Def Con hackers showed how easily voting machines can be hacked
At Def Con’s hacker voting machine village, where 30 pieces of election equipment sat waiting, hackers were given a deliciously wicked goal. John Hopkins computer scientist Matt Blaze said, “We encourage you to do stuff that if you did on election day they would probably arrest you.” And they did. Most of the voting machines…
Apple Removes Some VPN Services From Chinese App Store
Apple has removed software allowing internet users to skirt China’s “Great Firewall” from its app store in the country, the company confirmed Sunday, sparking criticism that it was bowing to Beijing’s tightening web censorship. Chinese internet users have for years sought to get around heavy internet restrictions, including blocks on Facebook and Twitter, by using…
Researchers Demo Physical Attack via Car Wash Hack
LAS VEGAS – BLACK HAT USA – Researchers have created proof-of-concept (PoC) exploits to demonstrate how hackers can cause physical damage to vehicles and injure their occupants by remotely hijacking a connected car wash. The attack was detailed in a presentation at the Black Hat security conference this week by WhiteScope founder Billy Rios, a…
WikiLeaks Details Mac OS X Hacking Tools Used by CIA
The latest round of documents published by WikiLeaks as part of a leak dubbed by the organization “Vault 7” describes several tools allegedly used by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to target Mac OS X and other POSIX systems. The tools, said to be part of a CIA project named “Imperial,” are called Achilles,…
Phishers’ techniques and behaviours, and what to do if you’ve been phished
Once a user has been phished, how long does it takes for the phishers to misuse the stolen credentials? To discover the answer to that question and many others, Imperva researchers went undercover by creating 90 personal online accounts, including email and file sharing accounts with Google and Dropbox. Once the so-called honey pot accounts…
FBI Talks Avalanche Botnet Takedown
BLACK HAT USA – Las Vegas – Tom Grasso, unit chief of the FBI’s cyber division, took the Black Hat stage to discuss the processes and partnerships leading up to the massive Avalanche takedown in December 2016. Avalanche “wasn’t a botnet,” he noted at the beginning of his talk. It was an infrastructure for enabling…
Hacking the Wind
BLACK HAT USA – Las Vegas – Gaping security holes in wind energy control networks make them vulnerable to cyberattacks for extortion and physical destruction purposes, a researcher showed here today. Jason Staggs, a security researcher at the University of Tulsa, has spent the past couple of years crisscrossing the US and hacking away at…
IBM Launches Security Testing Services For Cars, IoT
IBM Security announced on Monday that the services provided by its X-Force Red penetration testing group have been expanded to include connected vehicles and Internet of Things (IoT) devices. IBM X-Force Red, which the company launched one year ago, has been working with automotive manufacturers and third-party suppliers to provide expertise and penetration testing and consulting services.
Sweden Rattled by Massive Confidential Data Leak
Sweden’s minority government was battling to contain the fallout Monday after a massive leak that may have made confidential military information accessible abroad, as well as the private data of millions of citizens. The leak made an entire database on Swedish drivers’ licenses available to technicians in the Czech Republic and Romania, with media reporting…
One in Ten U.S. Organizations Hit by WannaCry: Study
A recent survey discovered that the vast majority of organizations in the United States weren’t prepared for the WannaCry ransomware attack, but just one in ten ended up being infected by the malware. WannaCry stormed the world in mid-May by leveraging a previously patched exploit called EternalBlue, which hacker group Shadow Brokers allegedly stole from the NSA-linked Equation…