A city in Texas is using paper after suffering ransomware attack

By Waqas Another day, another devastating ransomware attack; this time, computers at The City Hall of Del Rio, Texas have suffered a massive ransomware attack forcing authorities to completely shut down the targeted network. The attack took place on Thursday, January 10th after which the City's...

Man whose DDoS attacks took down entire country’s Internet jailed

By Waqas A court in London has sentenced a British and Israeli cyber criminal Daniel Kaye aka "BestBuy and Popopret" to two years and eight months in prison for conducting large scale DDoS attacks on Lonestar Cell MTN disrupting country's Internet and causing tens of millions of dollars in damage...

8 million users installed 9 adware apps from Play Store

By Uzair Amir This is the second time in one week that adware apps have been found on Google Play Store. Lukas Stefanko, an IT security researcher at ESET has discovered 9 Android apps on Google Play Store spamming users with unwanted ads. One of the apps called "Remote control for TV and home...

Anonymous hacker jailed for 10 years over hospital DDoS attacks

By Waqas He conducted those DDoS attacks for OpJustina back in 2014. In April 2014, Martin Gottesfeld 34 from Massachusetts claimed his affiliation with the online hacking group Anonymous and conducted a series of massive DDoS attacks distributed denial-of-service on Boston Children’s Hospital an...

Unprotected MongoDB leaks resumes of 202M Chinese job seekers

By Waqas China is often suspected to sponsor hack attacks against organizations and agencies in the US or Europe. However, this time around China itself has become a victim of a security breach. Reportedly, an unprotected MongoDB has exposed personal and professional details of more than 202...

It only takes a Skype Call to Unlock an Android Handset

By Waqas A 19-year old bug hunter has identified a flaw in the Android version of Microsoft’s Skype app, which is exploited can help the attacker access various app functions without needing to go through passcode verification for unlocking the phone. Once the phone is unlocked, the attacker can...

Kaspersky tipped off US about the contractor who stole NSA data

By Waqas According to a report published by Politico, Kaspersky Lab helped the National Security Agency NSA identify the contractor who stole classified NSA documents and was charged for the crime in 2016. As per the sources who revealed the information to Politico, two people played a key role i...

9 million users installed 85 adware infected apps from Play Store

By Uzair Amir Google has now removed all 85 Adware from Play Store. Reportedly, 85 Android applications on Google Play Store were discovered to be sending dangerous, full-screen adware to users. These apps collectively have been installed approx. 9 million times across the world. It is identified...

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...

WhatsApp Gold Scam is Back with Malware Payload

By Waqas In social media, the emergence of fake news and fake apps isn’t uncommon as thousands of these hoaxes keep circulating around the web to spread confusion among the users. Now, there is a new hoax doing the rounds and making headlines and it is called WhatsApp Gold Scam. Dubbed as WhatsAp...

Zerodium is paying $2 million for Apple iOS remote jailbreak

By Waqas Zerodium, an infosec and premium zero-day acquisition platform known for selling zero-day exploits to governments has announced that it will be paying a huge amount of money to buy iOS remote jailbreak and exploits related to WhatsApp, iMessage, or SMS/MMS. See: Zerodium uses Twitter to...

Thousands of Internet connected hot tubs vulnerable to remote attacks

By Waqas Weak security practices have rendered IoT devices vulnerable to hacking and all sorts of cyber-attacks. According to the research from a Buckinghamshire-based security group Pen Test Partners, hot tubs can also be hacked using an app simply because there isn’t any authentication process ...

NSA to release free reverse engineering tool GHIDRA at RSAConference

By Waqas WikiLeaks Fame Reverse Engineering Tool GHIDRA to be Released in March. GHIDRA is a reverse engineering tool developed by the United States’ National Security Agency NSA. According to reports, this framework will be released in March at the RSAConference. This is the same reverse...

2018’s Top hacks and data breaches

By Waqas The year 2018 is now a thing of the past yet it has established a memory that will haunt victims of biggest data breaches and hacking incidents for years. Today, we will be discussing some of the biggest data breaches and hacking incidents of 2018 which took users by storm. “2018 not onl...

Town of Salem data breach: Personal data of 7.6M gamers stolen

By Uzair Amir Over 7.6 million players have been impacted by a massive data breach suffered by the well-known browser-based role-playing game “Town of Salem.” BlankMediaGames, the owner of the game, has confirmed on its online forum that the breach did occur. A copy of the compromised database fr...

The Advantages of a More Secure and Safer Blockchain

By Waqas Blockchain technology has many uses and advantages over other types of ledger-based technology. One aspect of blockchain technology that is especially valuable today is the ability to securely and safely transmit data to and from two or more parties. This is particularly important when t...

MobSTSPY Android spyware found in legit looking apps on Play Store

By Waqas Spyware and Google have shared a pretty close relationship of late and the recent discovery from researchers at Trend Micro further establishes the fact that no matter how hard Google tries Android spyware keeps haunting its digital offerings. Reportedly, Trend Micro security researchers...

Dark Overlord hackers publish first batch of “secret” 9/11 files

By Waqas The Dark Overlord hackers have fulfilled their promise and published the first batch of decryption keys for 650 documents in a 70 megabytes file related to the 9/11 attacks. Initially, the group had vowed to publish 10GB of data on Twitter account or on a Dark Web form called “KickAss.”...

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...

How to Turn Your IT Skills into a Business

By Carolina If you are the go-to person for family and friends’ IT problems, the thought may have crossed your mind to use your skills to start a business. Almost all small businesses and homes use and rely on computers, but the users simply don’t have the time or skills to complete their own...

Google fixes critical vulnerability in Chrome for Android after 3 years

By Waqas A three-year-old security vulnerability in Google Chrome for Android has finally been fixed by Google. It is quite surprising that the tech giant took so long to fix a flaw that was identified several years back. The flaw was originally identified at Nightwatch Cybersecurity by white hat...

Abine Blur Password Manager exposed data of 2.4M users

By Waqas The password manager exposed the data due to a misconfigured S3 bucket. The Blur privacy and password management service developer Abine has issued a security notice this Monday stating that a file containing important customer data was accidentally exposed to the internet. Originally, t...

Hackers play PewDiePie ad on thousands of hacked Chromecasts & Smart TVs

By Waqas Hackers behind the hacking spree are urging users to change their router settings and subscribe to PewDiePie's YouTube. Last month, it was reported that a group of hackers compromised thousands of printers around the world to send printouts urging users to subscribe to Felix Kjellberg ak...

EU launches Bug Bounty program for 14 free open-source products

By Waqas The European Union EU will be offering bug bounty rewards for the 14 open-source products that it uses. The EU’s Member of Parliament Julia Reda announced that the European Commission will offer bounties worth of €851,000 under its Free and Open Source Software Audit FOSSA. Bug bounty...

Dark Overlord hackers vow to leak 9/11 related data stolen from law firm

By Waqas On Monday when the whole world was gearing up to celebrate New Year's Eve hackers from The Dark Overlord group made astonishing claims that they stole a trove of data from Hiscox Syndicates Ltd, a law firm responsible for handling insurance files related to 9/11 terrorist attacks. This w...

Major US newspapers suffer malware attack; printing & delivery affected

By Waqas It is believed that the malware attack was carried out from outside the United States. The Los Angeles Times suffered a malware attack earlier this Saturday that disrupted printing and delivery process for several of its print editions across the country, the newspaper said. The malware...

Researchers exploit Vein-based authentication system using a wax hand

By Waqas Biometric authentication is currently a widely used option for maintaining the security of devices and systems. With the emergence of vein-based authentication, biometric verification has moved beyond facial recognition and fingerprints. Vein-based authentication involves scanning of the...

Hackers steal credit card data of 14,579 BevMo customers

By Uzair Amir A warning has been issued by the Concord, California-based alcoholic beverages retailer BevMo informing its customers about a data breach that its online store experienced between 2 August and 26 September. During the attack, credit card data of its customers was exposed. “BevMo tak...

Hackers steal personal details of 1,000 North Korean Defectors

By Uzair Amir The data breach against North Korean Defectors came after hackers targeted computer at Resettling agency. Private data of approx. 1,000 North Korean Defectors present in the South have been exposed in a data breach which makes them vulnerable to all sorts of threats from the North,...

Hackers steal Bitcoin worth $750,000 by hacking Electrum wallets

By Waqas This year we have seen an unprecedented rise in malware attacks against cryptocurrency wallets whereas cryptomining incidents have increased by 4,000%, reports McAfee. The latest attack on well-known Bitcoin wallet Electrum further proves that malware attacks on crypto wallets are indeed...

School hackers steal personal data of half a million students & staff

By Waqas A school district in the United States has suffered a cyber attack in which unknown hackers managed to steal a trove of personal data belonging to over 500,000 staff and students. The targeted school was San Diego Unified School District in California whose database was accessed by hacke...

These people don’t exist – They were created by tech using Artificial Intelligence

By Waqas Artificial intelligence is increasingly advanced and has entered more and more areas, even in the most unexpected and sensitive issues for society such as the world’s first AI lawyer Ross. Now, tech giant NVIDIA has developed a tool that uses Artificial Intelligence to create extremely...

Holiday and Christmas scams users should be aware of

By Carolina "It's that time of the year again" when Holiday and Christmas scams target users around the world since millions of people are celebrating and buying gifts for friends and family. Most people prefer shopping online and that is where hackers and cybercriminals take full advantage of th...

Nokia exposes passwords & secret access keys to its internal systems

By Waqas Another day, another data breach - This time, multinational tech giant Nokia has been caught exposing highly sensitive data of industrial nature that would have put its internal security at risk. The data was discovered by the director of the cyber risk research team at Hacken and...

How to Market an Online Store

By Carolina If you own an online store, then you, more than likely, already know how hard it can be at times to make those all-important sales. What with the sheer volume of different retailers dotted around the Internet in this day and age, it can be incredibly difficult to stand out. It is not...

Authorities seize 15 popular DDoS-for-hire websites

By Waqas Authorities have seized and shut down 15 popular DDoS-for-hire websites used by cybercriminals for revenge and DDoS distributed denial of service attacks on private individuals as well as businesses including online gaming giants, email service providers and hosting sites. The operation...

Amazon sent 1,700 audio recordings of Alexa user to a stranger

By Waqas An Amazon customer in Germany under the European Union data protection law called GDPR General Data Protection Regulation requested the company to send all the data it stored on him but little did he know he was about to get his hands on a trove of 1,700 audio recordings of a stranger...

New email extortion scam warns “Pay $4,000 or a hitman is coming for you”

By Carolina In a new extortion scam, a cybercriminal is sending threatening emails to unsuspecting users asking them to pay a whopping $4,000 in Bitcoin or wait to be executed by a hitman. The email extortion scam surfaced on the Internet a few days ago and is currently arriving in victim's inbox...

NASA suffers data breach – Staff’s personal data stolen

By Waqas Another day, another data breach - This time, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration NASA has suffered a data breach in which personal data of the agency's employees have been stolen. In a notification obtained by SpaceRef, the data breach was identified on October 23rd, 2018...

Facebook gave Amazon, Netflix, Spotify & others access to private user data

By Waqas Facebook allowed Netflix, Spotify, Amazon, Microsoft, Yandex and Royal Bank of Canada unprecedented access to its users' private data. The social media giant Facebook has been making headlines for all the wrong reasons lately. Now, according to reports, Facebook allowed video streaming...

Here is a list of top 25 worst passwords of 2018

By Waqas SplashData, Inc. a leading password management application developer including SplashID has released a list of the 100 worst passwords of 2018. The company established the ranking after evaluating more than 5 million keywords leaked on the Internet this year. Their findings highlight the...

Hacker found using Twitter memes to spread malware

By Waqas Last year a shocking report revealed how Russian hackers were found spreading malware through Britney Spears's Instagram posts. Now, the IT security researchers at Trend Micro have discovered a sophisticated campaign in which an unknown hacker is using memes on the social networking...

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...

Chinese hackers reportedly stole secret US Navy data

By Waqas Hackers of Chinese origin have stolen data from US Navy contractors whose content includes highly confidential information on advanced military technologies. In June this year, it was reported that Chinese hackers stole 614 gigabytes of US Navy’s anti-ship missile data. Now, authorities ...

PewDiePie fan hacker compromise 100,000 printers

By Waqas A couple of weeks ago, a hacker going by the online handle of TheHackerGiraffe hacked over 50,000 printers for the sake of promoting PewDiePie’s YouTube channel and urging users to subscribe to his channel. Now, the same hacker has struck again and claims to have hacked over 100,000...

Wicked scammers steal $1 million from Save the Children charity

By Uzair Amir Another day, another email scam - This time, wicked scammers have stolen over $1,000,000 from Save the Children, an international non-governmental organization based in London, United Kingdom. This happened after scammers compromised email address of one of the Save the Children...

Facebook bug exposed private photos of 6.8M users to third-party developers

By Waqas Another day, another privacy breach - This time, the social media giant Facebook has announced that a bug in its Photo API exposed private photos of over 6.8 million users to third-party app developers. The breach took place from September 13 to September 25, 2018, which means for 12 day...

Hackers bypassed Gmail & Yahoo’s 2FA to target US officials

By Waqas The attack was carried out by Iran-backed charming kitten hackers and victims include dozens of US government officials. Private emails of US sanctions officials and nuclear scientists have been breached by Iranian state-sponsored hackers. As per the data obtained by Certfa, a...

Personal & banking data of 120 million Brazilians leaked online

By Carolina The Cadastro de Pessoas Físicas CPFs is a taxpayer registry identification for Brazilians - In this case, 120 million CPFs were exposed online. The IT security researchers at InfoArmor's Advanced Threat Intelligence team discovered a treasure trove of personal sensitive data belonging...

IT consultancy firm caught running ransomware decryption scam

By Waqas Ransomware has become a persistent threat to users globally but for cybercriminals, it is a lucrative business. Recently, IT security researchers at Check Point unearthed a sophisticated ransomware decryption scam in which a Russian IT consultant company has been caught scamming ransomwa...