Cortana Assistant Security Vulnerability

In order to provide user-friendly experience, there are many technology companies who are continually introducing powerful virtual assistants that work across several devices. On the other hand, for a certain group of technology-competent individuals, these smart assistants can virtually open a gateway for the purpose of hacking. As per a recent report, 2 Israeli security researchers were able to download malware onto a locked Windows PC. This was possible on account of accessibility provided by Cortana that helped users to open websites locked on certain PCs. In other terms, Cortana gave an opportunity to hackers, and even a helping hand to them to gain access to locked websites.

Cortana, a virtual assistant, has been created for Windows 10. Most recently, it added an additional feature that can be helpful to use Cortana from the Windows 10 lock screen. This development can’t be termed as innovative, since, Google Assistant and Siri are able to do so on Windows 10 as well as Smartphones. This functionality while the screen is locked is limited in the case with Siri and Google Assistant, but Cortana is an exception.

Even if the PC is locked, the users can open websites using Cortana. The websites can be loaded, and Cortana allows for the same without making any sense or being visible in this process. The oddness of this nonsensical feature of Cortana can actually be an opportunity to gaining a wrongful access to the computer. As a result, the hackers can perform their nefarious activities on any of the computers linked to the same network.



The Israeli security researchers carried out the process by plugging in a USB using a network adapter. Subsequently, it was able to secure webpage opening requests and redirect them to a malicious site. After that, this site will automatically install malware by downloading it, thereby, providing hackers an opportunity in the form of a gateway to gaining access to the locked computer. Evidently, this kind of unauthorized access was temporary, and no physical access to that computer was involved. However, the compromised PC can be used by the hackers for several illegal means to infect other computers linked to the same network, including Cortana.

Unfortunately, Microsoft was made aware of the insecurity on account of Cortana, but their reaction is amusing. Cortana has been observed to be bypassing security passwords. As a substitute for opening a webpage directly, it will now redirect the webpage opening command to the Bing search engine. Even so, it will still respond to the website opening command, and the researchers are making an effort to discover other similar cases where Cortana can be utilized to ignore security. As a security measure, Cortana can also be set to respond only to your peculiar voice. Even, this measure has been found to be non-reliable and non-perfect.

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Blockchain Technology Hacking and Cybercrime Risks

Bitcoins and blockchains are quickly becoming a dominant player in large-scale finances. Bitcoin as a substitute for money has opened up innovative ways to trade multiple options. It has gained much public awareness and is accepted by an increasing number of merchants globally. Now the main question arises whether they could be hacked or not? In the past, there was uncertainty about the hacking of Bitcoins and blockchain due to their secure crypto nature. Nowadays, everything runs online with the assistance of highly-developed computers. This has led to many hijacking incidents, and the computers have emerged to be the main targets for the hackers. On account of this, the crypto-currencies, Bitcoins, and blockchain have also been targeted by the cyber-criminals. The most recent figures reveal that hundreds of millions of dollars have been stolen by the thieves till date. The volume of the people cheated so far is huge, and even no day passes where is some news pertaining to cryptocurrency hacking. Here are some of the points that explain some of the hacking incidents related to Bitcoin and blockchain:

1. Bitcoin miner malware 
The process of generating Bitcoins involves huge consumption of electricity, since it cools the mine computers specifically engaged for this purpose. In order to save more from electricity consumption charges, many Bitcoins miners utilize the resources accessible at their company’s premises. Another method adopted by them involves the spreading of malware comprising of Bitcoin-mining. Nowadays, a botnet representing a network of infected computers is used by the malware to mine Bitcoins fraudulently. As a result, the victims are losing hundreds of millions of their hard-earned money.

 2. Hijacked online value stores 
The value of crypto-currencies is stored online in the files stores or wallets. Since, these wallets are accessible online; they can be stolen or compromised just like any other store of value functioning on a computer. The worst situation occurs when the users fail to remember their passwords or PIN, or misplace the computer’s hard drive holding the value store details. In this event, the value store turns out to be perpetually inaccessible. The same problem can be caused by the ransomware. In case, you are holding a bank account, you can access your account by using another computer, and your value remains unharmed. However, the cryptocurrency wallets have a different story to tell. These online wallets can be hijacked on another computer easily. Most financial experts suggest that the best way to protect your cryptocurrency value is to keep it in an offline wallet. As a result, the malware or hackers will not be able to access your value wallets. If you are using an online wallet, it can be best protected with multi-factor verification.

3. Crypto-currency Trojans 
The Crypto-currency Trojans sit at your computer and wait for getting the format of a crypto-currency account number. As soon as, it finds an account number, it replaces that account in which you are moving value with their account number. If you fail to notice this, you will be unable to stop it, just the once you hit the send button.

4. Disadvantages of Crypto Implementation 
In any crypto implementation, the main point to consider is the cryptologic algorithm that is being utilized. In case, if you make an arrangement for any cryptographic solution, the worst sufferers from vulnerability are the blockchain. The deficiency of a secure private key for Bitcoin mining can result in bringing the whole system down. Even though, this is not apparently noticeable, but, it is recommended that earlier than you get involved in a blockchain project or utilizing a crypto-currency; make sure that the programmers are using SDL (secure development lifecycle) processes to curtail bugs. As reported in most of the hacking incidents, cyber-criminals fraudulently hack the crypto-currency software in order to steal value. Any coding mistake committed by the hackers during this fraudulent practice can corrupt everybody’s cryptocurrency wallet sooner than any recovery. Even if the thieves are not successful in stealing money, yet, everybody can get cheated or troubled.

5. Cryptotext and cheating attacks
The qualities of a good crypto make sure that the ensuing cryptotext is not noticeable to anybody. The cyber-criminals would not be able to work out the original nature of cryptotext. On the other hand, in blockchain technology, the block formats are simple to figure out. In every block, there are instances when same letters, numbers, and characters exist in the same place. On account of this easy figuration, the crypto-attackers get an opportunity to steal the partial image of unencrypted text in every crypto- protected block. In addition, every block is a function of the preceding block. As a result, the entire protection of the basic encryption code gets weakened. Ultimately, the hackers get an opportunity to carry out their nefarious activities.

6. SHA-256 and Bitcoin security 
SHA-25 is similar likes its precedent SHA-1, but one doubts whether it would be able to offer the same level of security as in the past. Most security experts observe that SHA-256 is not of much concern regarding Bitcoin and blockchain. The most significant thing is that the world’s powerful financial as well as HTTPS transactions are provided highest protection by SHA-256. In the event, if somebody makes an attempt to break it down, the biggest thing to worry is the security of Bitcoins and blockchain. In case, if you are planning to make a blockchain or crypto-currency, you can utilize “crypto-agility,” which, in other terms, is the ability to substitute codes and maintain the basic program.

7. Hacking of centralized websites
At the moment, one of the most common threats that surround Bitcoins as well as blockchain project is the hacking of the centralized website controlling them. Only last week, there was a major setback to Bitcoins values, when the cyber-criminals fraudulently took over $70 million in Bitcoins. On the similar pattern, many crypto-currency sites managing more than hundreds of millions of dollars were hacked by stealers. These incidents have resulted in the downside value of Bitcoins.

The best way recommended is to store your cryptocurrency value in an offline location. There are many instances in which criminals ran away with millions of corrupt money. Therefore, you have to remain very careful while doing business with a crypto-currency web site. Make sure that particular site is fully protected and reliable. No organization is going to safeguard your interest in the event, in case, any mishappening occurs.

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7 worst data breaches in 2017

There seems to be no end to data breaches in most parts of the world. Every day, there is some news featuring the words like ”vulnerability", "hacked" or breach”. As reported by the Identity Theft Resource Center, the data beaches are constantly increasing, and they led to massive 1,500 in 2017. In comparison to 2016, this tantamount to a 37% annual increase, thereby, posing a major threat to personal data and its exposure. Moreover, there are many instances of security failure in most of the data breaches recorded. Here are the seven most colossal sets of compromised data breaches of 2017:

1. KRACK Vulnerability - All Wi-Fi Devices
In 2017, all data transmitted over WiFi networks was found to be exposed. According to Computer scientist Mathy Vanhoef, the WPA2 encryption protocol has made WiFi networks accessible without the need for login credentials. This posed a serious threat to the compromising of valuable data, and as a result, cyber criminals are able to access WiFi data through a key re-installation attack or KRACK. Nothing can be said now that if any data was, in fact, stolen utilizing this method, however, the data exposure threat has stood since the launch of WiFi.

In order to check this problem, technology companies have initiated the process of releasing patches. For all iPhones, the security holes have been fixed by Apple. In addition, several routers firms have released an updated firmware with the intention of protection against KRACK attacks.

2. Deep Root Analytics Data Breach
The data of near about 198,000,000 American citizens with Deep Root Analytics, the data analytics firm, working in contract for the Republican National Committee, was exposed. The data, including names, birthdates, contact numbers, and voter registration details was said to be compromised. On June 12, 2017, this breach was revealed by the security researcher Chris Vickery. He discovered that the firm’s database was stored without password protection on an Amazon cloud server, thereby, providing an opportunity to anyone to download the 1.1 terabytes value of data.

3. Equifax Breach
Equifax disclosed in September that hackers had infiltrated into their network. Being one of the four major credit reporting agencies, the breach fraudulently disclosed the data of 143,000,000 Americans. It included names, birthdates, addresses and, social security numbers. The worst thing was that the credit card numbers for approximately 209,000 consumers and documents pertaining to credit card disputes for about 182,000 people were also disclosed illegally. In return, Equifax made an effort to protect credit card holders, and offered identity theft protection services to all American citizens. The services were made free of charge till 31st January, 2018, including up to $1 million in ID theft insurance and social security number tracking.

4. Uber Data Breach Data breach occurred in Uber in 2016, but it was exposed in November, 2017, mainly due to underhandedness on Uber’s part. The data breach included compromised data in the form of names, email addresses, and contact numbers of near about 50 million Uber customers. Furthermore, the secret data information of approximately 7,000,000 drivers and 600,000 driver’s license numbers were also disclosed. The mode of operation adopted by hackers began by getting access to a private GitHub site, which was frequently utilized by Uber engineers. Subsequently, the cyber criminals also get access to Uber’s Amazon Web Services, and the personal data was accessed here. After collecting the huge data, the hackers asked for ransom from Uber. In order to hide this incident, Uber officials paid an amount of $100,000 to the hackers for keeping silence and erasing the data. The new Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi discovered this incident, and regretted for the same.

5. Edmodo Platform Hacked
In May, 2017, Motherboard informed that that social learning platform used by educators and students was hacked. This educational service has near about around 78,000,000 users, and a cyber criminal named “nclay” too claimed that he was in possession of account details of 77,000,000 of them. On the Dark Web, the hacked data was put up for sale. In view of the fact that the data for a site that is primarily educational and allocating homework isn’t valuable, the hacker quoted the complete database at merely $1,000.

6. Verizon Breach
In the event, you made an effort to call Verizon customer service in the earliest six months of 2017, most possibly your data was unintentionally disclosed. According to ZDnet, an Amazon S3 storage server containing data in the form of customer names, mobile numbers, and account PINs of about 14,000,000 Verizon customers was not secured successfully by Nice Systems, an Israel-based company. Luckily, Verizon was successful in protecting the valuable data earlier than anyone else could gain access to it. A Verizon spokesperson made a statement to CNBC and confirmed that an individual who got the solitary access to the cloud storage area other than Verizon was a researcher. He brought this issue to Verizon authorities. However, there were no reports of loss or theft in relation to Verizon customer details.

7. Sonic Drive-In Credit Card Breach
The fast-food chain Sonic Drive-In disclosed that an indefinite number of restaurant payment systems were breached in the form of customer credit card details. Millions of customers when ordering a cheeseburger may have unintentionally given their credit card details to swindlers. According to the security researcher, Brian Krebs, the stolen credit card numbers were utilized by the thieves for buying and selling sensitive financial data.

Click here for Global Cyber-crime New Reported by McAfee

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Tesla Kubernetes Servers Hacked

Tesla Kubernetes Servers Hacked, Infected with Cryptocurrency Miner Malware 

As detected by the Cloud security firm RedLock, Tesla internal cloud servers were hacked by unscrupulous elements and cryptocurrency miner malware was found installed on the company’s servers utilized by their engineers. This incident was reported to have taken place last year, when hackers got a fraudulent access to Tesla's Kubernetes server. This is an open-source application which is utilized by many companies to handle API and server infrastructure set up on cloud hosting providers.

The experts from RedLock revealed that the Kubernetes server’s pod that stored login details for one of Tesla's AWS cloud infrastructure was breached by the hackers. The server’s AWS buckets stores sensitive data such as telemetry, and but a spokesperson for Tesla Motors reiterated in an email to Bleeping Computer that the data was from their internally-used engineering test cars. Moreover, there was no proof that hackers stole any data, but they did made an effort and did install a mining application that was accountable for the wide computational resources of Tesla's internal servers to fraudulently mine the Monero cryptocurrency.

Tesla got a notification about the hacking incident, and thereafter, they secured the server instantaneously. According to the version of RedLock, the incident took place for the reason that Tesla engineers overlooked to protect the Kubernetes console with an access password. Tesla officials were also found quoting that in order to persuade this type of research, they maintain a bug bounty program, and had the capacity to encourage this type of research. Furthermore, they can solve any problem within hours of learning about it. The impact of breaching its internal servers appears to be restricted to internally-used engineering test cars only. As per the inquiry made by them, there was no sign of breaching or comprising of customer privacy or security in any way.

Most interestingly, the hackers made configuration changes in order to avoid any kind of suspicion or detection. Obviously, they made out what they were doing. They hacked the system only to set up a private mining pool meant for their fraudulent illegal mining operations. As a part of their illegal activities, they suppressed the mining pool behind CloudFlare, and the mining software was further configurated to take note of commands on a non-standard port. As a result of these activities, the hidden mining software was able to utilize only a small portion of Tesla's AWS CPU resources.

It is, obviously, clear that the hackers made a considerable amount of money by the utilization of a custom mining pool. In the past too, RedLock found exposed similar servers without a password belonging to Aviva, a British insurance company, and Gemalto, the world’s leading SIM cards manufacturing company.

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Crypto wallet was hacked by T-Mobile Phone Scam

Man loses $20k, Phone number, crypto-wallets hacked, T-Mobile US held responsible

A man from Washington who lost all of his crypto-coins has filed a suit against T-Mobile USA after the hackers were able to defraud his phone number. Even, the ‘PIN’ was ignored, for which T-Mobile has already put out an alert service.

Carlos Tapang approached the US state's western district court, and pleaded that the T-Mobile violated America's Federal Communications Act. The miscreants, in November last year, were able to get control of his phone number because of the huge lapse of security services by T-Mobile USA. Unfortunately, the strangers were able to take over his cryptocurrency wallets fraudulently. On account of this mischief, he lost thousands of dollars drained by them in digital money.

As per complaint made by Tapang, the mischief happened on November 7 last year when some unidentified person approached T-Mobile and asked the mobile company to move his (Tapang’s) number to a gadget on AT&T's network. Without verifying any details or asking for a PIN to approve the transfer of mobile number, Tapang claimed that T-Mobile is responsible for the entire security lapse. He asked the telecom co. that for what reason telco staff simply authorized the number port as requested by the miscreant. Surprisingly, AT&T assigned his mobile number to the criminals, without following the required US federal communication act.

It has been further alleged that the hackers fraudulently utilized the mobile number to reset his (Tapang’s) online cryptocurrency accounts password which was related to that number. After that, they accessed his cryptocurrency account, took a control over his wallet and moved his funds to an unidentified location.

Tapang's suit claims the stolen currency amounted to 2.875 Bit coins (approximately $20,350). The criminals converted his 1,000 OmiseGo (OMG) tokens and 19.6 Bit Connect coins into BTC illegally.

To conclude with, we must say that Tapang is not the only person whose mobile number was stolen via a falsified port-out application. In the past too, many persons have reported thefts in their wallet accounts. In order to provide assistance, T-Mobile USA has set up a website to handle these issues. Furthermore, consumers are told to set up a secure PIN to safeguard their numbers.

However, Tapang claims that T-Mob protection policy is hopeless. The telco falls short to need the PIN and permitted his number to be transferred without any verification. In this situation, the mobile network has been accused of carelessness, and for that reason, fully responsible for the hack.

The legal suit stated that T-Mobile has totally failed to implement safeguard policies regarding the conception and verification of user credentials for approved customers accessing mobile wallet accounts, thereby, leading to unfair trade practices. Moreover, T-Mob has failed to guarantee that only approved persons have such access and that customer accounts are safe and secure.

The defendants T-Mobile USA, however, did not made any comments on the legal suit.

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Hackers take control of 160,000 printers

Hackers usually aren’t playing pranks, but this one did by taking over 160,000 plus printers across the Internet. The purpose? To make ASCII art and send a warning. The hacker told The Register that it was “Kind of an impulse.”

The hacker in question is the infamous Stackoverflowing, who stated that he wrote a script to find insecure public-facing devices with Internet Printing Protocol aka IPP, RAW and Line Printer Remote Services that run on network ports 9100, 631 and 515.

After testing their program out and netting in some 50,000 devices as a result, Stack stopped his script before things got too serious, as most people seemed willing to laugh it off. However, there are some individuals out there that have been using similar scripts to ask for Bitcoin ransoms and make money off of unsecured devices in similar fashion.

Stack claims to have done it as an impulse and just because he had a general interest in the idea of messing with printers but it remains a serious warning to others out there with cybersecurity issues.

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Poland has seemingly encountered the biggest hack in its own history.

Poland has seemingly encountered the biggest hack in its own history. The kicker – it appears to have come from the Polish Financial Supervision Authority aka the KNF. A horrifying development took place when the KNF discovered their internal systems had been affected by a foreign agent of some kind.

Their system had to be taken down in order to find evidence of the breach and secure what data remained. There is no specifics on how far the breach reached into the KNF systems or what the current status is. Coincidentally, or, funnily enough, the KNF is meant to be the crème de la crème of cybersecurity standards for other banking institutions to look up to, so the humor of the situation isn’t lost, despite the serious repercussions being faced. As it stands, several banks across Poland have already discovered encrypted files on their servers as well as noticed higher network traffic than normal.

There is no report, thus far, on whether the bank’s customers have had their monetary funds affected or not. The investigation is ongoing so hopefully more information will come to light soon.

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