FBI Warns Officials For Attacks By Hacktivists

The FBI has a warning issued in which the police and other government staff warns of cyber attacks by hacktivists. In addition to attacks in which there is information about agents and officials is gathered and published, there have also been attacks observed attempting to hack into the email accounts of agents and officials.

Recently, there was still an old private mail account CIA director cracked. According to the FBI's use of social media can increase the chance of being attacked. The attacks are not directly aimed at the person but are carried out via eg the ISP or email provider. Thus, the attackers use social engineering to steal information from these parties, which they eventually gain access to email accounts.

Actions

To limit such attacks advises the FBI's use of two-factor authentication, turn on privacy settings, limiting the social media footprint, no post information about work or function online, be careful with online responses, secret questions and answers unanswerable simply, regularly changing passwords is also more than 15 characters and should also advise families to secure their accounts properly. The FBI provides advice to government personnel to periodically check what information about themselves online to find.

Google Chrome Now Also Protects Against Social Engineering

Google Chrome has the protection of its users expanded. Chrome previously protected its users against all phishing sites and websites with malware, social engineering is now also added. Social engineering attack websites posing as a trusted party and want to make the visitor believe that the web content is provided by the trusted party.

Warning

According to the Internet giant is going beyond traditional social engineering and phishing involves more instances of misleading web content. As an example, a website that uses the Google Chrome logo and offering a so-called update for the browser, or a page that occurs as Google support and the user requests a number to call. If Chrome detects such misleading websites let users now see a warning.

US Cable Operator Arranges Data Breach For 500,000 Euros

US cable operator Cox Communications has with the regulator FCC reached a settlement of the equivalent of more than 500,000 euros last year after an attacker via social engineering access to the customer database and managed to get some of the customer data placed online.

The attacker approached a customer service representative and a provider of Cox and did thereby posing as an employee of the IT department. In both cases, he asked to log on to a phishing site, which also took both victims. With these credentials the attacker got access to the customer database, including names, email addresses, secret questions and answers, PINs and partial social security numbers and drivers license numbers.

Some of the information was then placed by the attacker on the Internet. The FCC then started an investigation or the cable company did have secure customer data. This showed that the systems are not applied measures that could mitigate the impact of the stolen credentials. Cox has now reached a settlement and will pay $ 595 000 and all affected customers still inform about the attack, which took place last August. The security has been tightened. The US cable operator has about 6 million customers.

Avira Complains Freemium.Com Due To Adware

German antivirus company Avira has filed a lawsuit against the download site Freemium.com because users tricked into installing adware and potentially unwanted software. "It is time to tackle adware directly at the source," said Avira's CEO Tavis Witteveen.

"Freemium.com engages in unfair competition that violates the privacy rights of consumers and invalid contracts used", he tells. Through Freemium.com kinds of programs can be downloaded. The problem is the installation tool of Freemium, a "wrapper", which, according to Avira as potentially unwanted programs may be classified. The tool would use social engineering to users, in addition to the desired software, also letting unwanted applications installed.

The wrapper according to the virus fighter compared with ten layers of wrapping paper for a gift, where there is much room for surprises. Who one program through the wrapper will download may eventually end up with four additional programs, two browser extensions and a desktop link to a gaming site. The wrapper is also applied to other download sites, such as ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG, an investor in Freemium.com and the download portal of Computerbild.de, a website publisher Axel Springer.

WhatsApp Collects Phone Numbers And Call Duration

WhatsApp collects phone numbers, duration of calls and other information, as researchers from the University of New Haven determined. WhatsApp, the popular chat app in the world and has over 800 million users worldwide.

Last year it was acquired by Facebook for $ 19 billion. Due to the acquisition by the social network and the large number of users, according to the researchers, is important to know how the network protocol of WhatsApp works and what forensically relevant data it contains. For the study, the researchers decided to unravel the connection between the WhatsApp program and the WhatsApp servers.

Through the network traffic, the researchers were able to identify various data, such as WhatsApp phone numbers, metadata about the call set-up and the duration of the call. They also discovered the codec used WhatsApp for calls, as well as the IP addresses of the relay servers which run the WhatsApp conversations.

"Our research shows which data can be gathered through forensic examination of WhatsApp and provides a way for others to conduct additional research on network forensics messaging apps," said researcher Ibrahim Baggili. The researchers note that decrypting the network traffic was not easy. For this it is necessary to have access to both the data on the device as the entire network traffic. The research of the researchers: "WhatsApp Network Forensics: Decrypting and Understanding WhatsApp Call Signaling Messages" is published in the journal Digital Investigation.

British Companies For 83 Million Stolen Via Phishing

In Britain, nine people were arrested who managed to steal via telephone phishing 83 million companies. The scammers called corporate bank clients and occurred thereby for the bank employees. By phone spoofing looked like there was also the bank concerned was called.

The scammers then knew through social engineering to steal all kinds of banking information which they knew to gain access to bank accounts. Money from the companies was subsequently made ​​to the accounts of straw men. Through these accounts the money was withdrawn from ATMs. The British police advise bank customers to never give out personal information such as passwords, share passwords, PINs or provide other personal details, even if from a legitimate bank account number appears to be dialed.

Security Professionals On LinkedIn Stalked By Fake Recruiters

Several security professionals who are active on LinkedIn, have been the target of fake recruiters who probably tried to map the social circle and connections. The Dutch security researcher Yonathan Klijnsma warned two weeks ago for the 'recruiters'.

Also employees of the Finnish anti-virus firm F-Secure were approached by the fake accounts, which utilized under different from stock photos. The "recruiters" were mainly as employees of Talent Sources and approached security professionals through a standard message from a recruiter. What was the real purpose is unknown. Possibly this was an experiment to test how sensitive security professionals for social engineering. The accounts of the 'recruiters' appeared after some time to disappear. Still, warns Sean Sullivan from the F-Secure it is hoped that no one has given the fake accounts important information.

32 Zero-Day Vulnerabilities Announced At Black Hat Conference

For another two weeks and then starts the American edition of the Black Hat conference, one of the most important conferences in the field of IT security. This year especially defense against malware and mobile technologies popular topics, but there will also be all sorts of unknown vulnerabilities are demonstrated.

"We have 32 different zero-day vulnerabilities disclosed during the event," said Stevie Wylie, general director of the conference, compared to eWeek . "The zero days come from a variety of areas, including mobile and SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) systems." In addition, the conference for the first time a study ( pdf ) published among 460 security experts. The experts suggest that refined attacks directly against the organization are focused and phishing and social engineering are the main concerns. Furthermore, the experts most daily time spent on vulnerabilities that are introduced by their own application developers.

When it comes to expenditure are incidental data leaks that cause end users because they do not follow the policy as well as targeted attacks, the greatest costs. When asked what the weakest link in the enterprise security indicates 33% of the surveyed experts to end users who violate security policy and easily be misled by social engineering attacks. According to Black Hat, the survey shows that the current IT security model of enterprises should be reconsidered and that security professionals do not spend their time and money to make the issues they are most concerned about.

Critical Vulnerability In CMS Software Drupal Poem

There is an important security update for the popular content management system (CMS) Drupal appeared that fixes multiple vulnerabilities, including a vulnerability that allows attackers websites can take over completely. The leak is in the OpenID module and makes it possible for an attacker as any user to log in, including the manager, and their account hijacking.

Via the other vulnerabilities, it was possible to determine certain information, and to send user via an "open redirect" to a third party website through. This could, for example, can be used for a social engineering attack. Administrators are advised to upgrade to Drupal 6.36 or 7.38.