Items tagged with Hacking
Here we go again. WikiLeaks, the international non-profit whistleblower that publishes secret information to the web, has been dumping classified documents outlining various hacking tools and malware used by the United States Central Intelligence Agency. These documents are part of what WikiLeaks calls Vault 7, the...
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A team of scientists from the University of Washington have figured out how to infect a computer using malicious code inside DNA. This attack vector isn't aimed at your everyday PC sitting on your desk at home or in the office; this hack aims directly at the infrastructure around the DNA transcription and analysis industry. The team behind
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For the past several months, WikiLeaks has been publishing information related to exploits and hacking tools that had been used by the United States government at some point. The project is known as Vault 7 and seems to contain mostly older exploits, though it is not clear if some of the malware has been updated for...
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Many technology companies have in place bug bounty programs that reward security researchers who submit discovered vulnerabilities in the products and services they offer. It is a win-win proposition in which technology companies are alerted to potentially crippling security holes, and hackers are compensated for...
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Most wireless routers are equipped with a series of LEDs to indicate things like network connectivity and activity, though if a router has been compromised with malware, those blinking lights could reveal more than the owner bargained for. Using specially crafted malware, an attacker could instruct those LEDs to...
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New and used games retailer GameStop has found itself in a bit of a rough patch these days. The company recently reported less-than-stellar fourth quarter results and is planning to close at least 150 brick-and-mortar locations, and perhaps as many as 225. That is on top of the store locations it closed just a few...
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The latest bombshell to come out of WikiLeaks’ Vault7 series of leaks from the CIA, exposes a tool codenamed “Grasshopper”, which allows operatives to deploy persistent surveillance and hacking payloads on target Windows-based computer systems and remain undetected from popular anti-malware and anti-virus...
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Apple is not going to play ball with a group of hackers that is threatening to remotely wipe hundreds of millions of iPhone devices if the Cupertino outfit refuses to pay a ransom. While the hackers claim to have a large cache of iCloud and other Apple email account data at their disposal, Apple insists that its...
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Security researchers at Cybellum, a PC security firm in Tel Aviv, Israel, have discovered a rather nasty new zero-day attack that allows remote attackers to hijack popular antivirus programs and turn them into malicious agents. The technique is called DoubleAgent, named after the fact that a compromised antivirus...
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Bitcoin seems to be the currency of choice when it comes to demanding ransoms, and that is because culprits demanding payment can hide behind a pseudonym (Bitcoin itself is not actually anonymous). So it is no surprise that a hacking organization has instructed Apple to fork over a Bitcoin ransom in exchange for not...
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There are many different methods of hacking. Most of them involve some sort of software code, whether it is installing malware on a system or hacking a vulnerability to gain unauthorized access to a system or device. The Internet of Things (IoT) category is especially susceptible to hacking due to a surprising lack of...
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Just a couple of weeks ago, we wrote about the Israeli security firm Cellebrite, and how it suffered a major data breach. After the information began to trickle out, it seemed like no real damage was done. Cellebrite itself said that what leaked was an old, irrelevant backup. A new discovery, however, questions that...
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There seems to be no limit to the number of ways that exist to trip up an iPhone or other iOS device. The latest method involves a rather simple text message consisting of just three characters, and unfortunately for the recipient, just receiving the text message is enough to freeze an iPhone running iOS 10 or later...
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One of the biggest fears of companies that say they can hack virtually anything is to be found out that they've been hacked themselves. Case-in-point: Israeli firm Cellebrite. We've reported on the company multiple times in the past, notably after it aided the FBI in cracking open a terrorist's iPhone 5c. Since then...
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If you were super good last year (and super lucky), you might have scored an NES Classic Edition console on Christmas morning. The retro game system was one of the hottest and most in-demand items this past holiday season, commanding more than three times its value from second-hand sellers on eBay and Craigslist. Though in short supply, hackers
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The Supreme Court approved a series of changes to Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure by the United States Department of Justice that go into effect today. Those changes, which the DoJ proposed earlier this year and that were never discussed by Congress, gives the FBI permission to hack into multiple...
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It's been proven that some tech companies have been willing to cater to the government's every need, but others -- namely Google -- remain adamant about transparency regarding shady practices.
Earlier this year, we reported on Google's new feature that informs users if they've become the target of state-sponsored...
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2016 is going to be remembered for a number of fortunate and unfortunate things, with one topic that falls into the latter category being the debacle of U.S. law enforcement vs. Apple. The FBI and other US federal agencies have made it no secret that they would like to be able to gain access to any smartphone if the...
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Yahoo is again catching fire over a security breach dating back to 2014 that compromised the accounts of 500 million users, though this time the criticism is aimed at Yahoo's lack of timely disclosure. The company fessed up earlier this week that at least some of its employees had knowledge that a cyberattacker backed...
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So here we go again, another "massive and sustained Internet attack" made possible by a large collection of hacked Internet of Things (IoT) devices, things such as CCTV video cameras, digital video records, all sorts of smart home gadgets with a connection to the Internet, KrebsOnSecurity has determined. This is not...
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Police in the Czech Republic have arrested a Russian hacker for his suspected involvement in a massive 2012 cyber attack against LinkedIn. LinkedIn had been working with the FBI to track down the individuals responsible for the data breach, which exposed hashed passwords from over 100 million user accounts that were...
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First there was “Thanks, Obama!” Perhaps we should move on to “Thanks, Russia!”, because the country is getting blamed for the lion’s share of the recent major hacks against government entities. In fact, just this past week, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence...
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