Slashdot Mirror

An anonymous reader writes: In another installment of "Linux has malware too," security researchers have discovered a new trojan that targets Linux servers running Redis, where the trojan installs a cryptocurrency miner. The odd fact about this trojan is that it includes a wormable feature that allows it to spread on its own. The trojan, named Linux.Lady, will look for Redis servers that don't have an admin account password, access the database, and then download itself on the new target. The trojan mines for the Monero crypto-currency, the same one used by another worm called PhotoMiner, which targets vulnerable FTP servers. According to a recent Risk Based Security report from last month, there are over 30,000 Redis servers available online without a password, of which 6,000 have already been compromised by various threat actors.

An anonymous reader writes from a report via Softpedia: Microsoft fixed today a serious security flaw in the Windows PDF Library, a standard library used by Windows 10 to open and render PDF files, embedded by default in Edge. Exploiting this flaw allows attackers to execute code on the user's machine and take over the device, just by tricking a user into accessing a PDF hosted online via Edge. Since Edge is not only the default browser in Windows 10, but also the default PDF reader, this flaw puts countless of users that have not changed those settings at risk. Even worse, Microsoft has the annoying habit of resetting your personal app preferences once in a blue moon, always reverting Edge as the default browser and the default app to open PDF files.

A security researcher demonstrated a way to bypass the full disk encryption in Windows BitLocker last November -- but that attack required physical access. Inserting the PC into a network with a counterfeit domain controller with incorrect time settings "allowed the attacker to poison the credentials cache and set a new password on the targeted device." An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: Microsoft fixed this vulnerability, and then fixed it again when two researchers pointed out in February 2016 that the fix was incomplete. At this year's Black Hat security conference, two Microsoft researchers have discovered a way to carry out the Evil Maid attack from a remote location, even over the Internet.

The two researchers say that an attacker can compromise a PC, configure it to work as a rogue domain controller, and then use Remote Desktop Protocol to access computers (that have open RDP connections) on the same network and carry out the attack from a distance. This particular attack, nicknamed a Remote Evil Butler, can be extremely attractive and valuable for cyber-espionage groups.
The article points out that Microsoft's February fix prevents this exploit, adding "The reason the two Microsoft researchers disclosed this variation of the original attack is to make companies understand the need to keep their systems up to date at all times."

monkeyzoo writes: Softpedia reports that Torrentz.eu, the internet's biggest BitTorrent meta-search engine, has mysteriously and suddenly shut down. Visitors of the website see a simple message that reads, "Torrentz was a free, fast and powerful meta-search engine combining results from dozens of search engines." Trying to run a search, or clicking any link on the site changes that message to "Torrentz will always love you. Farewell." The main .EU domain, as well as all backup domains (.ME, .CH, and .IN), have the same message. The reason for the disappearance is mysterious, but there is speculation that Torrentz.eu admins decided to pull the plug on their own and avoid any future legal problems in the wake of increasing legal pressure on The Pirate Bay and the arrests related to KickassTorrents. It also cannot be ruled out that the site was hacked.

An anonymous reader writes from a report via Softpedia: "The hacking crew [PoodleCorp] that promised to launch DDoS attacks on the Pokemon GO servers on August 1 suffered a major setback, after someone hacked their site, dumped the database, and shared it with data breach index service LeakedSource," reports Softpedia. "PoodleCorp responded to LeakedSource's announcement with what they knew best, a DDoS attack." When that happened, LeakedSource started looking at the leaked data and discovered full names for three of PoodleCorp's members, saying they intend to share it with authorities. Soon after, PoodleCorp stopped the DDoS against LeakedSource and went to annoy Blizzard gamers. "It's a terrible idea to attack a business that knows something about virtually everybody," a LeakedSource spokesperson said.

prisoninmate writes from a report via Softpedia: LibreOffice 5.2 is finally here, after it has been in development for the past four months, during which the development team behind one of the best free office suites have managed to implement dozens of new features and improvements to most of the application's components. Key features include more UI refinements to make it flexible for anyone, standards-based document classification, forecasting functions in Calc, the spreadsheet editor, as well as lots of Writer and Impress enhancements. A series of videos are provided to see what landed in the LibreOffice 5.2 office suite, which is now available for download for GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows operating systems.

At least some applications on Fosshub, a free project hosting service appear to have been compromised, according to several reports. (Update: Fosshub has acknowledged the hack.) The software portal, furthermore, is serving malware payloads, reports add. Catalin Cimpanu of Softpedia says that a hacking group which goes by the name of PeggleCrew is responsible for the hack. "In short, a network service with no authentication was exposed to the internet," the hacker told Softpedia in an email. "We were able to grab data from this network service to obtain source code and passwords that led us further into the infrastructure of FOSSHub and eventually gain control of their production machines, backup and mirror locations, and FTP credentials for the caching service they use, as well as the Google Apps-hosted email." The hacker group told the publication that they have compromised the entire website, "including the administrator's email. He also revealed he didn't dump the site's database but claimed that "passwords weren't salted." A user on Reddit, who has since received lots of upvotes, adds: Some popular apps that have links to FossHub that may be infected include: Audacity, WinDirStat, qBittorrent, MKVToolNix, Spybot Search&Destroy, Calibre, SMPlayer, HWiNFO, MyPhoneExplorer, and IrfanView.Another application which has reportedly been compromised is Classic Shell. It is ostensibly overwriting the MBR on users' computers. Many users are upset with the timing of hack, noting that plenty of people were looking for Classic Shell amid the release of Windows 10 Anniversary Update. Update: 08/03 17:30 GMT by M :In a blog post, Audacity said that Fosshub was serving a hacked copy of its audio editing software for three hours. It adds that "no Audacity Team infrastructure was compromised." Fosshub team writes: Last night we had a security incident caused by a group of hackers that allowed them to log-in to FossHub developer *through* an user that was compromised. Shortly after, we noticed two users that were compromised. They simply logged-in using their passwords and this allowed them to escalate. [...] Several hours later, we noticed the attackers were able to gain access through an FTP account and we decided to shut down the main server immediately to prevent any further infection/damage. FossHub.com is down on purpose until we are able to identify the way hackers were able to escalate. Fosshub insists that the hacked copy of Classic Shell was only downloaded 300 times. In the meantime, if you know someone who may have downloaded the compromised copy of Classic Shell, here's what they need to do next.

Mozilla on Tuesday released Firefox v48, touted as one of the most important updates the browser has ever received. With the new version, Firefox starts migrating users to using mullti-process threads (e10s, Electrolysis), and it is also the first version to ship with Rust component. In addition, Firefox is now also making add-on signing mandatory. From a Softpedia article: Announced last year, Electrolysis, e10s, or multi-process support is Firefox's ability to process core browser operations separately from the content viewed on a Web page. Multi-process support allows a page to crash without bringing the entire browser down with it and improves the browser's overall performance. e10s rollout will take place in two phases, first in Firefox 48, and it will finish in Firefox 49, set for release on September 13, 2016. Mandatory add-on signing refers to Firefox preventing users from installing any add-ons that have not been approved by Mozilla's testers. This is something similar to what Chrome employs, but Firefox users have been spoiled all these years, always having the capability of installing any add-on they've desired. Rust is a programming language that's a revamped and improved version of C++ but that protects developers from accidentally including dangerous memory bugs in their code. It achieves this by how the language was constructed and by how developers write the code.

An anonymous reader writes from a report via Softpedia: A listing was published today on TheRealDeal Dark Web marketplace claiming to be offering data on over 200 million Yahoo users, sold by the same hacker that was behind the LinkedIn, Tumblr, MySpace, and VK data dumps. In statements to Softpedia, Yahoo said it was investigating the breach, but based on the seller's reputation, it is very likely the data is authentic. The data is up for sale for 3 Bitcoin (approximately ~$1,800), and based on the sample the hacker provided, the data dump includes details such as usernames, MD5-hashed passwords, and dates of birth for all users. For some records, there is also a backup email address, country of origin, and ZIP code for U.S. users. The hacker, called Peace, has also told Softpedia that he previously made $50,000 from the LinkedIn breach alone, and over $65,000 in total from all breaches.

dinscott and an anonymous reader are reporting of a new type of attack that bypasses SQRLs or Secure, Quick, Reliable Logins: "[As detailed by Seekurity Labs researcher Mohamed A. Baset], QRLJacking (i.e. Quick Response Code Login Jacking) is a method for tricking users into effectively logging into an online account on behalf of the attacker by making them scan the wrong QR code," reports Help Net Security. An anonymous Slashdot reader adds from a report via Softpedia: "In a Facebook post, Baset says he tested his attack on sites such as WhatsApp, WeChat, Line, Weibo, QQ Instant Messaging, QQ Mail, Alibaba, and more," reports Softpedia. The QRLJacking attack is nothing more than a social engineering attack that works by requesting a QR code for the service the victim is trying to log in to and modifying the QR code to send the confirmation message to the attacker's computer. The crook can modify these login details, add the data belonging to his PC, relay the data from his phone to the default login server, and access the victim's account from his PC. This attack needs both the attacker and the victim to be online at the same time, and can be defeated by any user that pays attention to the URL [of the page they're logging into with an account]. Judging that it's 2016 and people are still falling victim to phishing attacks, there's a high chance the attack can work. Baset demonstrated the attack against a WhatsApp user in a video posted to YouTube.

Firefox's voice and videoconferencing add-on was described as "the first global communications system built directly into a browser" -- but things change. An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: An entry on Mozilla's issue tracker opened on July 17 reveals ongoing efforts from Mozilla engineers to remove the Hello system add-on from default Firefox installations starting with version 49, set for public release on September 13, 2016. Mozilla added Hello to Firefox in version 34, released on December 1, 2014, and from the beginning, it was part of the browser's core code, but was moved in December 2015 into a separate add-on, one that came pre-installed with Firefox, making Hello its first ever system add-on.

Mozilla plans to remove Hello from the codebases of Firefox Beta 49, Firefox Developer Edition 50, and Firefox Nightly 51. Based on the currently available information, the deadline for the Hello code removal operations is for this Monday, August 1, after which the first Firefox builds with no Hello integration will be available for testing, and will ship out in the fall with the stable release.
The article suggests this may have been a space-saving measure, "since Mozilla is focused on rebuilding Firefox's code from scratch to keep up with speedier competitors like Chrome, Opera, and Vivaldi."

An anonymous reader writes from a report via Softpedia: Since the summer of 2015, users that surfed 113 major, legitimate websites were subjected to one of the most advanced malvertising campaigns ever discovered, with signs that this might have actually been happening since 2013. Infecting a whopping 22 advertising platforms, the criminal gang behind this campaign used complicated traffic filtering systems to select users ripe for infection, usually with banking trojans. The campaign constantly pulled between 1 and 5 million users per day, infecting thousands, and netting the crooks millions each month. The malicious ads, according to this list, were shown on sites like The New York Times, Le Figaro, The Verge, PCMag, IBTimes, Ars Technica, Daily Mail, Telegraaf, La Gazetta dello Sport, CBS Sports, Top Gear, Urban Dictionary, Playboy, Answers.com, Sky.com, and more.

An anonymous reader writes from a report via Softpedia: South Korea says that North Korea is behind a data breach that occurred last May, where hackers stole details about 10 million user accounts from Interpark.com, one of the country's biggest shopping portals. The hackers later tried to extort Interpark management by requesting for 3 billion won ($2.66 million / 2.39 million euros), otherwise they were going to release the data on the internet. [The hackers wanted the money transferred to their accounts as Bitcoin.] Authorities say they tracked the source of the hack to an IP in North Korea, previously used in other attacks on South Korean infrastructure. "Besides the evidence related to the IP addresses and the techniques used in the attacks, investigators also said that the emails Interpark management received, written in the Korean language, contained words and vocabulary expressions that are only used in the North," reports Softpedia.

An anonymous reader writes from a report via Softpedia: "The European Commission is proposing the creation of a database that will hold information on users of virtual currencies," reports Softpedia. "The database will record data on the user's real world identity, along with all associated wallet addresses." The database will be made available to financial investigation agencies in order to track down users behind suspicious operations. The creation of this database is part of a regulatory push that the EU got rolling after the Paris November 2015 terror attacks, and which it officially put forward in February 2016, and later approved at the start of July 2016. Legally, this is an attempt to reform the Anti-Money Laundering Directive (AMLD). The current draft is available here. The current AMLD draft reads: "The report shall be accompanied, if necessary, by appropriate proposals, including, where appropriate, with respect to virtual currencies, empowerments to set-up and maintain a central database registering users' identities and wallet addresses accessible to FIUs, as well as self-declaration forms for the use of virtual currency users."

An anonymous reader writes from a report via Softpedia: "The European Commission is proposing the creation of a database that will hold information on users of virtual currencies," reports Softpedia. "The database will record data on the user's real world identity, along with all associated wallet addresses." The database will be made available to financial investigation agencies in order to track down users behind suspicious operations. The creation of this database is part of a regulatory push that the EU got rolling after the Paris November 2015 terror attacks, and which it officially put forward in February 2016, and later approved at the start of July 2016. Legally, this is an attempt to reform the Anti-Money Laundering Directive (AMLD). The current draft is available here. The current AMLD draft reads: "The report shall be accompanied, if necessary, by appropriate proposals, including, where appropriate, with respect to virtual currencies, empowerments to set-up and maintain a central database registering users' identities and wallet addresses accessible to FIUs, as well as self-declaration forms for the use of virtual currency users."

An anonymous reader writes: "The U.S. National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) has released the latest draft version of the Digital Authentication Guideline that contains language hinting at a future ban of SMS-based Two-Factor Authentication (2FA)," reports Softpedia. The NIST DAG draft argues that SMS-based two-factor authentication is an insecure process because the phone may not always be in possession of the phone number, and because in the case of VoIP connections, SMS messages may be intercepted and not delivered to the phone. The guideline recommends the usage of tokens and software cryptographic authenticators instead. Even biometrics authentication is considered safe, under one condition: "Biometrics SHALL be used with another authentication factor (something you know or something you have)," the guideline's draft reads. The NIST DAG draft reads in part: "If the out of band verification is to be made using a SMS message on a public mobile telephone network, the verifier SHALL verify that the pre-registered telephone number being used is actually associated with a mobile network and not with a VoIP (or other software-based) service. It then sends the SMS message to the pre-registered telephone number. Changing the pre-registered telephone number SHALL NOT be possible without two-factor authentication at the time of the change. OOB using SMS is deprecated, and will no longer be allowed in future releases of this guidance."

An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: The Linux 4.7 kernel made its official debut today with Linus Torvalds announcing, "after a slight delay due to my travels, I'm back, and 4.7 is out. Despite it being two weeks since rc7, the final patch wasn't all that big, and much of it is trivial one- and few-liners." Linux 4.7 ships with open-source AMD Polaris (RX 480) support, Intel Kabylake graphics improvements, new ARM platform/board support, Xbox One Elite Controller support, and a variety of other new features.
Slashdot reader prisoninmate quotes a report from Softpedia: The biggest new features of Linux kernel 4.7 are support for the recently announced Radeon RX 480 GPUs (Graphic Processing Units) from AMD, which, of course, has been implemented directly into the AMDGPU video driver, a brand-new security module, called LoadPin, that makes sure the modules loaded by the kernel all originate from the same file system, and support for generating virtual USB Device Controllers in USB/IP. Furthermore, Linux kernel 4.7 is the first one to ensure the production-ready status of the sync_file fencing mechanism used in the Android mobile operating system, allow Berkeley Packet Filter (BPF) programs to attach to tracepoints, as well as to introduce the long-anticipated "schedutil" frequency governor to the cpufreq dynamic frequency scaling subsystem, which promises to be faster and more accurate than existing ones.
Linus's announcement includes the shortlog, calling this release "fairly calm," though "There's a couple of network drivers that got a bit more loving."

An anonymous reader writes: The European Commission announced on Wednesday that its IT engineers would provide a free security audit for the Apache HTTP Server and KeePass projects. The two projects were selected following a public survey that included several open-source projects deemed important for both the EU agencies and the wide public.

The actual security audit will be carried out by employees of the IT departments at the European Commission and the European Parliament. This is only a test pilot program that's funded until the end of the year, but the EU said it would be looking for funding to continue it past its expiration date in December 2016.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Softpedia: Mozilla announced today plans to ship its first ever Rust code with the production releases of Firefox. The first ever Rust components will arrive in Firefox 48, scheduled for release on August 2, 2016. After teasing Rust features last year, the Mozilla Foundation announced today that Firefox 48 would contain a new media stack component that's entirely coded in Rust. The first Firefox component to feature Rust code was not chosen at random because media components often execute malicious code when parsing multimedia files. "This makes a memory-safe programming language like Rust a compelling addition to Mozilla's tool-chest for protecting against potentially malicious media content on the Web," says Dave Herman, Director of Strategy at Mozilla Research. During tests of this Rust-based media component in Firefox's unstable builds, Mozilla says that after one billion uses they have yet to see a crash or issue in the Rust media component. Last month, Mozilla released the first versions of Servo, a minimal browser created in Rust code alone. At around the same time, Microsoft open-sourced Checked C, an extension to the C programming language that brings new features to address a series of security-related issues.

An anonymous reader writes from a report via Softpedia: "Microsoft patched today a critical security vulnerability in the Print Spooler service that allows attackers to take over devices," reports Softpedia. "The vulnerability affects all Windows versions ever released. [Security firm Vectra discovered the vulnerability (CVE-2016-3238), which Microsoft fixed in MS16-087.] At its core, the issue resides in how Windows handles printer driver installations and how end users connect to printers. By default, in corporate networks, network admins allow printers to deliver the necessary drivers to workstations connected to the network. These drivers are silently installed without any user interaction and run under the SYSTEM user, with all the available privileges." An attacker can hack printers and replace these files with his own. The vulnerability is exploitable from both the local network, but also from the internet, thanks to protocols like Internet Printing Protocol or the webPointNPrint. The exploit can be delivered via ads or JavaScript code inside a compromised website. The vulnerability is actually an OS design issue and affects all Windows versions ever released. Microsoft also announced today plans to make its recently renamed Windows 10 Enterprise product available as a subscription for $7 per user per month, or $84 per year.

An anonymous reader writes: "A botnet of over 25,000 bots is at the heart of recent DDoS attacks that are ferociously attacking businesses across the world with massive Layer 7 DDoS attacks that are overwhelming Web servers, occupying their resources and eventually crashing websites," reports Softpedia. This botnet's particularity is the fact that attacks never fluctuated and the attackers managed to keep a steady rhythm. This is not a classic botnet of infected computers that go on and off, but of compromised CCTV systems that are always on and available for attacks. The brands of CCTV DVRs involved in these attacks are the same highlighted in a report by a security researcher this winter, who discovered a backdoor in the firmware of 70 different CCTV DVR vendors. These companies had bought unbranded DVRs from Chinese firm TVT. When informed of the firmware issues, TVT ignored the researcher and the issues were never fixed, leading to crooks creating this huge botnet.

An anonymous reader shares this article from Softpedia: A religiously-motivated Moroccan hacker has defaced 111 different web sites promoting escort services since last summer as part of an ongoing protest against the industry. "In January, the hacker defaced 79 escort websites," writes Softpedia. "His actions didn't go unnoticed, and on some online forums where escorts and webmasters of these websites met, his name was brought up in discussions and used to drive each other in implementing better Web security. While some webmasters did their job, some didn't. During the past days, the hacker has been busy defacing a new set of escort websites... Most of these websites bare ElSurveillance's defacement message even today... Most of the websites are from the UK."
His newest round of attacks replace the sites with a pro-Palestine message and a quote from the quran, though in January Softpedia reported the attacker was also stealing data from some of the sites about their users' accounts.

An anonymous reader shares this article from Softpedia: A religiously-motivated Moroccan hacker has defaced 111 different web sites promoting escort services since last summer as part of an ongoing protest against the industry. "In January, the hacker defaced 79 escort websites," writes Softpedia. "His actions didn't go unnoticed, and on some online forums where escorts and webmasters of these websites met, his name was brought up in discussions and used to drive each other in implementing better Web security. While some webmasters did their job, some didn't. During the past days, the hacker has been busy defacing a new set of escort websites... Most of these websites bare ElSurveillance's defacement message even today... Most of the websites are from the UK."
His newest round of attacks replace the sites with a pro-Palestine message and a quote from the quran, though in January Softpedia reported the attacker was also stealing data from some of the sites about their users' accounts.

An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: Ecma International, the organization in charge of managing the ECMAScript standard, has published the most recent version of the JavaScript language. ECMAScript 2016 (ES7 or JavaScript 7th Edition in the old naming scheme) comes with very few new features. The most important is that JavaScript developers will finally get a "raise to the power" operator, which was mysteriously left out of the standard for 20 years. The operator is **...
It will also become much easier to search for data in a JavaScript array with Array.prototype.includes(), but support for async functions (initially announced for ES2016), has been deferred until next year's release. "From now on, expect smaller changelogs from the ECMAScript team," reports Softpedia, "since this was the plan set out last year. Fewer breaking changes means more time to migrate code, instead of having to rewrite entire applications, as developers did when the mammoth ES6 release came out last year."

Softpedia reports on the newest version of Peppermint OS, "a lightweight, stable, elegant, and fast computer operating system based on GNU/Linux and Open Source technologies." An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes their report: It's a bit earlier than expected, but the Peppermint OS 7 GNU/Linux distribution has been officially unveiled...based on the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating system [with] a lot of packages from the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS distro, which means that it will also be a long-term support release.... "Along with the shift to the 16.04 (Xenial) code base, Peppermint 7 continues our policy of choosing the best components from other desktop environments, wherever that may be, and integrating them into a cohesive whole with our own software," reads today's announcement.
"Team Peppermint" says they're switching to Firefox as their default browser for site-specific browser functionality (similar to Chrome's -app mode) after Google dropped their 32-bit version of Chrome and moved to PPAPI plugins "which effectively ends Flash support in 32-bit Chromium"... But you can also still choose Chrome or Chromium for site-specific browsing (and the OS comes in 32-bit and 64-bit editions).

An anonymous reader writes: "NASCAR team Circle Sport-Leavine Family Racing (CSLFR) revealed today it faced a ransomware infection this past April when it almost lost access to crucial files worth nearly $2 million, containing car parts lists and custom high-profile simulations that would have taken 1,500 man-hours to replicate," reports Softpedia. "The infection took place on the computer belonging to CSLFR's crew chief. Winston's staff detected the infection when encrypted files from Winston's computer began syncing to their joint Dropbox account." It was later discovered that he was infected with the TeslaCrypt ransomware. Because the team had no backups of the crucial data, they eventually paid the ransom (around $500). This happened before TeslaCrypt's authors decided to shut down their operations and release free decryption keys.

Reader Orome1 writes: For the last few years, researchers from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev have been testing up new ways to exfiltrate data from air-gapped computers: via mobile phones, using radio frequencies ("AirHopper"); using heat ("BitWhisper"), using rogue software ("GSMem") that modulates and transmits electromagnetic signals at cellular frequencies. The latest version of the data-exfiltration attack against air-gapped computers involves the machine's fans. Dubbed "Fansmitter," the attack can come handy when the computer does not have speakers, and so attackers can't use acoustic channels to get the info.An anonymous reader adds:Malicious applications use the noise emanated by a computer fan's speed to relay information to a nearby recording device and steal data from air-gapped, isolated systems. The attack relies on selecting a fan speed to represent binary "1" and another for binary "0". A specially crafted malware can alter the CPU, GPU or chassis fan speed between these two frequencies and provide a method to relay data from infected systems. Attackers can then place microphones or smartphones to record the sound coming from the infected machine and steal the data. The attack works for distances of one to four meters, and operates in the 100-600 Hz frequency that can be picked up by the human year. Choosing smaller fan speeds or fan speeds that are closer together can make the attack harder to pick up by a human, but also makes it susceptible to background noise.

An anonymous reader writes: [Softpedia reports:] "A study from GeoEdge (PDF), an ad scanning vendor, reveals that Flash has been wrongly accused as the root cause of today's malvertising campaigns, but in reality, switching to HTML5 ads won't safeguard users from attacks because the vulnerabilities are in the ad platforms and advertising standards themselves. The company argues that for video ads, the primary root of malvertising is the VAST and VPAID advertising standards. VAST and VPAID are the rules of the game when it comes to online video advertising, defining the road an ad needs to take from the ad's creator to the user's browser. Even if the ad is Flash or HTML5, there are critical points in this ad delivery path where ad creators can alter the ad via JavaScript injections. These same critical points are also there so advertisers or ad networks can feed JavaScript code that fingerprints and tracks users." The real culprit is the ability to send JavaScript code at runtime, and not if the ad is a Flash object, an image or a block of HTML(5) code.

An anonymous reader writes: Somebody created a botnet of three million Twitter accounts in one single day, and Twitter staff didn't even flinch -- even if the huge 35.4 registrations/second should have caught the eye of any IT staffer. Another weird particularity is that the botnet was also synchronized to use Twitter usernames similar to Twitter IDs. Couple this with a gap of 168 million IDs before and after the botnet's creation, it appears that someone specifically reserved those IDs. The IDs were reserved in October 2013, but the botnet was registered in April 2014 (except 2 accounts registered in March 2014). It's like Twitter's registration process skipped 168 million IDs, and someone came back a few months later and used them. [Softpedia reports:] "The botnet can be found at @sfa_200xxxxxxx, where xxxxxxx is a number that increments from 0 000 000 to 2 999 999. All accounts have a similar structure. They have "name" instead of the Twitter profile handle, display the same registration date, and feature the text "some kinda description" in the profile bio field. Additionally, there are also two smaller botnets available as well. One can be found between @cas_2050000000 and @cas_2050099999. Sadbottrue says it was registered between March 3 and March 5, 2015. The second is between @wt_2050100000 and @wt_2050199999, and was registered between October 23 and November 22, 2014." Both have 100,000 accounts each. Theoretically, these types of botnets can be used for malware C and C servers, Twitter spam, or to sell fake Twitter followers. At 3 million bots, the botnet accounts for 1% of Twitter's monthly active users.

Cisco says in just one week in February they detected 1,127,818 different IP addresses being used to launch 744,361,093 login attempts on 220,758,340 different email addresses -- and that 93% of those attacks were directed at two financial institutions in a massive Account Takeover (ATO) campaign. An anonymous reader writes: Crooks used 993,547 distinct IPs to check login credentials for 427,444,261 accounts. For most of these attacks, the crooks used proxy servers, but also two botnets, one of compromised Arris cable modems, and one of ZyXel routers/modems. Most of these credentials have been acquired from public breaches or underground hacking forums. This happened before the recent huge data breaches such as MySpace, LinkedIn, Tumblr, and VK.com.
It's apparently similar to the stolen-credentials-from-other-sites attack that was launched against GitHub earlier this week.

Cisco says in just one week in February they detected 1,127,818 different IP addresses being used to launch 744,361,093 login attempts on 220,758,340 different email addresses -- and that 93% of those attacks were directed at two financial institutions in a massive Account Takeover (ATO) campaign. An anonymous reader writes: Crooks used 993,547 distinct IPs to check login credentials for 427,444,261 accounts. For most of these attacks, the crooks used proxy servers, but also two botnets, one of compromised Arris cable modems, and one of ZyXel routers/modems. Most of these credentials have been acquired from public breaches or underground hacking forums. This happened before the recent huge data breaches such as MySpace, LinkedIn, Tumblr, and VK.com.
It's apparently similar to the stolen-credentials-from-other-sites attack that was launched against GitHub earlier this week.

Long-time Slashdot reader JImbob0i0 shares a scathing article by Red Hat's Fedora QA "community monkey"/senior QA engineer on Canonical's announcement about their application delivery mechanism "snap"... ...and how it's going to unite all distributions and kill apt and rpm! This is, to put it diplomatically, a heaping pile of steaming bullshit... The press release and the stories together give you the strong impression that this thing called Snappy is going to be the cross-distribution future of application delivery, and it's all ready for use today and lots of major distributions are buying into it... The stories have headlines like "Adios apt and yum? Ubuntu's snap apps are coming to distros everywhere" and "Snap Packages Become Universal Binary Format for All GNU/Linux Distributions"...

Now, does Snappy actually have the cross-distribution buy-in that the press release claims (but never outright states) that it has? No... The sum total of communication between Canonical and Fedora before the release of this press release was that they mailed us asking about the process of packaging snappy for Fedora, and we told them about the main packaging process and COPR. They certainly did not in any way inform Fedora that they were going to send out a press release strongly implying that Fedora, along with every other distro in the world, was now a happy traveler on the Snappy bandwagon... They just decided to send out a wildly misleading press release and actively encourage the specialist press to report that Snappy was all set to take over the world and everyone was super happy with that.

An anonymous reader writes from a report via Softpedia: Microsoft has open-sourced Checked C, an extension to the C programming language that brings new features to address a series of security-related issues. As its name hints, Checked C will add checking to C, and more specifically pointer bounds checking. The company hopes to curb the high-number of security bugs such as buffer overruns, out-of-bounds memory accesses, and incorrect type casts, all which would be easier to catch in Checked C. Despite tangible benefits to security, the problem of porting code to Checked C still exists, just like it did when C# or Rust came out, both C alternatives.

An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft has just patched a vulnerability that affects all Windows versions ever released. Called BadTunnel, the security flaw allows attackers to pass as a WAPD or ISATAP server and intercept all network traffic. Exploitation is trivial and firewalls are natively designed to open the port through which the attack is carried out. BadTunnel can be triggered whenever the user clicks URI or UNC links/paths in Office files, IE, Edge, or other applications that support the URI/VNC scheme (and most do). Additionally, an attacker can carry out his attack from the other side of the world, and does not need to have a foothold on the victim's network. While recent Windows OS versions received patches, exploitation points remain open for non-supported Windows operating systems such as XP, Windows Server 2003, and others. For these operating systems, and for those that can't be updated just yet, system administrators should disable NetBIOS.

An anonymous reader writes from a report via Softpedia: "A criminal group going under the name of The CC Buddies is selling a hi-tech device on the Dark Web that's capable of copying details from contactless debit cards if held as close as eight centimeters away from a victim's card," reports Softpedia. The device, named Contactless Infusion X5, is extremely dangerous because it can copy up to 15 bank cards per second, something that may come in handy if a crook is going through a crowd at a concert or through a crowded subway cart. The device can collect data such as the card's number and expiration date. If the debit card's RFID chip stores information such as the card holder's name, home address, and a mini statement, X5 can steal that data as well. The X5 is sold on the Dark Web for only 1.2 Bitcoin (~$825), and its creators say that each buyer will receive the X5 device, a USB cable for charging and data transfers, and 20 blank plastic cards.

An anonymous reader quotes an article from Softpedia: Google has recently patched a high severity security bug in the Chrome browser that allowed crooks to send malicious code to your browser and take over your entire system... Cisco's Aleksandar Nikolic was the researcher that discovered and reported the issue to Google, who even awarded him $3,000 for his efforts.
Chrome's built-in PDF reader PDFium used an OpenJPEG library to parse JPEG2000 files, and in Chrome it was lacking a crucial heap overflow check, according to a post on the Talos security blog. "By simply viewing a PDF document that includes an embedded jpeg2000 image, the attacker can achieve arbitrary code execution on the victim's system."

An anonymous reader shares this story from earlier in the week: "ISIS hacking crews aren't the most talented hackers you'll find," reports Softpedia, noting that the terrorist group had finally succeeded in leaking the addresses and phone numbers of of over 800 employees of Arkansas high school and college libraries. "The Arkansas State Police is not working on the case," reports Newsweek, "and is leaving the follow-up to the Arkansas Library Association." In addition, "It appears that the FBI does not believe the threat from ISIS's cyber-hacks and lone-wolf directives is serious enough to occupy its resources on each individual." The ISIS hacking crew's previous targets have included a church's website in Michigan, a Japanese dance instructor, and an SEO optimization site which they'd apparently mistaken for Google.
One small-town library director told Newsweek that he personally found their library hack "vaguely amusing".

An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: Softpedia is reporting that a member of the Anonymous collective "has been hijacking accounts for the most active ISIS supporters, the ones involved in online recruitment, and has been plastering their profiles with naked women and peaceful messages." Anonymous is also using the hijacked accounts to monitor "protected" tweets from ISIS, and they're reporting hundreds of thousands of other ISIS profiles to Twitter. But Anonymous is also defacing 161 of the hijacked accounts, saying they're "Adding our own images and basically showing them 'We are in control'... we are creating confusion and distrust..." There are a few things that the Islamic State fear. One is women and the second is Porn."

An anonymous reader writes: Thursday's release of jQuery 3.0 is "the first version that features absolutely no workarounds for old Internet Explorer browsers," reports Softpedia. "If customers are still asking you to work with IE6, IE7, and IE8, then you should stick with jQuery 1.0 for the foreseeable future." The jQuery blog explains that over 18 months of development, "We set out to create a slimmer, faster version of jQuery (with backwards compatibility in mind)... It is a continuation of the 2.x branch, but with a few breaking changes that we felt were long overdue." Besides jQuery's free, open source JavaScript library, they also released a "slim" version that excludes ajax and effects modules (as well as deprecated code), and a new version of the jQuery Migrate plugin.

An anonymous reader writes: Macro malware is a term to describe malware that relies on automatically executed macro scripts inside Office documents. This type of malware was very popular in the '90s, but when Microsoft launched Office 97, it added a popup before opening Office files that warned users about the dangers of enabling macros. Microsoft's decision had a huge impact on macro malware, and by the 2000s, this type of malware went almost extinct. Lo and behold, some smart Microsoft UI designers start thinking that users might get popup fatigue, so in Office 2007, Microsoft makes the monumental mistake of removing the very informative popup, and transforming the warning into a notification bar at the top of the document with only six words warning users about macros. Things get worse in Office 2010, when Microsoft even adds a shiny button that reads "Enable Content," ruining everything it had done in the past 10-15 years, and allowing macro malware to become the dangerous threat it is today. The U.S.-CERT team issued an official threat yesterday warning organizations about the resurging threat of malware that uses macro scripts in Office documents.

An anonymous reader writes: Macro malware is a term to describe malware that relies on automatically executed macro scripts inside Office documents. This type of malware was very popular in the '90s, but when Microsoft launched Office 97, it added a popup before opening Office files that warned users about the dangers of enabling macros. Microsoft's decision had a huge impact on macro malware, and by the 2000s, this type of malware went almost extinct. Lo and behold, some smart Microsoft UI designers start thinking that users might get popup fatigue, so in Office 2007, Microsoft makes the monumental mistake of removing the very informative popup, and transforming the warning into a notification bar at the top of the document with only six words warning users about macros. Things get worse in Office 2010, when Microsoft even adds a shiny button that reads "Enable Content," ruining everything it had done in the past 10-15 years, and allowing macro malware to become the dangerous threat it is today. The U.S.-CERT team issued an official threat yesterday warning organizations about the resurging threat of malware that uses macro scripts in Office documents.

Reader prisoninmate shares a Softpedia report: We've been monitoring the Ubuntu 16.10 development cycle for quite some time now to see what Linux kernel version the upcoming GNU/Linux operating system will be based on, and for now, it remains powered by the same kernel packages as Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus). Also, it looks like Ubuntu 16.10 has been switched to a universal local DNS resolver service. However, the Ubuntu Kernel Team published the other day a new installation of their weekly newsletter, informing the community that Ubuntu 16.10 (Yakkety Yak) would soon be rebased on the latest stable Linux 4.6 kernels. Then, it will move to the Release Candidate builds of Linux kernel 4.7, and after that, the operating system will finally be switched to Linux kernel 4.8.

An anonymous reader writes from a report via Softpedia: Fears that fake online reviews might ruin the consumer market and damage legitimate businesses are making the European Commission consider the idea of forcing all EU citizens to log into online accounts using their government-issued ID cards. Details about these plans can be found in a proposal named "Online Platforms and the Digital Single Market Opportunities and Challenges," announced on May 25, 2016. According to this document, "online platforms should accept credentials issued or recognized by national public authorities, such as electronic or mobile IDs, national identity cards, or bank cards." The reasoning, according to the EU, is that "online ratings and reviews of goods and services are helpful and empowering to consumers, but they need to be trustworthy and free from any bias or manipulation. A prominent example is fake reviews."

An anonymous reader writes from a report via Softpedia: Two researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have come up with a method to turn smartphone vibration motors into makeshift microphones, capable of recording the sound around them. The attack relies on using the vibration motor's coil to record incoming sound waves, which are then transmitted to the attacker, who then uses a processing algorithm to enhance the signal by reconstructing high-frequency waves. This is needed because the vibra-motor can only pick up low-frequency sounds, up to 2 kHz. Their method doesn't yield perfect results (4 in 5 people can understand the sounds) and also needs physical access to the device, but it puts in place the theoretical details needed to carry out and refine such attacks in the future.

The top five PC sellers have big security holes in the third-party tools which updates their software. Now Softpedia follows up with a report that "The ASUS LiveUpdate software that comes pre-installed on all ASUS computers downloads critical BIOS and UEFI updates via plaintext HTTP and installs them without verifying the content's source or validity." An anonymous reader shares this report from developer Morgan Gangwere: "Content is delivered via ZIP archives over plain HTTP, extracted into a temporary directory and an executable run as a user in the "Administrators" NT group ("Highest Permissions" task scheduler).
Softpedia adds that "The attackers wouldn't even need to mess around modifying low-level firmware code because the update process would launch anything you throw at it. This includes spyware, backdoors, remote access trojans, and anything an attacker would wish."

An anonymous reader writes: A large number of websites have been infected with SEO spam thanks to a new zero-day in the WP Mobile Detector plugin that was installed on over 10,000 websites. The zero-day was used in real-world attacks since May 26, but only surfaced to light on May 29 when researchers notified the plugin's developer. Seeing that the developer was slow to react, security researchers informed Automattic, who had the plugin delisted from WordPress.org's Plugin Directory on May 31. In the meantime, security firm Sucuri says it detected numerous attacks with this zero-day, which was caused by a lack of input filtering in an image upload field that allowed attackers to upload PHP backdoors on the victim's servers with incredible ease and without any tricky workarounds. The backdoor's password is "dinamit," the Russian word for dynamite.

Marius Nestor, reporting for Softpedia (condensed): Linux kernel 4.6.1 is already here, only two weeks after the official launch of the Linux 4.6 kernel series. For those not in the loop, Linux 4.6 branch is the latest and most advanced kernel branch available right now for GNU/Linux operating systems, but it looks like its adoption is a little slow at the moment. "I'm announcing the release of the 4.6.1 kernel. All users of the 4.6 kernel series must upgrade," says Greg Kroah-Hartman. "The updated 4.6.y git tree can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser."
Some users are apparently facing boot failure issue on the latest version. An anonymous tipster tells Slashdot: Several folks on the web have reported a regression in the latest Linux kernels, starting with 4.6.1 and including the 4.7 beta that prevents booting and drops to busybox, at least the one supplied by the Ubuntu PPA. The boot sequence ends with "address family not supported by protocol: error getting socket" and then, "error initializing udev control socket" (screenshot here).

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Softpedia: Something is happening with TeamViewers servers at the moment, and all clues point to a massive breach that has led to many users going on Reddit and complaining about having their computers hacked. Some users have reported finding new transactions in their PayPal and bank accounts, while others discovered someone had been poking around their email account. Other lucky users said they barely avoided getting hacked at the last minute, noticing their mouse starting to move across the screen, and hurrying to disconnect their Internet connection. On Twitter, the TeamViewer team wrote that they're only experiencing issues in some parts of their network, but they denied any security breach, at least on their side. In the past months, we've seen malware use TeamViewer many times to infect computers, but most of those cases were because of users who used weak passwords, which is certainly not TeamViewer's fault. It is strange that this time around, just when TeamViewer servers go down, multiple users also flock to social media to complain about getting hacked. This is either one huge strange cosmic coincidence or TeamViewer is really at fault and won't be able to pin the blame on its users. On a semi-related note, PayPal will be suspending their business operations in Turkey after failing to obtain a new license for its service in the country.

An anonymous reader writes: "A hacker going by the handle BuggiCorp is selling a zero-day vulnerability affecting all Windows OS versions that can allow an attacker to elevate privileges for software processes to the highest level available in Windows, known as SYSTEM," writes Softpedia. The zero-day is up for sale on a Russian underground hacking forum, and is currently available for $90,000 -- after it was initially up for $95,000. The hacker is saying he'll sell the zero-day to one person only, who'll receive its source code and a working demo. Two videos are available, one showing the hacker exploit Windows 10 with the May 2016 security patch, and another one bypassing all EMET features. While security experts think the zero-day may be overpriced, they think the hacker will find a buyer regardless.

prisoninmate writes from a report via Softpedia: The moment you've all been waiting for is almost here, as you will no longer need a cable to connect your Ubuntu Phone to your TV or a supported LCD monitor. Canonical will soon release the OTA-11 software update to supported Ubuntu Phone devices implementing the Aethercast (also known as Miracast or Display Casting) technology that provides Wireless display support to Ubuntu Phone devices, but only for Meizu PRO 5, which comes with out-of-the-box wireless display functionality. Some other features of the OTA-11 update include: the adoption of the NetworkManager 1.2 network connection manager, an updated VPN feature with username and password authentication support, a pre-loaded Home Scope which will allow for a faster startup, multiple application windows, and subtitles in the header. In addition, the positioning in location service has been greatly improved, Dynamic Grid Unit (DGU) support is now available, and many bugs have been fixed (squashed). You can view a list of the devices that support the OTA-11 update here.

UPDATE 5/31/16: The report has been updated to clarify that the Meizu PRO 5 is the only device that supports wireless display functionality out-of-the-box.