Thursday, November 22, 2012

Smartphone security risks rise on top



If you are using a Smartphone and using the internet with different applications especially in the public networks or free Wi-Fi network then you really need to secure your phone from the crackers who can hijack your device or steal your data.

Cyber Crime Investigator & Security expert Dr. Anup Girdhar, (CEO-Sedulity Solutions) said that as more people use their mobile devices in free and open Wi-Fi networks, the risks are increasing as well. It’s time to lookout for fraudulent applications, messages and Wi-Fi networks which can trick users of mobile devices to divulge passwords, personal data or even credit card numbers.
In case you are using any Android device, then you are often targeted by spyware, including one system called FinFisher, capable of taking a mobile device, or Loozfon, "an information-stealing piece of Malware."

Dr. Girdhar said that as the popularity of apps is increasing, the chances of Cyber Crimes have also been increased. You download an application which could be malicious and designed to steal your personal information or could even send out paid text messages without your knowledge."
Some crackers are using Twitter or some other ads offering special discounts for popular gifts, which link to a malicious software. Now a days, "Criminals are more Tech Savvy with authentic-looking social ads that take consumers to legitimate looking websites.  "In order to take advantage of the best deals consumers provide their personal information including credit card number, email address, phone number, home address etc."

Dr. Girdhar has advised and appeal from all the Smartphone users to "Be careful what you do on public Wi-Fi networks especially when you're shopping”. Do not expose passwords, account numbers or credit card information unless you are certain that you are on a secure connection. "Use carefulness when downloading apps. Only download apps from legitimate sites you trust or experts suggest.

Friday, September 28, 2012

Topology in Network Design | Sedulity Groups

In computer networking, topology refers to the layout of connected devices. Network topologies are categorized into the following basic types:
Bus, Star, Tree, Ring, Mesh & More complex networks can be built as hybrids of two or more of the above basic topologies.

Bus Topology
Bus network uses a common backbone to connect all devices. The backbone functions as a shared communication medium that devices attach into with an interface connector. A device wanting to communicate with another device on the network sends a broadcast message onto the wire that all other devices see, but only the intended recipient actually accepts and processes the message.

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Pirate Bay co-founder arrested on hacking charges | Sedulity Groups

A co-founder of BitTorrent tracker The Pirate Bay has been arrested in Sweden over allegations he was involved in hacking a contractor to the country's tax authority.
Sweden's public prosecutions authority suspected Gottfrid Svartholm to be one of three involved in continued breaches of a core database held by contractor Logica over a two-year period.
The hacks, which began in 2010 and continued until April this year, reportedly involved accessing the database containing civic registration numbers for people with protected identities, with thousands of such numbers copied by the three over the breach period.

Virgin Mobile Users Personal Details Hacked by crackers | Sedulity Groups

Users of virgin mobile must pay attention as the data in your mobile phones is not safe anymore. Your phone number is the main key to your personal information. According to Kevin Burke, who warned Virgin Mobile USA customers about a conspicuous security hole in the phone company's account login protocol said, "If you are one of the six million Virgin subscribers, you are at the whim of anyone who doesn’t like you."

USA users of Virgin Mobile manage their account by logging in through an online portal, which requires a mobile number and a 6-digit pin. Once inside, customers can check their call records, change the handset associated with their number, and update their personal details

Sunday, September 23, 2012

An Introduction to Cloud Computing | Sedulity Groups

Introduction 
Cloud computing means using the computing resources both hardware and software, that are delivered as a service over Internet. In other words, computer and software services necessary for computing works provided via the internet is called cloud computing.

When we think about the need of IT, cloud computing comes into focus like the requirement of a way to increase or add capabilities on the fly without investing in new infrastructure, training new personnel, licensing new software etc. Cloud computing encompasses any subscription-based or pay-per-use service that, in real time over the Internet, extends IT’s existing capabilities.

Friday, September 21, 2012

Ways of Improving Communication | Sedulity Groups

Think before speaking - This is not something new, but however often we hear it, we forget to apply it. To think before speaking means to show consideration to the other and then we say the right thing, at the right time, in the right way. 

Listen with both ears - We should be an active listener by tuning in fully and being present fully with the person and with the moment. If I am not, I listen through one ear and let it out of the other, or I only half listen, which finally creates misunderstandings.

Thursday, September 20, 2012

CYBER CRIME - A major problem in cyber space | Sedulity Groups

The concept of cyber crime is not totally different from the concept of conventional crime. Both include conduct whether act or omission, which cause breach of rules of law and counterbalanced by the permit of the state.

Crime is a social and economic phenomenon and is as old as the human society. Crime is a legal concept and has the sanction of the law. Crime or an offence is “a legal wrong that can be followed by criminal proceedings which may result into punishment.” The hallmark of criminality is that, it is breach of the criminal law. 

Monday, September 17, 2012

Android OS – Boom in Mobile Operating System | Sedulity Groups

Android is a Linux-based operating system for mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers, developed by Google in conjunction with the Open Handset Alliance. It had a worldwide smartphone market share of 59% at the beginning of 2012, and as of year 2012 there were 500 million devices activated and 1.3 million activations per day.

There are a host of advantages that Android OS has like Open Platform/ License Free, Robust OS Kernel, Innovative Library Packages, Easy Application Development, Rapid Improvement, etc.
The advantages are listed below:-

Friday, September 14, 2012

How to Keep your computer virus free

Is your computer speed is similar to the speed of a tortoise? Is your computer drives contain double the number of folders that you have created? Do you often get mysterious error messages? Is your computer hangs every time; you open 2 or 3 applications simultaneously? 

Well if you are facing any of the problems listed above then your computer is infected with ‘Viruses’.

What is Open Source? | Sedulity Groups

Open source Open Source Open Source!

Today, there is a lot of hype about open source in the IT Industry.

But the Question is that what is OpenSource?

Some People Say that opensource means free software i.e. the software which is said to be open source software will be freely available to the masses.

Other says that if the software is open source software then the “sourcecodeof the software i.e. the programming instructions are also available.

Actually, the above said things about open source are true but the actual power of open source is even more than this.

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Steps to regain access to your Hacked Facebook Account | Sedulity Groups

Today facebook is one of leading social networking site. It was launched in February 2004, owned and operated by Facebook, Inc. Today facebook has millions of users, which is a milestone for any company plying its trade on the Internet.

Facebook has evolved rapidly from a raw social networking website into a billion dollar company in a short span of time.

Facebook hosts valuable data of all its active users, which pertains to their personal details, contact details, geographic details, and other information related to interests, hobbies, and favourite hangouts.

Ankit Fadia site again Hacked and Suspended | Sedulity Groups

Ankit Fadia has been in the news for being one of India’s first ethical hackers. He has been recognized by a number of software companies. Fadia was also seen on several TV shows, recently as a host offering tech and security advice to his viewers. At the same time, there have been a bunch of other activities, such as writing security books, that have been published in the market. He’s also known to give talks and speak in seminars on security related topics. There have also been reports that books written by Ankit Fadia contain plagiarised content. 

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Sunday, September 9, 2012

Al Jazeera SMS service Hacked, Fake messages spread by Hackers

Al-Jazeera says hackers have targeted the Qatar-based TV satellite channel for the second time in a week, sending out false news reports on its mobile sms service. Al Jazeera confirm the hack in a tweet,"We'd like to inform our subscribers that Aljazeera sms sevice is being compromised by pirates and they've sent fake news news with no basis"

The story claiming that the Prime Minister (Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem) has been the target of an assassination attempt in the royal palace is completely false and was a result of hacking of the service,” the channel said in breaking news.

Friday, September 7, 2012

"Al Jazeera" News Network website Hacked | Sedulity Groups

The official website of one of the biggest Arabic-language news network "Al Jazeera" got hacked just now by Pro-Assad hackers called "Al-Rashedon". If your miss the deface page, please have a look to mirror of it Here.

Deface page designed with Dark color as shown in image and have some message in Arabic language, in English its "In response to your attitude against Syria, ( Syrian people and Government ) and your support to the Terrorist & Armed Groups, and sharing Fake news, your site has been hacked and this is our response to you. ( Al Rashedon hakcker group.)"

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Antisec Hackers hack FBI laptop and leak 12 Million Apple Device Records | Sedulity Groups

The hacker group AntiSec released a file of a million and one UDIDs unique device identifiers which it claims to have hacked it off an FBI computer via a Java vulnerability. UDIDs are unique IDs for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch devices. They said they obtained the file in March by hacking into the laptop of a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent in the bureau’s New York field office.

In an unusually lengthy note on Pastebin, a member of AntiSec said the group had culled some personal data such as full names and cell numbers from the published data. Instead, the group said it published enough information such as device type, device ID and Apple Push Notification Service tokens to let users determine whether their devices are on the list.

Monday, September 3, 2012

Sony Mobile website hacked by NullCrew | Cyber Times

Another Cyber attack on Sony this year, Hacking group called "NullCrew" hack into one of the biggest site of Sony mobile website (www.sonymobile.com) and leak complete database on Internet. Nullcrew releasing their hack dumps from their official twitter account @OfficialNull.

The dump of database released on Pastebin with a small note from Hackers as given below:
Sony, we are dearly dissapointed in your security.
This is just one of eight sony servers that we have control of.
Maybe, just maybe considering IP addresses are available.
Maybe, just maybe it’s the fact that not even your customers can trust you.
Or maybe, just maybe the fact that you can not do anything correct technologically



Critical buffer overflow vulnerability in Photoshop CS6 | Sedulity Groups

Adobe has released an update for Photoshop CS6 that closes a critical heap-based buffer overflow vulnerability (CVE-2012-4170) in its popular graphics editing program. Both the Mac and Windows versions of Photoshop CS6 (aka Photoshop 13.0) contain a critical vulnerability that could allow an attacker to take control of affected systems.

Furthermore, company officials say Adobe is unaware of any attacks against this vulnerability.That said, the Photoshop 13.0.1 update contains 75 other bug fixes, including 31 for problems known to cause crashes, 18 pertaining to 3D features, and 15 for drawing and graphics features.

Friday, August 31, 2012

Sedulity Groups | Ban on bulk SMS lifted

The Centre on Thursday lifted the ban on bulk SMS and MMS that was imposed to check the spread of rumours and inflammatory content related to the ethnic violence in Assam that had led to the exodus of northeastern people from Bangalore and other cities.
The decision was taken as the social unrest that gripped various cities due to these rumours has subsided and the flow of hate content has also reduced to a large extent in the last few days, a Ministry of Home Affairs spokesperson said.
Following the exodus from Bangalore and other cities due to rumours generated through SMS and MMS, the MHA banned bulk SMS/MMS on August 17. Initially, the Department of Telecommunications had allowed only five SMS per day, per mobile, that was increased to 20 per day on August 23.

Thursday, August 30, 2012

Sedulity Groups | AVX Corporation Hacked by Anonymous #OpColtan

Anonymous Operation #OpColtan have announced another attack in the name of this operation and this time its on a Manufacturer and Supplier of Electronic Components AVX Corporation (www.avx.com). AVX It's a big firm which produce ceramic and tantalum capacitors, connectors, thick and thin film capacitors, resistors and integrated passive components

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Sedulity Groups | Team "GhostShell" leak One Million Records

TeamGhostShell a team linked with the Activist group Anonymous, is claiming that they have hacked some major U.S. institutions including major banking institutions, accounts of politicians and has posted those details online.

The dumps comprising of millions of accounts has been let loose on the web by the hacking collective. The motivation behind the hack, the group claims, is to protest against banks, politicians and the hackers who have been captured by law enforcement agencies.

The group justifies its operation, Project HellFire, as a “final form of protest this summer against the banks, politicians and for all the fallen hackers this year”.

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Monday, August 27, 2012

Sedulity Groups | Saudi Aramco Oil Producer's 30,000 workstations victim of Cyber Attack

Saudi Aramco, the world's biggest oil producer, has resumed operating its main internal computer networks after a virus infected about 30,000 of its workstations in mid-August.

Immediately after the Aug. 15 attack, the company announced it had cut off its electronic systems from outside access to prevent further attacks. Saudi Aramco said the virus "originated from external sources" and that its investigation into the matter was ongoing. There was no mention of whether this was related to this month's Shamoon attacks.

Sunday, August 26, 2012

Sedulity Groups | Hijacking Servers Remotely with Hikit advanced persistent threat

Security researchers have revealed the existence of an advanced persistent threat that has been making the rounds since April 2011Backdoor.Hikit  is a dangerous backdoor Trojan that will damage infected system and files. Usually, Backdoor. Hikit will open backdoor to allow remote attackers to connect to the infected system and carry out harmful activities, such as stealing information  or destroying files and programs.

It is really stubborn those antiviruses often fail to delete it for good, for it runs secretly and automatically when Windows boots without your knowledge or consent and can disguise it as fake system files or processes. Besides, many other threats, such as adware, redirecting virus, Trojan variants from family, such as Trojan Horse Generic 27.PN, BackDoor.Hupigon5.CJMY, Trojan.Zeroaccess.C, Trojan:win64/Sirefef.E and so on, which is really a threat to system and data security.

Thursday, August 23, 2012

Sedulity Groups | Google engineers Warn Of Serious Unpatched Adobe Reader Flaws

Adobe has missed dozens of vulnerabilities in Reader in this week’s Patch Tuesday run according to Google engineers who reported the flaws. Sixteen vulnerabilities still affected the Windows and Mac OS X versions, while 31 critical and “trivially exploitable” bugs were found in the Linux application.

Of particular concern to Google’s Mateusz Jurczyk and Gynvael Coldwind are bugs in Reader for Linux, although other issues affect versions for Windows and OS X. For the Linux version, which went completely unpatched, Adobe and Google have been working together to counter 14 “new unique crashes” and nine “test-cases” that were potentially exploitable for remote code execution.

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Sedulity Groups | Your Friend can help Investigators to Access your Facebook Profile

If you’re not already particularly picky about who you friend on Facebook, you might want to think about rejiggering those privacy settings. It's not the backdoor access that the FBI has been pushing for, but US District Judge William Pauley III has now ruled that it and other law enforcement agencies are entitled to view your Facebook profile if one of your "friends" gives them permission to do so.

As GigaOm reports, a New York City federal judge ruled in a recent racketeering trial that it’s legal for police to view your Facebook profile if one of your friends grants them permission. Better start sniffing out the rats on your friends list.
That’s because all of that data that you think is personal really isn’t that personal after all, according to the Judge. "Colon’s legitimate expectation of privacy ended when he disseminated posts to his friends because those friends were free to use the information however the wanted including sharing it with the Government."

Monday, August 20, 2012

Sedulity Groups | AMD Official Blog Hacked by Crackers

A team of Hackers called, "r00tBeer Security Team" today hack into official blog of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) which is a American multinational semiconductor company. AMD is the second-largest global supplier of microprocessors based on the x86 architecture and also one of the largest suppliers of graphics processing units.

Hacker deface the blog page (http://blogs.amd.com/wp-content/r00tbeer.html) and also leak the complete user database of blog on his twitter account. Leaked database SQL file uploaded on Mediafire by Hackers which include 200 AMD user's Emails, Wordpress Blog Usernames and Passwords.

During the time of writing, Even at the Day end AMD is not aware about that they are the Victim of a Hack attack.

Friday, August 17, 2012

Sedulity Groups | Serious Security Flaw : iPhone Bug Allows SMS Spoofing

A rather serious security flaw in the iPhone’s SMS messaging system has been discovered and revealed by well-known security researcher and jailbreak extraordinaire ‘pod2g’. Security flaw affecting all iPhones that he says could facilitate hackers or thieves to access your personal information.

The researcher claims that the flaw has actually been present in Apple’s iPhone software ever since the first iPhone was launched in 2007, but has failed to have been picked up on by anybody, including Apple it seems.

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Sedulity Groups | Virtual Private Network of Airport Hacked via Citadel Malware

It sounds like an air traveler’s nightmare, Researchers at Trusteer recently uncovered a variant of the Citadel Trojan targeting the virtual private network (VPN) credentials used by employees at a major airport.The firm would not disclose the name of the airport because the situation is being investigated by law enforcement.

Many businesses use VPNs to provide outside workers with access to secure data. Incursions on these networks often involve advanced “Man in the Browsermalware such as the Citadel, Zeus, and SpyEye programs. The man-in-the-browser (MITB) assault first used form-grabbing malware, which steals data entered into web forms before it is passed over the internet, to steal the airport employees' VPN usernames and passwords, Amit Klein, Trusteer's chief technology officer, said in a blog post.

Sedulity Groups | Anonymous hackers target Australian Intelligence

Hacking group Anonymous claimed to have shut down a computer server belonging to Australia's domestic spy agency ASIO, reportedly briefly closing down access to its public web page. The Australian Security Intelligence Organization acknowledged some disruption to its website.

The ASIO website was down for about 30 minutes after the attack and is now operating slowly or not at all. It appears the attack may be ongoing, but ASIO’s technical staff are recovering the situation.

Sunday, August 12, 2012

Sedulity Groups | Man orders a TV via Amazon, gets a Military grade assault rifle

Seth Horvitz ordered a Westinghouse 39-inch LCD for about $320 from a third-party electronics seller on Amazon and was shocked to see what he got a military-grade assault rifle.
He received a delivery via UPS ground, a HUGE oblong box that arrived at this door step.
When I saw some metal parts inside the box, I thought, ‘Maybe this is a TV stand or mount or something,’” Horvitz said in a phone interview with Wired.
“When I realized it was an assault rifle, it was pure shock and disbelief.”
Horvitz immediately contacted D.C. police to inform them about the situation, they came in a confiscated the box which contained a semi-automatic Sig Sauer 716 patrol rifle. The police informed Horvitz that the gun was illegal in the District of Columbia.

Saturday, August 11, 2012

Sedulity Groups | A student SMS her father, a minute before committed suicide

"I am sorry Papa. I am committing suicide," said a text message from Rekha Singh, second year polytechnic student in electronics stream, to her father Ranjeet, a WCL manager at Kamptee. The 22-year-old Rekha had been afraid to face her father since she had lied to him about her repeated failures. She jumped to her death from the third-floor balcony of her hostel within a minute of sending the SMS.

Thursday, August 9, 2012

Sedulity Groups | Mariposa botnet creator goes on trial

26-year-old Slovenian hacker known as Iserdo stands thought to have been behind the Mariposa botnet is on trial in Slovenia, charged with having masterminded an international cybercrime gang.

At its height, the Mariposa botnet infected up to 12.7 million PCs, with more than half of the Fortune 1,000 companies believed to have been compromised, including 40 major banks. Once a computer had been compromised and brought into the botnet, operators could steal information from innocent users - including credit card details and banking passwords.

Sedulity Groups | Account Hacked | Fake News Posted on Reuters's blog and Twitter account.

On Friday, Reuters blog platform was hacked with false posts and on Saturday, the @ReutersTech account on Twitter was taken over and renamed @TechMe. False tweets were sent before it was taken down.

The first attack came Friday after Syrian hackers loyal to President Bashar al-Assad allegedly gained access to Reuters’ blogging platform, which they used to post a fake interview with rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) leader Riad al-Assad. The interview essentially said the general was withdrawing troops after a battle.

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Sedulity Groups | Researcher Demonstrate hardware based backdoor called Rakshasa

Security researcher Jonathan Brossard created a proof-of-concept hardware backdoor called Rakshasa that replaces a computer's BIOS (Basic Input Output System) and can compromise the operating system at boot time without leaving traces on the hard drive.
In short, firmware is software that is stored in non-volatile memory on a computer chip, and is used to initialise a piece of hardware’s functionality. In a PC, the BIOS is the most common example of firmware but in the case of wireless routers, a whole Linux operating system is stored in firmware.

Hardware backdoors are lethal for three reasons:

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Sedulity Groups | Pakistani hackers deface inactive Southern Railways website


New Delhi: An inactive website of the Southern Railways www.southernrailway.gov.in has been defaced apparently by Pakistani hackers.
Pakistani hackers deface inactive Southern Railways websiteThe hacker group that calls itself ‘Pak Cyber Pyrates’ replaced the home page of the website with a page with content that denounces India’s role in Kashmir.
The official Southern Railways website moved to a new domain www.sr.indianrailways.gov.in back in 2010.
Inactive websites are a soft target for hackers as they are not constantly monitored. Recently the hacker group Anonymous had targeted an inactive Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL) website accusing the company of censoring content on the Internet.
Indian and Pakistani hacking groups are engaged in a cyber war of sorts with websites in both the countries being regularly attacked and defaced. 
Indian and Pakistani hacking groups are engaged in a cyber war of sorts with websites in both the countries being regularly attacked and defaced.