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Yahoo! Voice reportedly compromised, over 453,000 credentials exposed

  • Post author: Omid Farhang
  • Post published: July 12, 2012
  • Reading Time: 1 min
  • Word Count: 209 words

Übergizmo wrote: If you use Yahoo! Voice a lot – Yahoo’s VoIP service via its Yahoo! Messenger instant messaging application, then you will definitely need to hear this report. Earlier today, more than 453,000 user accounts from an unidentified service owned by Yahoo were posted on a hacker site. The hackers reportedly said that they infiltrated the subdomain by using a union-based SQL injection. But the group responsible for the security breach added that the data breach was intended to be a wake-up call for Yahoo. ...

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LinkedIn spam, exploits and Zeus: a deadly combination ?

  • Post author: Omid Farhang
  • Post published: June 14, 2012
  • Reading Time: 2 min
  • Word Count: 300 words

Is this the perfect recipe for a cybercriminal ?: Hacking LinkedIn’s password (and possibly user-) database. Sending an email to all obtained email addresses, which is urging you to check your LinkedIn inbox as soon as possible. A user unawarely clicking on the link. An exploit gets loaded. Malware gets dropped. Malware gets executed. User’s computer is now a zombie (part of a botnet). I would definitely say YES. A reader of my blog contacted me today, he had received an email from LinkedIn which was looking phishy. We can verify that Step 1 is accomplished, by the simple fact that in the “To” and/or “CC” field of the email below, there are about ~100 email addresses. A quick look-up of a few of them on LinkedIn reveals the unconvenient truth
 Here’s the email in question: ...

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The Pirate Bay hit by DDoS attack

  • Post author: Omid Farhang
  • Post published: May 17, 2012
  • Reading Time: 3 min
  • Word Count: 460 words

File-sharing website The Pirate Bay (TPB) has been hit by a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. The site has been largely inaccessible for the last 24 hours, and the service is intermittent in the UK. The Pirate Bay has confirmed the attack on its Facebook page, saying that it did not know who was behind it, although it “had its suspicions”. A provider of DDoS defense systems said that it was unlikely that the attack came from hacking group Anonymous. ...

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Foxconn hacked by Swagg Security

  • Post author: Omid Farhang
  • Post published: February 9, 2012
  • Reading Time: 2 min
  • Word Count: 348 words

The H-Online: Hackers operating under the name Swagg Security have said they were responsible for breaching the security of Chinese electronics manufacturer Foxconn. In a posting on Pastebin, the group took credit for penetrating the systems, noting that “Foxconn did have an appropriate firewall, but fortunately to our intent, we were able to bypass it almost flawlessly”. The posting pointed to a 6.5 MB torrent on The Pirate Bay which contained what appears to be CSV file dumps of database tables and other text files. The files included lists of what look like customer names, accounts and plain text passwords though many of those passwords are “foxconn” or “foxconn2”. ...

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Russian Spammers Eye World Content Show

  • Post author: Omid Farhang
  • Post published: February 8, 2012
  • Reading Time: 1 min
  • Word Count: 150 words

Symantec Connect: Television channels across the world are set to be at the 14th International Exhibition and Forum, World Content Show, held Feb 7- 9, 2012, in Russia. The exhibition showcases the latest technologies and trends in the TV and telecommunication industry. This techno-fair will be attended in large numbers by leading media businesses, and spammers don’t want to miss the opportunity to circulate spam around the event. In a bid to catch the reader’s attention, one such spam email reveals some appealing facts about the event, such as Interactive Elements, Prize Drawings, Performance of Popular Leader/Star, and Colorful Musical Concerts. ...

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Attackers taking aim at retail and food chains

  • Post author: Omid Farhang
  • Post published: February 7, 2012
  • Reading Time: 2 min
  • Word Count: 376 words

v3.co.uk: The uniform infrastructure and predictable behaviors are making corporate retail and restaurant chains the choice targets for cybercriminals. A report from security firm Trustwave found that attackers favor companies with chains of outlets, such as those commonly found in the food and retail industries, when launching targeted attacks. The attackers like the uniform IT infrastructure that large chains deploy at individual sites, Nicholas Percoco, head of the Trustwave’s SpiderLabs team, told V3. ...

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Twitter Malware Attack: Photos of Dead Gaddafi

  • Post author: Omid Farhang
  • Post published: October 20, 2011
  • Reading Time: 2 min
  • Word Count: 348 words

Mashable: As reports of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s death circulate on the Internet, so is a gruesome cellphone photo of what appears to be his severely wounded body and another that appears to be his dead body. Both are likely opportunities for spammers with bad intentions. The first photo was distributed by the news agency AFP after commanders for Libya’s transitional military, the National Transitional Council (NTC), said they had captured Gaddafi after invading his hometown of Sirte. On Thursday, an NTC spokesperson told the New York Times Gaddafi had been killed, but the U.S. State Department had still not confirmed his death as of 10:00 a.m. ET. ...

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An update on attempted man-in-the-middle attacks

  • Post author: Omid Farhang
  • Post published: August 31, 2011
  • Reading Time: 1 min
  • Word Count: 164 words

Google: Today we received reports of attempted SSL man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks against Google users, whereby someone tried to get between them and encrypted Google services. The people affected were primarily located in Iran. The attacker used a fraudulent SSL certificate issued by DigiNotar, a root certificate authority that should not issue certificates for Google (and has since revoked it). Google Chrome users were protected from this attack because Chrome was able to detect the fraudulent certificate. ...

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Hacker steals user data from Nokia developer forum

  • Post author: Omid Farhang
  • Post published: August 29, 2011
  • Reading Time: 1 min
  • Word Count: 204 words

H-Online: A vulnerability in its forum software has been exploited by a hacker to compromise mobile phone maker Nokia‘s developer forum. The attacker used SQL injection to access the forum database at developer.nokia.com and, according to Nokia, obtained email addresses of registered users. Where configured to be publicly available, the table also includes details such as the user’s date of birth, web site URL and Skype, ICQ or other IM username; this is reported to be the case for around 7 per cent of users. The database did not contain passwords or credit card information. The issue does not, according to Nokia, affect any other Nokia accounts. ...

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Restricting access to net resources for "good reasons"

  • Post author: Omid Farhang
  • Post published: August 20, 2011
  • Reading Time: 7 min
  • Word Count: 1349 words

This article is originally posted at Norman Security Blog, Credit to my friend ‘Pondus’ for sharing. Introduction During recent months, we have seen several examples of attempts and suggestions to restrict access to different types of net resources, and in some cases the Internet itself. Is this a method that accomplishes its end, or is it more of a “shooting the messenger” type of action? We shall give some examples and discuss different issues in this article. ...

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