The Time Has Arrived to Embrace Hackers

BOSTON—More than ever, hackers are getting a welcoming embrace from law enforcement, governments and business. Bug bounties and vulnerability disclosure programs are becoming the norm across industry, and hackers are no longer universally viewed as a pariah. Simultaneously, however, groups such a...

Hack'em If You Can — U.S. Air Force launches Bug Bounty Program

With the growing number of data breaches and cyber attacks, a significant number of companies and organizations have started Bug Bounty programs for encouraging hackers and bug hunters to find and responsibly report vulnerabilities in their services and get rewarded. Now, following the success of...

U.S. Dept Of Defense: Exposed ███████ Administrative Interface (ColdFusion 11)

Summary: The "/██████████/administrator/" directory is accessible to the public and allows an attacker to further enumerate the system and/or perform brute force attacks. Description: The ████████ website has an exposed "Administrative Interface" for ColdFusion 11, which could be useful to an...

Tracing Spam: Diet Pills from Beltway Bandits

Reading junk spam messages isn't exactly my idea of a good time, but sometimes fun can be had when you take a moment to check who really sent the email. Here's the simple story of how a recent spam email advertising celebrity "diet pills" was traced back to a Washington, D.C.-area defense...

Spammer's Arrest Puts End to Kelihos Botnet

The alleged Russian botmaster behind the Kelihos botnet was arrested while on vacation in Spain, putting an end to a seven-year cybercrime operation that foisted hundreds of millions of spam messages on consumers, as well as a dangerous array of banking malware and ransomware. Pyotr Levashov, als...

Aviation-Related Phishing Campaigns Seeking Credentials

A wave of email-based phishing campaigns is targeting airline consumers with messages that contain malware that infects systems or links to spoofed airline websites that are personalized to trick victims into handing over personal or business credentials. “Over the past several weeks, we have see...

U.S. Dept Of Defense: Remote command execution (RCE) vulnerability on a DoD website

A remote command execution RCE vulnerability was found on a DoD website which could have enabled an attacker to execute remote commands on the web server. @japp1 was able to demonstrate this vulnerability by crafting a specially formatted URL. Thanks @japp1!...

Heartbleed Persists on 200,000 Servers, Devices

Almost 200,000 servers and devices are still vulnerable to Heartbleed, the OpenSSL flaw patched nearly three years ago. The numbers come from search engine Shodan, which released data showing U.S. servers hosted on Amazon AWS are disproportionately vulnerable to the flaw. “There’s a lot to be...

U.S. Dept Of Defense: Critical information disclosure at https://█████████

Summary: There is a critical information disclosure at https://████████/rserver/rdPage.aspx?rdReport=dbDashboard&rdShowModes= Description: As you can see in the video the https://████████/rserver/rdPage.aspx?rdReport=dbDashboard&rdShowModes= loads a page with a debug this page functions enabled,...

Hack the Army Bounty Pays Out $100,000

The U.S. Army on Thursday shared the outcome of its first bug bounty, which concluded a three-week trial on Dec. 21, calling the program a success. The Hack The Army bounty, announced last fall, was the second such government rewards program, debuting months after the conclusion of the Hack the...

U.S. Intelligence Report Due Next Week on Election Hack

The various branches of the U.S. intelligence community said they will next week deliver a joint report that corroborates claims that Russian intelligence attempted to influence the 2016 presidential election. Outgoing Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper also confirmed to a U.S...

Pentagon Subcontractor Inadvertently Leaks 11 Gigs of Sensitive Data

A slew of sensitive data pertaining to psychologists, doctors and other healthcare professionals involved with an arm of the U.S. Department of Defense was recently left unsecured online. Chris Vickery, a security researcher with MacKeeper who has stumbled across unsecured internal databases...

U.S. Dept Of Defense: Attackers can control which security questions they are presented (████████)

Summary: When clicking on the forgot password link on ██████, the questions used to verify identify can be arbitrarily selected by an attacker. Description: When clicking on the forgot password link on ██████████, the questions used to verify identify can be arbitrarily selected by an attacker...

U.S. Dept Of Defense: DNS Misconfiguration

Multiple reporters identified a DNS configuration issue in the defense.gov domain that could allow same-site scripting. Thanks to @myst404 for first reporting this, and to @atik-rahman and others for also reporting it...

U.S. Dept Of Defense: Stored cross site scripting (XSS) vulnerability on a DoD website

A stored cross-site scripting vulnerability was found on a Department of Defense website which may trick a web user into executing a malicious script, potentially revealing a user's web session information or modify web content. @ahsantahir was able to demonstrate this vulnerability by crafting a...

U.S. Dept Of Defense: Unrestricted File Upload

A Navy system had a file upload tool accessible from the Internet. This would have permitted an attacker to upload malicious files and potentially execute code on the server. Thanks to @hogarth45 for reporting it...

U.S. Dept Of Defense: Cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability on a DoD website

A cross-site scripting XSS vulnerability was found on a Department of Defense. XSS vulnerabilities can be used to trick a web user into executing a malicious script, potentially revealing a user's web session information or modify web content. @ juliocesar able to demonstrate this vulnerability b...

Convenient Mobile Commerce is the Key to Success this Holiday Season

With the Black Friday, Cyber Monday holiday weekend upon us, retailers in the U.S. and abroad are preparing for another peak period for customer acquisition and commerce revenues. In 2016, the U.S. eCommerce market is the second largest globally and...

U.S. Dept Of Defense: Unrestricted File Download / Path Traversal

A misconfigured USTRANSCOM website allowed arbitrary system files to be downloaded. ziot was able to demonstrate this vulnerability by downloading a file from a specially crafted URL. Thanks ziot!...

Hack the Army Bug Bounty Focuses on Recruiting Websites

The backdrop to the U.S. government’s first public-facing bug bounty program announced earlier this year was that the Hack the Pentagon program was a way to connect with legitimate researchers and make a subtle plea for help. On Friday, Veterans Day, the U.S. Army became the second critical agenc...