showed examples of the vulnerabilities and detailed proof that they had hacked into the operating system.
The category of Advanced Persistent Threats is a hot one because Google discovered that, under Operation Aurora, dozens of companies were compromised over a long period of time. And McAfee reported today that a similar attacked, dubbed Operation Shady RAT, compromised a total of 72 governments and corporations over a five-year period.
A network of Mac computers can be compromised in the usual way, iSEC’s Stamos said. A single user can be tricked out of giving up a username and password through social engineering or targeted “phishing attacks,” or attacks that use a believable ruse to get you to enter your username and password, which is then captured and compromised by the hackers.
Once inside the network, Stamos said that it is easy for the attacker to escalate the privileges he or she has on the network. That is where Apple’s operating system falls down in comparison to Windows. ”Once you have access, you can compromise the networking,” Orvis said. “Network privilege escalation is where it really gets bad on the Mac.”
The security researchers said that Apple has made improvements to security in version 10.7 of OS X, such as putting applications in a “sandbox,” or isolating them so that they can run (or crash) without taking down the rest of the operating system. Still, the researchers said they had figured out a couple of different ways to compromise the security of Macs through a test program dubbed Bonjoof. They said that it’s possible to lurk on a network and cover your tracks so that intelligence can be gathered on a network over time.
“All of Apple’s major authentication protocols suffer” from some kind of weakness, Orvis said.
There are ways to deal with the vulnerabilities, but company security professionals have to know how to use security forensics technology, which can take a long time. In the meantime, attackers can detect the forensics tools and react to their usage in an attempt to hide. The security researchers said they did talk with Apple about the vulnerabilities they found and communicated a number of ideas about how to improve the security of Apple’s computers.

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FBI Used LulzSec To Track & Spy on Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange

FBI Used LulzSec To Track & Spy on Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange

After the inside story of Anonymous former leader Hector Xavier Monsegur aka "Sabu" case get revealed, the world came to know that Sabu was working as an under cover agent of FBI which lead a series of arrest for several key members of hacker collective Anonymous & LulzSec. Now we got another twist which came from a new book written by Parmy Olson, the London bureau chief for Forbes Magazine, saying that FBI used an agent inside the LulzSec hacker group to track and spy on Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. According to the book, an associate of WikiLeaks contacted LulzSec spokesman Topiary on June 16 hours after the assault on the CIA. The two would eventually converse over an Internet Relay Chat channel that was reported to be witnessed by Assange, who confirmed his identity by providing a video to the hacker in real time during their chat. For a few weeks, writes Olson, Assange and/or his associate returned to the LulzSec IRC channel “four or five more times,” during which others occasionally engaged in conversation with both sides. During at least one of those conversations, Assange’s contact at WikiLeaks offered LulzSec a spreadsheet of classified government data contained in a file named RSA 128, which she says was heavily encrypted and needed the manpower of black hat hacktivists to decode.
According to an exclusive report of RT - Aside from a few unsealed court documents, details about the now-defunct hacktivism group LulzSec remains few and far between. One journalist is saying she got inside the organization though — along with Julian Assange.
“We Are Anonymous: Inside the Hacker World of LulzSec, Anonymous, and the Global Cyber Insurgency” is an upcoming book from Parmy Olson, the London bureau chief for Forbes Magazine. And although her alleged account has not yet hit the shelves, a lengthy excerpt has been leaked to the Web — and its contents suggest that that the world’s once most powerful hacking collective was in correspondence with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange after he allegedly reached out to the organization for assistance. The US government says that they had already infiltrated LulzSec by then, though, meaning that WikiLeak’s plea to the hacking collective was actually being offered to an FBI mole.
According to Olson, the June 2011 attack on the public website of the US Central Intelligence Agency by LulzSec caught the attention of Assange, who was residing in the countryside manor of an English journalist while on house arrest.Once he saw that a LulzSec-led invasion had crippled CIA.gov, Assange allegedly sent out two tweets from the WikiLeaks Twitter account, only to delete the micomessages shortly after:
"WikiLeaks supporters, LulzSec, take down CIA . . . who has a task force into WikiLeaks," read one."CIA finally learns the real meaning of WTF” reads the other.
Assange “didn't want to be publicly associated with what were clearly black hat hackers” writes Olson, speaking of computer compromisers who target network for perhaps no real intention other than mischief making. “Instead, he decided it was time to quietly reach out to the audacious new group that was grabbing the spotlight,” she says. Olson says that one of those hackers aware the newfangled relationship was Hector Xavier Monsegur, who spearheaded LulzSec by serving as a leader of sorts under the handle Sabu. Perhaps unbeknownst to all engaged in the IRC chats, however, was that Sabu had been arrested on June 7 and, according to the federal government, began immediately working as an FBI informant.
"Since literally the day he was arrested, the defendant has been cooperating with the government proactively," Assistant US Attorney James Pastore said at a secret bail hearing on August 5 2011, according to a transcript released this March after his arrest was made public.
While details of Sabu’s escapades under the direct influence of the FBI are obviously being kept confidential, federal attorneys have said that the hacker more or less masterminded the group under their command until LulzSec dissolved on June 25; Jake Davis — Topiary — was arrested in the UK on August 1. If Olson’s allegations add up, that could mean that the FBI’s top-secret informant, Sabu, was speaking directly with America’s cyber-enemy number one: Julian Assange.
On Wednesday this week, the UK Supreme Court agreed to extradite Assange to Sweden, where he is facing a lawsuit unrelated to his involvement with WikiLeaks. Once there, however, the United States may be able to more easily fight to have him sent stateside to be charged with aiding the enemy — the crime being pegged to alleged WikiLeaks contributor Bradley Manning, who now faces life in prison for that involvement. The uncertainty of who exactly conversed with whom might be near impossible to confirm given the widespread anonymity of hacktivists tied with LulzSec and Anonymous alike, but if Olson’s account adds up, the FBI’s inside man may very well have come close to working with Assange. On his part, Topiary claims that he never received the RSA 128 file.




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Apple Hired Kristen Paget, Renowned Hacker & Former Security Expert of Microsoft

Apple Hired Kristen PagetRenowned Hacker & Former Security Expert of Microsoft 

To become  the very best along with that to maintain and hold your position, you need to deliver your hundred percent even some times more than hundred percent, and this race continues. For that we have to gather the very best guy with as. The above fact took place again, when Apple hired a renowned computer security researcher who helped Microsoft to rid Windows Vista from glaring exploits. I think, you already started guessing, let me tell you that yes you are absolutely right. Kristen Paget formerly known as Chris Paget who was part of an elite team of security experts of Microsoft has now been hired by Apple to lend her expertise to securing the company's operating systems. Apple, slowly, has been trying to make inroads into the security community. This summer, an Apple engineer spoke at the Black Hat security conference for the first time. So it is a bit predictable that why Apple is looking for security experts. Paget's exact charge at Apple is still somewhat of a mystery, with company representatives declining to comment on the specifics of what she'll be working on. After leaving Microsoft and prior to her move to 1 Infinite Loop, Paget was employed by security firm Recursion Ventures. According to sources, this past July, she'd departed stating that she wished to focus on developing security-related hardware.  
According to a report by Wired - Paget’s work at Microsoft had been similarly secretive. She’d been forbidden from speaking about it for five years after her work there ended.
But in 2011, the NDA expired, and she spilled the beans on her Vista hacking at the Black Hat Las Vegas conference. In short: Microsoft’s security team had expected Vista to be pretty clean when Paget got her hands on it, but they were wrong.
“We prevented a lot of bugs from shipping on Vista,” Paget said, according to a recording of her talk. “I’m proud of the number of bugs we found and helped get fixed.” Paget and company’s bug-hunt was so successful, in fact, that it forced Microsoft to push back Vista’s ship date. When the work was done, the hackers received special T-shirts, signed by Microsoft Vice President of Windows Development Brian Valentine. They read: “I delayed Windows Vista.” 
Until this past summer, Paget had been chief hacker at Recursion Ventures, a company that specializes in hardware security. When she left in July, she said she was looking for a break from bug-finding, hoping to find a job that involved building “security-focused hardware.”
“I’ve done too much breaking of things, it’s time to create for a change,” she said on Twitter. She was hired in September as a core operating system security researcher at Apple, according to her Linkedin Profile. 
Paget made headlines in 2010 when she built her own cellphone-intercepting base station at the Defcon hacker conference. Back then, Paget was known as Chris. She switched genders last year.

While talking about hiring geniuses by giant firms, we would like to remind you that very recently Apple has hired search guru Bill Stasior to oversee Apple's Siri voice-activated personal assistant. Along with this, few months ago social networking giant Twitter had appointed famous whitehat hacker Charlie Miller, to boost up its security.  Also in late 2011 Nicholas Allegra, the world-famous hacker known as "Comex", creator of JailbreakMe.com comes was also hired by Apple.




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The 2012 Cyber Defence University Challenge (Australia's First National Cyber Security Competition)

The 2012 Cyber Defence University Challenge - Australia's First National Cyber Security Competition
The 2012 Cyber Defence University Challenge, Australia’s first national cyber security competition, has been announced  by The Gillard Government, in partnership with Telstra and Australian universities. The ultimate prize, sponsored by Telstra, is travel and entry to the Black Hat 2012 Conference in Las Vegas, USA, in July 2012. Black Hat conferences are much sought-after technical information security congresses and briefing seminars which bring together trainers and speakers from corporate, government and research sectors worldwide.
Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy Senator Stephen Conroy said the Challenge would test the cyber problem-solving skills of teams of Australian undergraduates in a virtual computer network scenario. “The Challenge will raise awareness of the importance of cyber security, particularly in the university and business sectors, while also showcasing the diverse career opportunities for ICT graduates,” Senator Conroy said.
“The need for greater awareness of cyber security issues and for more high-skilled ICT graduates were two of the key themes to emerge from the public engagement process associated with the Government’s Cyber White Paper, due for release later this year. “The Challenge is a positive example of the Government partnering with industry and academia to enable Australia to overcome the challenges associated with being a modern, digital economy. “The Government is committed to working with industry to develop a safe and secure digital economy for Australians.  We are also committed to increasing the skills and expertise necessary to protect online environments from cyber crime such as data theft.”
The Challenge will run for 24 hours on 3 – 4 April 2012. University undergraduates across Australia who are studying computer science and related degrees are encouraged to register a team in the Challenge via their university.


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Anonymous Exposed The Private Information of The Special Agent, Officers, Cyber Crime Investigators Of Department Of Justice


The hacktivists claim to have hacked into Baclagan's Gmail account and to have accessed his voicemails and SMS message logs using unspecified techniques as part of their ongoing campaign against law enforcement officials and their "allies" in the computer security industry.
The email dump, released as a torrent last Friday in part of what has become the group's regular FuckFBIFriday release, is also said to contain personal information including Baclagan's home address and phone number. The cache of emails – which according to AntiSec are from the account of Fred Baclagan, a retired special agent supervisor of the Californian Department of Justice – includes 38,000 emails detailing various computer forensic techniques and cybercrime investigation protocols. 
Baclagan told that he was nobody special in the Justice Department ... which is what he would say, of course. He said that he had specialised in identity theft before he retired last year. "I'm really just a nobody," he told the Post, "just a local investigator, not involved in anything dynamic or dramatic

In the Press Release Anon Said:-

################################################################################
#        ANTISEC LEAKS DOJ SPECIAL AGENT SUPERVISOR'S PRIVATE EMAILS,         #
#               IACIS CYBERCRIME INVESTIGATOR COMMUNICATIONS                              #
#         care of the #OCCUPYWALLST CRACKDOWN RETALIATION TASK FORCE         #       
################################################################################

Greetings Pirates, and welcome to another exciting #FuckFBIFriday release.

As part of our ongoing effort to expose and humiliate our white hat enemies, we
targeted a Special Agent Supervisor of the CA Department of Justice in charge of
computer crime investigations. We are leaking over 38,000 private emails which
contain detailed computer forensics techniques, investigation protocols as well
as highly embarrassing personal information. We are confident these gifts will 
bring smiles to the faces of our black hat brothers and sisters (especially 
those who have been targeted by these scurvy dogs) while also making a mockery 
of "security professionals" who whore their "skills" to law enforcement to 
protect tyrannical corporativism and the status quo we aim to destroy.

We hijacked two gmail accounts belonging to Fred Baclagan, who has been a cop
for 20 years, dumping his private email correspondence as well as several dozen 
voicemails and SMS text message logs. While just yesterday Fred was having a 
private BBQ with his CATCHTEAM high computer crime task force friends, we were 
reviewing their detailed internal operation plans and procedure documents. We 
also couldn't overlook the boatloads of embarrassing personal information about 
our cop friend Fred. We lulzed as we listened to angry voicemails from his 
estranged wives and ex-girlfriends while also reading his conversations with 
girls who responded to his "man seeking woman" craigslist ads. We turned on his 
google web history and watched him look up linux command line basics, golfing 
tutorials, and terrible youtube music videos. We also abused his google 
voice account, making sure Fred's friends and family knew how hard he was owned.

Possibly the most interesting content in his emails are the IACIS.com internal
email list archives (2005-2011) which detail the methods and tactics cybercrime 
units use to gather electronic evidence, conduct investigations and make 
arrests. The information in these emails will prove essential to those who want 
to protect themselves from the techniques and procedures cyber crime 
investigators use to build cases. If you have ever been busted for computer 
crimes, you should check to see if your case is being discussed here. There are 
discussions about using EnCase forensic software, attempts to crack TrueCrypt 
encrypted drives, sniffing wireless traffic in mobile surveillance vehicles, how 
to best prepare search warrants and subpoenas, and a whole lot of clueless 
people asking questions on how to use basic software like FTP. In the end, we
rickrolled the entire IACIS list, causing the administrators to panic and shut
their list and websites down.

These cybercrime investigators are supposed to be the cream of the crop, but we
reveal the totality of their ignorance of all matters related to computer
security. For months, we have owned several dozen white hat and law enforcement
targets-- getting in and out of whichever high profile government and corporate
system we please and despite all the active FBI investigations and several
billion dollars of funding, they have not been able to stop us or get anywhere
near us. Even worse, they bust a few dozen people who are allegedly part of an
"anonymous computer hacking conspiracy" but who have only used 
kindergarten-level DDOS tools-- this isn't even hacking, but a form of
electronic civil disobedience. 

We often hear these "professionals" preach about "full-disclosure," but we are
sure these people are angrily sending out DMCA takedown notices and serving
subpoenas as we speak. They call us criminals, script kiddies, and terrorists, 
but their entire livelihood depends on us, trying desperately to study our 
techniques and failing miserably at preventing future attacks. See we're cut 
from an entirely different kind of cloth. Corporate security professionals like
Thomas Ryan and Aaron Barr think they're doing something noble by "leaking" the
public email discussion lists of Occupy Wall Street and profiling the "leaders"
of Anonymous. Wannabe player haters drop shitty dox and leak partial chat logs
about other hackers, doing free work for law enforcement. Then you got people 
like Peiter "Mudge" Zatko who back in the day used to be old school l0pht/cDc 
only now to sell out to DARPA going around to hacker conventions encouraging 
others to work for the feds. Let this be a warning to aspiring white hat 
"hacker" sellouts and police collaborators: stay out the game or get owned and 
exposed. You want to keep mass arresting and brutalizing the 99%? We'll have to 
keep owning your boxes and torrenting your mail spools, plastering your personal 
information all over teh internets.

Hackers, join us and rise up against our common oppressors - the white hats, the 
1%'s 'private' police, the corrupt banks and corporations and make 2011 the year 
of leaks and revolutions! 

We are Anti-Security,
We are the 99%
We do not forgive.
We do not forget.
Expect Us!

For More information Click Here


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Vulnerability in Apple MacBooks Which Could ruin Batteries


One prominent security researcher has discovered a vulnerability in the batteries of Apple's MacBook line of portable computers that could allow hackers to ruin the batteries or install malware on them that could corrupt a Mac.
Charlie Miller, a renowned white-hat hacker who works for security firm Accuvant, plans to reveal and offer a fix next month for a MacBook battery vulnerability he has discovered, Forbes reports. Miller uncovered default passwords, which are used to access the microcontroller in Apple's batteries, within a firmware update from 2009 and used them to gain access to the firmware.

Apple and other laptop makers use embedded chips in their lithium ion laptop batteries to monitor its power level, stop and start charging and regulate heat.
During the course of his tests, the researcher "bricked" seven batteries, rendering them unusable by rewriting the firmware. Of more concern is the possibility that hackers could use the vulnerability to install difficult to remove malware, or, in a worst case scenario, cause the batteries to explode.

“These batteries just aren’t designed with the idea that people will mess with them,” he said. “What I’m showing is that it’s possible to use them to do something really bad.” According to him, IT few administrators would think to check the battery, providing hackers with an opportunity to hide malicious software on a battery that could repeatedly implant itself on a computer.

Miller admitted that he hasn't tried to blow up any batteries, but he did say it might be possible. "You read stories about batteries in electronic devices that blow up without any interference,” he noted. “If you have all this control, you can probably do it.”
another researcher, Barnaby Jack, who works for antivirus software maker McAfee, also looked into the battery issue a couple years ago, but said he didn't get as far as Miller did.

Miller, who is a regular winner of security contests demonstrating Mac, Safari and iPhone exploits, has notified Apple and Texas Instruments of the issue. Despite requests from several other researchers not to proceed, he plans to unveil the vulnerability, along with a fix he calls "Caulkgun," at the Black Hat security conference next month.
"Caulk Gun" will change a battery's default passwords to a random string of characters. While the fix will prevent hackers from breaking into the battery, it would also block any future firmware updates from Apple.

In spite of the battery vulnerability that he uncovered, Miller believes Mac OS X security is better than ever before. According to him, Apple engineers made few security-related changes in the jump from Leopard to Snow Leopard, but they made substantial improvements in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, which was released on Wednesday.
"Now, they've made significant changes and it's going to be harder to exploit,” he said, as noted by The Register.
“It's a significant improvement, and the best way that I've described the level of security in Lion is that it's Windows 7, plus, plus,” said noted security consultant Dino Dai Zovi.
Apple offered security researchers, including Miller and Dai Zovi, an unprecedented early look at Lion in order to get their feedback.
According to researchers, Lion's biggest security improvement is Lion's support for Address Space Layout Randomization. ASLR randomizes the location of critical system components to reduce the risk of attack. Apple also added sandboxing security measures in Safari that will isolate potential bugs or malware. Finally, the newly revamped File Vault now allows an entire drive to be encrypted.


-News Source (Appleinsider)

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DARPA Launched Cyber Fast Track (Fund To Innovate Military)



The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency on Thursday launched Cyber Fast Track, an effort to fund innovative cybersecurity efforts by groups and people who don't usually do work for the government, including hobbyists, boutique security labs, and other small groups of hackers, DARPA project manager Peiter "Mudge" Zatko announced at Black Hat, a UBM TechWeb event, in Las Vegas.
The Cyber Fast Track program, first announced at the annual ShmooCon cybersecurity conference in January, will fund between 20 and 100 projects a year, Zatko said. The short, fixed-price contracts will be awarded with little turnaround time--about 10 days from the receipt of proposals--based on a simple proposal template so as to lower the barrier to entry. Projects will be carried out over no more than a few months. 
Cyber Fast Track will fund experimental projects, including commodity high-end computing, open software tools, and others, that might help the military. For example, Zatko raised possibilities like cheap unmanned aerial vehicles and an automated war-dialer that could repeatedly ring phones in a given area to discourage bomb-makers from building improvised explosive devices. Cyber Fast Track may also fund community efforts, possibly including a bug hunting exercise.
In addition to funding fast, cheap innovation that can later be leveraged by the Department of Defense, Zatko sees Cyber Fast Track as a way to link hackers up with government. "The way government is set up, it's almost impossible for the small businesses, the researchers, the hackers, to get money for research without giving up intellectual property or being purchased and having their company gutted," Zatko said. "I want to make it easier."
While some hackers may be reticent of the federal government, Zatko comes with impeccable hacker credentials. He was a member of the L0pht hacker group, created a famous password-cracking tool, and in 1998 testified before Congress that hackers could shut down the Internet in a half hour.
Zatko said that it is difficult for organizations like the L0pht to parse the legalese and government-talk in government contracts, and challenging for them to put together proposals. It takes too long and too much money for venture-backed companies, meanwhile, to justify crafting proposals.
When research is complete, researchers will be able to keep commercial rights to whatever they create, but the government will get government purpose rights that allow it to use, modify, repurpose, or release technical data on the projects in question. They may also be asked to present their efforts to a forum of undergraduate students at a U.S. military service academy, and will be encouraged to continue to update DARPA on the status of their projects once the contract has ended.
In his time at DARPA, Zatko has also been responsible for CINDER, a project that was initially reported by the government to be about insider threats, but which Zatko says is more about combating attacks like Stuxnet and next-generation advanced persistent threats. 

-News Source (Information Week)

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Anonymous Exposed full Details of IRCFederal.com


Hacker group Anonymous Exposed full details and sensitive data of IRCFederal 

According to Anon:-

"Today we release the ownage of another government-contracted IT company, IRC Federal. They brag about their multi-million dollar partnership with the FBI,
Army, Navy, NASA, and the Department of Justice, selling out their "skills" to the US empire. So we laid nuclear waste to their systems, owning their pathetic windows box, dropping their databases and private emails, and defaced their professional looking website.
In their emails we found various contracts, development schematics, and internal documents for various government institutions including a proposal for the FBI to develop a "Special Identities Modernization (SIM) Project" to "reduce terrorist and criminal activity by protecting all records associated with
trusted individuals and revealing the identities of those individuals who may pose serious risk to the United States and its allies". We also found
fingerprinting contracts for the DOJ, biometrics development for the military, and strategy contracts for the "National Nuclear Security Administration
Nuclear Weapons Complex".
Additionally we found login info to various VPNs and several Department of Energy login access panels that we are dumping *live* complete with some URLs
to live ASP file browser and upload backdoors - let's see how long it takes for them to remove it (don't worry we'll keep putting it back up until they pull
the box ;D)
 
Before we begin the drop, a personal message to the employees of IRC Federal:
 
If you place any value on freedom, then stop working for the oligarchy and start working against it. Stop aiding the corporations and a government
which uses unethical means to corner vast amounts of wealth and proceed to flagrantly abuse their power. Together, we have the power to change
this world for the better.
 
“He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetuate it.” –Martin Luther King, Jr.
 
Props to our black hat and antisec comrades: bantown, dikline,
h0no, phrack high council, ~el8 and all you kick-ass motherfuckers
we've never even heard of. Thank you...."

For More Details Click HERE

You May also Download this torrent file 

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