1 Billion Mobile Apps Exposed To Account Hijacking Through OAuth 2.0 Flaw

Threatpost, the security news service of Kaspersky Lab, is reporting a new exploit which allows hijacking of third-party apps that support single sign-on from Google or Facebook (and support the OAuth 2.0 protocol). msm1267 quotes their article:
Three Chinese University of Hong Kong researchers presented at Black Hat EU last week a paper called "Signing into One Billion Mobile LApp Accounts Effortlessly with OAuth 2.0"… The researchers examined 600 top U.S. and Chinese mobile apps that use OAuth 2.0 APIs from Facebook, Google and Sina — which operates Weibo in China — and support single sign-on for third-party apps. The researchers found that 41.2% of the apps they tested were vulnerable to their attack… None of the apps were named in the paper, but some have been downloaded hundreds of millions of times and can be exploited for anything from free phone calls to fraudulent purchases. "The researchers said the apps they tested had been downloaded more than 2.4 billion times in aggregate."



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Hundreds Of Operations Canceled After Malware Hacks Hospitals Systems

Computer viruses do not discriminate.

They are not just hacking your email and online banking accounts anymore.

Computer viruses do not distinguish between a personal computer or a hospital machine delivering therapy to patients — and the results could prove deadly.

Cyber attacks on hospitals have emerged as a significant cyber security risk in 2016, which not only threaten highly sensitive information but also potentially harm the very lives of those being protected.

In the latest incident, hundreds of planned operations, outpatient appointments, and diagnostic procedures have been canceled at multiple hospitals in Lincolnshire, England, after a "major" computer virus compromised the National Health Service (NHS) network on Sunday.

In a bright-red alert warning labeled "Major incident" on its website, the Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust (NLAG) said its systems in Scunthorpe and Grimsby were infected with a virus on October 30.

The incident forced the trust to shut down all the major systems within its shared IT network in order to "isolate and destroy" the virus and cancel surgeries.

"We have taken the decision, following expert advice, to shut down the majority of our systems so we can isolate and destroy it," the NHS wrote on its website. "All planned operations, outpatient appointments and diagnostic procedures have been canceled for Wednesday, Nov. 2 with a small number of exceptions."

Some patients, including major trauma patients and high-risk women in labor, were diverted to neighbouring hospitals.

Although the majority of systems are now back and working, the NHS Trust has not provided any specific information about the sort of virus or malware or if it managed to breach any defense.

The incident took place after the U.S. and Canada issued a joint cyber alert, warning hospitals and other organizations against a surge in extortion attacks that

infect computers with Ransomware

that encrypts data and demand money for it to be unlocked.

Although it is unclear at the moment, the virus could likely be a ransomware that has previously

targeted hospitals

and healthcare facilities.

Life Threatening Cyber-Attacks

With the rise in

Ransomware threat

, we have seen an enormous growth in the malware businesses.

The countless transactions of Bitcoins into the dark web have energized the Ransomware authors to distribute and adopt new infection methods for the higher successful rate.

Today, Ransomware have been a soft target for both Corporates as well as Hospitals.

Since earlier this year, over a dozen hospitals have been targeted by ransomware, enforcing them to pay the ransom amount as per the demand by freezing the central medical systems.

Technological advancement in the medical arena has digitalized patients data in the form of Electronic Medical Record (EMR) in order to save them into the hospital’s central database.

Since the delay in patients treatment by temporary locking down their details could even result in the patient’s death, the attackers seek 100 percent guarantee ransom by infecting hospitals with Ransomware.

Due to this reason, in most of the cases, hospitals generally agrees to pay the ransom amount to the attackers.

Earlier this year, the Los Angeles-based Presbyterian

Medical Center paid $17,000

in Bitcoins to cyber crooks in order to restore access to its electronic medical systems, after a ransomware virus hit the hospital.

Also back in April, the MedStar Health chain that runs a number of hospitals in the Baltimore and Washington area, was attacked with

Samsam ransomware

(or Samas) that encrypted sensitive data at the hospitals.

Followingly, many more hospitals, including Methodist Hospital in Henderson and Kentucky, Desert Valley Hospital in California and Chino Valley Medical Center, have been infected with Ransomware.

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Three hospitals in England cancel operations over computer virus

Planned operations and outpatient appointments have been cancelled at three hospitals in northeastern England after a computer virus infected a health service network, the National Health Service Trust said.

In a post on its website, the Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust called the attack a "major incident" and said it had cancelled all planned operations, outpatient appointments and diagnostic procedures for Wednesday.

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Indian teen arrested in US for cyber attack choking 911 lines

An Indian-origin teenager has been arrested in the US for carrying out a cyber-attack that swamped Arizona’s emergency services with several bogus calls, an incident he claimed was a non-harmful joke gone wrong. Meetkumar Hiteshbhai Desai was taken into custody after the Surprise Police Department, Arizona, notified the Sheriff’s Office of more than 100 hang-up 911 calls.

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