It costs less than $60. For just a few bucks, you can pick up a USB stick that destroys almost anything that it’s plugged into. Laptops, PCs, televisions, photo booths — you name it. Once a proof-of-concept, the pocket-sized USB stick now fits in any security tester’s repertoire of tools and hacks, says the Hong … Read More “USB Kill Stick” »
Category: malware
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We have leak from yet another cyberweapons arms manufacturer: the Italian company RCS Labs. Vice Motherboard reports on a surveillance video demo: The video shows an RCS Lab employee performing a live demo of the company’s spyware to an unidentified man, including a tutorial on how to use the spyware’s control software to perform a … Read More “Leaked Product Demo from RCS Labs” »
Both Kaspersky and Symantec have uncovered another piece of malware that seems to be a government design: The malware — known alternatively as “ProjectSauron” by researchers from Kaspersky Lab and “Remsec” by their counterparts from Symantec — has been active since at least 2011 and has been discovered on 30 or so targets. Its ability … Read More “Yet Another Government-Sponsored Malware” »
EFF has the story of malware from the Kazakhstan government against “journalists and political activists critical of Kazakhstan’s authoritarian government, along with their family members, lawyers, and associates.” Powered by WPeMatico
Citizen Lab has a new report on an Iranian government hacking program that targets dissidents. From a Washington Post op-ed by Ron Deibert: Al-Ameer is a net savvy activist, and so when she received a legitimate looking email containing a PowerPoint attachment addressed to her and purporting to detail “Assad Crimes,” she could easily have … Read More “How the Iranian Government Hacks Dissidents” »
Andrew “bunnie” Huang and Edward Snowden have designed a smartphone case that detects unauthorized transmissions by the phone. Paper. Three news articles. Looks like a clever design. Of course, it has to be outside the device; otherwise, it could be compromised along with the device. Note that this is still in the research design stage; … Read More “Detecting When a Smartphone Has Been Compromised” »
Here are two essays trying to understand NSA malware and how it works, in light of the enormous number of documents released by Der Spiegel recently. Powered by WPeMatico
No one has admitted taking down North Korea’s Internet. It could have been an act of retaliation by the US government, but it could just as well have been an ordinary DDoS attack. The follow-on attack against Sony PlayStation definitely seems to be the work of hackers unaffiliated with a government. Not knowing who did … Read More “Attributing the Sony Attack” »
An analysis of the timestamps on some of the leaked documents shows that they were downloaded at USB 2.0 speeds — which implies an insider. Our Gotnews.com investigation into the data that has been released by the “hackers” shows that someone at Sony was copying 182GB at minimum the night of the 21st — the … Read More “More Data on Attributing the Sony Attack” »
Citizen Lab has a new report on a probable ISIS-launched cyberattack: This report describes a malware attack with circumstantial links to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. In the interest of highlighting a developing threat, this post analyzes the attack and provides a list of Indicators of Compromise. A Syrian citizen media group critical … Read More “ISIS Cyberattacks” »