FBI paid less than $1M for iPhone hack -- and doesn't know how it works.

Any iPhone 5C running iOS 9 can now be hacked by the FBI. Apple

How much is it to hack an iPhone? Not as much as we thought.

The FBI has paid less than $ 1 million to hack the iPhone 5C of one of the shooters San Bernardino, Reuters reported Friday, a figure lower than some observers had previously estimated.


FBI Director James Comey said last week the government had spent more money than it has been to the rest of the running of the office term. This was calculated at $ 1.3 million.

The software mechanism bought by the FBI for an undisclosed security company can also be used by the government to unlock other 5C iPhone models running the latest software from Apple, although the FBI does not understand how it works, the sources cited by Reuters said.

The FBI declined to comment beyond what he has already said in public statements, but CNET directed to a page entitled "Going Dark show" about the interception of communications.

The agency purchased the mechanism after Apple refused to create a backdoor through its encrypted software, despite a court order demanding does.

Apple has opposed the government's request, saying it was impossible to break its own encryption and creating a workaround might jeopardize the safety of all iPhones. The transparency report the company released earlier this week shows met about 80 percent of the requests made by the US government in the second half of last year.

The technology industry has gathered around Apple lending support as he prepared to fight the FBI in court. But the government dropped the case after finding another way to break the security of the phone.

Comey could know that the hack was expensive, but the sources cited by Reuters said he does not know which company provided the technology, despite his seniority. Previous reports have suggested an Israeli security cabinet was behind the hack.


The mechanism was purchased with a single payment and can be used again.

The content of the iPhone, which belonged to San Bernardino shooter Rizwan Syed Farook, are still under consideration, but initial investigations are not considered to have produced remarkable discoveries. In particular, the FBI hopes to discover if Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, co-conspirators.

The FBI authorized by the Supreme Court to hack any PC

Democratic Senator Ron Wyden considers that a massive intrusion hundreds of millions of computers would target the vast majority of people who have done nothing wrong.

The Supreme Court of the United States adopted amendments to the federal law on criminal procedures to enable police authorities and investigators to go away in any computer located anywhere in the world.These somewhat draconian amendments would take effect on 1 December.

We knew the US reluctant to comply in broad privacy - revelations of Snowden affair around the existence of a global surveillance program PRISM to support - and this may well continue.Despite all the efforts of the League of protection of freedoms and human rights and mobilization of major cloud players (Google, Microsoft, Apple ...) to try to preserve the privacy of individuals against large state espionage scale, the Supreme Court of the United States took a momentous decision accordingly.

The US institution has just approved several amendments to the federal law on criminal proceedings, including Section 41 levels, which allow investigators to take all necessary means to enable the authorities and investigators (police, FBI ... ) to enter remotely on any computer located anywhere in the world. "With these new rules, the government may now be able to get access and find information on hundreds of thousands or millions of computers at a time, most of the machines concerned may belong to victims rather than 'to people behind cybercrime, "said Democratic Senator Ron Wyden. The latter had already distinguished himself in December 2014 for presenting a bill to prevent the government from exploiting backdoors on software to facilitate its surveillance operations.

The Congress called upon to decide by December ¹

These amendments adopted by the US Supreme Court must now be approved by Congress by 1 December. Voting could be suspended from the US election results, the results will be announced on November 8, according to the political color of the winning candidate ...

A US senator proposes an explosive countermeasure against backdoors FBI

Democratic Senator Ron Wyden hope to forget the failure of the vote in the Senate of Freedom Act last month.

Ron Wyden, Democratic senator from Oregon, introduced a bill to prevent the government from exploiting backdoors and vulnerabilities of security technology products and solutions to facilitate its surveillance operations.

Democratic US Senator from the State of Oregon, Ron Wyden, hope to pass the US legislation aimed to preempt the actions of government's spying on users through products and technology solutions. Called Secure Data Act, this bill is extracted from a previous, broader named Freedom Act and presented last November in the Senate, but had then not get a final vote despite the support of the administration of Barack Obama.

With Secure Data Act, Ron Wyden said his bill is in response to proposals made ​​by US government officials forcing IT sector companies design backdoors (backdoors) in their products. "The strong encryption and security on the noise emitted from a computer are the best way to keep the data of the US safe from pirates and foreign threats," said Senator.

The Secure Data Act in the crosshairs of the FBI director

Ron Wyden also says that technological mandates driven by the government to weaken the security of data in order to facilitate government investigations, compromise the national and economic security and privacy. "An integrated backdoor in a security system it is compromised, and companies will have less incentive to invest in new security technologies," he also said. By allowing these backdoors, already weakened customer confidence in the products and services because of revelations about the government surveillance program, would further erode a little more after him.

The Secure Data Act therefore seeks to establish that no agency is able to mandate a manufacturer, developer or seller of computers, software or electronic terminals to change or develop safety functions in order to monitor any any user of these products. Unless they are already covered by CALEA (Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act), which requires telecommunications operators and broadband providers to make available to the Justice of interception capabilities. "Adopted 20 years ago, this measure does not cover the latest communication technologies," stressed however James B. Comey, FBI Director. According to him, seeing also a very dim view of proposals Apple and Google started encrypting by default the data of users of iOS and Android, the same Congress should pass legislation requiring all tools communication allow police access to user data.

Confident, however, Ron Wyden said his bill has a number of support within the House of Representatives, Thomas Massie and Zoe Lofgren, who last June adopted an amendment to ban electronic vulnerability warrants. 

DDoS attack on global DNS root servers

Unknown launched a large-scale DDoS attacks on the servers that hold the top-level addresses of the global Internet. The attack was made by strangers in the 13 servers that are the root of the global Internet, because in them is the matching of top-level domain name [.com, .org, .net and those relating to specific countries] with the IP addresses of websites .

According to a report from root-servers.org, The first barrage took place on Monday, November 30, and lasted for about two hours and 40 minutes. The second one happened a day later and lasted for almost exactly an hour. Most but not all of the 13 root servers that form the Internet's DNS root zone were hit. The attacks started and stopped on their own and consisted of billions of valid queries for just two undisclosed domain names, one for each incident. There's no indication of who or what was behind the attack.

Users encountered the problem as a timeout in their applications to their servers.

The attack took place between November 30 and December 1.

See the root-servers.org report here.

The "happy hacker" money distributed to the Palestinians who "stole" from banks

If Robin Hood lived in modern times probably did that and the Algerian Hamza Bendelladj, who violate US computer banking systems, take away large sums of money and distributed to charitable organizations for Palestinians.

According to Al jazeera , the 27 year old programmer, for the case, which is expected during the current week's court decision, Georgia, USA, developed and used malware against 200 US banks and financial institutions. Then, it seems dollars handed out millions to charities for financial support for the Palestinians.

The Hamja Bendelladj has admitted guilt and faces jail almost 70 years, and a fine of more than $ 13 million.

The young man, who was known by the nickname Bx1, was arrested in Thailand and deported to the United States in 2013, while the press called the "happy hacker" because the pictures of the switching of the airport was smiling.

After the news, however, that funded organizations for the relief of Palestinians, the Bejdelladjcharacterized by many as a "hero". When not, rumors reported that the hacker threatened even with death penalty, dozens of his supporters launched a campaign in favor of the Internet with messages of solidarity, calling on the authorities not to execute him.

Gmail: Two new security features

The company Google has announced two new features to Gmail email service, which will provide a safer environment for its users.

The first new feature is a "sign" when you receive or send an email. For example when you receive or send a message to an address that does not use TLS encryption then you see an open padlock next to the address and vice versa.

The second new feature to be added is: when a user receives a message from an address that can not be verified, then the position of the logo of the company or the sender's photo will display a question mark.

According to the second update, if you receive an email that the userdoes not can be certified , then you will see a question mark in place of the sender's photo or logo of the company.

The roll out of new services has started .

WebUSB: goes to another level connecting devices!

Two engineers Goolge developed an API, which named WebUSB. The WebUSB allows a user to connect a USB device to the internet safely bypassing the need for local drivers.

The development was made by Reilly Grant and Ken Rockot.

What is WebUSB;

Today, when you connect a device to our computer, we expect that will somehow find the correct driver (driver) and that it will work properly with a WEB application. For many devices, such as keyboards, hard drives, cameras, etc. this is possible because there are standard drivers built into the operating system. But what about other devices which have not yet been standardized? This is where comes the need for that API, which go to the next level to connect devices to the Internet regardless of the operating system, making the device truly "plug and play".

The development is still in progress and you can see more information here.

5 Steps to security in Linux

The fact that in our computer desktop use Linux, as "home users", is not in itself enough to give us security against cybercriminals. Why only 2% of the worldwide desktop using functional Linux, but that does not mean that cybercriminals remain "indifferent" towards this - seemingly small - number of users.

Many will say that the main aim of cybercriminals is overwhelmingly the most - compared to other operating systems - Windows users, but this is not absolute. Cybercriminals are always looking for ways to take advantage of "backdoors" and vulnerabilities, with a view, as is logical, the economic benefit. And Linux systems is - for now - a very good field.

There malicious for running Linux software and many users have found. Users of Linux fall phishingvictims. Well someone can lose his laptop running Linux, to steal or fall victim hacker. Some remove and resell hard drives from computers with Linux systems, without first deleting the saved data in them. So we realize that there is a serious risk to our personal data and in general for our digitalidentity, even if we use functional Linux.

5 Steps to security in Linux

After this, we present five basic steps to better protect your data, privacy and your property if you are using Linux on the desktop or on your laptop.

1. Select Full Disk Encryption (FDE)

Regardless of the operating system, encryption of the entire hard drive is always an important step protection.

If your laptop is lost or stolen, a password during the login is not enough to protect your data. It is very easy to start the computer in Linux with a USB key, and so one who holds your computer can read your files easily.

If, however, your disk data is encrypted, then it is safe, as the ultimate owner of your computer will not be able to "read" without FDE code.

It is worth noting that the Full Disk Encryption advantage over encryption only a few files, and the first will not have to worry about any temporary files or files that may have accidentally come up with some random folder.

Moreover, slowing your computer's response speed will be negligible because of the encryption.

In Ubuntu and Fedora, and other distributions of Linux, the FDE is available as an option during installation.

During installation select «Encrypt the new Ubuntu installation for security ».

Of course you have to choose from and a strong password!

2. Regularly update your software

And in this case, regardless of the operating system, it is imperative to update on a daily basis - or even real - time, both the operating system and the software you use, such as web browsers, PDF readers file or video players.

This is fairly easy in most Linux distributions.

In Ubuntu security updates installed automatically, by default.

Check yourself in System Settings> Software & Updates> Updates

Make sure that important (Important) security configuration updates is active.

3. Learn to use the firewall of Linux.

The kernel in Linux includes an element firewall, called iptables, and has significant potential for network traffic management and avoid a lot of cyber species.

In Ubuntu there is also a further embodiment, described Uncompicated Firewall (UWF), a frontend program facilitates considerably the iptables setting.

The UWF is disabled by default, but you can activate it from a command prompt as follows:

  $ Sudo ufw enable
 Password:
 Firewall is active and enabled on system startup
 $ 

In Fedora will find FirewallD, an alternative firewall management tool, which is enabled by default.

At your disposal you have also a GUI firewall - config for easier adjustment FirewallD. You can install through command prompt as follows:

  $ Yum install firewall-config 

4. Increase safety in the browser you are using

Any browser you use, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera, etc., this is a "safe" gateway to cyber.

Many free extensions (extensions) are available to improve the security of your browser, and to protect your privacy. Among other things, you can use the following:

• HTTPS-Everywhere
• adblock Plus
• NoScript
• Ghostery
• Disconnect

5. Use anti-virus software

For last we left the main, considered by many as unnecessary. Anti-virus software! Some will say: "But I need anti-virus on Linux;». The answer is "yes"!

The fact is that more malware detected in a Linux target Windows systems. But there is reason to be part of a chain of problems for others - that might take the "infected" files - rather than to protect them?

Want Some other reason? If Linux does not constitute a frequent target of cybercriminals, this does not mean that they never target. If you ignore the hackers, then - alas - there is a serious risk of breaching the security of your computer from malicious users and not noticing only when the situation will be irreversible.

Banking Trojan via strand of Pirate Bay

Hackers try to sharing malicious software (malware & banking Trojan) through a strand of Pirate Bay, which aims to websites based on WordPress.

Researchers at Malwarebytes have revealed the attacks, which appear to come from a web page identical to the Pirate Bay, which was created under the initiative TheOpenBay. The TheOpenBay allows anyone to freely develop its own version of the file-sharing software that uses the famous platform, as many ISPs in many countries have banned their users access to the 'original' page due to violations of the relevant copyright laws.

However, a significant number of websites using WordPress compromised through iFrames that were incorporated in them, because of a vulnerability in an older version of Flash Player of Adobe. The iFrames redirect visitors to a website clone Pirate Bay, from where the exploit kit is split with Nuclearname and containing a banking Trojan. The Trojan that targets computers with Windows operating systems and is automatically installed on the device once it has observed that the system is running an outdated version of Flash Player.

How to protect yourself?

The way of protection, as is logical, it is relatively simple. The website owners based on WordPress should upgrade both the version of WordPress, and the plugins that have incorporated in their site.Meanwhile, the website visitors should be sure that they use the most recent software updates - in this instance of Flash Player. A guide on how to update the Flash Player is available here .

It is not the first time that websites based on WordPress have been the target of cyber-criminals - is also for platform widely used. Earlier this year, there was a problem with a popular plugin , while last year it was discovered that some cloned themes and plugins of WordPress contained a CrypthoPHP backdoor.

WordPress Slimstat plugin: threatening web data

More than one million websites based on WordPress content management platform at risk because of a critical vulnerability discovered in one of the most popular plugin platform, the Slimstat.

Vulnerability found in most versions of the WordPress plugin called Wettable Powder Slimstat (WP-Slimstat) . The websites of course operating in WordPress environment worldwide amounted to nearly 70 million, but 1.3 million of them use the WP-Slimstat, an additive that displays web analytics in real time.

What versions problem occurs?

All previous last-3.9.6 versions of WP-Slimstat contain a "secret key", which easily can guess, and that is used to sign data sent and received to and from the computer of the end user.

After the "secret key discovery", the attacker could carry out an attack SQL injection to a site - using this plugin - to steal sensitive information from the databases of the victim's computer, including encrypted passwords and keys encryption (WordPress Secret Keys) that remotely used to manage websites.

technical explanation

The "secret key" to the WP-Slimstat is the MD5 hash value of the timestamp of the plugin installation. Using sites like the Internet Archive, a hacker could easily determine the year that the site - target came into being.

Subsequently, and given that the possible values ​​for testing do not exceed 30 million, the attacker within 10 minutes (with a possible CPU) could identify the "secret key" and thus to extract sensitive data from the database.

What to do;

If your website have used the WordPress platform and while you install the WP-Slimstat plugin, then you will need to immediately upgrade to a newer version of the plugin, to fix the vulnerability and avoid unpleasant sensitive data loss.

How to make sure Adobe Flash is up-to-date and enabling it on-demand

Since vulnerabilities in Flash are increasingly being targeted by exploit kits in order to distribute malware on vulnerable computers, it is important to use an up-to-date version. Here is a step-by-step procedure to check your current version and, if necessary, update Adobe Flash.

Is my Flash plugin up-to-date?

Adobe provides a page that will tell you which version is currently loaded in your browser by clicking on the “Check Now” button.

http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player.html

In the event that your Flash is out of date the page will show a warning like the one below. In this case follow the instructions on the page to download and install the latest version.

For Google Chrome, the browser comes with its own version of Flash and is updated automatically. Just make sure you have the latest version of Chrome.

Enabling automatic updates of Flash

Flash can be configured to download and install updates automatically. On Windows, open theControl Panel and then the Flash Player menu item.

Then click on the Advanced tab. On recent Windows systems the update options probably be grayed out, click the Change Update Settings button. Finally select either to automatically install updates or to notify when updates are available.

Enabling Flash on-demand

It is possible to configure browsers to ask before loading Flash objects which is an extra step you can take to limits risks of infection.

Firefox

In Firefox, this can be done by going in the Add-ons menu, clicking the Plugins pane and selecting “Ask to Activate” for the Shockwave Flash plugin.

The next time a Flash object is loaded on a webpage Firefox will display a grey box, click on it to activate it. You can select to automatically load Flash on domains you trust.

Google Chrome

In Google Chrome, go to the Settings menu.

Then in the search box type ‘click to play’. Google Chrome will highlight the Content settingsbutton. Click on it to open the menu.

Scroll down until the click to play item appears and select it. You can add domains on which to automatically activate plugin by clicking the Manage Exceptions button. Finally click the Donebutton at the bottom of the dialog to save the settings.

The next time a Flash object is loaded on a webpage Google Chrome will display a grey box, click on it to activate it.

Internet Explorer

Internet Explorer does not offer a way to activate Flash on demand. However it is possible to configure it to allow Flash only on specific domains. To do that first open the Manage add-onsmenu.

Then under the Toolbars and Extensions pane, right-click on the “Shockwave Flash Object” plugin and click on the More information menu item.

Then on the next dialog click on the Remove all sites button and close the window.

The next time a Flash object is loaded on a website Internet Explorer will display a dialog at the bottom of the window, click the Allow button to enable Flash on that website.