2017-04-08

Unprotect MS Word files, check ransomware code

An interesting tool to have (especially for ransomware): How to unprotect vb-code from MS Word.

2017-02-23

SHA1 Broken (shattered)!

SHA1 cryptography hash has finally been broken. In all fairness it was declared obsolete a while back. But it is still very interesting to see a theoretical attack live in action.

2016-11-30

Free Rides at San Francisco Metro

27-Nov-2016:
A hacker deployed ransomware making the metro system un-usable, and asked for $73000..!

30-Nov-2016:
The hacker gets hacked. Reminder to change those password recovery questions.

2016-11-14

Tesco Bank Hack

About 9000 customers lost over £2.5 million. The Bank was then forced to refund the money. This is after they froze internet banking for over 20K customers.

2016-10-20

3.2 million debit cards compromised in India

Hackers allegedly used malware to compromise the Hitachi Payment Services platform — which is used to power country's ATM, point-of-sale (PoS) machines and other financial transactions — and stole details of 3.2 Million debit cards!
Amazing

2016-10-12

Distressed Yahoo!

Yahoo is a facing a lot of heat at the moment, with some recent events.

First, 500 million user accounts was stolen in 2014, and got dumped online recently. Then, there is news that Yahoo complied with a secret government order to search the incoming emails of all of its users. This secret initiative was not even known to its internal security team.

Verizon, who has been in talks to acquire Yahoo is now seeking a $1 Billion price cut. Hence, the timing of these revelations couldn't have come at a worse time for Yahoo. 

To make matters worse, to avoid users leaving its platform, Yahoo has disabled email-forwarding. This is totally in bad faith, which will only frustrate it's users.

Update 15-Dec-2016:
Yahoo says an additional 1 Billion users were impacted. This is insane!
More details from Krebs.

Update 14-Jun-2017:
The Verizon deal finally goes thru, and Yahoo's CEO resigns.

Update  04-Oct-2017:
Every single Yahoo account was hacked - 3 billion in all - link

2016-09-10

Israeli Online Attack Service

A super investigation (and DOXing) done by Brian Krebs. A look at how a DDoS for hire service operates and launders money!   Link

Update 13-Sep-2106:
Krebs gets DDoS-ed for this article, by the same botnet company