A week in security (February 25 – March 3)

Last week, we delved into the realm of K-12 schools and security, explored the world of compromised websites and Golang bruteforcers, and examined the possible realms of pay for privacy. We also looked at identity management solutions, Google’s Universal Read Gadget, and did the deepest of dives...

Over 92 Million New Accounts Up for Sale from More Unreported Breaches

All these numbers…. "More than 5 billion records from 6,500 data breaches were exposed in 2018" — a report from Risk Based Security says. "More than 59,000 data breaches have been reported across the European since the GDPR came into force in 2018" — a report from DLA Piper says. …came from data...

Over 92 Million New Accounts Up for Sale from More Unreported Breaches

All these numbers…. "More than 5 billion records from 6,500 data breaches were exposed in 2018" — a report from Risk Based Security says. "More than 59,000 data breaches have been reported across the European since the GDPR came into force in 2018" — a report from DLA Piper says. …came from data...

Data Breach Bonanza: Dating Apps, Equifax, Mass Credential Dumps

In a week full of cyber-incidents and marked by the Valentine’s Day holiday, data breach news was surging. Equifax may have been hacked by spies, two huge credential spills on the Dark Web did their part to endanger people online and several companies admitted to data exposures, data breaches and...

Hacked versions of popular iOS games available on App Store

By Waqas Software pirates are distributing hacked and infected versions of iPhone apps by hijacking Apple’s enterprise developer program. Reportedly, the hacked apps include versions of Minecraft, Spotify, Angry Birds, and Pokemon Go. These apps have been modified for making paid content/features...

Bomb Threat Hoaxer Exposed by Hacked Gaming Site

Federal authorities this week arrested a North Carolina man who allegedly ran with a group of online hooligans that attacked Web sites including this one, took requests on Twitter to call in bomb threats to thousands of schools, and tried to frame various online gaming sites as the culprits. In a...

Authorities shut down xDedic marketplace for selling hacked servers

By Waqas The domain for xDedic has been seized as well. In a joint operation, the Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI and authorities from several European countries have successfully taken down xDedic, a notorious dark web marketplace known for selling stolen digital goods such as login...

New Firmware Version of Nintendo Switch Hacked in just 4 Hours

By Waqas Nintendo Switch Hacked: The company was claiming to have added advanced security codes in this version of Switch Firmware. The problems for Nintendo console owners are far from over as the latest firmware version got hacked in merely a few hours. According to reports, the newly rolled ou...

Police Shut Down xDedic – An Online Market for Cyber Criminals

In an international operation involving law enforcement authorities from the U.S. and several European countries, feds have shut down an online underground marketplace and arrested three suspects in Ukraine. Dubbed xDedic, the illegal online marketplace let cybercriminals buy, sell or rent out...

Police Shut Down xDedic – An Online Market for Cyber Criminals

In an international operation involving law enforcement authorities from the U.S. and several European countries, feds have shut down an online underground marketplace and arrested three suspects in Ukraine. Dubbed xDedic, the illegal online marketplace let cybercriminals buy, sell or rent out...

Someone Hacked PHP PEAR Site and Replaced the Official Package Manager

Beware! If you have downloaded PHP PEAR package manager from its official website in past 6 months, we are sorry to say that your server might have been compromised. Last week, the maintainers at PEAR took down the official website of the PEAR pear-php.net after they found that someone has replac...

BEC Will Reach Two Levels Deeper

In our predictions report for 2019, “Mapping the Future: Dealing with Pervasive and Persistent Threats,” we foresaw an increase in the rate of BEC business email compromise attacks: “Business email compromise will go two levels down in the org chart.” From the report: | “Business email compromise...

773M Password ‘Megabreach’ is Years Old

My inbox and Twitter messages positively lit up today with people forwarding stories from Wired and other publications about a supposedly new trove of nearly 773 million unique email addresses and 21 million unique passwords that were posted to a hacking forum. A story in The Guardian breathlessl...

Aussie govt emergency service hacked to send fake warning alerts

By Waqas A hacker managed to infiltrate Australian emergency warning system Early Warning Network EWN. The hacker accessed the system and sent countless messages to random citizens informing them that “you’ve been hacked.” However, the warning service’s managing director Kerry Plowright claims th...

Irish tram system website hacked; held for 1 BTC ransom

By Waqas The official website of Luas, a tram and light rail system in Dublin, Ireland was hacked on Thursday, January 3rd after a hacker defaced its homepage and left a message demanding ransom payment of 1 Bitcoin BTC. In their deface message, an unknown hacker claimed that Luas was informed...

Dual Data Leaks of Blur, Town of Salem Impact Millions

The new year has started off with the disclosure of two high-profile data breaches exposing the personal and password data of millions of people. Popular role-playing game Town of Salem saw the email addresses and passwords of more than 7.6 million players hacked; while a separate database issue...

Pro-PewDiePie messages appear on hacked Wall Street Journal website

By Waqas The official website of the Wall Street Journal was hacked earlier today after unknown hackers defaced it with messages in support of PewDiePie Felix Kjellberg, the most widely followed YouTuber. The hackers left a deface page along with a message on the domain partners.wsj.com that WSJ...

Hey there! How much are you worth?

Have you ever stopped to think just how much your life is worth? I mean really think about it. For instance, let's say you wanted to sell everything you have – your house, your car, your job, your private life, photos and home movies from your childhood, your accounts on various social media, you...

Sextortion emails: They’re probably not watching you

Back in July, Krebs on Security reported on a rather novel scam, where the threat actor would use credentials from old data dumps to suggest that they had directly hacked the victim and obtained the victim's presumably sensitive browser history. Stolen credentials aside, sex-based extortion scams...

Adult Website Hack Exposes 1.2M ‘Wife Lover’ Fans

The database underlying an erotica site known as Wife Lovers has been hacked, making off with user information protected only by a simple-to-crack, outdated hashing technique known as the DEScrypt algorithm. Over the weekend, it came to light that Wife Lovers and seven sister sites, all similarly...