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

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

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

SHARE OUR NEWS DIRECTLY ON SOCIAL NETWORKS:-
<a href="> BBC Server Compromised! Russian Hackers Broke Into FTP & Tried to Sell Unauthorized Access "https://www.voiceofgreyhat.com/2014/01/bbc-ftp-server-hacked-by-russian-hackers.html</a>

Taith North Wales Transport & Travel Planning of UK Govt Hacked By Pakistani Hacker

Taith North Wales Transport & Travel Planning (Govt of UK), Few Other High Profile Websites Hacked By 'KHAN' (Pakistani Hacker)

A hacker from Pakistan going by the nick name of 'KHAN' has targeted a several high valued website of United Kingdom. The cyber attack happened few days ago where 'Khan' has hacked into the websites of Taith North Wales Transport and Travel Planning of UK Government. Taith is a joint committee of six county authorities from North Wales that handles transport and travel planning.

Sources revealed that the hacker belongs from Italy has managed to gain access into one the server of UK govt, and thus he successfully hack and change the index page with customized message saying- "today i am again with same message uk goverment deciding Ban Hijab for muslim womens what the hell is this! when your womens wear underware and come out of home beaches, road, you said this is freedom ? this is no problem ? but when our ladies , sisters , mothers wear hijab you said this is problem . so you call this justice ? i will fight for our right like a legend till i die .. We Want Freedom For Our Religion. You can kill us but cant kill our idea!" The hacker also claimed that not only defacement, but also he managed to breach the database of  the website. As soon as the security breach get spotted the authorities of Taith North Wales Transport Dept, took immediate steps and restored the site. While the time of writing this news, Taith Transportation portal has come back to online to its normal format. Also in his deface page 'Khan' took the responsibility of intrusion against Customs of Russia' official website. This slew of hacking rampage also affected several other high profile website of UK such as Hotel Black Boy Inn, Buckley Industry, Groes News, Spirit Models, Livetech, ByteBack Training & few more.

SHARE OUR NEWS DIRECTLY ON SOCIAL NETWORKS:-
<a href=">Taith North Wales Transport & Travel Planning of UK Govt Hacked By Pakistani Hacker"https://www.voiceofgreyhat.com/2013/12/taith-govt-uk-hacked-by-khan.html</a>

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

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

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

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

SHARE OUR NEWS DIRECTLY ON SOCIAL NETWORKS:-
<a href=">The Washington Post Server Breached! Chinese Hackers Apprehend For This Cyber Attack "https://www.voiceofgreyhat.com/2013/12/washington-post-hacked-by-chinese-hackers.html</a>

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. 

SHARE OUR NEWS DIRECTLY ON SOCIAL NETWORKS:-
<a href=">Chinese Hackers Eavesdropping European Diplomats Before G20 Summit "https://www.voiceofgreyhat.com/2013/12/china-eavesdropping-europeans-before-G20-summit.html</a>

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

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

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

SHARE OUR NEWS DIRECTLY ON SOCIAL NETWORKS:-
<a href=">Security Breach Invaded 8,500 Recipients of Unemployment Insurance Agency Michigan (UIA) "https://www.voiceofgreyhat.com/2013/12/unemployment-insurance-agency-hacked.html</a>

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. 

SHARE OUR NEWS DIRECTLY ON SOCIAL NETWORKS:-
<a href=">TeamSpeak Official Forum Hacked! Redirecting Users Into Malicious DotCache Exploit Kit"https://www.voiceofgreyhat.com/2013/12/TeamSpeak-forum-hacked.html</a>

Twitter & Yahoo Tightening Their Security to Prevent Eavesdropping of NSA

Twitter & Yahoo Tightening Their Security to Prevent Eavesdropping of NSA & Other Govt Agencies 

Last month a untold and sensational story came to light, when the whistle blowers Edward Snowden unveiled one of the top secret program of NSA called called “Muscular” Former NSA contractor Snowden himself disclosed that the National Security Agency has secretly broken into the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centers around the world in order to collect and snoop the private data of millions of internet users. NSA’s acquisitions directorate sends millions of records every day from internal Yahoo and Google networks to data warehouses at the agency’s headquarters at Fort Meade, Md. In the preceding 30 days, the report said, field collectors had processed and sent back 181,280,466 new records including “metadata,” which would indicate who sent or received e-mails and when, as well as content such as text, audio and video. Both Yahoo & Google said that they had never gave access to nay Govt agency to their data centers. Yahoo spokeswoman said, “We have strict controls in place to protect the security of our data centers, and we have not given access to our data centers to the NSA or to any other government agency.” Google’s chief legal officer, David Drummond said “We are outraged at the lengths to which the government seems to have gone to intercept data from our private fiber networks, and it underscores the need for urgent reform,” 

But the matter of fact is that NSA has indeed sniffed the personal & private communication of million internet users of tech giants like Yahoo and Google. To get rid of this kind of privacy breach, now the tech giants who hold the personal record and credential of mass, are tightening and enhancing their existing security system. According to Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo "We’ve worked hard over the years to earn our users’ trust and we fight hard to preserve it." Yahoo also says it will encrypt all information moving between its data centers by the end of the first quarter, and it will work on getting international partners to enable HTTPS encryption in Yahoo-branded Mail services.Yahoo says it will give users an option to encrypt all data flow to and from Yahoo. "Yahoo has never given access to our data centers to the NSA or to any other government agency ever. There is nothing more important to us than protecting our users’ privacy. To that end, we recently announced that we will make Yahoo Mail even more secure by introducing https (SSL - Secure Sockets Layer) encryption with a 2048-bit key across our network by January 8, 2014." added Marissa Mayer.

Not only Yahoo, but the social networking giant Twitter, who have registered users of almost 550 million with an active user of 250 million across the globe has also taken immediate steps after this breathtaking story of spying by NSA get the spot light. Twitter is implementing new security measures that should make it much more difficult for anyone to eavesdrop on communications between its servers and users. The entire security mechanism has been taken to tighten the data privacy of its users. According to a blog post of twitter the company has implemented "perfect forward secrecy" on its Web and mobile platforms, which made eavesdropping almost impossible. "As part of our continuing effort to keep our users’ information as secure as possible, we’re happy to announce that we recently enabled forward secrecy for traffic on twitter.com, api.twitter.com, and mobile.twitter.com. On top of the usual confidentiality and integrity properties of HTTPS, forward secrecy adds a new property. If an adversary is currently recording all Twitter users’ encrypted traffic, and they later crack or steal Twitter’s private keys, they should not be able to use those keys to decrypt the recorded traffic." -said the blog post.

While talking about Muscular program of NSA, we would also like to remind you that couple weeks ago we came to know about 'Royal Concierge' another secret program of GCHQ & NSA to spy foreign diplomats through hotel bookings uncovered by Edward Snowden.

-Source (CIO & PC World) 

SHARE OUR NEWS DIRECTLY ON SOCIAL NETWORKS:-
<a href=">Twitter & Yahoo Tightening Their Security to Prevent Eavesdropping of NSA"https://www.voiceofgreyhat.com/2013/11/twitter-yahoo-tightening-security-2stop-eavesdropping.html</a>

Cupid Media Network Breach Exposes 42 Million Passwords in Plain Text

Cupid Media Network Breach Exposes 42 Million Passwords in Plain Text (Uunencrypted)

Cupid Media one of the leading niche online dating network that have more than 35 large online dating website, faced a massive intrusion that effects more than 42 million of its registered users. From an exclusive report of Kerbs On Security we came to know that the breach was taken earlier in this year. Where the hackers managed to gain access into the crucial servers belongings to Cupid Media network. According to the managing director of Cupid Media, Mr Andrew Bolton - "In January we detected suspicious activity on our network and based upon the information that we had available at the time, we took what we believed to be appropriate actions to notify affected customers and reset passwords for a particular group of user accounts.” After a preliminary investigation it has been found that the purloined database of Australia-based niche dating service Cupid Media was found on the same server where hackers had amassed tens of millions of records stolen from Adobe. More than 42 million peoples' unencrypted names, dates of birth, email addresses and passwords have been found from the pinched database. I am very much wearied to see that a high value site like Cupid is unconcerned about the basic security counter measure. Even their confidential tables remained unencrypted which allows the hacker to gain the personal information in plain text. Like the Cupid Media security team, the registered users also found very much inadvertent and unaware of basic security measures. I am saying this because of the leaked passwords, almost two million picked "123456", and over 1.2 million chose "111111". "iloveyou" and "lovely" both beat out "password", and while 40,000 chose "qwerty", 20,000 chose the bottom row of the keyboard instead - yielding the password "zxcvbnm". 

Jason Hart of famous data protection firm Safenet said "The true impact of the breach is likely to be huge. Yet, if this data had been encrypted in the first place then all hackers would have found is scrambled information, rendering the theft pointless."

This security breach of Cupid Media reminds us  the decent history of breach where we have seen a slew of attacks against the following sites: Drupal.org  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. While covering this story on behalf of VOGH, I am warning our readers across the globe to use strong alphanumeric passwords to avoid such disaster. Also the webmasters and security administrator are highly recommended to use salted encryption in their database to prevent fortuitousness cyber attack. 

SHARE OUR NEWS DIRECTLY ON SOCIAL NETWORKS:-
<a href=">Cupid Media Network Breach Exposes 42 Million Passwords in Plain Text "https://www.voiceofgreyhat.com/2013/11/cupid-media-breach-exposes-42million-plaintext-passwords.html</a>

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

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

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

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

Official Release of Anonymous: -

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

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

Greetings Our Fellow lulz. + 

+ 

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

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

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

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

SHARE OUR NEWS DIRECTLY ON SOCIAL NETWORKS:-
<a href=">Customs Services of Ukraine Govt Hacked By Anonymous, 1 GB of Classified Data Stolen"https://www.voiceofgreyhat.com/2013/11/customs-services-ukraine-hacked-by-anonymous.html</a>

Stratfor Hacker Jeremy Hammond Sentenced to 120 Months in Prison

LulzSec Hacker Jeremy Hammond Sentenced to 120 Months in Prison For Stratfor Hack

Infamous hacker Jeremy Hammond convicted by the Judge for cyber-attacks on government agencies and businesses, including a global intelligence company. This 28 year old Chicago hacker who is also known as "Anarchaos" was arrested by the federal authorities and been charged for the  breach of the security analysis company Stratfor. In December last year the bail application of Hammond was also been rejected by the the U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska. On June this year Hammond pleaded guilty for his sin. In his statement he said "I have pleaded guilty, it is a relief to be able to say that I did work with Anonymous to hack Stratfor, among other websites." 

That guilty plea indeed worked out for him, as that time it was predicated that Hammond  might have to face 30 years in prison, but on Friday Judge Loretta Preska sentenced Hammond to 120 months in federal prison and three years of supervised release for illegally accessing computers systems of law enforcement agencies and government contractors. In an emotional proceeding that lasted more than 2 hours in a Manhattan federal court room on Friday, victims and relatives of Hammond railed against the FBI and shed tears on his behalf following the sentencing. One overwrought person claiming to be a victim was forcibly escorted from the court by officers. But Hammond likely knew the sentence was coming, his lawyer said. "When Jeremy took this plea with a 10-year maximum, I think he understood this was very likely the outcome," said Sarah Kunstler, Hammond's defense attorney outside of court house.

Chief U.S. District Judge Loretta A. Preska said Hammond's digital handiwork had compromised thousands of people's personal and financial data, including the unpublished phone numbers and addresses of law enforcement, who then received threats. Hammond tried unsuccessfully to argue that his actions were politically motivated, she said. Hammond pleaded guilty to a single charge with a 10-year maximum sentence. Still his lawyers are asking to reduce his punishment for a sentence of 20 months.

Hammond has been held without bail since his arrest in March on charges connected with last year's hacking of Strategic Forecasting, or Stratfor, an Austin, Texas-based international intelligence broker, by AntiSec, an offshoot of LulzSec, which is in turn an offshoot of the hacktivist collective Anonymous. Prosecutors say the hack of Austin, Texas-based Strategic Forecasting resulted in the theft of 60,000 credit-card numbers and records for 860,000 clients. The government alleges that he published some of that information online, and used some of the stolen credit card data to run up at least $700,000 in unauthorized charges. He is also accused of giving about five million internal emails to WikiLeaks, which were published under the name The Global Intelligence Files.

-Source (Fox News)

SHARE OUR NEWS DIRECTLY ON SOCIAL NETWORKS:-
<a href=">Stratfor Hacker Jeremy Hammond Sentenced to 120 Months in Prison"https://www.voiceofgreyhat.com/2013/11/jeremy-hammond-sentenced-to-120-months-in-prison.html</a>

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. 

SHARE OUR NEWS DIRECTLY ON SOCIAL NETWORKS:-
<a href=">Drupal.org Hacked ! More Than 967,000 Registered User Details Compromised "https://www.voiceofgreyhat.com/2013/06/Drupal.org-Hacked-967000-User-at-Risk.html</a>

Jeremy Hammond -Key Member of Anonymous Affiliated LulzSec Pleads Guilty To Stratfor Hack

Jeremy Hammond -Key Member of Anonymous Affiliated LulzSec Pleads Guilty To Stratfor Hack, Could Face 10 Years In Prison

Lulz Security widely known as LulzSec, the most dangerous hacker collective group who set their devastating hacking rampage for fifty days in which they have successfully penetrated almost all the so called top secure fields; has suddenly stopped their sail. But stopping crime never means that the criminal will be overlooked, the pending punishment will surely take place. And this applied from LulzSec also. Lat year we have seen leader of LulzSec and also also leader of infamous hacker collective group Anonymous code-named "Sabu," whose real name is Hector Xavier Monsegur, turned traitor to his community and became FBI informer and provided all the information on fellow hackers. The arrest of Sabu subsequently helped law-enforcement officials to infiltrate Lulzsec, an offshoot of Anonymous, the loose hacking collective that has supported an ever-shifting variety of causes. The information provided by Sabu lead FBI to arrest all the key members of LulzSec including Ryan Cleary, Jake Davis, Raynaldo Rivera, Cody Kretsinger and so on. Among them there was Jeremy Hammond widely known as "Anarchaos" who was arrested by the federal authorities and been charged for the  breach of the security analysis company Stratfor. In December last year the bail application of Hammond was also been rejected by the the Court. So after several hearings finally the accused of security breach against global intelligence firm Stratfor,  Jeremy Hammond pleaded guilty in a Manhattan court to one count of computer fraud and abuse in response to charges that he hacked into the network of the privacy intelligence firm Stratfor, stealing millions of emails that eventually were given to WikiLeaks and published over the course of 2012. The plea agreement could carry a sentence of as much as 10 years in prison, as well as millions of dollars in restitution payments, though Hammond’s official sentence won’t be handed down until September. Hammond also told Judge Loretta A. Preska of Federal District Court in Manhattan that in 2011 and 2012 he had gained unauthorized access to Stratfor’s computer systems and several other groups, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Virtual Academy, the public safety department in Arizona, and Vanguard Defense Industries, which makes drones. 

"Now that I have pleaded guilty, it is a relief to be able to say that I did work with Anonymous to hack Stratfor, among other websites," Hammond said in a statement on last Tuesday. 

A petition posted to Change.org by Hammond’s brother Jason Hammond asks the judge in Hammond’s case, Loretta Preska, to sentence him to time served, given that he’s already spent 15 months in lockup. “Jeremy did nothing for personal gain and everything in hopes of making the world a better place,” reads Hammond’s brother’s petition. “Jeremy is facing a maximum sentence of ten years, but the minimum is zero. He has been in jail since March 2012 awaiting trial and now sentencing. It’s time for him to come home.”

-Source (Forbes & Huffington Post)

SHARE OUR NEWS DIRECTLY ON SOCIAL NETWORKS:-
<a href=">Jeremy Hammond -Key Member of Anonymous Affiliated LulzSec Pleads Guilty To Stratfor Hack"https://www.voiceofgreyhat.com/2013/06/Jeremy-Hammond-Pleads-Guilty-To-Stratfor-Hack.html</a>

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.

SHARE OUR NEWS DIRECTLY ON SOCIAL NETWORKS:-
<a href=">Linux/Cdorked.A: One of The Most Sophisticated Apache Backdoor Targets Millions of Websites "https://www.voiceofgreyhat.com/2013/05/Linux-Cdorked.A-Sophisticated-Apache-Backdoor.html</a>