Cyber Concious

How to check your android phone for malicious apps Android malware, ransomware, hacking, phishing, cyber attack is on the rise. Here is how to prevent your phone from hackers. Hackers no longer find it difficult to have their malicious app on Google Play Store. Google's new tool makes it easy to quickly verify you haven't installed a suspicious app. Google Play Protect is the company's newest tool aimed at helping Android users stay clear of any suspicious apps. The service constantly scans your Android phone or tablet and will alert you if there's an issue. Keep in mind, Play Protect is designed to scan and identify bad apps in the Play Store, not from third-party websites that host apps. The easiest way to keep your device safe is to install apps from the Play Store, and the Play Store alone. There are a few different ways to check if an app is Play Protect approved. View recent scan details To view the current scan status and make sure Play Protect...

How to secure my phone, how to prevent phone from being hack, is my phone hacked, my phone is being track, how to prevent phone track are some of the questions being asked by phone users. Here are some steps to take to secure your phone. Though there are advanced ways to secure your phone which will be discussed later. Change your phone's passcode often The first line of defense against people attempting to view or steal your data is a strong and constantly changing passcode. Make sure that you substantially change the passcode each time you change it--don't just change one number. On most phones, you can set a "complex" or "advanced" password that includes letters and symbols in addition to the typical numerical characters. Use Touch ID if possible While you'll still need to have your passcode for your phone's lock screen, you should use Touch ID on any supported devices to pay for items and any other available services. As a general rule...

How to secure password How to secure password, password security tips, password security best practices, how secure is my password, how to secure facebook, gmail, twitter, website accounts password and many more are a daily routine questions asked by internet users due to the rising challenges of internet security. Here are safety tips for keeping your password away from hackers. Create complex passwords Your passwords to access your accounts on apps or websites should consist of a combination of numbers, upper- and lower-case letters, and special characters that is difficult to guess. Don't use the same password for more than one website or account. This limits the damage to you if a hacker happens to crack one of your passwords. Use a password manager Password managers store and auto-fill your credentials for different sites, allowing you to create a complex and unique password for each site without having to worry about entering the password itself more t...

Companies are starting to hire more hackers to help with their security programs. I understand hackers come with a skill set that could prove useful, is it a good idea? What are the pros and cons to this strategy? And is there really such a thing as ethical hackers? If someone broke into your home and stole your precious jewelry, would you hire him years later to safeguard your home, or buy jewelry from him? Probably the most celebrated hacker-turned-security professional is Kevin Mitnick. He is best known for his high-profile 1995 arrest for various computer and communications-related crimes. Since 2000, Mitnick has been a paid security consultant, public speaker and author. He does security consulting for Fortune 500 companies and the FBI, performs penetration testing services for the world's largest companies, and teaches social engineering classes to dozens of companies and government agencies. One could say he is reformed and contributes to the fight against unlawful hacki...

Linux, Android Malware Recent Threats Linux computers and android devices are among the fastest growing targets of malware. Over the past few years, anecdotal evidence has suggested that security threats to Linux devices are on the rise. Last fall’s Mirai botnet attacks, which turned thousands of Linux devices into a zombie army used to attack infrastructure via Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), were particularly effective in waking up the Linux community. Now, we’re seeing quantitative statistics to support the Linux malware trend. On the heels of a WikiLeaks release detailing the CIA’s OutlawCountry and Gyrfalcon hacking tools aimed at Linux, both AV-Test and WatchGuard have released reports claiming that Linux computers are among the fastest growing targets of malware over the past year and a half.  According to AV-Test, MacOS computers saw the largest increase in malware targeting in 2016 with a 370 percent increase, but Linux was close behind with a 300 percen...

Being scary of having direct access to your computer was enough to keep you safe in centuries back, but today its far beyond that. Having the right tools may not be enough to keep you safe from computer virus especially in this 2017 but in combination with doing the right thing will keep. Let’s take a look at eight additional ways you can protect yourself from viruses and malware: 1. Keep your software up to date Software makers like Microsoft and Oracle routinely update their software to fix bugs that could potentially be exploited by hackers. Oracle just released on Sunday an update to its Java software to fix a security hole hackers could have used to infect computers with malware. The software patch came after the Department of Homeland Security sent out an advisory late last week about the security flaw recommending computer users disable the Java plug-in in their Web browsers. 2. Don’t click on links within emails A good rule of thumb is if you don’t recognize a sende...

You can’t lock down all the things all the time, it’s the digital equivalent of hiding in a bunker. Build a personal protection plan that makes sense for you. Look in the Mirror Start your security assessment with what’s known as a threat-modeling exercise. Ask yourself what you want to protect and from whom, and estimate the likelihood that the specific parties would compromise your data. Plug the high-risk holes first. Everything else, you can sweat a little less. Master Your Passwords A good password manager generates, stores, and updates all your passwords with a button press. The actual passwords are encrypted and accessible solely by you, but the system is only as good as your master password. Use a key generated by the Diceware method, which randomly selects words to build a complex but easy-to-remember phrase. Ditch Touch ID It’s a neat way to quickly unlock your phone, but your fingerprint sensor is also one of the easier ways for someone to access your device. Th...

A latest report suggests that hackers try sending malicious mails to nuclear engineers for hacking in to their IT systems. There’s a lot of hustle in the world of computers these days as malware attacks have been on the rise and have caused mayhem on a global scale. WannaCry shook the world with its widespread infection capabilities as it was based on leaked NSA tools. The concerns regarding such malicious IT attacks have now escalated to another level as reports have claimed that hackers have been trying to infect nuclear plants in the US. A report from federal law enforcement officials has confirmed that hackers have been trying to breach networks of companies that operate nuclear power plants in the United States. The Wolf Creek Nuclear Operating Corporation, with their plant in Kansas, was one of the companies claimed to have been a target of the malware attack according to a report by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. The hackers tried the same old way ...

Kaspersky Lab researcher Vitaly Kamluk has released the source code of Bitscout, a compact and customizable tool designed for remote digital forensics operations. Bitscout, which is not an official Kaspersky product, initially started as a hobby project a few years ago, and it has been continually improved based on the requirements that arose in Kaspersky investigations involving digital forensics. Bitscout 2.0 – version 1.0 was never released to the public – enables forensic investigators to remotely analyze a system, while allowing the system’s owner to monitor the expert’s activities and ensure that their access is limited to the targeted disks. The tool can be useful to researchers, law enforcement cybercrime units, and educational institutions. The owner of the system on which forensic analysis will be conducted is provided an image file that they must burn onto a removable storage drive. The system is then booted from this drive and the investigator connects remotely...

The virus made millions by infecting millions of phones with fake apps to churn out fraudulent ad revenue. This CopyCat's got claws. A new strain of a malware called CopyCat has infected more than 14 million Android devices around the world, rooting phones and hijacking apps to make millions in fraudulent ad revenue, researchers at Check Point said Thursday. While the majority of victims are in Asia, more than 280,000 Android devices in the US were hit by the massive hack. Google had been tracking the malware for the last two years and has updated Play Protect to block CopyCat, but millions of victims are getting hit through third-party app downloads and phishing attacks. There was no evidence that CopyCat was distributed on Google Play, according to Check Point. "Play Protect secures users from the family, and any apps that may have been infected with CopyCat were not distributed via Play," Google said in a statement. Keeping true to its name, Copy...

Britain's Parliament has been hit by a new wave of cyber attack after hackers attempted to trick lawmakers into revealing their passwords, prompting officials to warn MPs and their aides to guard against such threats. Politicians have been warned that hackers were posing as parliamentary officials asking for their passwords. "This afternoon we've heard reports of parliamentary users being telephoned and asked for their parliamentary username and password," a message sent to MPs and staff earlier this week warned. "The caller is informing users that they have been employed by the digital service to help with thecyberattack. These calls are not from the digital service. We will never ask you for your password." According to 'The Sunday Telegraph', parliamentary officials have said that hackers are still attempting to gain access after a "sustained" assault last week lasted for more than 12 hours as unknown hackers repeatedly ta...

A bug in Linux’s systemd init system causes root permissions to be given to services associated with invalid usernames, and while this could pose a security risk, exploitation is not an easy task. A developer who uses the online moniker “mapleray” last week discovered a problem related to systemd unit files, the configuration files used to describe resources and their behavior. Mapleray noticed that a systemd unit file containing an invalid username – one that starts with a digit (e.g. “0day”) – will initiate the targeted process with root privileges instead of regular user privileges. Systemd is designed not to allow usernames that start with a numeric character, but Red Hat, CentOS and other Linux distributions do allow such usernames. “It's systemd's parsing of the User= parameter that determines the naming doesn't follow a set of conventions, and decides to fall back to its default value, root,” explained developer Mattias Geniar. While this sounds like it ...

The increasing amount of data we’re all generating is everywhere: in smartphones, laptops, thumb drives, and dozens of online services. How can we secure all of them against unwarranted access? We virtually can’t. Smartphones get stolen, thumb drives get lost, email passwords get brute-forced, cloud servers get breached, unwary users get phished, WiFi networks get tapped, and eventually, malicious users obtain access to your data. So how do you protect your data against unwelcome parties? You encrypt it. In case you don’t know it, encryption is the science of modifying data to prevent intruders from making sense of it. When you encrypt your data, only you and anyone else holding the decryption keys will be able to unlock and read it. This means that even if an attacker gains access to your data by breaking into a server or stealing your hard drive, they won’t be able to make sense of it if they don’t have the keys. As I’ve argued before, encryption is your last line o...

NordVPN, a popular virtual private network provider, has launched CyberSec, a new security feature as part of the NordVPN 6.4.5.0 client update. CyberSec is a new security component of the official NordVPN client designed to block malware, intrusive advertisement, and other threats. Customers of NordVPN who upgrade the client to the latest version will receive a popup when they run the client after update installation that informs them about the new CyberSec feature. Introducing CyberSec ! From now on, NordVPN gives comprehensive protection from intrusive ads, malware, phishing attempts, DDoS attacks and other threats. CyberSec can best be described as a mechanism to control traffic. It resembles a content blocker but with the difference that it runs on the system level, and not as a browser extension. It is not the first feature of its kind; Private Internet Access’ client for instance ships with a similar feature called MACE for some time now. So what does it d...

Hackers can steal passwords and PINs by analysing your brainwave signals, a new study has found. Researchers from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the University of California Riverside collected data from electroencephalography (EEG) headsets, which sense the electrical activity inside a person’s brain. They’re growing increasingly popular amongst gamers, who can use them to control characters using their brain signals. Crucially, however, EEG headsets also monitor your brainwaves when you’re not playing. Users who paused a game but left their EEG headset on while checking their password-protected accounts could be vulnerable to hackers, the researchers found. They asked 12 people to use a physical keyboard to type a series of randomly generated PIN numbers and passwords into a text box while wearing a headset. After they had entered 200 characters, an algorithm created by the researchers was able to make educated guesses about the PINs with a 43.4 per cent suc...

Energy companies, including nuclear energy companies, are likely to come under hacking attack warns the FBI and US Department of Homeland Security. The agencies have detected attempts by hacker to harvest access information to electricity providers. “Historically, cyber actors have strategically targeted the energy sector with various goals ranging from cyber espionage to the ability to disrupt energy systems in the event of a hostile conflict,” says the report. Last December hackers closed down electricity suppliers in the Ukraine with malware called Industroyer. The report says it thinks the hackers have been conducting reconnaissance on vulnerabilities at the energy companies for the last two months. The report describes 11 files used in the attacks, including malware downloaders and tools that allow the hackers to take remote control of computers and crawl across their networks.