He said that the entire city database was attacked by hackers and held hostage. The attackers demanded a ransom of 2,000 bitcoins, an encrypted digital currency to decrypt the same. However Duggan said the ransom was not paid because the database wasnt used or needed by the city. Was it a hack attack or was it a work of a Ransomware? These questions remained unanswered. The timing was such that he certainly thought it was a political agenda, the Mayor said....

Now researchers have found out that it neither provides security nor privacy. In fact they have warned users against snycing and sending sensitive and confidential information over BitTorrent Sync. Sync gets its speed from the BitTorrent protocol on which it was built and it is fast. Growing Popularity As of August 2014, the popularity of the service has grown far and wide. The fact that it does not need a subscription fee hasnt been a blockade in its spread....

The process is done using traffic analysis. They used CISCO routers in their research. And since CISCO defines all major networking standards, it is applicable to every router available. Tor is susceptible to this kind of traffic analysis because it was designed for low-latency. This kind of monitoring, even on a large scale does not require many resources. source: www.techworm.net

I just saved productive time to iPhone users being distracted by Twitter. This was the message that Alfonso was sending to his followers and in the process crashing their Twitter App. #BreakTheInternethttps://xn–rs8haaaa34raa89aaadaa(. ? ? ???? For example munich would be encoded as mnich-kva. An IDN takes thepunycodeencoding, and adds a xn– in front of it. He tweeted the reply he got from Twitter which is given below : pic.twitter.com/q6EubhqcaG Dingo ?...

The readers may know about the White House hacking incident which took place in late October. The hackers seem to be after the US government websites. A spate of recent attacks on the United States government websites including the White House, the U.S. Postal Service and the National Weather Service suggest something far more sinister in the offing. The official was not authorized to speak about the matter by name and spoke on condition of anonymity....

Although this time, they have a new adversary to deal with- Anonymous. In a video the group posted to YouTube they say that the KKK is for messing with their family. High profile ones that too. Few would also remember that they had claimed to take down Facebook for their total disrespect of its users. Experts advise to take any Anonymous news with a pinch of salt. The group is a very wide one with lots of layers....

Viber is a messaging software with versions of its app available for almost every platform including the desktop. The spam trail starts when a user receives an email stating that they have received a new voice mail. This leaves your entire machine vulnerable at any time. Mobile Android As said above the redirections change depending upon the platform of the gadget. Android users were at times redirected to the GO Launcher page in the Play Store....

Patch Released Luckily, the day the researcher revealed that this was a zero day bug i.e. no one has known about this bug before today has been patched by Microsoft. Which also means that no one has managed to utilize this bug and infect machines. The researcher credited with this discovery is IBMs Robert Freeman. source: www.techworm.net

Enterprise users installing custom apps should install apps from their companys secure website. Which leaves all devices running this version of iOS or higher at risk. Which translates to 95% of all iPhones and iPads under the risk. This bug also does not require a unit to be jail broken. Previous Flaw This is the second instance of Apple products falling prey to a security flaw. These new security flaws have dented Apples credibility in the security paradigm a lot....

This breach is suspected to be backed by the state actors based in China. CrowdStrike has named the group Deep Panda. This group seems to be carrying out hacking activities as per the political interests of its nations government. Mr Alperovitch said he could not name the media organisations targeted because of confidentiality reasons. source: www.techworm.net

Officials think the malware came from an malvertising ad someone in the department clicked on. McCliss added that it did not seem that that the Sheriffs office was targeted by cyber crooks. CryptoWall CryptoWall is a malware that encrypts files on the compromised computer. It then asks the user to pay a ransom to have the files decrypted. It uses a variety of different techniques for encourage the user to pay the ransom....

The Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau arrested three peoples suspected to be involved in WireLurker Malware Campaign. WireLurkerwhich infected iOS and Mac users using OS X applicationreportedlyinfected hundreds of thousands of Apple users. The WireLurker malware has hogging headlines in the world for all the wrong reasons. Why WireLurker is considered as a bigger threat? The researchers who found this Malware said the discovery of WireLurker poses a new era of malware....

In addition to Tor, the malware was also distributed through pirated softwares hosted on many torrent sites. Written in assembly language, most MiniDuke files were tiny. OnionDuke is however, a different family from MiniDuke. The co-relation was found because both seemed to use the same command & control chain. From these C&Cs the malware may receive instructions to download and execute additional malicious components. Another component discovered by F-Secure is theBackdoor:W32/OnionDuke....