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Iranian Hackers targeting US oil, gas, and electric companies

  • Post author: Omid Farhang
  • Post published: May 26, 2013
  • Reading Time: 2 min
  • Word Count: 336 words

The Hacker News reported: For all the talk about China and the Syrian Electronic Army, it seems there’s another threat to U.S. cyber interests i.e. Iran. Series of potentially destructive computer attacks that have been targeting American oil, gas and electricity companies tracked back to Iran. Iranian hackers were able to gain access to control-system software that could allow them to manipulate oil or gas pipelines. Malware have been found in the power grid that could be used to deliver malicious software to damage plants. The targets have included several American oil, gas and electricity companies, which government officials have refused to identify. ...

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Turkish FlashPlayer? no! It’s malware

  • Post author: Omid Farhang
  • Post published: March 28, 2013
  • Reading Time: 1 min
  • Word Count: 98 words

I recently came across the file “FlashPlayer.exe” during the course of regular research. The file had been distributed with the file name FlashPlayer.exe and not surprisingly, when executed, it shows the following GUI, partly written in Turkish: Obviously, it’s disguised as an Adobe Flash Player 11 installer. Here is more info about the file: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 File Name: FlashPlayer.exe MD5: e2856b1ad6c74c51767cab05bdedc5d1 SHA1: 1ac150ddb964722b6b7c96808763b3e4d0472daf CRC32: a8464606 SHA-256: b5f37cc44365a5a1b240e649ea07bbb17959ceddc3f8b67a793df694a6f03a88 SHA-512: e2d1388bd5feec51227cfa10a5606f7d3bc58f12ea95d688acb5178ff31a156a1092f739e7dd276f4c5368d89c33ed6a15b08ff5df294b9c3647905c1083921d SHA-384: 5d622afcf87e33334a446df5dfd2be7769cab596cc9a121bfd6269bc85ee980f75e1a2d1472f0eb379788845230d883b File Size: 561,152 Version: 2.01 Source: hxxps://flash-player-download.com/FlashPlayer.exe VirusTotal: Latest Report ...

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Evernote is suspect of a hack, change your password

  • Post author: Omid Farhang
  • Post published: March 2, 2013
  • Reading Time: 2 min
  • Word Count: 415 words

Cross-posted from Evernote blog: Evernote’s Operations & Security team has discovered and blocked suspicious activity on the Evernote network that appears to have been a coordinated attempt to access secure areas of the Evernote Service. As a precaution to protect your data, we have decided to implement a password reset. Please read below for details and instructions. In our security investigation, we have found no evidence that any of the content you store in Evernote was accessed, changed or lost. We also have no evidence that any payment information for Evernote Premium or Evernote Business customers was accessed. ...

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Doc blocker : Oxford University blocked Google Docs

  • Post author: Omid Farhang
  • Post published: February 19, 2013
  • Reading Time: 2 min
  • Word Count: 331 words

For about two and a half hours on Monday, students at Oxford University couldn’t access Google Docs after the University’s Computing Services team decided to take “extreme action” to halt phishing attacks and also to put pressure on Google. Robin Stevens of OxCert explained in a blog post that, in the past, Google has been slow to respond to requests to help the university. The university’s problem is that phishers are frequently using Google Docs to present phishing forms to its users, with a legitimate domain shown to the user and not detectable by firewalls as Google traffic is over SSL. If phishing mail directing users to pages like this gets past the defenses, it is hard to detect and respond to. ...

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Facebook Got Hacked Last Month and Is Just Telling You Now

  • Post author: Omid Farhang
  • Post published: February 15, 2013
  • Reading Time: 2 min
  • Word Count: 273 words

Cross-posted from Gizmodo: Facebook just announced that it was hacked last month in a short statement on its website. Apparently, an unknown number employees visited a compromised developer site and were infected with malware. Facebook’s being very cagey about all this, but we’ve been able to scrounge up some details. According to the statement, the company reacted swiftly with an investigation and remediation following the “sophisticated attack.” The company won’t say which law enforcement agencies it’s working with. It claims no user data was compromised. ...

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New Adobe Vulnerabilities Being Exploited in the Wild

  • Post author: Omid Farhang
  • Post published: February 14, 2013
  • Reading Time: 1 min
  • Word Count: 176 words

Adobe posted a vulnerability report warning that vulnerabilities in Adobe Reader and Acrobat XI (11.0.1) and earlier versions are being exploited in the wild. Adobe is currently investigating this issue. According to the FireEye blog posted earlier today, the malicious file arrives as a PDF file. Upon successful exploitation of the vulnerabilities, two malicious DLL files are dropped. Symantec detects the malicious PDF file as Trojan.Pidief and the two dropped DLL files as Trojan Horse. ...

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Symantec claims losses from cybercrime exceed $100 billion

  • Post author: Omid Farhang
  • Post published: September 7, 2012
  • Reading Time: 2 min
  • Word Count: 292 words

h-Online: According to Symantec’s 2012 Norton Cybercrime Report, worldwide, private individuals have suffered approximately $100 billion (more than £69 billion at the current exchange rate) in financial losses as a result of cybercrime. In the period from July 2011 to July 2012, losses averaged $197 (£124) per victim. A total of 556 million adults are reported to have fallen victim to malware, phishing or similar virtual crimes. The report claims that there are 1.5 million victims of cybercrime each day, or about 18 per second. The security specialist’s report also states that two-thirds of internet users have been caught out by cybercriminals at some point in their lives, and almost half (46%) were victims during the period covered by the report. The results reveal that many of those affected are victims of their own carelessness. Around 40% of people don’t use complex passwords or don’t change their passwords regularly. ...

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1 million Apple Device IDs leaked, claim hackers

  • Post author: Omid Farhang
  • Post published: September 4, 2012
  • Reading Time: 2 min
  • Word Count: 255 words

According to the AntiSec hacker group, they claim to hold more than 12 million Apple iOS Unique Device IDs, in addition to other personal information from device owners. As a move to back up such a claim, the AntiSec hacker group is said to have released slightly more than a million Apple Device IDs to the masses. This particular expose was unveiled on Pastebin, which is said to hold a detailed description of the method that the hacking group were said to have obtained the IDs from the FBI. ...

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Java zero day vulnerability actively used in targeted attacks

  • Post author: Omid Farhang
  • Post published: August 27, 2012
  • Reading Time: 1 min
  • Word Count: 189 words

ZDNet: Security researchers from FireEye, AlienVault, and DeependResearch have intercepted targeted malware attacks utilizing the latest Java zero day exploit. The vulnerability affects Java 7 (1.7) Update 0 to 6. It does not affect Java 6 and below. Based on related reports, researchers were able to reproduce the exploit on Windows 7 SP1 with Java 7 Update 6. There’s also a Metasploit module available. Upon successful exploitation, the campaign drops MD5: 4a55bf1448262bf71707eef7fc168f7d – detected by 28 out of 42 antivirus scanners as Gen:Trojan.Heur.FU.bqW@a4uT4@bb; Backdoor:Win32/Poison.E ...

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Crisis malware infects VMware virtual machines

  • Post author: Omid Farhang
  • Post published: August 23, 2012
  • Reading Time: 2 min
  • Word Count: 241 words

v3.co.uk: The Windows version of the Crisis Trojan is far more dangerous than first thought, being capable of infecting VMware virtual machine images, Windows Mobile devices and removable USB drives, research has revealed. Crisis was originally uncovered targeting businesses with social engineering attacks that trick users into running a malicious Java applet in July. Symantec has since revealed that the malware has more advanced capabilities, letting it search for and copy itself onto VMware virtual machine images on compromised computers. ...

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