Popular Post

Archive for 2014-03-23

Windows XP Flaw: Hackers withdraw money from any ATM by just sending a Text Message

By : Unknown


ATM theft and fraud is nothing new and culprits are coming up with new ways all the time to either get cash out of ATM in some way or steal ATM user’s card number and pin code. One expects the banks to stay vigilant and at top of the security game to cope with such notorious acts by keeping their ATMs up to date with cutting edge technology. However, this is not the case as over 95 percent of the ATMs run on an operating system which was released initially about 13 years ago that is Windows XP. Microsoft will stop supporting the historic operating system on April 8 this year after which it will be officially declared dead. According to Symantec researchers, this will affect the banks heavily. What can be the reason for banks to not upgrade to a new OS in ATMs? Clearly, shortage of funds is not something that is associated with banks.
The users and the banks have already been warned by Microsoft and hackers are eagerly waiting for the day when support will be withdrawn. Microsoft will neither issue any more patches nor will it investigate the flaws any further after that.
It could be as easy as to send an SMS through a mobile sharing the internet connection of the ATM machine to collect the cash from the ATMs. The Trojan threat named as “Backdoor.Ploutus.B” is an English variant of its earlier Mexican version called “Backdoor.Ploutus” which used an external keyboard to send commands. How does it work? The hacker attaches a mobile phone in the compromised ATM running on Windows XP using USB tethering which creates a shared Internet connection for ATM and mobile phone to connect to the servers of the bank. Then the hacker sends SMS commands to the connected phone which converts the commands in proper network packets that are sent through the ATM to the bank servers. The servers think that the request for cash is legitimately coming from a properly working ATM thus releases the cash to be collected by the hacker.


Two SMSs are required to carry out this hack successfully:
“SMS 1 must contain a valid activation ID in order to enable Ploutus in the ATM.”
“SMS 2 must contain a valid dispense command to get the money out.”
Symantec suggest a number of measures that can be taken to make the ATMs more secure from Ploutus attacks. Symantec writes:
“Upgrading to a supported operating system such as Windows 7 or 8
Providing adequate physical protection and considering CCTV monitoring for the ATM
Locking down the BIOS to prevent booting from unauthorized media, such as CD ROMs or USB sticks
Using full disk encryption to help prevent disk tampering
Using a system lock down solution such as Symantec Data Center Security: Server Advanced (previously known as Critical System Protection)”



Hackers create drone that can steal What’s inside your phone

By : Unknown
At this point of time, most of smartphones are loaded with an important function that requires Hackers of London have created a drone that is proficient in taking data consists of locations and passwords directly from your smartphone.
The drone uses a codename “Snoopy” that targets busy city streets and specific phones switched on while using the WiFi settings and it is also an advantage for the drone that it uses the common smartphone features and thus, it continuously searches for the networks that are already approved and accessed by a user.
The developer of Snoopy, Glenn Wilkinson said in a report of CNN that whenever users will connect their smartphones to Snoopy, they will be shouting and noisily. There shouting would be like this, are you there Starbucks? Are you there McDonald’s?

 Onboard software of snoopy then tries to be a part of the networks that are approved and connects to more than one secured devices at a time, acting as different networks. After connecting to the quadcopter, Snoopy seizes each transmission sent or received by a phone.
After stopping the individual media access control address of a phone, Snoopy is capable of seeing and recording data of sensitive nature such as location, username, passwords or even information about credit card that is more often accessed by accounts or websites.
“I can have a look at all of your traffic after your phone connects to me, “said by Wilkinson.” I’ve gone through the situation where somebody is searching for ‘Bank X’ cooperate Wi-Fi. In this way, we can be informed that that the concerned person is working at the bank.
While giving an interview to CNN, Snoopy revealed multiple users of smartphones about how they were attacked by the drone, and within the space of an hour gathered the sensitive information and real time GPS location of about 150 smartphones. It also collected their Yahoo, Amazon and PayPal accounts created for testing purpose.
Daniel Cuthbert and Wilkinson, both belong to SensePost Information security a London based company developed Snoopy, have a plan of presenting their achievements at the cybersecurity conference named as Black Hat Asia which to be held in Singapore at 25th March.
Like lots of other companies of information security, SensePost completed a test to show the weak points of the technology that we use on daily basis. It is an important research that is being considered as very helpful in preventing the attack of drones.
permission for the side of the user before entering into a network. It is needed that this function must certainly be switched on after the research of SensePost.

Share and Enjoy

Hackers have hacked 300000+ wireless routers, Check yours NOW!

By : Unknown
Hackers have hacked 300000+ wireless routers, Check yours NOW!
Hackers near by you could hack your router and redirect to the custom Malicious websites, according to a report at least 300,000 routers compromised by hackers.
Small Office/Home Office (SOHO) routers produced by TP-Link, D-Link, Micronet and Tenda affected through the Weak authentication and vulnerabilities in both the routers’ firmware and their web application interfaces were all exploited in the attacks, reported by security team Cymru.
Hackers attacking Routers:

To hack a router, one of the vulnerability used was a cross-site request forgery flaw- Whenever a user visited a malicious website, router authentication was hendled to the hackers. Image below helps you to describe the attack:
Some of the known flaw also exploited by hackers in ZyXEL ZynOS firmware on the routers, which meant to download the credentials directly from the device by using an unauthenticated web interface for the machines. Hackers also caught up that they changing the domain name system (DNS) configrautions on the devices, by which user easily rediercted to any of the Malicious URL that attacker wants to. Most of the victims of the attack were based in Vietnam, although other victims lived in Italy, India and Thailand. The attacks date back to at least mid-December. It appears the UK came away relatively unscathed, even though there were many victims across Europe

Main motive of hackers is still unclear, for what they are attacking routers because the IP addresses the victims were forwarded on to did not appear to contain anything obviously malicious. According to Team Cymru hackers using these type f techniques to send victims to fake sites, where they could get your financial information ‘n all. You should check yours NOW! 
Share and Enjoy 

- Copyright © Virus Bhabhi - Expeet Outsourcing - - - - Designed by Expeet Outsourcing -