Zero Point By Javed Chaudhry

Showing posts with label Technology. Show all posts

US blames North Korea for hacking spree, says more attacks likely

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WASHINGTON/TORONTO: The U.S. government on Tuesday issued a rare alert squarely blaming the North Korean government for a raft of cyber attacks stretching back to 2009 and warning that more were likely.</h2>
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The joint warning from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation said that "cyber actors of the North Korean government," referred to in the report as "Hidden Cobra," had targeted the media, aerospace and financial sectors, as well as critical infrastructure, in the United States and globally.</div>
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The new level of detail about the U.S. government's analysis of suspected North Korean hacking activity coincides with increasing tensions between Washington and Pyongyang because of North Korea's missile tests. The alert warned that North Korea would continue to rely on cyber operations to advance its military and strategic objectives.</div>
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North Korea has routinely denied involvement in cyber attacks against other countries.</div>
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The North Korean mission to the United Nations was not immediately available for comment.</div>
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Tuesday's alert said Hidden Cobra has been previously referred to by private sector experts as Lazarus Group and Guardians of the Peace, which have been linked to attacks such as the 2014 intrusion into Sony Corp's Sony Pictures Entertainment.</div>
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Symantec Corp and Kaspersky Lab both said last month it was "highly likely" that Lazarus was behind the WannaCry ransomware attack that infected more than 300,000 computers worldwide, disrupting operations at hospitals, banks and schools.</div>
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The alert did not identify specific Hidden Cobra victims. It said the group had compromised a range of victims and that some intrusions had resulted in thefts of data while others were disruptive. The group's capabilities include denial of service attacks, which send reams of junk traffic to a server to knock it offline, keystroke logging, remote access tools and several variants of malware, the alert said.</div>
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John Hultquist, a cyber intelligence analyst with FireEye Inc , said that his firm was concerned about increasingly aggressive cyber attacks from North Korea.</div>
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The hacks include cyber espionage at South Korean finance, energy and transportation firms that appears to be reconnaissance ahead of other attacks that would be disruptive or destructive, he said.</div>
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"It suggests they are preparing for something fairly significant," he added.</div>
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Hidden Cobra commonly targets systems that run older versions of Microsoft Corp operating systems that are no longer patched, the alert said, and also used vulnerabilities in Adobe Systems Inc's Flash software to gain access into targeted computers.</div>
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The report urged organizations to upgrade to current versions of Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight or, when possible, uninstall those applications altogether.</div>
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Microsoft said it an emailed statement that it had "addressed" the Silverlight issue in a January 2016 software update. Adobe said via email that it patched the vulnerabilities in June 2016.</div>
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North Korean hacking activity has grown increasingly hostile in recent years, according to Western officials and cyber security experts.</div>
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The alert arrived on the same day that North Korea released an American university student who had been held captive by Pyongyang for 17 months.</div>
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Otto Warmbier, 22, was on his way back to the United States on Tuesday but in a coma and in urgent need of medical care, according to Bill Richardson, a veteran former diplomat and politician who has played a role in past negotiations with North Korea.</div>
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"The U.S. government seeks to arm network defenders with the tools they need to identify, detect and disrupt North Korean government malicious cyber activity that is targeting our country's and our allies’ networks," a DHS official said about the alert. The official was not authorized to speak publicly.</div>

US blames North Korea for hacking spree, says more attacks likely

WASHINGTON/TORONTO: The U.S. government on Tuesday issued a rare alert squarely blaming the North Korean government for a raft of cyber...

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Hackers steal 17 million users' data from Indian restaurant app Zomato

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<span style="font-family: lato, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">NEW DELHI: India's largest restaurant and food delivery app Zomato announced on Thursday (May 18) that the data of 17 million users had been stolen from its database, including names, email addresses and protected passwords.</span></h2>
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<span style="font-family: "lato" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">The startup said the "hashed" passwords could not be decrypted but recommended users change their login details if they use the same password for other services.</span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "lato" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">Zomato's chief technology officer Gunjan Patidar said customers' financial information was stored separately from the stolen data and was not compromised by the hack.</span>"No payment information or credit card data has been stolen/leaked," he said in a statement on Zomato's website, adding they were scanning all possible breaches in their system. "Your credit card information on Zomato is fully secure, so there's nothing to worry about there."</h4>
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<span style="border: 0px; font-family: "lato" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Those affected had been logged out of the website and app and had their passwords changed "as a precaution", he added.</span></div>
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A report on an online hacker news website carried in local media said the trove of personal data was being auctioned on the dark web for roughly US$1,000 by a hacker using an alias.</div>
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The hack of the internationally popular e-commerce startup comes on the heels of the "WannaCry" cyberattack, the world's biggest ransomware attack to date.</div>
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The culprits demanded payment in virtual currency and threatened to delete files on compromised computers, which numbered in the hundreds of thousands worldwide.</div>
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Zomato, which boasts 120 million user visits a month, said it was "plugging any security gaps" and would further enhance its security measures after the database breach.</div>
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<span style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The company - a so-called "unicorn" startup because it is valued at more than US$1 billion - was founded in 2008 and it now operates in 23 nations.<span style="border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
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Hackers steal 17 million users' data from Indian restaurant app Zomato

NEW DELHI: India's largest restaurant and food delivery app Zomato announced on Thursday (May 18) that the data of 17 million users had...

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ZTE launches world's first 5G-Ready Smartphone

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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMPJBNxdj8esctIi4P9RmenKus7Rdi97ZBgnpR4ePKodm5bYtWgdpVRtlRkuFy1QCrT_tY7cA46r-02Dfvx70dnE5bD1-MeD32pw9ZUwRO_JApiE_cNjym24HmiYp5cNB9JOaT12oh5jf_/s1600/a-display-of-smartphones-at-last-year-s-mobile-world-congress.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMPJBNxdj8esctIi4P9RmenKus7Rdi97ZBgnpR4ePKodm5bYtWgdpVRtlRkuFy1QCrT_tY7cA46r-02Dfvx70dnE5bD1-MeD32pw9ZUwRO_JApiE_cNjym24HmiYp5cNB9JOaT12oh5jf_/s320/a-display-of-smartphones-at-last-year-s-mobile-world-congress.jpg" title="A display of smartphones at last year's Mobile World Congress. Lightening-fast 5G mobile internet is due to be up and running by 2020. (AFP/JOSEP LAGO)" width="320"></a></td></tr>
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<span class="add-txt" style="background: rgba(0 , 0 , 0 , 0.498039); bottom: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: white; font-size: 0.875rem; left: 0px; line-height: 1.1; padding: 11.0938px 14.7969px; position: absolute; text-align: center; width: 740px;">A display of smartphones at last year's Mobile World Congress. Lightening-fast 5G mobile internet is due to be up and running by 2020. (AFP/JOSEP LAGO)</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "roboto" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">BARCELONA: Chinese telecoms giant ZTE on Sunday (Feb 26) unveiled what it said is the world's first smartphone compatible with the lightening-fast 5G mobile internet service that networks expect to have up and running by 2020.</span></h2>
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ZTE launches world's first 5G-Ready Smartphone

A display of smartphones at last year's Mobile World Congress. Lightening-fast 5G mobile internet is due to be up and running by 20...

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Google, unlike Microsoft, must turn over foreign emails: US judge

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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "roboto" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">REUTERS: A U.S. judge has ordered Google to comply with search warrants seeking customer emails stored outside </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "roboto" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">the United States, diverging from a federal appeals court that reached the opposite conclusion in a similar case involving Microsoft Corp.</span></h2>
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Google, unlike Microsoft, must turn over foreign emails: US judge

REUTERS: A U.S. judge has ordered Google to comply with search warrants seeking customer emails stored outside the United States, diver...

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Indian police bust US$550-million internet scam that duped thousands

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<b><br>NEW DELHI</b>: <b><a href="http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/technology/indian-police-bust-us-550-million-internet-scam-that-duped-thous/3490480.html">Indian police</a></b> have busted an internet scam in which around 650,000 people lost a combined 37 billion rupees (US$549 million) after sending money to a company that promised they would earn cash by clicking on web links, police said on Friday.<br>
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Indian police bust US$550-million internet scam that duped thousands

NEW DELHI : Indian police have busted an internet scam in which around 650,000 people lost a combined 37 billion rupees (US$549 million)...

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