Xiaomi back to sales in India, but only till January 8th

Following the ban of the OnePlus One, it seems like there might be some good news for phone fans in India! As you probably already know, Xiaomi was also banned from selling their products in India recently, but the Delhi High Court has now partially lifted the ban to allow the Chinese company to sell phones once again, but only until January 8th.

Xiaomi was banned from selling or importing handsets in India, due to a patent infringement Ericsson’s Standard Essential Patents (SEPs). Ericsson sued Xiaomi and had taken the matter up to the Delhi high court. For now though, Xiaomi has been allowed to sell or import their handsets once again, but only handsets based on Qualcomm chipsets. The Xiaomi Redmi 1S that was on sale in India runs on a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, and so does the 4G variant of the Redmi Note. However the mediatek powered Redmi Note which was on sale before the ban, will not be available.

Xiaomi’s Hugo Barra posted on his Facebook account today, to clear things up for fans of the company:

** Resuming sales in India **

Dear Mi fans,
Last week, we were forced to suspend sales in India due to an order passed by the Delhi High Court. Thanks for the overwhelming support so many of you have shown to Mi India in response to that!
We are happy to announce that the Delhi High Court today issued a ruling in our favor, allowing us to resume sales in India subject to certain terms.

The good news is that Redmi 1S is coming back next week and we’ll be having our next sale on Tuesday, December 23. Registration will open shortly — keep an eye on the Mi India page for details!

Still fighting with GIRL FRIEND , Lets hide in WhatsApp

Since WhatsApp introduced the blue tick as red status, we’ve all been trap into big trouble, Particularly who has girlfriend  . Now we see ourselves forced to reply to anyone whose message we accidentally opened ,sometime my boss :( .

We can say the blue tick now cornered us and force to screw us in more timing.Don't be worried we have simple trick that can save you from your girlfriend's smash.Lets see,

Maybe we just wanted to read girlfriend’s WhatsApp message but we cannot instantly reply, we want to think about what to say as to not make her angry, but there she goes, freaking out like “You read my message but you don’t reply?”.

Keep calm, lets play with our method for you to avoid giving the blue ticks to your girlfriend but still be able to read her messages  All you need to do is, receive all her messages calmly, then TURN OFF your mobile data or Wi-Fi or both, make sure you have no internet connection running, and kudos, read her messages and don’t reply, nothing will happen  (Except she might be seeing you as online if you turn off the data while WhatsApp screen is open, so better turn it off while on your Home screen).

Lets hide in whatsApp 

Low cost smart phones stealing your data

Once again in this year low cost smart phones stealing your data. A security vendor warned pre-installed malwares are sell out with these cheap smart phones.And like the last time the manufactures of the mobiles are from Africa and Asia.

This time the criminals using a broad schema to make it work that is they shifted distribution of malware through supply chain :( .

What does it do ???

The malware can use the SMS and WAP services to push the data from the user. The malware haven't work at the beginning its starts it process when the mobile shut-down for the fifth time and rebooted its starts its game.

Which Phones are Affected ?

• Counterfeit Samsung GS4/Note II Various TECNO devices

• Gionee Gpad G1 

• Gionee GN708W 

• Gionee GN800 

• Polytron Rocket S2350

• Hi-Tech Amaze Tab 

• Karbonn TA-FONE A34/A37

• Jiayu G4S – Galaxy S4 Clone

• Haier H7 

• No manufacturer specified i9502+ Samsung Clone 

The main countries of concern are Vietnam, Indonesia, India, Nigeria, Taiwan, and China. 

17 ATMs hacked in Malaysia

Hackers steal more than $1.2 million from 17 automated teller machines (ATMs) in Malaysia

A Team of Latin American  cyber criminals were able to exploit a way to hack and steal millions of dollars from 17 automated teller machines (ATM) in Malaysia.

ATMs of at least 17 bank branches belonging to United Overseas Bank, Affin Bank, Al Rajhi Bank and Bank of Islam were reportedly hacked by the Latin American gang.

CCTV  footage from the banks showed that 2-3 Latin American men, who were involved in the crime, entered and withdraw money from these ATM’s one after another.

Bukit Aman Commercial Crime Investigation Department chief Comm Datuk Mortadza Nazarene told Bernama that the suspects used a computer malware known as “ulssm.exe” to hack into the ATMs. “The suspects were found to have opened the top panel of the machine without using a key and inserted a compact disc into the machine’s processing centre which caused the ATM’s system to reboot,” he told Bernama, Tuesday morning, The Star reported.

A Selangor Commercial Crime Investigation Department spokesman said that investigations is still going on. In the meantime police were able to recover one of the ATM cards which was used by the hackers to withdraw the money. 

Since it was the ATM which was rebooted to default, no customers data was compromised in the hack, police are investigating the scene and believes the gang members are still in the country.

MeterSSH – Meterpreter over SSH

As penetration testers, it’s crucial to identify what types of attacks are detected and what’s not. After running into a recent penetration test with a next generation firewall, most analysis has shifted away from the endpoints and more towards network analysis. While there needs to be a mixture of both, MeterSSH demonstrates how easy it is to circumvent a lot of these signature based “next generation” product lines.

MeterSSH is an easy way to inject native shellcode into memory and pipe anything over SSH to the attacker machine through an SSH tunnel and all self contained into one single Python file. Python can easily be converted to an executable using pyinstaller or py2exe.

MeterSSH is easy – simply edit the meterssh.py file and add your SSH server IP, port, username, and password and run the script. It will spawn meterpreter through memory injection (in this case a windows/meterpreter/bind_tcp) and bind to port 8021. Paramiko (python SSH module) is used to tunnel meterpreter over 8021 and back to the attacker and all communications tucked within that SSH tunnel.

Here we launch our initial meterssh payload:

Next we launch monitor.py which monitors or the SSH connection and automatically launches Metasploit for you. Once it detects the SSH connection and shell, it kicks off Metasploit for you:

Next, Metasploit is launched and notice that we are tunneling through localhost to the victim machine.

There are two files, monitor.py and meterssh.py.

monitor.py – run this in order to listen for an SSH connection, it will poll for 8021 on localhost for an SSH tunnel then spawn Metasploit for you automatically to grab the shell.

meterssh.py – this is what you would deploy to the victim machine – note that most windows machines wont have Python installed, its recommended to compile Python with py2exe or pyinstaller.

Fields you need to edit inside meterssh.py

user = “sshuser”

# password for SSH

password = “sshpw”

# this is where your SSH server is running

rhost = “192.168.1.1”

# remote SSH port – this is the attackers SSH server

port = “22”

user – this is the user account for the attackers SSH server (do not use root, does not need root) password – this is the password for the attackers SSH server rhost – this is the attackers SSH server IP address port – this is the attackers SSH server port

Note that you DO NOT need to change the Metasploit shellcode, the Metasploit shellcode is simply an unmodified windows/meterpreter/bind_tcp that binds to port 8021. If you want to change this, just switch the shellcode out and change port 8021 inside the script to bind to whatever port you want to. You do not need to do this however unless you want to customize/modify.

Ugandan 'revenge porn' victim Desire could be arrested

After their private nude photos were stolen and published online in September, some chastised Jennifer Lawrence and other celebrities for taking the photos in the first place. Others said the blame was misplaced, and considered publication of the photos a sex crime.

After nude photos of a Ugandan singer were published online and in newspapers – allegedly spread by a spurned ex-boyfriend who wanted to teach her a lesson – the Ugandan ethics minister called for her arrest. Singer Desire Luzinda, he said, should be prosecuted under a new anti-pornography law that punishes “indecent” behavior.

“I have directed the police to arrest her, but first they should investigate her,” ethics minister Simon Lokodo told the Monitor last week. “She should be locked up and isolated,” he added.

On Monday, Patricia Okiria, an ethics ministry official, told the Ugandan newspaper New Vision Luzinda might not be charged with a crime. “She will only be contacted to help in the investigations on this case. She will help us in establishing the motive of releasing the pornographic content,” Okiria said.

“Her answers will help us substantiate her role in this saga. We need to know whether she consented before these photos were taken,” he added.

Luzinda, 26, remains in hiding.

She addressed the controversy on her Facebook page: “These were photos taken in privacy with someone I loved. In our private moments, we all have our ‘moments of madness’. The bottom line is that I trusted this person and never hoped that something done in private would find its way to the public domain irrespective of our differences.” She added: 

“These images in no way should define who I am” — but then apologized for taking “such shameful pics” and took full responsibility for the incident.

Twitter wants to make money!!!!!

No longer the fun-loving "Toys 'R' Us" kid, Twitter is all grown up now and it wants to make money. The social network released a statement on Wednesday outlining its strategy on the Internet, stating that it wants to bring in revenue, and lots of it, though it did not give any specifics on that plan. The confusing statement was met with some mockery on the social network itself.

In its statement, Twitter outlined its strategy as:

Reach the largest daily audience in the world by connecting everyone to their world via our information sharing and distribution platform products and be one of the top revenue generating Internet companies in the world.

One response to the statement on Twitter from user @dkberman calls out the strategy as wordy:

Twitter's new mission statement: 35 words, 62 syllables, 4 clauses, 2 grammatical errors.

For its part, Twitter is saying that this is its strategy and not its mission. Twitter's mission is:

To give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers.

As part of its plan to improve, Twitter will bring more functionality to private messaging, release more standalone apps like Vine, and introduce Instant Timeline that will make it easy for new users to get updates without having to first follow other users.

Source: Business Insider; WSJ

 

 

The top 5 text message apps for Android

Don't like the IM app on your phone? Check out these replacements!

So maybe the standard messaging app that came on your phone isn't the best. You may think it's a bit clunky or doesn't pack a lot of punch when it comes to features. Luckily, we can replace those with other messaging apps. Most of them will bring some different design elements to the table, as well as additional functionality to fulfill our texting (and multimedia messaging) needs.

These apps will handle regular messaging without requiring you and your friends to use the same platform. This is not meant to provide a detailed look at any particular apps, but offer an overview of several popular ones. The ones we've listed here have received pretty good reviews on the Play Store.

Now let's get to it!

Textra SMS

Textra is definitely a handsome-looking SMS app, especially since it received its Sept. 3 Material Design-inspired update. I like the look quite a bit, and I look forward to seeing how it will evolve going forward.

It's pretty customizable. You can choose your color themes, set dark mode ('dark mode off' has a white background, dark mode is grey, black is...well...black), request delivery reports, auto save videos and images to your phone (if you're into that sort of thing) and more.

I also like that Textra has a quick reply pop up, or the ability to reply immediately by tapping on the notification, which will display a window that kind of hovers over your home screen or whatever you were looking at before. Please see the above screen shot. Unfortunately, landscape keyboard is not available with this feature.

This app will take care of your MMS (picture and group messaging) needs as well.

Who is responsible for your Android update?

Speaking to LG’s concerns, it is true that most phones on the market have more than one hand in the cookie jar that is your phone. As a refresher, here is the basic idea of how Android releases work:

Carrier branded/subsidized phone: 

When you get a phone from a carrier, the version of Android on the device has been passed from the manufacturer to the carrier. The carrier then injects their apps and code to support their services and network before finally finding its way to your handset.

What we have here, then, is no clear cut path between Google’s Android release and your phone. By the time the manufacturer and the carrier do their thing, updates can be muddled and delays can be lengthy. The real sore spot here is when you end up with a device that is physically capable of running the latest and greatest Android release, but it is halted due to issues in software compatibility for you carrier’s requirements. Just ask any early adopter Nexus 7 LTE user on Verizon, they’ll explain some of this for you.

Unlocked phones: 

An unlocked phone usually comes at a premium price, the main reason for this is that there are no subsidies as would be found by your typical carrier branded Android smartphone. The benefit is that your phone manufacturer is typically in charge of releasing Android to the device and can get it done with minimal delay. Not to mention this often means a simpler version of Android being installed on the device, sometimes very close to stock Android.

Nexus phones from Google are a great example of how Unlocked phones work. You buy the device from Google and Google ships you any available Android updates.

Despite the promises and best intentions of even Google and others through the Open Handset Alliance, your device will, inevitably, meet its end for software updates.

'Masque Attack' iOS Malware - Can Steal Sensitive Information

It’s barely been a week since we learned about the WireLurker malware for iOS, and now we have new reports that an even more dangerous iOS malware called "Masque Attack" is in the wild.

"Masque Attack" works much like WireLurker in that it takes advantage of Apple’s enterprise provisioning to bypass other security checks on iOS. This proves that Apple’s banning of the infected WireLurker apps has been mostly ineffective, as expected, and until the company fixes this enterprise provisioning loophole, a whole new class of malware is going to invade iOS devices in the coming months or years.

Unlike WireLurker, though, Masque Attack doesn’t even need to infect the user's PC and then have the user connect to the iOS devices through USB. Instead, it can just infect iPhones or iPads when the user visits a certain infected web page online; then, it prompts the user to install a new app. Once the user clicks to install it, the device is infected.

The new app can replace any application from the user’s device, other than the pre-installed Apple applications. That includes email, banking or any other type of third-party app. If the user introduces his or her login credentials in those apps, that information will be stolen by the malware’s creators. The apps will look identical to the ones they are replacing.

Cyber frauds cost Indians nearly Rs 220 cr since 2011

The government said Indians suffered a total loss of Rs 219.73 crore since 2011 due to cyber frauds and as many as 24,882 cases were registered by the RBI and CBI in the same period for such crimes.

“As per information available with Reserve Bank of India (RBI), total monetary loss suffered by Indians (as reported to RBI) is Rs 38 crore, Rs 67 crore and Rs 54 crore during the years 2011-12, 2012-13, 2013-14 (up to September 30, 2013),” Minister of State for Communications and IT Milind Deora said in a written reply to Rajya Sabha.

“As per information available with RBI, 10048, 8765 and 6035 fraud related cyber crime cases have been reported to the RBI during 2011-12, 2012-13 and 2013-14 (up to September 30,2013). CBI has registered 12, 11, and 11 cases during 2011,2012, and 2013 (up to November 30, 2013) respectively,”

Deora said with increasing penetration of Internet, mobile, computer, proliferation of Information Technology (IT) applications and online services, e-commerce and payments through credit and debit cards, the number of cyber crimes being reported has shown a rising trend during the recent past.

“However, the trend in increase in cyber incidents is similar to that worldwide,” he added.

He said since Police and Public order are state subjects, state governments and union territory administrations are primarily responsible for prevention, detection, registration and investigation of crimes including cyber crime and for prosecuting the criminals within their jurisdictions.

“Existing legal framework – Information Technology Act, 2000, together with the Indian Penal Code and other laws comprehensively addresses the cyber crimes,” he said to a query if existing laws are capable to tackle cyber crime. 

Microsoft to launch first non-Nokia smartphone on Nov 11

 Microsoft is all set to launch the first Lumia phone under its own branding. On its official blog, Microsoft Mobile teased an upcoming device that will be unveiled on November 11, 2014.

The short blog post stated that "Microsoft is delivering the power of everyday mobile technology to everyone" with the hashtag #MoreLumia. The company also shared the same picture on its official Facebook page with the slogan 'Big on Experiences'.

It is likely that the company will announce the successor of Lumia 635 smartphone, going by the curved corners teased in the image by Microsoft Mobile.

An upcoming Microsoft smartphone with curved corners and sans Nokia branding was leaked recently on Chinese social networking site Weibo, which were soon deleted. This smartphone, codenamed RM-1090, sports a front facing camera and a flash on the back and is rumoured to have a 5-inch qHD display and 3G support. There is no word on other details about the upcoming Microsoft Lumia RM-1090, including pricing.

5 Free Mobile Apps For Safety Of Indian Women

In India, women safety is one of the most talked about topics, especially in cities like Delhi, where rapes and murders of women make frequent news headlines.

Smartphones have now gone mainstream, and they have helped us to improve our lives in many ways. Even in women safety, they can play a major role in avoiding untoward incidences.

So,we bring you 5 free mobile apps that women should consider installing on their smartphones to keep themselves safe in all situations.

SOS Stay Safe

 

SOS – Stay Safe! is a personal safety application that empowers any individual against acts of violence, and helps summon aid in any kind of emergency. It lets you send out SOS alerts to friends and family quickly, as soon as you sense danger.

The alert can be simply triggered by shaking the device using a customizable shake limit. SOS – Stay Safe! can be extremely useful in a wide range of dangerous scenarios ranging from sexual harassment or in case of medical emergencies like heart failure.

VithU: V Gumrah Initiative

This app created by Star India, has been widely advertised on their channels and has over half a million downloads till date.

Like SOS, VithU, is also an emergency App that, at the click of the power button (2 times consecutively) begins sending out alert messages every 2 minutes to your contacts that you feed into the app as the designated receivers or guardians.

The message that goes out simply says

 “I am in danger. I need help. Please follow my location.”

The receiver will receive a link to your location every 2 minutes giving them your updated location tracked by GPS. Also, the app gives out updates on the Crime Scene in India and a “Tips Feed” option exclusively giving the user safety tips in an emergency situation.

Additionally, being created by a TV channel, users of this app can share the incident with Channel V by posting it in the “Submit Your Story” option in the Menu Bar.

Nirbhaya: Be Fearless

Like previous 2 apps, “Nirbhaya: Be Fearless” is also a free emergency app on Android, which can send a distress call or emergency message to a specified contact or group in an emergency situation faced by a woman or any other individual in general.

However, Nirbhaya app does have some extra features which include Geo Fence and Unsafe are alerts(These are areas marked as unsafe, and alerts are sent out when app users are in vicinity of that area). It also has option to use either the power button or shake, both of which can send out SOS messages.

YatraMiTR

Recently launched YATRAMiTR app is primarily a dynamic GPS and GPRS based auto-fare calculator, which also has women safety and emergency alert features.

Anyone who has YATRAMiTR installed on their smartphones will be able to calculate the exact distance of the travel along with exact calculation of fare when you are traveling by an Auto-Rickshaw.

From safety perspective this app enables the user’s location to be viewed through a browser by their family or friends. The inbuilt alert system will not only send out an SMS with user’s current location but also keep constant track of the path to numbers saved in the app’s contact list. The app provides a panic or danger button, when pressed, will send emergency alert SMS to designated contacts.

Woman Safety Shield Protection

Developed by SmartShehar.com, “Woman Safety Shield Protection” app has the same premise as other emergency apps, however, it offers some additional features.

The app allows you to click a photograph of the situation, whether you are yourself in an emergency, or something is happening around you. When you click a photo through the app, it gets sent immediately to designated emergency contacts. The location is sent as an SMS and the picture is emailed to them.

This app can be useful even if you are just a bystander and are witnessing a crime in progress. This picture can be used by the police to apprehend and convict the perpetrators.

WhatsApp to remain free in developing countries like India

WhatsApp will continue to offer its service for free to users in developing countries like India. Vice-president for business development Neeraj Arora stated that low debit and credit card penetration was the main reason for not collecting the $1 annual fee the service charges users in North America and Europe.

Speaking at the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad on Tuesday, Arora reiterated that monetization for the service would come from user subscriptions, and not advertisements.

"Monetization is on the cards. It will happen over the next few years. We believe in the subscription model and not in advertising as people do not like to have ads as they converse."

One way WhatsApp could charge users in the subcontinent is by tying up with carriers and collecting subscription charges from offline channels. WhatsApp already works with carriers in bundling data plans that do not charge users for the service, which has a user base of 70 million in the country.

The executive, who was pivotal in the $19 billion acquisition by Facebook earlier this year, also stated that there is potential in India to "build the next WhatsApp for the world."

Indian readers, are you excited that WhatsApp will remain free for the time being?

Source: The Hindu

Characters Trapped by Smartphone

An idea of trapping fictional characters into something isn't so new thing. The bottle meme on the Japanese illustrators community pixiv is a famous example of this kind of illustration memes. The earliest known character art illustration tagged with “Tried to Confine” was submitted to pixiv by user Taste on June 21st, 2013.The image featured a Vocaloid character Len Kagamine with his hands pressed against an invisible glass as if he is locked inside of the phone . However, this 2014 meme caused on Twitter by mainly Fujoshi or female otakus addicted to homosexual shipping, which was triggered by an illustration featuring Dio Brando from JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. It was posted by Hz on January 3rd, and had gathered over 5000 re tweets and 4700 favorites within the first 24 hours.

iPad Pro Rumor Comes Up for Air

 

The iPad Air 2 will see a boost through holiday sales. At the same time, the first sets of iOS apps created by the collaboration between IBM and Apple will start hitting the market, which should goose some enterprise iPad sales. IBM, by the way, will be able to sell the iPad directly into its enterprise accounts, which also fuels new iPad 'Pro' version rumors.

Rumours of a larger-screen iPad 'Pro' have been floating around since early this year. Most of them have suggested variations on a supposed 12.9-inch screen size. As soon as they rise, though, they're buried by another news wave. The latest to surface is a report in the Japanese techblog macotakara.

The upcoming iPad Pro reportedly will have a 12.2-inch screen and not the more widely rumoured 12.9-inch screen.

In addition, the iPad Pro will be thicker than an iPhone 6 but thinner than an iPhone 6 Plus -- and definitely thicker than the current iPad Air 2. Most other design features will be similar to the iPad Air 2, but the Pro version may have speakers capable of stereo playback.

Although the Japanese-language site seems to label the post as a "rumor," it claims the information comes from a "reliable source" who remains unnamed. 

Repetition Vs Truth 

Therein lies the usual trouble with tech rumours. The source could be reporting on some discarded casing of a prototype. The source could work for a display provider that produces screens in a 12.2-inch size, and this effort could be an elaborate move to cast attention to some other company entirely.

Or the site could have decided to nudge the conversation along -- if not for traffic, then perhaps in the hope of generating interest in a 'Pro' version to help influence Apple in that direction.

The point is, after a rumour is repeated dozens, if not hundreds, of times on-line, it seems to take on a new measure of validity that it may or may not deserve. Still, U.S.-based Apple rumour site Apple Insider notes that macotakara "has at times unearthed details about Apple's future product designs that turn out to be fairly accurate."

That said, widely cited Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI Securities, who has a pretty good track record, has been reporting to his investors that Apple has had a 12.9-inch iPad in development for quite some time.

If it's Truth 

If the rumor of a larger iPad Pro is true -- never mind the difference between 12.9 and 12.2 inches -- the confidence of Apple CEO Tim Cook attributing the slowdown in iPad sales to a "speed bump" becomes much more believable.

Apple wouldn't have to rely so much on new markets and IBM apps to drive rising sales, as plenty of existing iPad fans would have a reason to buy into the iPad line once again..:P

It's a Vim instead of Samsung - Snap-deal Lol

Here is a funny little story that unfolded this Diwali.

The market was abuzz this Diwali with e-commerce giants offering great deals. Thousands of consumers faced out-of-stock, price changes, delivery delays and end user experience issues on their mighty portals.

In all this mayhem, a bizarre incident occurred with a certain Mr Laxminarayan Krishnamurthy from Borivali, Mumbai. This man ordered a Samsung smartphone from Snapdeal, but when he opened the phone’s packaging, he found a Vim bar and a stone scrubber inside!

Completely stunned, he soon posted on Facebook about this epic fail. The social media picked up this story and soon Mr. Krishnamurthy’s public post was shared over 20,000 times.

Later Mr. Krishnamurthy updated his Facebook page with the news that the e-commerce giant took responsibility and duly refunded the money paid for the online transaction. They are investigating and trying to find who is at fault, the seller on their portal or the courier guys. 

However, playing Santa to a hassled Mr. Krishnamurthy was Hindustan Unilever’s Vim, who gifted him with a brand new Samsung smartphone - exactly the one he was trying to order, after his story went viral online.

Later we learned that Mr Krishnamurthy actually wanted to gift the phone to his wife as a surprise Diwali present.

All’s well that ends well, we say!

Facebook's News Feed is 50% faster on iOS

You might have noticed that your Facebook News Feed is faster than it used to be on your iPhone or iPad. You're not crazy :P.

Facebook has made the News Feed operate 50% faster than the previous version in the iOS app, according to the company.

About two years ago, Facebook switched from HTML5 to native iOS code to make the app perform as smoothly as possible. But the developers noticed something strange: Each time the app updated, it would take longer for the News Feed to load. And gradually, users started noticing, too.

"As we added more and more features to the app, every part of the app got slower," Adam Ernst, a software engineer at Facebook's New York office, told Mashable.

The slower speeds were associated with a data storage problem in Facebook's app. In most iOS apps, data models are managed by "core data," but there was a quirk in the Facebook iOS app's system. The core data originally worked with only a few dozen code entities, but that number escalated to hundreds.

The engineers developed a different way to store data that significantly cut back on the app's inner workings, which resulted in a much faster News Feed. The software developers began rolling out the rewrite publicly this summer. Facebook is promising to keep rolling out improvements to the News Feed's performance.

White House breached (Russian Attack)

 

The worlds most secured line "The White House" told the NYT this week that its EOP network was hacked two or three weeks ago, and played down the breach to press by emphasizing that it was on an unclassified network only — where the hackers conducted "fairly standard espionage." So basically, the intruders accessed the network that handled everything else that happens on unclassified computers in the Executive Office of the President, which indicates that this breach is very likely much more serious than is being reported. Mitigation included staffers having to change their passwords and intranet or VPN access being temporarily shut off. The Washington Post reported that Russian hackers may be to blame.

FireEye revealed APT28 when it released its latest Advanced Persistent Threat report on Tuesday, "APT28: A Window Into Russia's Cyber Espionage Operations" (.PDF link). In a blog post FireEye wrote,

This report focuses on a threat group that we have designated as APT28. While APT28’s malware is fairly well known in the cybersecurity community, our report details additional information exposing ongoing, focused operations that we believe indicate a government sponsor based in Moscow.

In contrast with the China-based threat actors that FireEye tracks, APT28 does not appear to conduct widespread intellectual property theft for economic gain. Instead, APT28 focuses on collecting intelligence that would be most useful to a government.

Specifically, FireEye found that since at least 2007, APT28 has been targeting privileged information related to governments, militaries and security organizations that would likely benefit the Russian government.

The Shellshock attacks are stacking up. Organizations are unable to keep up with Shellshock patching processes, and incident response practices are lagging: Security researchers released two new Shellshock-related attack warnings Thursday as they witness attackers take advantage of the Bash bug in UNIX and Linux systems.

The next version of the Google Chrome browser expected in six weeks will arrive with support to fallback to SSLv3 disabled by default. Chrome 39, due to be released in six weeks' time, will be the first step in Google's plan to remove SSLv3 support from its Chrome browser.We knew two weeks ago when the Drupal team disclosed a really, really bad SQL injection vulnerability in Drupal 7 that it was important for admins to update quickly. Drupal claims a million users on project site drupal.org and over 30,000 developers. But there's no evidence yet of actual, widespread attacks.