The Pirate Bay Co-founder Sentenced to 3.5 Years Imprisonment

After being found guilty on Thursday, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg,aka Anakata, the co-founder of The Pirate Bay was sentenced to 3.5 years imprisonment on Friday in the largest hacking case in Denmark's history.
The prosecutor made a request of six year in jail for Warg and two years in jail for his 21 year old co defendant Dane. Dane received a 6 month sentence instead. The Court said that they hacked into the Danish systems of IT giant CSC and illegally downloaded social security numbers from Denmark’s national driving license database, illegally accessing information in a Schengen Region database and cracking police email accounts between Febuary and August 2012. Anakata argued that his computer was been used remotely to carry out the attack but Court did not accept this argument.
In 2009, Warg was sentenced to one year in jail and ordered to pay criminal damages to the music and film industry for his part in founding the website.
Source:[RT]

Beware of MCB Phishing Email "URGENT MVR Required for your accounts"[UPDATED]

Phishing Email Screenshot
A phishing email pretending to be from The Mauritius Commercial Bank is at the moment making the round. The email is titled as "Update: URGENT MVR Required for your accounts" and contains the official logo of the Mauritius Commercial Bank. Along with the logo and picture, the following message was written,

Dear customer,
Your account(s) is no longer active as it has been suspended due to MVR (MCB Verification Requirements).
Your attention is required to activate your account now.
Activate Account Now(Link Removed)
Thanks and have a great day.

Fake Website of the Bank

When the recipient clicks on the link provided, he/she is directed to a website looking like a legitimate MCB website where a banner having the official logo of the bank is displayed on the top of the scam webpage. Following the banner, there are several warning message which ask recipients to reactivate their account. Scrolling down, there is a form where recipients need to insert their credentials such as, USER ID, USER PASSWORD, TRANSACTION PASSWORD, EMAIL ADDRESS and EMAIL PASSWORD. After clicking on the activate button, the website is directed to a PDF file from the official website of the bank. But it seems that the PDF file is no more available on the bank's site causing the browser to freeze for around 5seconds and afterwards remaining blank. In the meantime, cybercriminals behind the phishing scam have already received your login credentials which they may use to transfer money.

We advise our readers to be alert. The email and the phishing website have been professionally designed, not leaving noticeable errors which can prove they are fakes. The only two ways to find out is to have a look at the URL, which is a porn website domain name and secondly in the email, “Thanks and have a great day.”, an official email will never use and informal way of thanking a recipient. If you think you have been a victim of this email, change your password as soon as possible and contact the bank.

We reported the email to The Mauritius Commercial Bank and received an automated reply where it stated "MCB will NEVER ask for your Internet Banking login and transaction passwords under any circumstances". This is already a confirmation that the email is a fake one.

UPDATE
Yesterday, 27 October 2014, we received confirmation from The Mauritius Commercial Bank that this is a phishing email. The content of the confirmation email goes as follows:

Dear Sir/ Madam

We acknowledge receipt of your e-mail dated yesterday, and thank you for escalating the issue to us.
This e-mail is indeed a scam whereby fraudsters aim at obtaining personal details of our customer, with the intention of carrying out fraudulent transactions on the customer’s accounts.
These fraudsters operate by sending e-mails that appear to come from the Bank.
The MCB requests you to disregard these bogus messages and not to respond to any instructions contained therein. Instead, Internet Banking customers should forthwith delete the messages.
IB customers who have responded to such messages are advised to change their password immediately and call the MCB on (230) 2026060 without delay.
May we remind you that access codes (be the “User IDs” or “passwords” for Internet Banking or “PIN” for credit and debit cards) are strictly personal and must not be revealed to third parties or used otherwise than in the appropriate authenticated environment.
Rest assure that all possible steps are taken to promptly ban the fraudulent domains and to inform our customers not to respond to these fraudulent attempts.

We reiterate our thanks for advising us of this issue and assure you of our best services at all times.

Mauritius Tourism Promotion Authority (MTPA) Official Website Vulnerable

Ish Sookun, Mauritian Linux enthusiast and blogger who discovered vulnerability on the MNIC website recently is back with another ‘data leaking’ discovery. The vulnerabilities this time is on the official website of Mauritius Tourism Promotion Authority (MTPA).
According to Mr Sookun, 269,146 email addresses are publicly available. This is because the directories where the files are kept on the server allow public access. As he stated in his blog post, this database would be a gold mine for spammers.
Not satisfied with this, he decided to do some further search by visiting other directories.He was once again shocked when he came across two  administrator’s unencrypted credentials, that is, usernames and plain text passwords. One was for the blog MySQL database and the other for the newsletter application.  Mr Sookun reported this issue to CERT-MU and at the time of publishing, he stated he hasn’t received any reply from them.

Source: [Click Here!]

Dropbox Blames Third Party Services For Credentials Leaked

A series of dropbox credentials are being posted on pastebin and Reddit since Monday. These documents consist of user email addresses and passwords in plain text. In each of these pastebin documents, the hacker has been writing a message stating that there is around 6,937,081 accounts which has been hacked and has given a bitcoin account number so that people donates for the hacker to release more. The message goes as follows,
"Dropbox Hack Second Teaser.
As promised here is another batch of Hacked Dropbox accounts from close to 7 million total hacked accounts.
We will keep releasing more to the public as donations come in, show your support.
Send bitcoin donations to 1Fw7QqUgzbns7yWHH32UnmMxmMMwu6MC6h
Enjoy! More to come. As previously, all Dropbox logins are in the same format, login:Password"

Dropbox through a blog post stated that they were not hacked. They added that the usernames and passwords were stolen from unrelated services and attackers are using these credential to try to log into dropbox accounts. Dropbox is advising its users to enable the 2 step verification in their account.

Source:[Dropbox Blog]

The Snappening : SnapSaved.com Hacked and Database Leaked On The Internet

SnapSaved.com is a third party service which allowed users of Snapchat to save senders image and videos without the latter knowing about it. On 11th October 2014, SnapSaved.com published a post on its official Facebook Page stating that SnapSaved.com was hacked.

The private images and videos have been leaked on Torrent and 4chan under the name of "Snappening".  The name came after the recent event where celebrities’ naked pictures were leaked on the internet, The frappening. According to the threads on 4Chan, around 200,000 pictures and videos are in this Snappening leak.

In the Facebook post, Snapsaved.com stated that they had a misconfiguration in their Apache server and that SnapChat has not been hacked. All the images are from snapsaved.com's database. Find below the full Facebook Post,

"I would like to elaborate on the recent events regarding Snapsaved.com
Snapsaved.com Was a website used to save SnapChat's, precisely as the app snapsave.
In response to recent media events and the statement made by http://pastebin.com/cJcTbNz8, I would like to inform the public that snapsaved.com was hacked, the dictionary index the poster is referring to, was never publicly available. We had a misconfiguration in our Apache server.
SnapChat has not been hacked, and these images do not originate from their database.
Snapsaved has always tried to fight child pornography, we have even gone as far, as to reporting some of our
Users to the Swedish and Norwegian authorities.
As soon as we discovered the breach in our systems, we immediately deleted the entire website and the database
Associated with it. As far as we can tell, the breach has effected 500MB of images, and 0 personal information
From the database.
The recent rumors about the snappening are a hoax. The hacker does not have sufficient information to live up to his claims
Of creating a searchable Database.
Our users had to consent to all the content they received via SnapSaved.com, as we mentioned, we tried to cleanse the database of inappropriate images as often as possible.
The majority of our users are Swedish, Norwegian and American.
I sincerely apologize on the behalf of snapsaved.com we never wished for this to happen. We did not wish to cause SnapChat or their users any harm, we only wished to provide a unique service."


Beware of Vodafone New Message Phishing Scam

A new phishing email pretending to be from Vodafone is at the moment making the round. This scam can make plenty of victims if it hits the right audience as Vodafone has many customers who keep the voice message service activated.

The phishing email is very simple,
"Subject: Vodafone New Message
Dear Customer,
You have one unread Message on your Online Vodafone Account.
VIEW YOUR MESSAGE
Regards,
2014 Vodafone Limited
"

The recipient is provided with a link in the mail, which redirects he/she to a fake website identical to the original login page of Vodafone. Once the recipient enters the username and password, the credentials are sent to the crooks behind the scam.  These credentials can be used to hijack accounts.

We advise our readers to be vigilant.

13 year old China Youngest Hacker Wants to Be a White Hat

Wang Zhengyang, only 13 and is known in his country as the youngest hacker.He has been attracting the press during the China Internet Security Conference which took place from the 24th to 25th September.
Wang who is a student from a junior high school affiliated with Tsinghua University in Beijing said that he would like to be known as an ethical hacker or a white hat. He stated that he hacked his school website to avoid submitting homework. He also hacked an online store, after he discovering a flaw, to alter the price of an item from 2500 Yuan to 1 Yuan. Wang stated that he did notify the store about the vulnerability and has not purchased the item.
Earlier this year in April, he contacted a software company in Beijing to report about vulnerabilities he discovered which could affect over 100 educational institutions in the country.

Wang said:
"I think those who hack all day for profit are immoral,".."It is interesting to look for website security risks and I am overwhelmed with joy when I find one. But I will not use my talent for something illegal."

He added,
"By attending the conference, I want the other to notice me and know that someone my age could work on internet security,"

Source:[Want China Times]

Beware of Red Cross Job Offer Scam Email

An email pretending to be from Red Cross is at the moment making the round in which it is saying that Red Cross is recruiting staffs. The newly recruited staff will be paid $250 / €200 per day. A series of job positions have been listed in the email and those interested are requested to fill in the 'form' and to pay an enrollment fee.

This email is not from Red Cross and we advise our readers to ignore this email if they received it. This is  a way for cyber criminals to collect easy money.

Source:[Hoax-Slayer]

New Android Trojan Wipes Data and Blocks Communication

Security Researchers from Dr.WEB discovered a new android malware posing as Angry Bird Transformers. It has been categorised as a "vandal programs" as researchers has not find any code which indicates that the creators of the malware will have any financial benefits from it.
These types of malicious programs are rare nowadays and are done only to show the programming skills or to make mischief. Dr.Web added the malware to its database under the name of Android.Elite.1.origin.
Once this malware is granted permission, it starts formatting the SD card. The malware also blocks access to popular messengers like whatsapp messenger, hangouts or standard SMS application by displaying a message "OBEY or Be HACKED".
Adding to these, the Trojan also sends a text message to all contacts on the device which goes as follows,
"HEY!!! [contact_name] Elite has hacked you. Obey or be hacked.
A similar text is sent as a reply to all incoming SMS from valid mobile phone numbers:
Elite has hacked you.Obey or be hacked."

We advise our readers to be cautious and to install application from trusted developers only.

Source: [Dr.WEB News]

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