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Researchers find that a spoofing a service message from the phone carrier is simple and effective on some brands of Android smartphones. Using text messages with embedded links, security researchers from Check Point Software Technologies recently discovered that spoofing messages from a phone carrier could be used to configure certain features, including e-mail and the directory server, of several brands of Android phones. The attack uses over-the-air (OTA) provisioning messages, a technique used by carriers...

Google yesterday rolled out security patches for the Android mobile operating system but did not include the fix for at least one bug that enables increasing permissions to kernel level. Security flaws that enable privilege escalation can be exploited from a position with limited access to one with elevated access to critical files on the system. In order to utilize this, an attacker should have already compromised the device but have their actions restricted by insufficient permissions....

More than half of the Android mobile phones in use are susceptible to an advanced text-based phishing attack that only requires a cybercriminal make a $10 investment. Check Point researchers found malicious actors using a remote agent to trick phone owners into accepting new phone settings that hand over various levels of control to the attacker. The attack vector is through a process called over-the-air (OTA) provisioning which is used by carriers to deploy network-specific settings to...

In an incident practically ripped from the plot of one of its own stories, the webcomic XKCD reported that user data from its online forum section was found in an exposed database. XKCD, which labels itself a “webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language,” posted in a brief note that portions of its PHPBB user table from its forums showed up in a leaked data collection. The exposed data includes usernames, email addresses, salted and hashed...

The Internet of Things (IoT) is rapidly creating business opportunities, and the surveillance segment is among the largest. Following the increased development of security camera technology, PoE switches have played an essential role in surveillance deployments. However, the current PoE switch designs are too generic to keep up with the expanding needs of modern surveillance installations. Zyxel, an industry leader in switch design and production, has created the GS1300 and GS1350 series PoE switches specifically...

A recently exposed malware campaign that used watering-hole attacks to target iPhone users for more than two years was reportedly part of an effort to track Uyghur Muslims based in China’s Xinjiang state. The campaign was actually broader than originally thought, and attempted to infect Android and Microsoft Windows devices as well, reports are also stating. Citing sources with knowledge of the matter, TechCrunch this past weekend reported the campaign is the work of a state actor — most...

First there was Brangelina, TomKat and Bennifer and now Kaspersky has presented the world with BRATA, or Brazilian RAT Android. BRATA is not a power celebrity couple, but is a relatively new Android remote access tool family that, at least so far, has exclusively targeted Brazilians using Android 5.0 or higher, according to Kaspersky’s GReAT team. GReAT has found it hosted primarily in the Google Play store, and to a lesser extent on third-party Android outlets,...

A data breach at flight booking site Option Way exposed personal details on passengers and their flight and travel plans. Researchers at vpnMentor led by Noam Rotem and Ran Locar were “able to access over 100 GB of data, a massive amount of customers’ unencrypted Personally Identifiable Information (PII),” including names, birth dates, gender email addresses, destinations, flight prices and flight departure and return dates. Source: SC Magazine

The forums of the XKCD webcomic created by Randall Munroe in 2005 are currently offline after being impacted by a data breach which exposed the information of 561,991 users on July 1. The compromised user information including usernames, emails, and IP addresses, as well as hashed and salted passwords stored in MD5 phpBB3 format, was added to Have I Been Pwned's database on September 1, after being provided by security researcher and data analyst Adam Davies. Source: Bleepingcomputer

Phishers behind a new campaign have switched to using compromised SharePoint sites and OneNote documents to redirect potential victims from the banking sector to their landing pages. The attackers take advantage of the fact that the domains used by Microsoft's SharePoint web-based collaborative platform are almost always overlooked by secure email gateways which allows their phishing messages to regularly reach their targets' inboxes. Source: Bleepingcomputer