Items tagged with backdoor
A new report details a startling discovery that Chinese state hackers accessed the networks of major US broadband providers, which were able to gain access to information from systems the federal government uses for court-authorized wiretapping. The companies listed as being hacked include communications providers...
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Over the past few days, the security world has been abuzz with the discovery of a backdoor snuck into a compression utility called xz-utils. While this backdoor was effectively a near miss, getting caught before it became pervasive, it goes to show that with a bit of social engineering and laying low for a while, you...
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Security researchers at SafeBreach Labs have discovered a novel PowerShell backdoor which has been able to evade the dozens of malware scanners employed by VirusTotal. The tool’s stealthy qualities have earned it the “fully undetectable,” or FUD, descriptor. The researchers believe it has been used to target around...
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The SolarWinds breach and subsequent attacks are shaping up to be the most elaborate and long-lasting attacks in some time. Microsoft has done a deep dive into the second stage of the attacks and has found that the attackers are both skilled and elusive. Overall, though, the deep-dive gives us a look into what...
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Over the years, lawmakers and law enforcement worldwide have been pushing for backdoors and to eliminate end-to-end encryption in devices. According to security and cryptographic research, however, law enforcement and governments can already access locked smartphones through various tools and tricks. This is mainly...
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Intel has been going through a bit of rough patch over the past few weeks, following the disclosure that its 7nm products have been delayed, which led to an internal reorganization that resulted in the company's chief engineering officer departing the company. Now we're learning that Intel was also the victim of a...
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Malware is getting sneakier, as Kaspersky researchers just discovered “Titanium”, a trojan backdoor malware. This malware is very difficult to detect and includes various stages.
Titanium is currently being used by the Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) actor “Platinum”. Platinum is considered one of the most...
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Yesterday, we reported on a rather alarming security exploit which took advantage of a weakness in the ASUS Live Update utility installed on millions of PCs. Operation ShadowHammer took advantage of Live Update to gain a backdoor to users’ PCs and download malware in the background.
ASUS was initially notified of...
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If you have an ASUS computer that is running the company’s Live Update utility, it’s possible that your system was susceptible to backdoor intrusions during the latter half of 2018. The folks at Kaspersky say that they first discovered the existence of Operation ShadowHammer on January 29th, and has been performing...
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Nintendo gaming consoles are typically pretty well locked down (at least initially), and are a tough nut to crack for enthusiasts. About the closest that homebrew wizards came to prying inside the inner working of the Nintendo Switch was to find a hidden NES Golf game, which was included in honor of late Nintendo...
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Over the past few months, we’ve witnessed the Mirai botnet wreak havoc with IoT devices like consumer webcams, DVRs and security cameras. These often budget-minded devices were often equipped with insecure software or employed security countermeasures that were easily overpowered.
However, we’re learning today that...
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It’s another day, and another backdoor Android exploit has been discovered. Last week, we brought you news of a secret backdoor installed on a number of budget Android devices that was beaming personal information (test messages, phone numbers, contacts) to servers in China. Today, we’re learning of another exploit...
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2016 is going to be remembered for a number of fortunate and unfortunate things, with one topic that falls into the latter category being the debacle of U.S. law enforcement vs. Apple. The FBI and other US federal agencies have made it no secret that they would like to be able to gain access to any smartphone if the...
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Microsoft Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith is no fan of the FBI’s efforts to bypass encryption protocols in order to unlock smartphones. Smith’s thoughts on the matter were made even more clear today while speaking at the annual RSA Conference which is held in San Francisco, California. In fact, Smith offered his most...
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U.S. President Barack Obama is getting a little hot under the collar, and we’re not talking about the speech that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave this morning. Instead, President Obama is troubled over new regulations that are being proposed by the Chinese government, which would affect American tech...
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Chinese OEMs are stepping up their game in the smartphone sector. Companies like Huawei and Xiaomi have bolstered their share of the market, with the latter booting Samsung out of first place in China. One Chinese OEM, however, is looking to expand its presence in the smartphone world while at the same time partaking...
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A hacker (“Craig”) on a site devoted to embedded device hacking posted a lengthy entry detailing how he, on a whim and armed with boredom and too much Shasta cola, reverse-engineered a firmware update and found a backdoor to certain D-Link routers that allows one to access the devices’ web interface...
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While many have dogmatically adhered to the idea that Macs are impervious to malware, some experts have been warning that it was only a matter of time before the Apple systems were hit with significant bugs. Findings like the one from Doctor Web late yesterday confirm that indeed, the malware threat looms large for Mac users. According to...
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Intuit, maker of Quicken products, started using a "strong encryption" method in 2003, but apparently a backdoor has been found that might compromise passwords: "A Russian firm that provides password-recovery services says it has found a backdoor in the encryption mechanism that Quicken uses to secure password-protected files, a feature...
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