UK ISPs block several pirate domains

Piracy is a global concern and the entertainment industry world over has been fighting the menace of the pirated stuff that adversely impacts their business. Despite their attempts to keep piracy at bay, piracy is only becoming more common. There, however seems some relief for the makers of the original thing, at least in the United Kingdom.

Since April 2012, several of these producers of the original works such as the BPI, MPA and book publishers have been successfully obtaining court orders getting the ISPs block various pirated sites. Premier League is the latest entrant and ah successfully got Row Sports blocked. As per the court ruling in April 2012, Pirate Bay was the first website to be blocked. Since then there have been 100s of ISPs that have been subsequently blocked.

The latest blocking order has mandated the various Internet Service Providers, including the six major ISPs of the United Kingdom to block 90 more domains. The domains blocked under this order and also the previous ones belong to torrent sharing websites, pirated and illegal video streaming websites and unauthorised broadcasting services.

The order also mandates blocking of duplicate and mirror websites of the originally banned websites. The entertainment industry majors who have got these blocking orders against such websites can add domain names to the list and the ISPs have to block them.

Every year entertainment industry loses out on millions of dollars globally and has to suffer due to piracy. The requirement to take stringent steps against such illegal mediums such as pirate websites is high and it is about time when such court orders are taken seriously by the ISPs.

But, the entire process has a catch. Several times the domains are blocked without proper notification to the users who are bemused to suddenly see these websites being blocked on their screens when they try to access them.

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by Malik korrich ~ mercredi 21 octobre 2015 0 commentaires

One Of The Most Common Passwords In The World Is 123456 | Ashley Madison |

Ashley Madison is a popular dating website that has been frequently accused of enticing married individuals to cheat on their partners and find partners on the website for dating. On 19^th August 2015, “The Impact Team” a hacking group penetrated the website and extracted information about the users of the website of Ashley Madison.

They posted details of who the users are on online forums. Apart from this information they also posted login ids and passwords of 11.7million Ashley Madison users. The list of the users leaked online included regular people with some of them in very high position.

These people were negatively affected by the leak and now have their reputation tarnished. Among the passwords posted on the online forums, there are some very common and easy to guess passwords. These passwords were cracked using MD5 algorithm. It also shows that among 11.7 million users, just 4.86 million had used unique passwords. Others used very simple passwords that 

can be cracked easily by using various brute force methods.

These passwords include:

·         123456

·         12345

·         password

·         DEFAULT

·         123456789

·         qwerty

·         12345678

·         abc123

·         pussy

·         1234567

These passwords are some very common passwords and therefore it is very easy to crack them by using the trial and error methods used by brute force techniques.

It shows that these users took their security lightly and were not bothered to use more secure passwords.

The incident brings to light two important points – the safety of the passwords used by people commonly and how safe are websites like Ashley Madison?

The first point about the safety of the passwords shows that people are not bothered and do not think that they can be affected. It is the reason why websites make it mandatory to use alpha-numeric and character combinations for the passwords which was clearly missing in the case of Ashley Madison.

The second point shows the vulnerability of sites like these and hence people must avoid using them.

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by Malik korrich ~ vendredi 16 octobre 2015 0 commentaires

Anonymous Says It’s World War 3 Are They Sure ? | Anonymous | World War 3 |

In a video posted on YouTube by the hacktivist group Anonymous, it’s been said that the current global geo-political turmoil is nothing else but World War 3. Anonymous might have nailed it and their arguments sound logical.

Anonymous has made several claims in its video and has backed it with evidences such as interviews of former top officials and other scientific facts that cannot be simply ignored. The hactivist group has said that there are major political powers behind the origin of instabilities in many parts of the world and especially in the Middle-East.

The video shows an interview of Hilary Clinton stating how the US governments have in the past funded rebels in countries like Afghanistan. These rebels then turned into jihadists and attacked USA and American forces. Taliban is an example of this where the US governments supported the rebels against the former USSR. United States wanted to control the Middle-East and South-East Asia and at the peak of Cold War in the 80s, it was the focal point of the government to reduce the influence of the USSR in this region and exert its own control.

But, soon after these rebels supported by the US turned their weapons (given to them by the US government) on to their former masters. The attack on the twin towers on 9/11 is an example. But the video also claims the validity of the attack. According to one conspiracy theory stated in the video, it has doubted the claim that the burning jet fuel of the planes hitting the twin towers melted the steel body of the buildings. The video claims that the heating point of jet fuel is much lower than the melting point of the steel.

There are various conspiracy theories doing the round. But one fact cannot be denied is that the disturbance caused by groups like Taliban and ISIS and the problems between countries such as Russia-Ukraine, Iran-Iraq, Israel-Palestine and other countries could be flashpoints of a larger global war – World War 3.

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by Malik korrich ~ mercredi 14 octobre 2015 0 commentaires

Edward Cryptickiller Creates The Biggest Wordlist Containing 4.9 Million Passwords | Wordlist | Hacking |

Online threats, it seems despite all the security measures have only been increasing. Although there are significant efforts from the various governments and also the fact that the world now has more cyber security experts than ever before, the security threats only seem to increase exponentially.

In recent times we have seen a lot of hacks on government websites and other social media websites where the cyber criminals have posted millions of ids and passwords online. A very recent threat has been the creation of the biggest wordlist ever created. It has been created by Edward Cryptickiller and has very 4.9 million passwords in the list.

The list is pretty comprehensive and is very useful for cyber criminals who can easily download the list from the website of Edward Cryptkiller and use if for brute force attacks. The list contains frequently used passwords and it cans easily crack even the most complicated and encrypted of the ids.

A brute force attack tries several passwords in an automated manner one after the other till it inserts the right password in the password field. At this point, the password is cracked and the attacker gets an access to the login credentials of the users.

There seems to be an immediate need to counter such threats. With the growing use of the internet, more than half of the world’s population is online. It also means that their confidential and sensitive information is also online and its security is threatened by such cyber criminals.

The rising threat of terrorism has resulted in a kind of cyber terrorism who are much more dangerous than the regular cyber criminals. They target not just individuals but also governments. The need of the hour is to counter this threat immediately and take corrective steps to reduce the menace they create.

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by Malik korrich ~ dimanche 4 octobre 2015 0 commentaires

10,000 routers hacked and have become more secure | Wifi-Hacking |

In a surprising and unprecedented incident, 10,000 home based routers have been hacked and in a surprising turn of events, these routers have become more secure. It seems that the malware has been implemented by a White Hat hacker who intends to identify vulnerability in the routers and prompt the users to address the security related issues and change their passwords. According to Symantec, the application cleans the routers of any suspicious malware and then asks the users to change their password to something more complicated.

Malware is a term that is generally has a negative connotation and hence a malware capable of improving security of a system is something unheard of. The name of the application is Wifatch software and gets installed on Linux operating system based routers. It works through a peer to peer network and when it detects a Telnet port which is vulnerable, the application shuts down the port. Telnet ports generally have easy to crack passwords and are therefore highly vulnerable to attacks.

Wifatch updates the firmware of the routers and asks the users for changing the passwords. It also has a module for detecting common malwares and therefore efficiently identifies them and eliminate them. The application is highly effective against DDoS or distributed denial of service attacks carried out by other malwares.

A signature included in the email belongs to Richard Stallman, a supporter of free software. It does seem that the authors of the code intentionally did not hide it so that everyone can look at the code. Mario Ballano, a Symantec researcher has however stated that although Wifatch has good intentions, the methods used by it is similar to that of a malware and therefore they will consider the application as a malware although unlike other malwares, it does not breach the security but enhances it.

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by Malik korrich ~ samedi 3 octobre 2015 0 commentaires

Release of Kali Linux 2.0 announced and it much more powerful than ever before!

The version 2.0 of the Debian based Linux distribution has been released and offers a much more efficient and effective user interface, updates and powerful tools. This version of Kali was released by offensive Security, who in the past have released ‘Swiss Army Knife’ a powerful tool for security researchers, ethical hackers and penetration testers.

The latest version of Kali, also code named Kali Sana is an open source platform useful for testing several security vulnerabilities in a computer network. Kali 2.0 packs several hacking, forensic, reverse engineering and penetration testing tools into a single powerful Linux distribution package.

The Linux distribution system is based on the open end Debian. Debian is an operating system and distribution system for Linux and is based on UNIX. The latest version of Kali comes packed with a much snappier and crisp user interface, powerful tools and rolling updates. The rolling updates are available not just for Kali but also for the individual tools. It means that if you are using this Linux distribution system and its power tools, you will always have the latest updates available to you. 

What it will ensure it is that users always work on the cutting edge tools when using Kali.

The user interface is highly epigrammatic, user friendly and intuitive. It has all the tools docked onto the side of the screen instead of them being arranged as a menu item which is otherwise tiring to browse.

Kali Linux 2.0 runs on Linux Kernel version 4.0, uses full Gnome 3 Desktop, supports 2.0 version of Ruby and includes a horde of highly sophisticated wireless penetration tools. Kali also supports various desktop environments, displays desktop notifications for updates for the tools and has a bundled screen recording tool enabling users to record their desktops. 

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by Malik korrich ~ samedi 15 août 2015 0 commentaires

Most wanted cybercriminal by the FBI is also responsible for spying on the US government

One of the most notorious cybercriminal who uses the alias Slavik is also linked with the Russian espionage of the US government agencies. Slavik is one of the ‘Most Wanted’ cybercriminal by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

In the summer last year, Slavik, whose real name is Evgeniy Bogachev was linked with infecting thousands of computers around the world with his botnet ‘Gameover Zeus’. The cyber gang that Slavik operated siphoned of millions of dollars from around the world through several cybercrime attacks using the botnet created by Slavik.

This included theft of over US$ 100 million from several banks from around the world and US$ 27 million in ransom. The gang used several methods such as the phishing attacks, online extortion of money, various types of online scams, fraudulent money making scheme and other such methods to steal the bank account details of thousands of people. They also infected computers of over 250,000 people around the world and demanded ransom to be paid for releasing control over their computers. This is how they collected over US$ 27 million in ransom. This malware was termed as the Cryptolocker Ransomware.

The network was eventually brought down in June 2014 after FBI and the United States Justice Department partnered with several law enforcement agencies from several nations in a bid to bring down this notorious network of cybercriminals and hunt down their kingpin Evgeniy Bogachev alias Slavik. Once the cryptolocker of Slavik was shut down and further investigations were conducted, it was identified that Slavik and his gang as well as his clients were hunting for information about government agencies of several countries including US.

It is believed that Slavik was doing this on the behest of the Russian government. A bounty of US$ 3 million has been announced on information that will lead to the arrest of Slavik.

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by Malik korrich ~ 0 commentaires

Malware that can hack Facebook accounts infected over one million users(facebook hacking)

Over one million users were affected by malware that hacked into the Facebook accounts of these users. The malware was a part of two gaming applications and hence the spread reached over a million since these were relatively popular gaming applications.

These games are ‘Cowboy Adventure’ and ‘Jump Chess’. The malware is a Trojan named Android/Spy.Feabme.A and it collected the login ids and passwords of the users who installed it. 

These two applications were used to get the Facebook login credentials of the users and the malware could collect details of around a million accounts before it was detected.

The apps contained malware codes in a subtle way. It means that the gaming applications functioned normally and the users could actually enjoyed playing the game unaware of the fact that the applications contained malware.

The malware used a phishing mechanism to get the user details. It will open a fake Facebook screen asking users to enter their login details. The applications did not ask for account details at the time of installation and hence users would not suspect any malware activity. However, since it would open a face Facebook page, users would login in their details and would get an error that they are unable to login.

However, the details would get captured by the malware embedded in the application which would then be used to log into user accounts. The spread of malware was more than anything similar that has happened before. The applications could successfully get the approval from Google for getting published on Google Play Store.

Since the malware has been detected, the apps have been removed from the play store; however it was done only after affecting around a million Facebook accounts. Also, if someone tries to install these apps from some other store, Google issues a warning to them communicating about the malware in the application.

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by Malik korrich ~ mardi 14 juillet 2015 0 commentaires

whatsapp and other messenger might be banned by the United Kingdom government #whatsapp

It was decades ago that George Orwell predicted in his novel 1984 that the governments will be involved in the surveillance of its own citizens and the same is now proposed by the UK government which mandates that all social media messenger service providers to switch off their end to end encryption services thereby allowing the government to access the details of the messages, communication and chat history and other details of the users.

If the service providers do not comply with this requirements, their services would be banned in the UK. The new law shall be a part of the Investigatory Powers Bill which is termed as the Snooper’s Charter and it was mentioned by the Queen in her Speech in the current year. The bill, if passed will empower the government to bar the services of the instant messenger applications which do not comply with this guideline of the government.

Messengers like the Facebook messenger, WhatsApp, SnapChat and iMessage will come under the purview of the new law which is already in the parliament and which might be applicable later this year. According to the British Prime Minister David Cameron, such a law is essential to ensure the safety of the citizens of the UK. He stated this in the context of the attack on the French Newspaper Charlie Hebdo.

The major intent behind this law is to make it mandatory for the service providers of these messengers to record all the messages and activities that take place on their network. The growing threat of terrorism is the reason cited for such laws world over; however such laws only infringe with the personal lives of the citizens in their respective countries thereby imposing a surveillance system on them that will infringe into their privacy. 

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by Malik korrich ~ 0 commentaires

Barack Obama’s official website defaced by a Yemeni hacker(#obama)

The webpage my.barackobama.com that is a part of United
States’ President Barack Obama has been hacked by a Yemini hacker that uses the
name Lov3rDns. The webpage is a part of President Barack Obama’s official social
media website barackobama.com.


The hacker hacked into the webpage and defaced it by posting
messages that were derogatory in nature and targeted President Obama. The hacker
wrote on the page asking Barack Obama to leave Yemen alone. The same hacker had
earlier targeted Saudi Arabia and leaked confidential information of Saudi
Arabia, like the communication between the country’s embassies online.

Lov3rDns is also believed to have been involved in the
hacking activities that hacked websites of MIT, AVG Security, Coca Cola, Joomla
blog, Mcafee website, MSN’s Portugal domain, Firefox and Avast Security. This
shows that this hacker is no ordinary hacker and has been involved in some
serious stuff that has disrupted the services of several major websites.

The website of President Obama was also hacked earlier in
2014 by the Syrian Electronic Army, a hacking group supported by Pro-Assad
hackers. The website has been accessed and used by more than 35,000 groups who
have created around 20,000 events at the time of the Presidential campaign of
Barack Obama. Since his victory, the website is his official social media
website.

Hacking attacks like these reveal the vulnerabilities of the
websites of even the most powerful people in the world. It is a growing concern
that such hacks are becoming common and are being used as a means of protest
against the governments of various nations world over.


Governments and large organisations have taken a notice of
such instances and have been building measures to counter such attacks.
However, these measures are still not efficient enough to prevent such
activities
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by Malik korrich ~ 0 commentaires