The Hacker News — Cyber Security and Hacking News Website: website security
Chinese Certificate Authority 'mistakenly' gave out SSL Certs for GitHub Domains
A Chinese certificate authority (CA) appeared to be making a significant security blunder by handing out duplicate SSL certificates for a base domain if someone just has control over its any subdomain. The certificate authority, named WoSign , issued a base certificate for the Github domains to an unnamed GitHub user. But How? First of all, do you know, the traditional Digital Certificate Management System is the weakest link on the Internet today and has already been broken? Billions of Internet users blindly rely on hundreds of Certificate Authorities (CA) around the globe to ensure the confidentiality and integrity of their personal data. But, these CAs have powers to issue valid SSL cert for any domain you own, despite the fact you already have one purchased from another CA. ...and that's the biggest loophole in the CA system. In the latest case as well, WoSign issued a duplicate SSL certificate for GitHub domains without verifying ownership of the base domain.
4 Flaws hit HTTP/2 Protocol that could allow Hackers to Disrupt Servers
If you think that the HTTP/2 protocol is more secure than the standard HTTP ( Hypertext Transfer Protocol ), then you might be wrong, as it took researchers just four months to discover four flaws in the HTTP/2 protocol. HTTP/2 was launched properly just in May last year after Google bundled its SPDY project into HTTP/2 in February in an effort to speed up the loading of web pages as well as the browsing experience of the online users. Now, security researchers from data center security vendor Imperva today at Black Hat conference revealed details on at least four high-profile vulnerabilities in HTTP/2 – a major revision of the HTTP network protocol that the today's web is based on. The vulnerabilities allow attackers to slow web servers by flooding them with innocent looking messages that carry a payload of gigabytes of data, putting the servers into infinite loops and even causing them to crash. The HTTP/2 protocol can be divided into three layers: The transmissio
Several Critical Remotely Exploitable Flaws Found in Drupal Modules, patch ASAP!
The extraordinary ' Panama Papers leak ' from Law firm Mossack Fonseca that exposed the tax-avoiding efforts by the world's richest and most influential members was initially believed to be the result of an unpatched vulnerability in the popular content management systems: Drupal and WordPress. Now, we are quite sure that the Panama Papers, which implicated 72 current and former heads of state, was due to vulnerabilities in Drupal and WordPress that allowed hackers to get into the law firm's system and stole over 11.5 Million files (around 2.6 Terabytes of data). The Drupal Security Team has announced that critical patches to address several security issues in Drupal contributed modules, including several highly critical Remote Code Execution (RCE) vulnerabilities, will be released today at 16:00 UTC. According to an advisory, the critical arbitrary remote PHP code execution vulnerability ( PSA-2016-001 ) affects up to 10000 Drupal websites. However, "Drupal c
Pornhub Launches Bug Bounty Program; Offering Reward up to $25,000
With the growing number of cyber attacks and data breaches, a significant number of companies and organizations have started Bug Bounty Programs to encourage hackers and security researchers to find and responsibly report bugs in their services and get a reward. Now, even pornography sites are starting to embrace bug bounty practices in order to safeguard its user's security. The world's most popular pornography site PornHub has launched a bug bounty program for security researchers and bug hunters who can find and report security vulnerabilities in its website. Partnered with HackerOne, PornHub is offering to pay independent security researchers and bug hunters between $50 and $25,000, depending upon the impact of vulnerabilities they find. Also Read: 10-year-old Boy becomes the youngest Bug Bounty Hacker . HackeOne is a bug bounty startup that operates bug bounty programs for companies including Yahoo, Twitter, Slack, Dropbox, Uber, General Motors – and even th
High-Severity OpenSSL Vulnerability allows Hackers to Decrypt HTTPS Traffic
May 05, 2016Mohit Kumar
OpenSSL has released a series of patches against six vulnerabilities, including a pair of high-severity flaws that could allow attackers to execute malicious code on a web server as well as decrypt HTTPS traffic . OpenSSL is an open-source cryptographic library that is the most widely being used by a significant portion of the Internet services; to cryptographically protect their sensitive Web and e-mail traffic using the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) or Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol. One of the high-severity flaws, CVE-2016-2107 , allows a man-in-the-middle attacker to initiate a " Padding Oracle Attack " that can decrypt HTTPS traffic if the connection uses AES-CBC cipher and the server supports AES-NI. A Padding Oracle flaw weakens the encryption protection by allowing attackers to repeatedly request plaintext data about an encrypted payload content. The Padding Oracle flaw ( exploit code ) was discovered by Juraj Somorovsky using his own developed tool c
Google makes it mandatory for Chrome Apps to tell Users what Data they collect
In Brief Chrome apps and extensions make things easier, but they can also do terrible things like spy on web users and collect their personal data. But, now Google has updated its browser's User Data Policy requiring all Chrome extension and app developers to disclose what data they collect. Furthermore, developers are prohibited from collecting unnecessary browsing data and must also use encryption when handling sensitive information from users. Around 40 percent of all Google Chrome users have some kind of browser extensions, plugins or add-ons installed, but how safe are they? The company plans to enforce developers starting this summer, to "ensure transparent use of the data in a way that is consistent with the wishes and expectations of users." Google is making its Chrome Web Store safer for its users by forcing developers to disclose how they handle customers' data. Google's new User Data Policy will now force app developers, who use the Chrome We
More than 1 Million Websites Install Free SSL Certificate (and Counting...)
March 09, 2016Swati Khandelwal
Let's Encrypt has achieved another big milestone by issuing 1 million free Transport Layer Security (TLS) SSL Certificates to webmasters who wish to secure the communications between their users and domains. Let's Encrypt – operated by the Internet Security Research Group (ISRG) – is an absolutely free, and open source certificate authority recognized by all major browsers , including Google's Chrome, Mozilla's Firefox and Microsoft's Internet Explorer. It is just three months and five days since Let's Encrypt launched a beta version of the service, and the group has crossed 1 Million certificates in use across the Web, Let's Encrypt said in a blog post on Tuesday. Let's Encrypt allows anyone to obtain Free SSL/TLS (Secure Socket Layer/Transport Layer Security) certificates for their web servers. Backed by companies including EFF, Akamai and Mozilla, the Let's Encrypt project started offering Free HTTPS certs to everyone fro
Critical Flaws in Magento leave Millions of E-Commerce Sites at Risk
January 27, 2016Swati Khandelwal
If you are using Magento to run your e-commerce website, it's time for you to update the CMS ( content management system ) now. Millions of online merchants are at risk of hijacking attacks due to a number of critical cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities in the Magento, the most popular e-commerce platform owned by eBay. Why the Bugs are So Serious? Virtually all versions of Magento Community Edition 1.9.2.2 and earlier as well as Enterprise Edition 1.14.2.2 and earlier, are vulnerable to the Stored Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) flaws. The stored XSS flaws are awful as they allow attackers to: Effectively take over a Magento-based online store Escalate user privileges Siphon customers' data Steal credit card information Control the website via administrator accounts However, the good news is that the vulnerabilities are patched, and an update has been made available to the public after security firm Sucuri discovered and privately reported the v
How to Install Let's Encrypt Free SSL Certificate On Your Website
Another Big Milestone – Let's Encrypt is now offering Free HTTPS certificates to everyone. Let's Encrypt has opened to the public, allowing anyone to obtain Free SSL/TLS ( Secure Socket Layer/Transport Layer Security ) certificates for their web servers and to set up HTTPS websites in a few simple steps ( mentioned below ). Let's Encrypt – an initiative run by the Internet Security Research Group (ISRG) – is a new, free, and open certificate authority recognized by all major browsers , including Google's Chrome, Mozilla's Firefox and Microsoft's Internet Explorer. The Free SSL Certification Authority is now in public beta after testing a trial among a select group of volunteers. Why Let's Encrypt? Let's Encrypt promised to offer a certificate authority (CA) which is: Free – no charge for HTTPS certs. Automatic – the installation, configuration as well as the renewal of the certificates do not require any administrator a
Linux Ransomware targeting Servers and Threatening Webmasters to Pay
Since past few years, Ransomware has emerged as one of the catastrophic malware programs that lets hacker encrypts all the contents of a victim's hard drive or/and server and demands ransom (typically to be paid in Bitcoin ) in exchange for a key to decrypt it. Until now cyber criminals were targeting computers, smartphones and tablets, but now it appears they are creating ransomware that makes the same impact but for Web Sites – specifically holding files, pages and images of the target website for Ransom. Dubbed Linux.Encoder.1 by Russian antivirus firm Dr.Web , the new strain of ransomware targets Linux-powered websites and servers by encrypting MySQL, Apache, and home/root folders associated with the target site and asking for 1 Bitcoin ( ~ $300 ) to decrypt the files. The ransomware threat is delivered to the target website through known vulnerabilities in website plugins or third-party software. Must Read: FBI Suggests Ransomware Victims — 'Just Pay th
When a 'Hacker News' Reader Tricked Me into visiting this Amazing Site (Don't Click at Work)
My usual bed routine is to check comments under my articles before I go to sleep. The same I was doing last night, but something weird happened to me. Someone posted a mysterious short link without any text below one of my articles on our official 'The Hacker News' Facebook Page , and with the curiosity to check that link I visited that website. And what I saw… One by one my every single account I logged in into my web browser got automatically logged out just in few seconds in front of my eyes. This is exactly what Super Logout does. Log Out All Your Accounts in Just One Click Yes, Super Logout – a website that logs you out of over 30 major Internet services just in one click. You can visit 'Super Logout' here . ( Note : Once clicked, this will log you out instantly from all your online accounts and don't worry it is neither harmful, nor malicious ) This is a great tool for people who: Usually visit Internet Cafes for surfing In
Thousands of Hacked WordPress Sites Abused to Infect Millions of Visitors
September 18, 2015Khyati Jain
A Large number of WordPress websites were compromised in last two weeks with a new malware campaign spotted in the wild. WordPress , a Free and Open source content management system (CMS) and blogging tool, has been once again targeted by hackers at large scale. Researchers at Sucuri Labs have detected a " Malware Campaign " with an aim of getting access to as many devices they can by making innumerable WordPress websites as its prey. The Malware campaign was operational for more than 14 days ago, but it has experienced a massive increase in the spread of infection in last two days, resulted in affecting more than 5000 Wordpress websites. The Security researchers call this malware attack as " VisitorTracker ", as there exists a javascript function named visitorTracker_isMob() in the malicious code designed by cyber criminals. This new campaign seems to be utilizing the Nuclear Exploit Kit and uses a combination of hacked WordPress sites, hidden iframes and nu
Let's Encrypt Project issues its First Free SSL/TLS Certificate
Last fall the non-profit foundation EFF ( Electronic Frontier Foundation ) launched an initiative called Let's Encrypt that aimed at providing Free Digital Cryptographic Certificates (TLS) to any website that needs them. Today, Let's Encrypt – a free automated Open-source Certificate Authority (CA) – has signed its first certificate, hitting what it calls a major milestone to encrypt all of the Web. Let's Encrypt enables any Internet site to protect its users with free SSL/TLS (Secure Socket Layer/Transport Layer Security) certificates that encrypt all the data passed between a website and users. Not just free, but the initiative also makes HTTPS implementation easier for any website or online shopping site owner in order to ensure the security of their customers' data. "Forget about hours (or sometimes days) of muddling through complicated programming to set up encryption on a website, or yearly fees," EFF explains . "Let's Encr
​Google, Yahoo, Facebook Collaborate to Blacklist Bad Bots
The major tech companies including Google, Facebook, and Yahoo! have joined their hands to launch a new program meant to block fake web traffic by blacklisting flagged IP addresses. Today, majority of data center traffic is non-human or illegitimate, so to fight against this issue the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) has announced a program that will tap into Google's internal data-center blacklist to filter bots. The new pilot program will reject traffic from web robots or bots by making use of a blacklist, cutting a significant portion of web traffic from within data centers, said Google Ad Manager Vegard Johnsen. Google or any other big tech firm maintains a Blacklist that lists suspicious IP addresses of computer systems in data centers that may be trying to trick the human into clicking on advertisements. Google's DoubleClick blacklist alone blocked some 8.9% of data-center traffic back in May. Facebook and Yahoo to Contribute Apart from Goo
Critical OpenSSL Flaw Allows Hackers to Impersonate Any Trusted SSL Certificate
The mysterious security vulnerability in the widely used OpenSSL code library is neither HeartBleed nor FREAK, but it's critical enough to be patched by sysadmins without any delay. OpenSSL Foundation released the promised patch against a high severity vulnerability in OpenSSL versions 1.0.1n and 1.0.2b, resolving a certificate forgery issue in the implementations of the crypto protocol. The critical vulnerability could allow man-in-the-middle attackers to impersonate cryptographically protected websites, virtual private networks, or e-mail servers, and snoop on encrypted Internet traffic. The vulnerability, ( CVE-2015-1793 ), is due to a problem lies in the certificate verification process. An error in its implementation skipped some security checks on new, untrusted certificates. By exploiting this vulnerability, an attacker could circumvent certificate warnings that enable them to force applications into treating an invalid certificate as a legitimate Certificat
Free Encryption Project to issue First SSL/TLS Certificates Next Month
Let's Encrypt , a project aimed to provide free-of-charge and easier-to-implement way to obtain and use a digital cryptographic certificates (SSL/TLS) to secure HTTPS website, is looking forward to issue its first digital certificates next month. With Let's Encrypt , any webmaster interested in implementing HTTPS for their services can get the certificates for free, which is a great move for encouraging people to encrypt their users' connections to their websites. Let's Encrypt is a combined effort of digital-era rights advocate Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Mozilla Foundation , Cisco Systems , Internet content distributor Akamai Technologies , certificate provider IdenTrust and researchers from the University of Michigan . Generally, the process of implementation of an SSL certificate, including the need to obtain and install a certificate, is complicated for most web developers as it sounds. In most cases, the cost related issues force web adm
Why Protecting Your Magento Ecommerce Website Is So Damn Important
The Market of E-commerce websites is at its peak, as today people love to shop online to save their time. However, E-commerce and financial sites stand first in the rundown of potential victims as they manage financial exchanges. The traditional way to target victims of e-commerce sites is to use targeted "phishing" attacks via social media and emails. But… …due to increased awareness among the people about the threat of phishing attacks, hackers have now discovered new way — by malvertising legitimate websites where people assume to be safe and secure. We know: Today, there are many ready-to-use e-commerce platforms available on the Internet that are very easy to install and manage and that too at no extra cost; ' Magento ' is one of the most popular out of them. The most popular, the most targeted: Yes! Security researchers at Sucuri have found a malicious code inside the Magento e-commerce website that was intended to send all the data
Tor — How to Protect Your Digital Environment?
Are you aware of everything that your users are accessing from your environment? While most of the time, non-work-related Internet browsing is harmless (looking at pictures of cats, online shopping, social media, etc.) there are some instances where you could be an unknowing and unwilling participant in criminal activity. That is, when users hide that activity via the Tor network , or the Dark Net . The Onion Router , better known as " Tor ", an open source project, launched in 2002, is designed to allow a user to browse the Internet anonymously via a volunteer network of more than 5000 relays. It doesn't share your identifying information like your IP address and physical location with websites or service providers. A user that navigate Internet using Tor , it's quite difficult to trace its activities ensuring his online privacy. There are arguably legitimate uses for this technology, such as providing Internet access in repressively regulated countri
Yahoo! pays $24,000 to Hacker for finding Security Vulnerabilities
Yahoo! has offered $24,000 to a security researcher for finding out and reporting three critical security vulnerabilities in its products including Yahoo! Stores and Yahoo!-hosted websites. While testing all the company's application, Mark Litchfield , a bug bounty hunter who often works with different companies, discovered three critical vulnerabilities in Yahoo!'s products. All the three vulnerabilities have now been fixed by Yahoo!. THREE CRITICAL SECURITY VULNERABILITIES The first and most critical vulnerability gives hackers full administrator access to Yahoo!'s e-commerce platform, Yahoo! Small Business , a portal that allows small business owners to create their own web stores through Yahoo! and sell merchandise. According to the researcher, the flaw in the service allowed him to fully administrator any Yahoo store and thereby gain access to customers' personally identifiable information, including names, email addresses, telephone numbers.
 Prev Page Next Page 
New Malware Replaced Legit Android Apps With Fake Ones On 25 Million Devices
Cybersecurity Frameworks — Types, Strategies, Implementation and Benefits
Magecart Hackers Infect 17,000 Sites Through Misconfigured Amazon S3 Buckets