Cybersecurity researchers have decoded the mechanism by which the versatile Qakbot banking trojan handles the insertion of encrypted configuration data into the Windows Registry. Qakbot, also known as QBot, QuackBot and Pinkslipbot, has been observed in the wild since 2007. Although mainly fashioned as an information-stealing malware, Qakbot has since shifted its goals and acquired …
A new analysis of website fingerprinting (WF) attacks aimed at the Tor web browser has revealed that it’s possible for an adversary to glean a website frequented by a victim, but only in scenarios where the threat actor is interested in a specific subset of the websites visited by users. “While attacks can exceed 95% …
In a huge sting operation, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Australian Federal Police (AFP) ran an “encrypted chat” service called ANoM for almost 3 years to intercept 27 million messages between criminal gang members globally. Dubbed Operation Ironside (AFP), Operation Greenlight (Europol), and Operation Trojan Shield (FBI), the long-term covert probe into …
The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) on Friday announced an indictment against Jean-Francois Eap, the CEO of encrypted messaging company Sky Global, and an associate for wilfully participating in a criminal enterprise to help international drug traffickers avoid law enforcement. Eap (also known as “888888”) and Thomas Herdman, a former high-level distributor of Sky Global …
In a joint operation, European and British law enforcement agencies recently arrested hundreds of alleged drug dealers and other criminals after infiltrating into a global network of an encrypted chatting app that was used to plot drug deals, money laundering, extortions, and even murders. Dubbed EncroChat, the top-secret encrypted communication app comes pre-installed on a …
A team of cybersecurity researchers has disclosed a new severe vulnerability affecting most Linux and Unix-like operating systems, including FreeBSD, OpenBSD, macOS, iOS, and Android, that could allow remote ‘network adjacent attackers’ to spy on and tamper with encrypted VPN connections. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2019-14899, resides in the networking stacks of various operating systems …
When you visit a new website, your computer probably submits a request to the domain name system (DNS) to translate the domain name (like arstechnica.com) to an IP address. Currently, most DNS queries are unencrypted, which raises privacy and security concerns. Google and Mozilla are trying to address these concerns by adding support in their browsers …
Over a billion Bluetooth-enabled devices, including smartphones, laptops, smart IoT devices, and industrial devices, have been found vulnerable to a high severity vulnerability that could allow attackers to spy on data transmitted between the two devices. The vulnerability, assigned as CVE-2019-9506, resides in the way ‘encryption key negotiation protocol’ lets two Bluetooth BR/EDR devices choose …
Matrix—the organization behind an open source project that offers a protocol for secure and decentralized real-time communication—has suffered a massive cyber attack after unknown attackers gained access to the servers hosting its official website and data. Hackers defaced Matrix’s website, and also stole unencrypted private messages, password hashes, access tokens, as well as GPG keys …
Mozilla has made it easy for you to share large files securely and privately with whomever you want, eliminating the need to depend upon less secure free third-party services or file upload tools that burn a hole in your pocket. Mozilla has finally launched its free, end-to-end encrypted file-transfer service, called Firefox Send, to the …