Posts

Showing posts with the label spyware

Plurox Virus – A new name in the long list of Malwares

Image
Understanding the Malicious Plurox Virus According to researches, it was initially discovered in February, 2019. It is believed that this destructive virus is still in its testing phase. Plurox Virus – the malicious malware operates as a cryptocurrency miner. It proliferate itself on computers connected to local network, with the motive of mining crypto currencies. As a rule, Plurox Trojan makes a backdoor entry in your system without your knowledge. In other words, the nasty Plurox is Trojan , Self – Spreading Virus and a Cryptocurrency-Miner all at the same time. By Cryptocurrency miner, we refer to programs that solve mathematical problems using computer’s CPU and GPU. Typically, it is used to mine cryptocurrency! In addition, it consumes high electricity which results in higher electricity bills. The destruction of cryptocurrency miners are not yet over! It also overheats the system and cause unexpected shut downs. In order to restrict the financial or data loss, we ...

Android Nemesis MobSTSPY goes global via Google Play

Image
An Android Spyware disguised as games & utilities struck more than 100,000 victims in 196 countries before being taken out of Google Play. Detected as  ANDROIDOS_MOBSTSPY  & dubbed  MobSTSPY,  the malware initially grabbed attention when it was masqueraded as a called  Flappy Birr Dog . While it is common to find unarmed goods in third party app stores,  MobSTSPY  managed to infiltrate the authentic & reliable App Store i.e. Google Play with at least six different apps in 2018. These apps include: FlashLight, HZPermis Pro Arabe, Win7imulator, Win7Launcher, and Flappy Bird Flappy Birr Dog These apps pose as legitimate & claim to be torches, games & tools for productivity. Some of these have seen 10,000 download from users around the world. Though malware invasion in devices is common, but what makes this case more interesting is the widespread distribution of its applications. Among the countries where the malware is sca...

Flawed API of US Postal Services Exposed 60 Million Users Data

Image
A ruinous security flaw in Application program Interface of US Postal Services  exposed personal data  of over  60 million users over the course of 2017 & 2018. This vulnerability on USPC’s website allowed anyone with an account at usps.com to view personal information & account details of other users. In some cases, this flaw even allowed users to modify the details in the affected accounts. The leaked information included  user name ,  user ID ,  e-mail address ,  account number ,  street addresses  &  contact numbers  of the users. An anonymous researcher discovered this problem a year ago & informed US Postal Services, however, USPC failed to pay heed to researcher’s warning at that time. USPS patched this issue last week when a cyber security investigator, Krebs flagged it. Insight into the API Defect The root-cause of the vulnerability is hitched to an authentication weakness in the site’s Applicati...

Adware Doctor: A Security App for Apple users with malicious intentions

Image
Ever wondered that the Guardian of your system software that is meant to protect your system against malware attacks can step into the breach? A recent security research demonstrated a popular anti-malware app called Adware Doctor that was supposed to protect Apple MAC users against privacy and security threat, ironically, siphoned off browsing history and information about system processes and applications. It turns out that Apple; the most convincing consumer electronics and computer software brand in terms of security is under interrogation for not acting quickly in removing the dubious app. What is Adware Doctor? Adware Doctor was one of the top paid apps (sold for $14.99) in the Mac app Store with 4.8 star rating and over 7,000 reviews. The app claimed to: 1. Remove suspicious and unwanted extensions 2. Clear Browser cookies and caches to restore your browser 3. Remove Adware, malware and other nasty system infections from Apple PCs. 4. Kill annoying pop-ups and 5. R...

Google Plucks Chrome Bug that Exploits Audio or Video HTML Tags

Image
HTML5 is the latest version of HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) that offers new attributes, elements and behaviors allowing the design of websites and applications with a  powerful and diverse mechanism. HTML5 new API allows us to play the video\audio within the browser without installing cumbersome browser plug-in (like flash). Google Chrome, a widely used browser platform recently plucked a bug that had enabled the abuse of video and audio HTML tags by cyber miscreants to embezzle important user information. Google tagged this vulnerability as CVE-2018-6177 and t has successfully fixed with the release of Chrome version 68.0.3440.75. Users who continue to use the older versions may fall in the trap of threat actors who may exploit this bug to lure users to the malicious websites. Read Full Article Click Here

Hackers target Indian Bank : Steal $13.5 Million across 3 days

Image
Banks remain a favorite target of cyber criminal activities. Use of internet, virtualization and digitization has eased our business and dealing with money. On the other hand it has also escalated cyber crime activities. In order to ameliorate the performance of financial transactions such as cash withdrawals, deposits, fetching account information, transfer funds etc the idea of cash machine was proposed in 1967. Since then these cash machines known as ATMs (Automated teller Machines) are widely used and besides offering convenience to the customers, they have also proven beneficial in reducing the workload of bank’s staff. With the growing cyber crime activities, undertaking precautions and regularly updating cyber preparedness and defence mechanism is important. However a large number of institutions stir up only post an incident that causes financial misappropriation or loss of reputation. Recently Cosmos Bank, India’s second largest cooperative bank suffered a breach on i...

Site Isolation Feature enabled by Google for 99% of Chrome Desktop Users

Image
Earlier when most web browsers were designed, the web pages were simple and hence were rendered in the same process, to keep resource usage low. However, with the growing technology, there has been a significant shift in the active web page content. Ranging from pages designed using JavaScript to make the web pages interactive and create richer user interfaces with reduced server load to Flash, a technology used by Adobe to show animation on web pages, web-pages nowadays are full of “web apps”. Browsers that keep all the running apps in one process may face real challenges related to security, responsiveness and robustness. 1. If one web app crashes, it will take the entire web browser with it, including all the web apps that are open. 2. Web apps have to compete for CPU time, on a single thread rendering the browser unresponsive at times. 3. Some webpage may have malicious code embedded that may compromise the entire system. Hence the browser must keep different apps isolated ...

Adware, Miners & unwanted extensions being pushed by Fake Adult sites!

Image
Fake Adult sites are being used as an outlet for malware such as adware, in-browser cryptocurrency miners, PuPs, unwanted browser extensions and software utility tools such as media players, security software, games etc. Unsuspecting users are often gullible to scams and fall into the traps laid out by cyber miscreants. Most users who visit these sites know that they are bound to come across excessive ads and pop-ups. Many times getting redirected on an adult site is considered normal and closing the new redirect and moving on is what users do mostly. Thus, if they face a notification for updating their media player, on a web page where they are trying to look at a video, then most users install the update. The so called ‘media player’ update is just another door for the cyber miscreants to walk into your system and install malicious software without your approval. Misguiding the user to install the adware, in-browser miner, extensions, etc. is what most cyber miscreants do. ...

ZeroFont Technique – An easy way to bypass office 365

Image
Phishing activities are becoming a flop with growing Artificial Intelligence powered phishing detection technologies. Email services and web security scanners use these anti phishing mechanisms to detect malicious emails. One such attempt is implemented by Microsoft in their Office 365 version to safeguard users from harmful emails and links. In Microsoft Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection (ATP), a cloud based email filtering service is used to protect users and their organizations against malware and viruses. Like Microsoft Office 365, many emails and web security services are based on natural language processing and to identify malicious or phishing emails faster. However cyber criminals can’t take a back seat! Recent news reveals that email scammers and cyber crooks have come up with a new technique that would allow their phishing emails to bypass the protection implemented by Microsoft in office 365. This new technique evolved by maleficent developers involves manipulating ...