Items tagged with botnet
The largest spam botnet in the world has a new trick up its sleeve, prompting security outfit Check Point to place it back in its list of the top ten most prevalent malwares. Called Necurs, the botnet dished up more than 12 million emails in a single morning during the Thanksgiving holiday. What makes it even more...
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A security firm is warning of a new botnet targeting IoT (Internet of Things) devices that is on the move. Dubbed IoT_reaper, the new botnet borrows some of the source code from Mirai, which took down the popular security blog KrebsOnSecurity with a massive DDoS attack, ultimately forcing Brian Krebs, the security...
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Symantec has issued a warning that it found at least eight different apps on Google Play that were infected with a malware called Android.Sockbot. The apps all posed as add-ons for Minecraft: Pocket Edition and claimed to change the way characters look in the game with new skins. The infection from these apps was...
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Official app stores are supposed to be safe havens for mobile users to download and install programs and games without fear of mucking up their smartphones and tablets. Unfortunately that is not always the case. Researchers at veteran security outfit Check Point, makers of the popular ZoneAlarm personal firewall...
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A full-blown Skynet situation might be the thing of science fiction (we hope, anyway), but that doesn't mean bizarre things involving machines can't happen. As proof of this, Verizon teased an entry in its upcoming 2017 Data Breach Digest that describes a recent DDoS attack on an unnamed university involving vending...
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Just yesterday, we posted a story concerning printer security and how we should take it more seriously given IoT botnets that are swooping across the globe (namely Mirai), along with the sensitive data and documents these machines are custodians of. Today’s printers have relatively potent processors, complex operating...
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Now might be a good time for Netgear to start doubling down on security for its networking products. The folks over at Trustwave found that 31 Netgear router models are susceptible to a security vulnerability that exposes the devices’ web GUI password to nefarious parties.
More specifically, an attacker is able to...
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Like a massive army of Storm Troopers willing to follow devious commands, a pair of researchers from the University College London warn that a "large number of Twitter users are bots" that are ready to "contaminate the Twitter API stream." There are more than 350,000 in all, comprising what the researchers have named...
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The Mirai botnet started making waves publicly during the fall of 2016 with a high-profile DDoS attack on the security site KrebsOnSecurity. The DDoS attack, which was at the time the largest on record, pummeled the site with 620 gigabits per second of traffic. Since that time, Mirai has “zombified” hundreds of...
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Large scale distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks powered by thousands and sometimes millions of Internet of Things (IoT) devices that have been turned into a massive botnet is something that content delivery networks (CDNs) and service providers must be prepared for in 2017. Lest anyone thinks otherwise, yet...
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Over the past few months, we’ve witnessed the Mirai botnet wreak havoc with IoT devices like consumer webcams, DVRs and security cameras. These often budget-minded devices were often equipped with insecure software or employed security countermeasures that were easily overpowered.
However, we’re learning today that...
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900,000 Deutsche Telekom customers in Germany were hit with an internet outage beginning on Sunday, and IT analysts have concluded that the company was the victim of a hacker attack. The 900,000 affected customers make up roughly 4.5 percent of Deutsche Telekom’s 20 million fixed-line customers.
It is believed that...
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We recently witnessed a new and disturbing trend in cyber security and that is the widespread hacking of Internet connected devices to initiate DDoS attacks on an unprecedented scale. That is the method that made possible the Mirai botnet that targeted security expert Brian Krebs and his security blog with 620...
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On Friday, DNS provider Dyn was walloped by a massive DDoS botnet attack which slowed down or completely sidelined major websites like Amazon, Twitter, and The New York Times. The attack was carried out using improperly configured Internet of Things (IoT) devices that were zombified by Mirai malware.
In this...
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Earlier this morning, we reported on the troubling news that the source code for the Mirai IoT DDoS botnet is now out in the open. If you recall, Miari is the botnet that was able to flood KrebsOnSecurity with 620 gigabits per second of traffic using a horde of zombie IoT devices (the attack was so devastating that...
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Well, this isn't good. The source code for the botnet that took KrebsOnSecurity down by tapping into an unprecedented number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices has been released to the public. It's availability virtually ensures that distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks equal in size or even larger will...
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The web is becoming the wild, wild west all over again it seems. You could argue the Internet's always been a potentially dangerous place, but with the proliferation of smart devices becoming increasingly commonplace, cybercriminals now have more points of entry into home networks than ever before. Smart home...
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There are two Dorkbots. One is a nerdy group of organizations that sponsor grassroots meetings of artists, engineers, designers, scientists, inventors, and anyone else involved in electronic art. Their motto is "people doing strange things with electricity," and they're cool. We like them. They're not affiliated with...
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In what sounds like a scene out of one of those (well meaning, but never remotely accurate) cyber-action movies, teams of technicians from Symantec and Microsoft’s Digital Crimes unit wielding a court order from the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, were escorted by U.S. Federal Marshals in raids on data centers in New Jersey...
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Researchers with Kaspersky Labs have released information on a new botnet they've discovered that dwarfs any previous cyber-espionage efforts as far as its size, scope, and complexity. The new network, dubbed Red October, has sunk its hooks into systems worldwide. The degree of penetration varies from state to state...
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It's like the wild west all over again, only this time we have the Internet, modern technology, and plumbing. Oh, and Microsoft isn't asking anyone to bring back a head on a platter. The Redmond sheriff is simply asking for "new information that results in the identification, arrest, and conviction" of those...
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While much attention is focused on Facebook scams and trojans involving Osama bin Laden's death, Facebook users should be aware of another new way scammers are spreading links to rogue sites. They have begun to circulate convincing links claiming to be stories from Wired News about the iPhone 5. This scam takes advantage of Facebook’s...
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