Information Security, SSAE 16, ISO 27001, CISA, Cert-IN
Anything under the umbrella of IT Security, Computer Security, IT Controls
Researchers have warned that the 911 emergency response phone system used in the US is vulnerable to cyberattacks, which could disrupt the network across the nation. According to a
Researchers at Israel’s Ben-Gurion University say they have discovered a way to disable the emergency system across an entire state for an extended period using a telephony denial-of-service (TDoS) attack targeting 911 call centres.
via https://ift.tt/2ccHYuN
Since at least 2011, Wells Fargo employees have been creating fake accounts using customers’ identities to boost their sales numbers, federal regulators said on Thursday.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) fined the bank $100 million after a third-party consulting firm found that 2 million fake deposit and credit card accounts had been made without the consent of the person whose name was on the account. According to CNN Money, the bank fired 5,300 employees for taking part in the scheme, which constitutes about 1 percent of the bank’s payroll.
via https://ift.tt/2c3ekI1
Own an Android smartphone? Beware, as just an innocuous-looking image on social media or messaging app could compromise your smartphone.
Along with the dangerous
that affected 900 Million devices and other previously disclosed issues, Google has
a previously-unknown critical bug that could let attackers deliver their hack hidden inside an innocent looking image via social media or chat apps.
In fact, there is no need for a victim to click on the malicious photo because as soon as the image’s data was parsed by the phone, it would quietly allow a remote attacker to take control over the device or simply crash it.
The vulnerability is similar to last year’s
(
) that allowed hackers to hijack Android devices with just a simple text message without the owners being aware of it.
The Stagefright flaw affected more than
and resided in the core Android component Stagefright — a multimedia playback library used by Android to process, record and play multimedia files.
However, the recent vulnerability (
) resided in the way images used by certain Android applications parsed the Exif data in an image, SentinelOne’s
Tim Strazzere
, the researcher who uncovered the vulnerability, told
.
Any app using Android’s Java object ExifInterface code is likely vulnerable to the issue.
Making a victim open the image file within an affected app like Gchat or Gmail, a hacker could either cause a victim’s phone to crash or remotely execute malicious code to inject malware on the phone and take control of it without victim’s knowledge.
“Since the bug is triggered without much user interaction – an application only needs to load an image a specific way – triggering the bug is as simple as receiving a message or email from someone,” Strazzere said. “Once that application attempts to parse the image (which was done automatically), the crash is triggered.”
According to Strazzere, attackers could develop a simple exploit inside an image to target a large number of vulnerable Android devices.
Strazzere crafted exploits for the affected devices and found that it worked on Gchat, Gmail and most other messenger and social media apps, though he did not disclose the names of the other non-Google apps affected by the flaw.
All versions of Google’s operating system from Android 4.4.4 to 6.0.1 are vulnerable to the image-based hack, except today’s update that fixed the vulnerability.
The researcher even successfully tested his exploits on a handful of phones running Android 4.2 and Amazon devices and found that the devices remain unpatched, leaving a large number of users of older Android devices exposed.
So, if you are not running an updated version of operating system and/or device, you probably are vulnerable to the image-based attack.
Google has
to fix the issue, but given the shaky history of handset manufacturers and carriers rolling out security patches, it is not known how long the companies will take to update vulnerable Android devices.
Google rewarded Strazzere with $8,000 as part of the company’s Android bug bounty program.
via https://ift.tt/2bSsdCK
DBPwAudit is a Java database password auditing tool that allows you to perform online audits of password quality for several database engines. The application design allows for easy adding of additional database drivers by simply copying new JDBC drivers to the jdbc directory.
Configuration is performed in two files, the aliases.conf file is used to map drivers to aliases and the rules.conf tells the application how to handle error messages from the scan.
The tool has been tested and known to work with:
– Microsoft SQL Server 2000/2005
– Oracle 8/9/10/11
– IBM DB2 Universal Database
– MySQL
The tool is pre-configured for these drivers but does not ship with them, due to licensing issues. The links below can be used to find some of the drivers. They should all be copied to the jdbc directory.
Links to JDBC Drivers:
– MySQL
– Microsoft SQL Server 2005
– Microsoft SQL Server 2000
– Oracle
|
root@darknet:~# dbpwaudit DBPwAudit v0.8 by Patrik Karlsson <patrik@cqure.net> —————————————————————————— DBPwAudit –s <server> –d <db> –D <driver> –U <users> –P <passwords> [options]
–s – Server name or address. –p – Port of database server/instance. –d – Database/Instance name to audit. –D – The alias of the driver to use (–L for aliases) –U – File containing usernames to guess. –P – File containing passwords to guess. –L – List driver aliases. |
Scan the SQL server (-s 192.168.1.130), using the specified database (-d testdb) and driver (-D MySQL) using the root username (-U root) and password dictionary (-P /usr/share/wordlists/nmap.lst):
|
root@darknet:~# dbpwaudit -s 192.168.1.130 -d testdb -D MySQL -U root -P /usr/share/wordlists/nmap.lst |
You can download DBPwAudit here:
Or read more here.
via https://ift.tt/2bZ0GS8
As promised at the Black Hat and Def Con security and hacking conferences, Offensive Security – the creators of Swiss army knife for researchers, penetration testers, and hackers – has finally released the much awaited Kali Linux 2016.2.
Kali Linux is an open-source Debian-based Linux distribution designed to help ethical hackers and security professionals with a wide range of tools for penetration testing, forensics, hacking and reverse engineering together into a single package.
Earlier the Kali Linux distribution was known as
BackTrack
.
Kali Linux 2016.2 is an updated Live ISO image of the popular GNU/Linux distribution that includes the latest software versions and enhancements for those who want to deploy the operating system on new systems.
What’s new?
Besides bringing the updated Live ISOs of Kali Linux, the Kali Linux team brings multiple variants of the GNU/Linux distribution with various Desktop Environments, specifically KDE, Xfce, MATE, LXDE, and Enlightenment – all available only for 64-bit platforms.
What’s even more exciting is that, from Kali Linux 2016.2 onwards, the team promises to release updated Live ISO images of Kali with new software versions and the latest security patches every week.
Since Kali Linux has been the most advanced and widely used distro for penetration testing and forensics, this weekly update has come up as exciting news for those involved in various hacking and security-related projects.
It’s been several months since the last update to the official Kali Linux Live ISOs, and there are a few hundred new or updated packages pushed to the Kali repositories.
This means that the packages incorporated in the previous Kali Linux ISOs need bug fixes and OS improvements, which are implemented in the most recent versions of the Linux distro.
"Since our last release several months ago, there’s a few hundred new or updated packages which have been pushed to the Kali reports," the Kali Linux team’s announcement reads. "This means that anyone downloading an ISO even 3 months old has somewhat of a long ‘apt-get dist-upgrade’ ahead of them."
You can download the latest
from its official website now. The Kali Linux team has also promised to bring a lot of exciting announcements in the next few weeks, so keep an eye on its announcements for the latest updates.
via https://ift.tt/2c7w7vV
via https://ift.tt/2bFUkLF
After examining general trends and statistics for malware infections in devices connected through mobile and fixed networks, Nokia found a sharp rise in the occurrence of smartphone malware infections in the first half of the year.
Mobile malware samples since July 2012
Smartphone infections nearly doubled between January and July compared to the latter half of 2015, with smartphones accounting for 78 percent of all mobile network infections. The malware infection rate hit an all-time high in April, with infections striking 1.06 percent of all mobile devices tracked.
Devices running Android were the most targeted mobile platform by far, representing 74 percent of all mobile malware infections.
“Today attackers are targeting a broader range of applications and platforms, including popular mobile games and new IoT devices, and developing more sophisticated and destructive forms of malware. Nokia’s network-based security solution is the best approach to address this growing threat to all types of devices. It detects and prevents malware activity that device-based solutions may miss,” said Kevin McNamee, head of the Nokia Threat Intelligence Lab.
Most prolific malware
96-percent surge in smartphone infections: The average smartphone infection rate increased 96 percent in the first half of 2016, compared to the second half of 2015 (0.49 percent vs 0.25 percent).
New all-time high: In April 2016, mobile infections hit an all-time high, with 1.06 percent of devices infected by a range of malware, including ransomware, spyphone applications, SMS Trojans, personal information theft and aggressive adware.
One out of 120 smartphones infected: In April, one out of every 120 smartphones had some type of malware infection.
Android OS hit hardest: Android smartphones were the most targeted mobile platform, accounting for 74 percent of all malware infections compared to Window/PC systems (22 percent), and other platforms, including iOS devices (4 percent).
75 percent jump in malware samples: The number of infected Android apps in Nokia’s malware database soared 75 percent, from 5.1 million in December 2015 to 8.9 million in July 2016.
Mobile game infections detected within hours: Downloaded mobile applications are a key conduit for malware attacks. The Nokia Threat Intelligence Lab detected infected copies of an extremely popular mobile game within hours after they were posted on untrusted third-party download sites.
More sophisticated malware: Malware is becoming increasingly more sophisticated, as new variations attempt to root the phone in order to provide complete control and establish a permanent presence on the device.
Top three mobile threats: The top three mobile malware threats were Uapush.A, Kasandra.B and SMSTracker, together accounting for 47 percent of all infections.
Fixed residential network infections rise: The overall monthly infection rate in residential fixed broadband networks reached an average of 12 percent in the first half of 2016, compared to 11 percent in late 2015, primarily due to an increase in moderate threat level adware. These infections are mostly due to malware on Windows PCs and laptops in the home, but also include infections on smartphones using home WiFi.
via https://ift.tt/2bJYVqu
Bad news for banks with lax security that also use SWIFT, the global financial transaction messaging network, as hackers are still pulling off high-tech heists.
On Tuesday, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, more commonly called SWIFT, notified customers of “ongoing attacks.”
via https://ift.tt/2bDcFmm
The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) released the new handbook from the CSA Big Data Working Group, outlining the 100 best practices in Big Data security.
The Big Data Security and Privacy Handbook: 100 Best Practices in Big Data Security and Privacy strives to detail the best practices that should be followed by any big data service provider to fortify their infrastructure.
The term Big Data refers to the massive amounts of digital information companies and governments collect about human beings and their environment. The amount of data generated is expected to double every two years from 2500 exabytes in 2012 to 40,000 exabytes in 2020. Large-scale cloud infrastructures, diversity of data sources and formats, the streaming nature of data acquisition and high-volume, inter-cloud migration all play a role in the creation of unique security vulnerabilities.
“This is an important initiative for the cloud community as new security challenges have arisen from the coupling of big data with public cloud environments. As big data expands through streaming cloud technology, traditional security mechanisms tailored to secure small-scale, static data on firewalled and semi-isolated networks are inadequate,” said J.R. Santos, Executive Vice President of Research for the CSA. “Security and privacy issues are magnified by this volume, variety and velocity of big data. This handbook serves as a comprehensive list of best practices for companies to use when securing big data.”
The handbook provides a roster of 100 best practices, ranging from typical cybersecurity measures, such as authentication and access control, to state-of-the-art cryptographic technologies. It addresses why these security measures are needed as well as how they can be implemented.
via https://ift.tt/2ckUpnP
Sri Lanka police on Monday arrested a 17-year old school boy on suspicion of hacking into the president’s official website, demanding that his university entrance examination dates not be changed, officials said on Monday.
The website of President Maithripala Sirisena, www.president.gov.lk, was first hacked on Thursday and then again on Friday.
via https://ift.tt/2bNeJt3