Monthly Archives: March 2017
Inside The TalkTalk 'Indian Scam Call Center'
Over a Hundred Thousand Printers Simultaneously Ghost Printed Goofy ASCII Art
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Printers are everywhere, but they’re not exactly the sort of device that we pay especial attention to when it comes to our businesses IT security infrastructure. In reality, corporate networks of printers that are not properly protected could end up being one of the company’s biggest security gaps.
A spectacular example of this can be found in an apparently mysterious event that recently affected more than 160,000 printers all over the world. Without warning, every one of them printed the same document, which warned that the printer in question would now be part of a bot network. In short, the printer had been infected and now seemed to respond only to orders coming from its new cybercriminal master.
Whatevs, flaming botnet. I DON’T EVEN LIKE THE OFFICE PRINTER. @lmaostack pic.twitter.com/UKxE9aKxCL
— Stephanie Sanchez (@IAmStephanieS) February 6, 2017
A Warning in the Form of a Joke
As it turns out, behind this singular attack was Stackoverflowin, an enigmatic hacker who explained that the whole thing was a joke intended to raise awareness of printers’ vulnerabilities. “It was kind of on impulse,” he acknowledged. As he explained, he was looking to raise awareness of how dangerous it is to expose connected printers to the public internet without a firewall or other tools.
In order for the humor of this singular attack to be noticed, the hacker’s warning came with a fun robot drawn with ASCII art. But jokes aside, the situation really is quite serious: printers of every kind and from all over the world have fallen into Stackoverflowin’s trap.
To achieve this, the hacker developed a script able to track printers connected to the Internet with one of its ports open. Using the open port, he was able to order the device to print the enigmatic document.
However, it is actually quite simple to heed Stackoverflowin’s warning and fix the problem. Just make sure that the ports on the printer network have a secure password and that all devices on your corporate network are covered by the right protection to avoid cyberattacks that, next time, may not be so friendly.
In case this wasn’t enough, a group of German researchers has published a study that shows that numerous printer security flaws can be exploited to access the memory of these devices and steal data such as passwords or even confidential documents. So check your printers! This is an issue that we collectively need to take more seriously, and these potentially vulnerabilities are worth looking into.
The post Over a Hundred Thousand Printers Simultaneously Ghost Printed Goofy ASCII Art appeared first on Panda Security Mediacenter.
Protecting real trust and truth in a virtual world
People often trust their social media contacts more than traditional advertising, and more readily believe everything from restaurant reviews to political opinions when it comes from a social network. An amusing or tragic anecdote that may not be representative of any trend has a better chance of going viral than a well-reported story with lots of analysis and facts. As always, there are marketers, abusers, propagandists, and outright criminals who are quick to exploit these psychological biases. The person who attacks you over a political tweet may be a paid troll or a robot. The spam you ignored in your inbox is now served into a trusted social media feed. The phishing attacks and malicious links you’d never click on in an anonymous email may now appear as a recommendation from a good friend, or a celebrity you admire. These attacks may even be customized by AI to target you perfectly, the way you get shopping or movie recommendations.
10 ways to ruin a cybercriminal’s day
Technology is affecting our relationships and changing our lives, but are we taking the necessary measures to protect ourselves online? Here’s how to outsmart cybercriminals.
The post 10 ways to ruin a cybercriminal’s day appeared first on WeLiveSecurity
From Shamoon to StoneDrill – Advanced New Destructive Malware Discovered in the Wild by Kaspersky Lab
The Kaspersky Lab Global Research and Analysis Team has discovered a new sophisticated wiper malware, called StoneDrill. Just like another infamous wiper, Shamoon, it destroys everything on the infected computer.
New Fileless Malware Uses DNS Queries To Receive PowerShell Commands
It is no secret that cybercriminals are becoming dramatically more adept, innovative, and stealthy with each passing day.
While new forms of cybercrime are on the rise, traditional activities seem to be shifting towards more clandestine techniques that involve the exploitation of standard system tools and protocols, which are not always monitored.
The latest example of such attack is
Entrepreneur Bus Booking Script 3.03 SQL Injection
Entrepreneur Bus Booking script version 3.03 suffers from a remote SQL injection vulnerability.
Naukri Clone Script 3.02 SQL Injection
Naukri Clone script version 3.02 suffers from a remote SQL injection vulnerability.
Yellow Pages Clone 1.3.4 SQL Injection
Yellow Pages Clone script version 1.3.4 suffers from a remote SQL injection vulnerability.