Hacking

Pierluigi Paganini October 30, 2018
The author of the Mirai botnet gets six months of house arrest

Paras Jha (22), the author of the Mirai botnet has been sentenced to six months of house arrest and ordered to pay $8.6 million in compensation for DDoS attacks against the systems of Rutgers University. A New Jersey court sentenced the author of the Mirai botnet, Paras Jha, 22, of Fanwood, after pleading guilty to violating […]

Pierluigi Paganini October 30, 2018
Recently discovered DemonBot Botnet targets Hadoop servers

Security experts from Radware have spotted a new botnet dubbed DemonBot that it targeting Hadoop clusters to launch DDoS attacks against third parties. Operators behind the DemonBot botnet target an unauthenticated remote command execution in Hadoop YARN (Yet Another Resource Negotiator). DemonBot bot only infects central servers, at the time of the report experts found over 70 active exploit servers […]

Pierluigi Paganini October 29, 2018
Systemd flaw could cause the crash or hijack of vulnerable Linux machines

Systemd is affected by a security vulnerability that can be exploited to crash a vulnerable Linux machine, and in the worst case to execute malicious code. An attacker can trigger the vulnerability using maliciously crafted DHCPv6 packets and modifying portions of memory of the vulnerable systems, potentially causing remote code execution. The flaw, tracked as CVE-2018-15688, […]

Pierluigi Paganini October 29, 2018
Crooks continue to abuse exposed Docker APIs for Cryptojacking

Cybercriminals continue to abuse unprotected Docker APIs to create new containers used for cryptojacking, Trend Micro warns. Crooks continue to abuse unprotected Docker APIs to create new containers used for cryptojacking. Earlier this year Sysdig and Aqua Security researchers started observing cyber attacks targeting Kubernets and Docker instances aimed at mining Monero cryptocurrency. A container is […]

Pierluigi Paganini October 28, 2018
How to deliver malware using weaponized Microsoft Office docs embedding YouTube video

Researchers at Cymulate security firm devised a new stealthy technique to deliver malware leveraging videos embedded into weaponized Microsoft Office Documents. The technique could be used to execute JavaScript code when a user clicks on a weaponized YouTube video thumbnail embedded in a Weaponized Office document. Experts pointed out that no message is displayed by […]

Pierluigi Paganini October 28, 2018
The Belgacom hack was the work of the UK GCHQ intelligence agency

Belgian newspaper reported that investigators had found proof that the Belgacom hack was the work of the UK GCHQ intelligence agency. Back to September 2013, Belgacom (now Proximus), the largest telecommunications company in Belgium and primarily state-owned, announced its IT  infrastructure had suffered a malware-based attack. Here we are again to speak about this incident after […]

Pierluigi Paganini October 27, 2018
A few dollars to bring down sites with new Bushido-based DDoS-for-hire service

Security researchers at FortiGuard Labs have discovered a new DDoS-for-hire service called “0x-booter” built with leaked code that implements an easy to use interface. “0x-booter” first appeared on October 17, 2018,  a post published on Facebook advertises over 500 Gbps of power and 20,000 bots. “During our regular monitoring, the FortiGuard Labs team recently discovered a new platform […]

Pierluigi Paganini October 26, 2018
CVE-2018-14665 privilege escalation flaw affects popular Linux distros

Security researcher discovered a highly critical vulnerability (CVE-2018-14665) in X.Org Server package that affects major Linux distributions. The Indian security researcher Narendra Shinde has discovered a highly critical vulnerability (CVE-2018-14665) in X.Org Server package that affects major Linux distributions, including OpenBSD, Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS, Red Hat, and Fedora. Xorg X project provides an open source implementation of the X Window […]

Pierluigi Paganini October 26, 2018
Experts presented BOTCHAIN, the first fully functional Botnet built upon the Bitcoin Protocol

Security experts Antonio Pirozzi and Pierluigi Paganini presented BOTCHAIN, the first fully functional Botnet built upon the Bitcoin Protocol. Security expert Antonio Pirozzi, director at ZLab malware lab at Cybaze firm, presented at the EU Cyber Threat Conference in Dublin conducted a research along with Pierluigi Paganini (aka @securityaffairs), about how crooks could abuse blockchain […]

Pierluigi Paganini October 25, 2018
Experts released a free Decryption Tool for GandCrab ransomware

Good news for the victims of the infamous GandCrab ransomware, security experts have created a decryption tool that allows them to decrypts files without paying the ransom. Bitdefender security firm along with Europol, the FBI, Romanian Police, and other law enforcement agencies has developed a free ransomware decryption tool. “The good news is that now […]