iPhone Hacking Campaign Using MDM Software Is Broader Than Previously Known

India-linked highly targeted mobile malware campaign, first unveiled two weeks ago, has been found to be part of a broader campaign targeting multiple platforms, including windows devices and possibly Android as well.

As reported in our previous article, earlier this month researchers at Talos threat intelligence unit discovered a group of Indian hackers abusing mobile device management (MDM) service to hijack and spy on a few targeted iPhone users in India.

Hackers Stole a Third of Singapore's Healthcare Data, Including Prime Minister's

Singapore's Ministry of Health (MOH) revealed today that a hacker had breached its IT systems and stolen personal and health-related data on roughly 1.5 million citizens.

MOH officials said this was not the work of casual hackers or criminal gangs but a deliberate and well-planned attack that sought to gather health information on the country's prime minister.

"The attackers specifically and repeatedly targeted Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s personal particulars and information on his outpatient dispensed medicines," the MOH said in a statement.

Phone in the right hand? You're a hacker!

Hackers are finding it too easy to circumvent traditional cyber defences, forcing businesses to rethink their security strategies. Many firms are now harnessing big data and adopting cutting edge verification checks. In fact, some can even identify you by how quickly you type your computer keys, or how you hold your mobile phone.

In these days of regular space travel, nanotechnology and quantum computers it is easy to believe we live in an age plucked from the pages of a science-fiction novel.

But there are some aspects of this shiny, computer-powered era that look more feudal than futuristic.

New Virus Decides If Your Computer Good for Mining or Ransomware

Security researchers have discovered an interesting piece of malware that infects systems with either a cryptocurrency miner or ransomware, depending upon their configurations to decide which of the two schemes could be more profitable.

While ransomware is a type of malware that locks your computer and prevents you from accessing the encrypted data until you pay a ransom to get the decryption key required to decrypt your files, cryptocurrency miners utilize infected system's CPU power to mine digital currencies.

Both ransomware and cryptocurrency mining-based attacks have been the top threats so far this year and share many similarities such as both are non-sophisticated attacks, carried out for money against non-targeted users, and involve digital currency.

Facebook quizzes may have exposed 120 million users personal information

Facebook's data privacy woes continue to grow as a security researcher uncovered the social media's popular "tests“ not only told users which Disney princess they were, but also exposed the private data of about 120 million people who took the test.

Inti De Ceukelaire blogged on Medium that nametests.com, the site behind the ubiquitous Facebook time killers, just fixed a flaw that was exposing data. The researcher said he is a participant in Facebook's Data Abuse Bounty Program, which was created after the Cambridge Analytica scandal and as such decided to see what offerings on the site might be a privacy problem.

Thousands of Mobile Apps Expose Their Unprotected Firebase Hosted Databases

Mobile security researchers have discovered unprotected Firebase databases of thousands of iOS and Android mobile applications that are exposing over 100 million data records, including plain text passwords, user IDs, location, and in some cases, financial records such as banking and cryptocurrency transactions.

Google’s Firebase service is one of the most popular back-end development platforms for mobile and web applications that offers developers a cloud-based database, which stores data in JSON format and synced it in the real-time with all connected clients.

Researchers from mobile security firm Appthority discovered that many app developers' fail to properly secure their back-end Firebase endpoints with firewalls and authentication, leaving hundreds of gigabytes of sensitive data of their customers publicly accessible to anyone.

Why Hackers Aren’t Afraid of Us

Ask finance ministers and central bankers around the world about their worst nightmare and the answer is almost always the same: Sometime soon the North Koreans or the Russians will improve on the two huge cyberattacks they pulled off last year. One temporarily crippled the British health care system and the other devastated Ukraine before rippling across the world, disrupting shipping and shutting factories — a billion-dollar cyberattack the White House called “the most destructive and costly in history.”

The fact that no intelligence agency saw either attack coming — and that countries were so fumbling in their responses — led a group of finance ministers to simulate a similar attack that shut down financial markets and froze global transactions. By several accounts, it quickly spun into farce: No one wanted to admit how much damage could be done or how helpless they would be to deter it.