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Month: March 2017

ComputerWorldIndependent
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Malicious uploads allowed hijacking of WhatsApp and Telegram accounts

Credit to Author: Lucian Constantin| Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2017 07:55:00 -0700

A vulnerability patched in the web-based versions of encrypted communications services WhatsApp and Telegram would have allowed attackers to take over accounts by sending users malicious files masquerading as images or videos.

The vulnerability was discovered last week by researchers from Check Point Software Technologies and was patched by the WhatsApp and Telegram developers after the company privately shared the flaw’s details with them.

The web-based versions of WhatsApp and Telegram synchronize automatically with the apps installed on users’ phones. At least in the case of WhatsApp, once paired using a QR code, the phone needs to have an active internet connection for WhatsApp messages to be relayed to the browser on the computer.

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ComputerWorldIndependent
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Twitter accounts hacked, Twitter Counter steps forward as culprit

Credit to Author: Peter Sayer| Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2017 07:37:00 -0700

Twitter Counter, a third-party analytics service, appears once again to have provided a gateway for hackers to post messages to high-profile Twitter accounts.

An unlikely number of Twitter users suddenly learned to speak Turkish on Wednesday, posting an inflammatory message in the language replete with Nazi swastikas.

Among those posting the message were the Twitter accounts of Forbes magazine, the Atlanta Police Department, and Amnesty International, one of the few hacked accounts one might expect to actually speak Turkish.

Fears that these accounts had all been hacked were quickly allayed, when Twitter identified a third-party app as being to blame.

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FortinetSecurity
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Teardown of Android/Ztorg (Part 2)

Credit to Author: Axelle Apvrille| Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2017 08:21:55 -0700

In the part 1 of this blog, we saw that Android/Ztorg.AM!tr silently downloads a remote encrypted APK, then installs it and launches a method named c() in the n.a.c.q class. In this blog post, we’ll investigate what this does. This is the method c() of n.a.c.q: This prints "world," then waits for 200 seconds before starting a thread named n.a.c.a. I'll spare you a few hops, but among the first things we notice is that the sample uses the same string obfuscation routine, except this time it is not…

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FortinetSecurity
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Teardown of a Recent Variant of Android/Ztorg (Part 1)

Credit to Author: Axelle Apvrille| Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2017 08:20:51 -0700

Ztorg, also known as Qysly, is one of those big families of Android malware. It first appeared in April 2015, and now has over 25 variants, some of which are still active in 2017. Yet, there aren't many technical descriptions for it – except for the initial Ztorg.A sample – so I decided to have a look at one of the newer variants, Android/Ztorg.AM!tr, that we detected on January 20, 2017. The sample poses a "Cool Video Player" and its malicious activity was so well hidden I initially thought I had run into…

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ComputerWorldIndependent
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Twitter Counter hacked: Hundreds of high-profile Twitter accounts hijacked

Credit to Author: Darlene Storm| Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2017 06:16:00 -0700

Twitter seemed to temporarily be overtaken by tweets featuring swastikas, Turkish flags and Nazi references after third-party analytics app Twitter Counter was hacked.

It’s unclear how many Twitter accounts were affected – hundreds or thousands – considering Twitter Counter claims to have more than two million users who linked their Twitter accounts to its service for the purpose of providing statistics and tracking responses to tweets.

Infosec journalist Graham Cluley apologized “for the Nazi spam” after his account was hijacked. There was a rush of people scrubbing their accounts as Amnesty International, Duke University, Forbes, Reuters Japan, BBC North America, UNICEF USA, the UK Department of Health, the CEO of Sprint, bitcoin wallet Blockchain, the Atlanta Police Department, Starbucks Argentina, the European Parliament, Nike Spain, sports stars, celebrities and many others were compromised and also spewed Nazi spam.

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SecurityTrendMicro
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Five Questions with University of Florida Health

Credit to Author: Justin Foster| Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2017 13:00:48 +0000

With the growing number of threats, technologies, and responsibilities, security teams have no shortage of challenges they face daily. Now more than ever, it is important that security providers offer tools that work with these teams instead of against them; solutions that allow for opportunities in place of constraints. This is why customers were directly…

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SecurityTrendMicro
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Celebrating the One Year Anniversary of Acquiring TippingPoint

Credit to Author: Steve Quane| Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2017 12:00:35 +0000

The month of March marks the one year anniversary of Trend Micro closing our acquisition of TippingPoint from Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). In that past year, we made a commitment to continue to innovate the TippingPoint solution while at the same time solidly executing for our customers and seamlessly continuing business operations. I’m pleased to…

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ComputerWorldIndependent
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Court blocks American from suing Ethiopia for infecting his computer

Credit to Author: John Ribeiro| Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2017 04:10:00 -0700

An appeals court has barred an Ethiopian-born U.S. citizen from filing a civil suit against the African country, which allegedly infected his computer with spyware and monitored his communications.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled Tuesday that foreign states are immune from lawsuits in a U.S. court unless an exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) applies.

The person, who is referred to in court documents by the pseudonym Kidane, was born in Ethiopia and lived there for 30 years before seeking asylum in the U.S. He lives in Maryland.

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