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How cybercriminals are still snaring victims using seven-year-old malware

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  Researchers analysed millions of posts made on dark web forums over a 12-month period -- here's what they found out and what it means for your security. Some of the most popular strains of malware on underground forums are open-source or cracked versions of malicious software that use exploits that are years old, but still effective. Cybersecurity researchers at Recorded Future analyzed almost four million posts made on dark web forums in several languages between May 2018 and May 2019, and set out their findings in a new report:  Bestsellers in the Underground Economy . The languages analysed include English, Russian, Chinese, Spanish, Arabic and others. Across the different forums, many of the forms of malware discussed were universally popular. The top choices were simple-to-use, readily-available forms of malware, suggesting that for many cybercriminals, getting their hands on malware is the main goal -- it doesn't necessarily have to be sophisticated. Some of the most p...

Hacker steals data of millions of Bulgarians, emails it to local media

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  Source of the data breach appears to be the country's National Revenue Agency A mysterious hacker has stolen the personal details of millions of Bulgarians and has emailed download links to the stolen data to local news publications. The data's origin is believed to be the country's National Revenue Agency (NRA), a department of the Bulgarian Ministry of Finance. In a  message posted on its website  on Monday, the NRA said it was working with the Ministry of the Interior and the State Agency for National Security (SANS) to investigate the hack. "We are currently verifying whether the data is real," said the NRA. Hours after this article's publication, the Bulgarian Ministry of the Interior  confirmed the hack . HACKER STOLE 110 DATABASES, LEAKED 57 According to reports from local media [ 1 ,  2 ,  3 ,  4 ,  5 ], who received part of the data, the hacker said they stole the personal details of over five million Bulgarians, of the country's total ...

Huawei CEO: Our 'Plan B' OS is likely to be 60% faster than Android

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  Huawei sets to work on creating an app store alternative to Google Play. Despite  recent talk by US President Donald Trump  that Huawei's ban on US tech would be lifted, the Chinese tech giant appears ready to move ahead with its  Hong Meng OS alternative to Android . Speaking with French news site Le Point, Huawei CEO and founder, Ren Zhengfei, said Hong Meng is likely to be 60% faster than Android, citing a story from  Chinese media about Chinese handset brands Oppo and Vivo testing the new OS .   Zhengfei admitted that the company currently lacked an alternative to the Google Play app store and Apple's App Store, but that it is working on one.   Huawei told potential partners last year that by the end of 2018 it planned to have 50 million Europeans using its own app store, according to documents seen by Bloomberg in May, shortly after the Department of Commerce added Huawei to its entities list, banning US firms from supplying tech to th...

Mozilla: Want ad-free news on Firefox? That'll cost you $5 a month

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  Would you pay $5 to get news online without seeing ads, asks Mozilla. Mozilla is teasing the launch of a new $5 monthly subscription to a variety of online news publishers that involves no ads. Mozilla is currently only running an online survey to see whether consumers would take up its $5 Firefox offer but it seems far enough into its plan to at least have a  button offering users to 'Sign up now, for $4.99 per month' . Clicking it leads to the survey and a confession that the product isn't actually available yet.  Should Mozilla launch the service, it seems likely to be provided in partnership with Scroll, which has an ad-free news subscription service with 12 media partners, including Slate, The Atlantic, BuzzFeed, USA Today, and Vox.  It's not a new idea but a particular take on one of many challenges that companies like Google, Facebook, and Apple are attempting to crack in various ways. In Mozilla's case, the main proposition is to offer users no ads on news...

New Silex malware is bricking IoT devices, has scary plans

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  Over 2,000 devices have been bricked in the span of a few hours. Attacks still ongoing. A new strain of malware is wiping the firmware of IoT devices in attacks reminiscent of the old BrickerBot malware that destroyed millions of devices back in 2017. Named Silex, this malware began operating earlier today, about three-four hours before this article's publication. The malware had bricked around 350 devices when this reporter began investigating its operations, and the number quickly spiked to 2,000 wiped devices by the time we published, an hour later. Attacks are still ongoing, and according to an interview with the malware's creator, they are about to intensify in the coming days. HOW THE SILEX MALWARE WORKS According to Akamai researcher  Larry Cashdollar , who  first spotted the malware earlier today , Silex works by trashing an IoT device's storage, dropping firewall rules, removing the network configuration, and then halting the device. It's as destructive as it...

Mozilla fixes second Firefox zero-day exploited in the wild

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  Two days after patching the first zero-day, Mozilla fixes a second one, used in the same attacks as the first. Mozilla has released a second security update this week to patch a second zero-day that was being exploited in the wild to attack Coinbase employees and other cryptocurrency organizations. Firefox 67.0.4 and Firefox ESR 60.7.2 are now available for Firefox users through the browser's built-in update mechanism. This second bug was used together with another one that Mozilla patched two days ago, through the release of Firefox 67.0.3 and Firefox ESR 60.7.1. THE TWO ZERO-DAYS The first one was described as a "remote code execution" vulnerability that allowed remote attackers to run malicious code inside Firefox's native process. The bug ( CVE-2019-11707 ) was discovered on April 15 by a Google Project Zero researcher and reported to Mozilla, who only patched it this week after the Coinbase security team reported attacks exploiting the vulnerability, together w...

Windows 10 Hit Repeatedly By Serious New Vulnerability

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  Windows 10  desperately   needed   changes  to its upgrade system and they are  finally rolling out . That said, they’re  not a magic bullet  and Microsoft has now warned users about an update which is going to be hit multiple times over the next few weeks, and before the company can do anything about it.  The threat comes from SandboxEscaper, a well-known  exploit broker , who has found multiple holes in Microsoft’s CVE-2019-0841 security update. Moreover, while Microsoft has posted a  warning  on June 7 and has attempted three fixes so far, SandboxEscaper has now released a fourth and promised to further exploits of it will follow. The result is Microsoft is left playing whack-a-mole and Windows 10 users should be vigilant. As reported by   security researcher Nabeel Ahmed  states  that SandboxEscaper has found a way to give anyone with access to a Windows 10 and Server 2019 machine permis...

Windows 10 security: Are ads in Microsoft's own apps pushing fake malware alerts?

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  Windows 10 users say they're being targeted by fraudsters through ads being delivered to Microsoft's apps. Windows 10 users are complaining of being targeted by fraudsters through in-app ads delivered through Microsoft's own software.  The fraudulent apps are being delivered through native Windows 10 applications like the Microsoft News app, according to Windows-focused site Ghacks.  Much like online ads promoting tech-support scams, the in-app ads are using bogus system alerts to warn users of non-existent security threats and other issues. The  example Ghacks noticed  claims that a PC is infected with multiple viruses and contains a warning that "personal and banking information is at risk". The ad then encourages users to click a 'Scan now' button, which likely leads to a phishing page or will download unwanted software.  Other scam ads appearing in Microsoft apps claim that the viewer of the ad has won a new iPhone while other ads ask users to pa...

Canva faced security breach, 139 million users data hacked

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Canva is a popular Sydney-based startup which offers a graphic design service. According to the hacker, who directly contacted, data of roughly 139 million users has been compromised during the breach. Responsible for the data breach is a hacker known as GnosticPlayers online. Since February this year, they have put up the data of 932 million users on sale, which are reportedly stolen from 44 companies around the world. “I download everything up to May 17,” the hacker said to news reports. “They detected my breach and closed their database server.” In a  statement on the Canva website , the company confirmed the attack and has notified the relevant authorities. They also tweeted about the data breach on 24th May as soon as they discovered the hack and recommended their users to change their passwords immediately. “At Canva, we are committed to protecting the data and privacy of all our users and believe in open, transparent communication that puts our communities’ needs first,” the...

Google sibling Jigsaw brings anti-troll AI to France ahead of EU elections

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  French news publisher Le Monde is launching a new comments section using Jigsaw's Perspective API. The EU elections  get underway tomorrow, and as debate heats up it's likely the comments sections of major news sites will be ablaze with fiery opinions, harassment, and general internet nastiness.    To help counter abusive online comments in France, Alphabet think tank Jigsaw has launched French-language versions of Perspective and Tune, its AI-powered, troll-fighting technologies. The Perspective API is first rolling out to the comments section of French news publisher Le Monde and will also be available to other publishers. The new version of  Le Monde's  comment system going live today will use Jigsaw's Perspective API to encourage readers to share views on news ahead of this week's 2019 European Union parliamentary elections. Perspective's machine-learning model is designed to determine whether a comment could be seen as toxic to a discussion. The mode...