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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VOGH Exclusive: URL Redirection Vulnerability Found In Facebook

VOGH Exclusive: URL Redirection Vulnerability Found In Facebook [The Vulnerability Still Active & Not Been Patched]

Facebook -the world's largest social networking site with registered users of more than one billion, is considered among one of the safest site of the cyber space. To maintain such reputation Facebook Inc has done all the required steps, that one could possibly take. Like other high profile and very popular websites, Facebook also stand as one of the hot target of almost every cyber criminals of the world. To get rid of this and make FB safe and secure, the company have introduced what it called 'Bug Bounty' offer; where you can submit vulnerabilities to FB and get rewarded. We have seen many security researchers and hackers across the globe has done this and get their award. But not every time, and today I will talk about that- few days ago a reader of VOGH, who also goes by the nick name of 'Dr41DeY' has figured out a URL redirection vulnerability in Facebook. One of the link in Facebook App which is apps.facebook.com is posing URL redirection vulnerability. The hacker has demonstrated how any one can use  the vulnerability  in order to manipulate millions of innocent Facebook users. Let see  

Before publishing this, one of our VOGH representative have talked with Facebook Security regarding this security vulnerability, but due to some reason FB might overlooked this issue. Finally after waiting for almost a week, we the Team VOGH decided to bring this in-front of our reader. Let briefly go through with the vulnerable link- 

https://apps.facebook.com/a.php?u=http://www.voiceofgreyhat.com&mac=AQLy7nyXi5NBt31j&__tn__=*B&eid=AQLpbizR7KEf3cyD0VTN7fNtv99fMZABDp2gdWhvL-MQocJIPy3w4hUG7_7hrmSMqDq7QLCI9k_0LbB95NEz_6GUDHGNgTDsGP_rX-VWRHxfg5a--VlnN1K9FdG3NAek8r2JPWENkb2Mu56EckbZCGXcPie27OnHxE-H7MBufQel0Pr-ZjpCWB6QF5xHeWsdKqyHzjK2woBGGrjk9Dlgnzcw3d9ZWPzrwbGpm6MSkpks3mqEphXnTP2Vd9UDQxIs68NnTaO35XIwKq5t3CSdb11iU_34gzjfLgvvDo_BYbgtrGe0Juc5CpRSwd5nImw9oPPvn6Za9rrxO_ivROtOGc2b2S3bYzNLWpbDwt3cFN2rJ3JElyIR0vjB4R859PpE9SrZx6AD3s_liikzPh30YLVb8XvPABk7r9MShk6OrVFPiAWZnEvPx49UzPDSF-nEl188rEPAi0KGJ4u1zb10hhzmHUCjH04SezDByUkyNituMb2lgiQz-Xlpgy_tkVYR-U7plDa38N9VzdAj_Bwefd7B85ykZCAy9ZQOt48Ql8KQeKfivk3sThZIkLwWPiju7R28Sw6bj09vS_Y28kFSqanGe9tYAPfKIe4zOzQt9-Q1CC_EwX3ypOlyQ2yXMiU3lwp7M9EriKHRFDsTgsuzzF-uvlpx3UrWh8M55-NX0ULjr4kxjAR5g_1wU-luUyn_Ot6Ly1_ZbBdahyb5uSmCDNvF5kMuIH8Gxvpql45dNffGzKau9oZGn6r1OmsG47JIGipznCVaZnWjXAakDnEMX6X8ZtI-M-db1olzbBpJdj5sZe-x2VM02S5XsXJWe_QLxFDOupjbz8I82HETHQ9PbzSIMsJboll4E3-f_JQFfdzwEguLa8SC_ImRahWBCwKNJeSlmRv91FqWpQaChe5-UyAoqcblvK4jPuRO3qC7o-qMTQ2jEJqqUW46koulOmgNJpMYXPgRxjNGcwjyTPS59Nr08zq6eCNd1aYLh2E4s5MYXBtVUTF8l0uhQ2wYSoR66xZsI2tK0DD1KiQHyTO1QieBwPtCN3eWgRzUTg3lM3ttkuwYKRPPLDvtUOPWmZhYUzUFcbfPM2kXdpqyGlrGx9-ErKGygYKATx2xzrTzktjgW4q0L5wfO3CSKAOCAoKfi_pfz-zIHSNE8ZAjZDtpbC_chgkvbHWJYYIs7pnE1riWJYORACjkkRr6nZoivC3z_g-8JBahghwy2C34kJYZJ6cBC8LKoB6KCTbj_F1tArQAzcSUij4vrJNUATzsdlO_ol6HwUQb8FjoWa38Bhtx81stxB328sgC9IGu1omPG0QeNJVhcJwh6HyEwtgycBLrlcdedaWbkwvnjv3F3BWuJIi763nBeYuAgNUaEUYHaXu_ZJzXW8fQ72nz_hddGT_GH50&sig=89099

Replace voiceofgreyhat.com with any of your favorite site, and the the said vulnerability will allow you to get redirected to that very website you want to from Facebook. This loophole is still active, and any one can test that with the above url, we thought the impact of this loophole is very serious, as any malicious attacker can misuse the trust-hod of Facebook's url in order to harm regular internet users, while redirecting them to any junk or malfunctional websites.

Disclaimer:- Earlier I told that the issue has already brought into the notice of Facebook Security, but they overlooked the whole issue, so being a responsible cyber media, we VOGH are disclosing this to people. If any one misuse this vulnerability, then Voiceofgreyhat will not at all be responsible for any kind of mishap.

Update:- May be doing more that what we call late repent, but finally the above disclosed vulnerability has been patched by Facebook security team. 

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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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Microsoft Along With FBI & EC3 Shattered The Notorious ZeroAccess Botnet

Microsoft Along With FBI & EC3 Shattered The Notorious ZeroAccess Botnet Responsible For Infecting More Than 2 Million Computers

Redmond based software giant Microsoft yet again got a huge success against a big racket of cyber criminals while shattering one of the world's largest and most rampant botnets named 'ZeroAccess'. The Sirefef botnet, also known as ZeroAccess, is responsible for infecting more than 2 million computers, specifically targeting search results on Google, Bing and Yahoo search engines, and is estimated to cost online advertisers $2.7 million each month. Tech giant Microsoft working alongside the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Europol's European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) have successfully disrupted this notorious botnet. This is Microsoft’s first botnet action since the Nov. 14 unveiling of its new Cybercrime Center — a center of excellence for advancing the global fight against cyber crime — and marks the company’s eighth botnet operation in the past three years.

“This operation marks an important step in coordinated actions that are initiated by private companies and, at the same time, enable law enforcement agencies around Europe to identify and investigate the criminal organizations and networks behind these dangerous botnets that use malicious software to gain illicit profits,” said Troels Oerting, head of the EC3. “EC3 added its expertise, information communications technology infrastructure and analytic capability, as well as provided the platform for high-level cooperation between cyber crime units in five European countries and Microsoft.”

Due to its botnet architecture, ZeroAccess is one of the most robust and durable botnets in operation today and was built to be resilient to disruption efforts, relying on a peer-to-peer infrastructure that allows cyber criminals to remotely control the botnet from tens of thousands of different computers. ZeroAccess is used to commit a slew of crimes, including search hijacking, which “hijacks” people’s search results and redirects people to sites they had not intended or requested to go to in order to steal the money generated by their ad clicks. ZeroAccess also commits click fraud, which occurs when advertisers pay for clicks that are not the result of legitimate, interested human users’ clicks, but are the result of automated Web traffic and other criminal activity. Research by the University of California, San Diego shows that as of October 2013, 1.9 million computers were infected with ZeroAccess, and Microsoft determined there were more than 800,000 ZeroAccess-infected computers active on the Internet on any given day.

How It Happened:- 

Last week, Microsoft filed a civil suit against the cyber criminals operating the ZeroAccess botnet and received authorization from the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas to simultaneously block incoming and outgoing communications between computers located in the U.S. and the 18 identified Internet Protocol (IP) addresses being used to commit the fraudulent schemes. In addition, Microsoft took over control of 49 domains associated with the ZeroAccess botnet. A10 Networks provided Microsoft with advanced technology to support the disruptive action.

As Microsoft executed the order filed in its civil case, Europol coordinated a multijurisdictional criminal action targeting the 18 IP addresses located in Europe. Specifically, Europol worked with Latvia, Luxembourg, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Germany to execute search warrants and seizures on computer servers associated with the fraudulent IP addresses located in Europe. This is the second time in six months that Microsoft and law enforcement have worked together to successfully disrupt a prevalent botnet. It demonstrates the value coordinated operations have against cyber criminal enterprises. For more information about this botnet operation click here

ZeroAccess is counted as a very sophisticated malware, blocking attempts to remove it, therefore recommended for every Microsoft user to click Here for detailed instructions on how to remove this threat. As Microsoft found that the ZeroAccess malware disables security features on infected computers, leaving the computer susceptible to secondary infections, it is critical that victims rid their computers of ZeroAccess by using malware removal or antivirus software as quickly as possible. 

In conversation with press David Finn, executive director and associate general counsel of the Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit said -“Microsoft is committed to working collaboratively — with our customers, partners, academic experts and law enforcement — to combat cybercrime. And we’ll do everything we can to protect computer users from the sinister activities and criminal networks that victimize innocent people and businesses around the world.” 

While talking about ZeroAccess botnet take down, I would like to remind you that in Match, last year Microsoft has successfully shutdown two command and control (C&C) server of world's of the most dangerous banking trojan Zeus.

-Source (Microsoft Official Blog)

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TeamSpeak Official Forum Hacked! Redirecting Users Into Malicious DotCache Exploit Kit

TeamSpeak Official Forum Hacked! Infecting Users By Malicious DotCache Exploit Kit

A serious security breach has compromised official forum of TeamSpeak, according to sources hackers have gained access inside the server and injected malicious script into the landing page of TeamSpeak official forum. Expert malware analyzer have figured out that the attack was thoroughly planned in order to infect millions of users while redirecting them to a DotCache exploit kit landing page as illustrated below 

TeamSpeak is a very famous Brazilian company who offers (VoIP) software that allows computer users to speak on a chat channel with fellow computer users, much like a telephone conference call. Users use the TeamSpeak client software to connect to a TeamSpeak server of their choice, from there they can join chat channels and enjoy the excellent VoIP service. Mostly it is used by millions of gamers across the globe. 

Basically we can consider TeamSpeak is a high value target, so did the hacker. Researchers said that the exploit kit landing page is hosted on atvisti.ro, a forum for ATV enthusiasts that's also been compromised. In a statement well known malware analyst & security researcher Jerome Segura said- if the Java exploit succeeds the final payload is loaded. In this particular example, the payload was the Zero Access Trojan which an Anti-Malware from Malwarebytes detects as Rootkit.0Access. The matter of a bit relief is that the malware has not yet been spotted in the wild. According to a statistic by Virus Total, only 7 of 46 leading antivirus can detect this type of malware. Exactly like TeamSpeak, a few days earlier Kahu Security researchers uncovered a similar compromise on the forum for the Nissan Pathfinder Off Road Association (NPORA) in both cases, JJEncode was used to obfuscate the malicious script. To avoid further infection, TeamSpeak forum has already been informed, an as expected they have over come this issue. For detail analysis of the above said malware you can visit official blog post of Malwarebytes. 

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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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Hackers Exploiting Old Ruby on Rails Vulnerability To Compromise Web Servers & Create Botnet

Hackers Exploiting Old Ruby on Rails Vulnerability (CVE-2013-0156) To Compromise Web Servers & Create IRC Botnet

A critical vulnerability on Ruby on Rails spotted in January this year which was deemed “critical” at the same time yet again found in the wild. The vulnerability known as CVE-2013-0156 that affected versions 3.0.20 and 2.3.16 again rises it's hand. Though a security patch was released by the Rails developers. But as we all know that many server administrator used to be unaware of these events have not patched their systems. As a result hackers and cyber criminals are actively exploiting a critical vulnerability in the Ruby on Rails Web application development framework in order to compromise Web servers and create a dangerous botnet. This major security issue was first discovered by a security consultant Mr. Jeff Jarmoc of research firm Matasano Security. In his blog Jarmoc said "It’s pretty surprising that it’s taken this long to surface in the wild, but less surprising that people are still running vulnerable installations of Rails. It also appears to be affecting some web hosts." According to his blog post -the exploit that's currently being used by attackers adds a custom cron job -- a scheduled task on Linux machines that executes a sequence of commands. Those commands download a malicious C source file from a remote server, compile it locally and execute it. The resulting malware is a bot that connects to an IRC (Internet Relay Chat) server and joins a predefined channel where it waits for commands from the attackers. A pre-compiled version of the malware is also downloaded in case the compilation procedure fails on the compromised systems.

"Functionality is limited, but includes the ability to download and execute files as commanded, as well as changing servers," Jarmoc said. "There's no authentication performed, so an enterprising individual could hijack these bots fairly easily by joining the IRC server and issuing the appropriate commands." But the matter of relief is that Jarmoc concluded while saying "this is a pretty straightforward skiddy exploit of a vulnerability that has been publicly known, and warned about, for months."

But still administrators who have not yet patched their Rails version should immediately should update the Ruby on Rails installations on their servers to at least versions 3.2.11, 3.1.10, 3.0.19 or 2.3.15 which contain the patch for this vulnerability. However, the best course of action is probably to update to the latest available Rails versions, depending on the branch used, since other critical vulnerabilities have been addressed since then. 

Brief About RoR:- Ruby on Rails is a popular framework for developing Web applications based on the Ruby programming language and is used by major websites including Hulu, GroupOn, GitHub and Scribd.

-Source (Network World)

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E!Online Official Twitter Account Hijacked By Syrian Electronic Army (#twithackery)

E!Online Official Twitter Account Hijacked By Syrian Electronic Army (#twithackery) Fake Tweet Claimed Justin Bieber is Gay

The massive ongoing twitter hijacking also known as twithackery carried by carried by the infamous pro-Assad group of hackers known as the Syrian Electronic Army targeted another high profile twitter account. After the successful hijack of three high profile twitter account of CBS news followed by the hack of BBC and the Associated Press twitter account, now Syrian Electronic Army aka SEA have caught another big fish  that is E! Online -one of the leading resource of entertainment and celebrity gossip news. The official twitter account of E!Online that has over five million followers fallen victim to these dangerous hacker collective group. As per several legitimate sources this high valued twitter account was hacked on Saturday afternoon and subsequently posted several false tweets about a few celebrities, most specifically Justin Bieber. After the successful hijack, exactly like earlier the hacker group started tweeting false message. Among those One tweet read, “Exclusive: Justin Bieber to E!Online: I’m a gay,” followed by a shortlink.  Another read, “Exclusive: Selena Gomez tells E! she will fully supporting Justin in his coming out” [sic], also followed by a shortlink.  (Selena Gomez was Bieber’s girlfriend up until recently).  And another made reference to Angelina Jolie blaming Jordan for “the Syrian refugees’ atrocious conditions.” Here is screen capture of those fake tweets:- 

After this mishap security experts have figured out that many of those links associated with the above fake tweets redirecting users to malicious webpages. So users were urged not to click on the links. Not only the official twitter account, but also the hacking group also managed to infiltrate the E!’s text messaging system, sending hundreds of thousands of subscribers similar messages including an obscene message relating to President Barack Obama. 

While talking about twitter hacking, widely known as #twithackery; we would like to remind you the following names, WWE champion John Cena, Star Rita Ora, Justin Bieber, Teyana Taylor,American pop singer Kesha, NBC News, Fox News Politics, USAToday, Lady Gaga’s Twitter Account, Anders Breivik, Mahesh Bhatt, Huffington Post & CBS; these are the famous names who have fallen victim to twithackery before E!Online. In the wake of all the recent cyberattacks on news organizations, Twitter has warned media accounts that they will continue to be targets of hackers, and has advised them to take all appropriate steps to further secure their Twitter accounts. 

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Linux/Cdorked.A: One of The Most Sophisticated Apache Backdoor Targets Millions of Websites

Linux/Cdorked.A: One of The Most Sophisticated Apache Backdoor Targets Millions of Websites to Serve Blackhole Exploit

ESET one of the world renowned security firm headquartered in Bratislava have figured out what it called a malicious cyber rampage targeting millions of cPanel-based servers. Since last few months security experts have been tracking server level compromises that have been utilizing malicious Apache modules to inject malware into websites and  redirecting some of its requests to the infamous Blackhole Exploit packs. On cPanel-based servers, instead of adding modules or modifying the Apache configuration, the attackers started to replace the Apache binary (httpd) with a malicious one. This new backdoor is very sophisticated and this new malware has been dubbed "Linux/Cdorked.A." Several analysis reveals that it is a sophisticated and stealthy backdoor meant to drive traffic to malicious websites. According to the official blog post of ESET - Linux/Cdorked.A is one of the most sophisticated Apache backdoor's we have seen so far. The backdoor leaves no traces of compromised hosts on the hard drive other than its modified httpd binary, thereby complicating forensics analysis. All of the information related to the backdoor is stored in shared memory. The configuration is pushed by the attacker through obfuscated HTTP requests that aren't logged in normal Apache logs. This means that no command and control information is stored anywhere on the system.

This malicious cyber rampage was first detected by another security firm named 'Sucuri' and later ESET published a detailed analysis of the issue. But still there are thoughtful matter as already thousands of websites get infected. The attack is particularly dangerous as Apache web servers are among the most well-known and widely-used in the world and are used by numerous companies. This means that a successful security breach can affect numerous different businesses across a diverse range of industries.

As this malware also known as Linux/Cdorked.A has already been spotted in the wild, so on behalf of cyber media, we urge all the concern system administrator, security analyst to take care of the above issue while to checking their servers and verify that they are not affected by this threat. Detailed instructions to perform this check are provided in the ESET blog.

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Controversial Cyber Security Bill CISPA Passed Again By The US House

Controversial Cyber Security Bill CISPA Passed Again By The US House

Couple of months ago we reported that the White House is planning for an executive cyber security order, from some official sources it has also come to know that the U.S. President Mr. Barack Obama has a special plan to re-introduce the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA). Today that deceleration get executed as the US House of Representatives has passed the controversial Cyber Information Sharing and Protection Act. This is the second time when CISPA have been passed by the White House, first it was rejected by the Senator while saying that the bill did not do enough to protect privacy. But yet again with the initiative of Obama and a substantial majority of politicians in the House backed the bill. Though there is a huge chance of getting rejected. According to some relevant sources it has been came to light that, this time also CISPA could fail again in the Senate after threats from President Obama to veto it over privacy concerns. Sources are saying that the main reason of re-introducing CISPA is the the President Barack Obama expressed concerns that it could pose a privacy risk. The White House wants amendments so more is done to ensure the minimum amount of data is handed over in investigations.  The law is passing through the US legislative system as American federal agencies warn that malicious hackers, motivated by money or acting on behalf of foreign governments, such as China, are one of the biggest threats facing the nation.  "If you want to take a shot across China's bow, this is the answer," said Mike Rogers, the Republican politician who co-wrote CISPA and chairs the House Intelligence Committee. 

On the other hand CISPA has also secured the backing of several technology firms, including the CTIA wireless industry group, as well as the TechNet computer industry lobby group, which has Google, Apple and Yahoo as members. By contrast, some other big names like Mozilla, Reddit has been vocal in its opposition to the bill. In the beginning the social networking giant Facebook supported CISPA but later they took back its support. The American Civil Liberties Union has also opposed CISPA, saying the bill was "fatally flawed". The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Reporters Without Borders and the American Library Association have all voiced similar worries.

-Source (BBC)

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PostgreSQL Fixed “Persistent Denial-of-Service” Vulnerability (CVE-2013-1899)

PostgreSQL Fixed 'High-Exposure Security Vulnerability' Causing Denial-of-Service Attack (CVE-2013-1899)

Security researcher's have yet again figured out a serious security hole in one of most widely used object-relational database management system, PostgreSQL also known as Postgres. While manipulating the loophole an attacker can easily corrupt files and in some cases, can execute malicious code on underlying servers causing "persistent denial-of-service" attack. By corrupting the files an attacker can cause database server to crash and refuse to reboot. Affected servers could only be restarted by removing garbage text from the files or by restoring them from a backup. Versions 9.0, 9.1, and 9.2 are all vulnerable. As soon as this vulnerability get spotted, the developers at PostgreSQL immediately  released updates while addressing a "high-exposure security vulnerability in versions 9.0 and later." The updates are available for 9.0, 9.1, and 9.2 branches, as well as 8.4. This updates also allow PostgreSQL to be built using Microsoft Visual Studio 2012. According to developers: "A major security issue fixed in this release, CVE-2013-1899, makes it possible for a connection request containing a database name that begins with "-" to be crafted that can damage or destroy files within a server's data directory. Anyone with access to the port the PostgreSQL server listens on can initiate this request. This issue was discovered by Mitsumasa Kondo and Kyotaro Horiguchi of NTT Open Source Software Center." In addition to fixes for one major security issue, the updates also include four more minor security fixes, as well as fixes for other, non-security-related issues. 

Some of these fixes include:

• A security vulnerability that made contrib/pgcrypto-generated strings too easy to guess;
• A vulnerability that would allow unprivileged users to interfere with backups;
• Security issues involving the OS X and Linux installers;
• Vaious issues with GiST indices;
• An issue related to crash recovery; and
• Memory and buffer leaks, among others.

The complete list of fixes and enhancements in each version can be found on the PostgreSQL release notes archive page. Also the patched PostgreSQL 9.2.4, 9.1.9, 9.0.13, and 8.4.17 are available now at download  page. While talking about this fix, we would like to remind you that, late in last year another security vulnerability hit PostgreSQL database system, including versions 9.1.5, 9.0.9, 8.4.13 and 8.3.20. The security holes associated with libxml2 and libxslt. Along with that a vulnerability in the built-in XML functionality, and a vulnerability in the XSLT functionality supplied by the optional XML2 extension. 

-Source (Campus Technology & The-H)

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Jadavpur University Official Website is Vulnerable to Sql Injection

Jadavpur University Official Website is Vulnerable to Sql Injection 

An ethical hacker from India named Chirag Singh have figured out serious loopholes in the official website of Jadavpur University -one of the most renowned and prestigious university of India. Chirag find blind Sql injection vulnerability which can be exploited by malicious purpose in order to harm the website and gain access. From the vulnerability report submitted by the hacker, it has been found that the web-server of Jadavpur University is using Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (Tikanga) where the web application technologies are Apache 2.2.3 and PHP 5.1.6; along with the back-end database is PostgreSQL. The hackers also managed to dump 11 database with more than 215 tables as shown in the picture below 

This issue has already been reported to the concern person and the webmaster of Jadavpur University, and due to security and privacy we are not exposing and mention the vulnerable link and dumped database.

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Pwn2Own 2013 Result: Chrome, Firefox, IE, Adobe Reader, Flash & Java Owned

Pwn2Own 2013 Result: Chrome, Firefox, IE, Adobe Reader, Flash & Java Owned Only Safari Survived 

Couple of months ago we have talked about 'Pwn2Own 2013' hacking contest sponsored by HP TippingPoint, ZDI and Google where the most famous and widely used browsers have to face challenges. Now the result of this long awaited security competition has came which is showing that the entire browser security landscape can change in a single day, as browsers thought to be secure are proven to be otherwise. Of the Big Four browsers, only Apple's Safari has so far survived the onslaught of the browser-breakers where Chrome, Internet Explorer 10 and Firefox all fell to the mercy of the hackers. Not only browsers but also three other popular applications that is Adobe Reader, Flash Player and yet again Java fallen victim to hackers at 'Pwn2Own'. And for Java it was a true disaster as Java fell three times, though under the contest rules, only the first attacker was due to win the $20,000 prize. Vupen, a renowned security research firm based in France, cracked both Firefox and Internet Explorer. It roughly explained the attack in a tweet, “We’ve pwned Firefox using a use-after-free and a brand new technique to bypass ASLR/DEP on Win7 without the need of any ROP.” This bug hint leads them winning $100,000 for finding a huge hole. Again in a tweet, Security firm Vupen explained “We’ve pwned MS Surface Pro with two IE10 zero-days to achieve a full Windows 8 compromise with sandbox bypass.” Lastly, U.K.-based security firm MWR Labs cracked Chrome and also gained full control of the operating system, this time Windows 7. It also “demonstrated a full sandbox bypass exploit.” The company explained in a blog post that it found a zero-day in Chrome “running on a modern Windows-based laptop.” It was able to exploit the vulnerability by performing a very similar attack to what took down Facebook, Microsoft, and a number of other well-known companies: It had the laptop visit a malicious website. 

Now lets take look at the final score board of Pwn2Own 2013:

Wednesday:
1:30 - Java (James Forshaw) PWNED
2:30 - Java (Joshua Drake) PWNED
3:30 - IE 10 (VUPEN Security) PWNED
4:30 - Chrome (Nils & Jon) PWNED
5:30 - Firefox (VUPEN Security) PWNED
5:31 - Java (VUPEN Security) PWNED

Thursday:
12pm - Flash (VUPEN Security) PWNED
1pm - Adobe Reader (George Hotz) PWNED
2pm - Java (Ben Murphy via proxy) PWNED

The total damage to the prize fund comes out at a whopping $480k. With HP's announcement that everyone will get paid for each attack, the prize monies will be divvied up as follows:-

1. James Forshaw: Java = $20K
2. Joshua Drake: Java = $20k
3. VUPEN Security: IE10 + Firefox + Java + Flash = $250k
4. Nils & Jon: Chrome = $100k
5. George Hotz: Adobe Reader = $70k
6. Ben Murphy: Java = $20k

As you all know that the main motive of these contest is to make applications, software more safe and secure while figuring out hidden vulnerabilities  Here also for Pwn2Own the security holes figured out by the above experts have already been submitted and taken carefully by those organization  along with that, the expected patch for the browsers have already been released. Those who are still using the older version of those above applications are requested to update their system. So, stay tuned with VOGH and be safe on the Internet. 

-Source (HP, Naked Security) 

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