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Showing posts with label news. Show all posts
Showing posts with label news. Show all posts

Friday, 31 August 2018

More Celebrity Nude Photos Leaked — Kim Kardashian and Others Targeted

 

So far people have not forgotten about the recent celebrity iCloud hacking scandal, a new wave of nude photographs of celebrities have been leaked in what appears to be the second edition of the massive leak related to the celebrities intimate-images on Internet earlier this month.

Among the victims of the most recent leak were reality television star Kim Kardashian, 33, actor Vanessa Hudgens, 25, and U.S. national women’s soccer team goalie Hope Solo, 33. Mary-Kate Olsen, Avril Lavigne, Hayden Panettiere, Lake Bell, Leelee Sobieski and former Disney stars Aly and AJ Michalka are other potential victims of this hacking scandal.

A video of Aubrey Plaza and previously unreleased nude photographs of celebrities included in the last leak, such as Oscar-winner Jennifer Lawrence and The Big Bang Theory star Kaley Cuoco, were also released with the recent privacy breach.

The leaked Celebrity Photos first appeared Saturday morning on the image-sharing site 4Chan and were also posted by users on Reddit, but were quickly deleted by site administrators as part of their new copyright infringement policy.

This new release of high profile celebrity leaked nude photos comes just three weeks after naked photos of the Oscar winning actress Jennifer Lawrence and '100 other celebrities', including supermodel Kate Upton and the American actress Mary E Winstead, were published online as part of a massive celebrity nude photo leak.

The photos were allegedly obtained from an iCloud leak that made celebrities’ phones susceptible to hacking, multiple media reported. The alleged hacked nude photos were previously posted on the 4chan thread to earn bitcoins.

After the icloud leaked photos began appearing on the Internet, Jennifer Lawrence, a three-time Oscar nominee who won for her role in Silver Linings Playbook, contacted FBI who are conducting investigations into the apparent widespread invasion of personal accounts thought to be connected to the iCloud service.
"This is a flagrant violation of privacy," Lawrence's publicist Liz Mahoney wrote in a statement. "The authorities have been contacted and will prosecute anyone who posts the stolen photos of Jennifer Lawrence."
The incident is currently under FBI investigation. Apple also investigated and had earlier this month confirmed there had been a "very targeted attack" on certain celebrities, rather than a widespread security breach affecting all users. According to the company, none of the cases it investigated suggests that Apple’s own systems were breached due to vulnerability in iCloud.

Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, said stars' iCloud accounts were compromised. He said that celebs were either victims of phishing attacks or had had their iCloud account hijacked because of hackers had guessed the security questions in an effort to obtain usernames and passwords.

The hackers targeted both Kardashian and Hudgens in past as well. The reality show star Kardashian was reportedly one of several stars who had personal information posted by hackers in 2013. Moreover, her sex tape with her then-boyfriend Ray J was leaked online in year 2007.

The "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" star has often shared revealing selfies and has posed nude for professional photo shoots. 

Also in 2007, Hudgens was targeted in a nude photo scandal during her Disney days after starring in "High School Musical 2." Later she also apologized for posing for the racy pics.

Hacker Who Leaked Celebrities' Naked Photos Gets 8 Months in Prison

 

The fourth celebrity hacker—who was charged earlier this year with hacking into over 250 Apple iCloud accounts belonged to Jennifer Lawrence and other Hollywood celebrities—has been sentenced to eight months in prison.


Earlier this year, George Garofano, 26, of North Branford, admitted to illegally obtaining credentials of his victims' iCloud accounts using a phishing scheme, carried out from April 2013 to October 2014, in which he posed as a member of Apple's security team and tricked victims into revealing their iCloud credentials.


Using stolen credentials, Garofano then managed to steal victims' personal information, including their sensitive and intimate photographs and videos, from their iCloud accounts, and then leaked them on online forums, like 4Chan.


Among the victims were Jennifer Lawrence, Kim Kardashian, Kirsten Dunst, Kate Upton, American Olympic gold medallist Misty May Treanor and actors Alexandra Chando, Kelli Garner and Lauren O’Neil.


While prosecutors asked for a sentence of at least 10 to 16 months in prison, Garofano's lawyer requested the judge to give his client a lighter sentence of five months in prison and another five months of home confinement.


However, a federal judge at the US district court in Bridgeport on Wednesday sentenced Garofano to 8 months in prison and 3 years of supervised release after his prison term is over.


Garofano is one of the four hackers who stole and leaked celebrities' nude photographs in the 2014 event, which is well known as "The Fappening" or "Celebgate" scandal.

The other three Celebgate hackers had already been sentenced for their roles in the celebrity photo hack:

  • Edward Majerczyk, 28, was sentenced to nine months in prison after pleading guilty to felony hacking and violating Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
  • Ryan Collins, 36, was sentenced to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty to the same.
  • Emilio Herrera, 32, pled guilty to the same but is still awaiting his sentencing.
While the US Attorney says there's no evidence that Majerczyk, Collins, or Herrera shared or posted the stolen photos online, prosecutors allege that Garofano, in some instances, also traded the stolen iCloud credentials and the victims' intimate images with other people.


Garofano, who is released on a $50,000 bond, will surrender on October 10, 2018, to serve his prison sentence.


The judge has also ordered Garofano to perform 60 hours of community service while he is on supervised release.

Reported Apple iCloud Hack Leaked Hundreds of Nude Celebrity Photos

 

Now this gonna be the height of Privacy Breach! Nude images of several high-profile persona including actors, models, singers and presenters have been made available online in a blatant hacking leak linked to the Apple iCloud service.

The recent privacy breach appears to be one of the biggest celebrity privacy breaches in history and represents a serious offense and violation of privacy. A hacker allegedly breached Apple’s iCloud service and copied the personal photos of at least 100 high-profile stars.

WHO IS BEHIND IT
The anonymous hacker, using the name Tristan, sparked the scandal on Sunday after dumping a large cache of female celebrities' alleged naked photographs onto the 4chan online forum, an online message board used for sharing pictures.

The list of those celebrities allegedly affected, whose nudes photographs are supposedly in this cache, is very long that includes Jenny McCarthy, Rihanna, Kristin Dunst, Kate Upton, the American actress Mary E Winstead, and the Oscar winning actress Jennifer Lawrence.

As a result of the leak, the nude photographs and videos of female celebrities are apparently being widely circulated on the internet. took to the ‘deep web’ where the images are thought to have first been posted a week ago to say he had to ‘move location’.

HOW ALL THIS BEGIN
The anonymous hacker behind the leaked images scandal posted a brief statement saying that they were going to bed because "s*** was getting real."

On Sunday evening, the anonymous user began posting the nude images of dozens of celebrities on 4chan website. It is still unclear how the photographs ended up online, but the anonymous hacker may have obtained more than 423 nude images of over a 100 celebrities without their permission.

Within hours Twitter was awash with hundreds of thousands of tweets about the photographs which are also alleged to include Brits Michelle Keegan, Cara Delevigne, Cat Deeley and Kelly Brook.

CELEBS ADMITTED - SNAPS ARE REAL
The 24-year-old Hunger Games and X-Men actress Jennifer Lawrence icluding several others have confirmed that the leaked photographs are genuine, while some celebrities have disputed the authenticity of the images.

The superstar Jennifer Lawrence's representative previously reported that Lawrence’s photographs were stolen, calling the hacking act as “a flagrant violation of privacy.” The spokesperson also added, “The authorities have been contacted and will prosecute anyone who posts the stolen photos of Jennifer Lawrence.”

Mary Elizabeth Winstead from Final Destination 3 was also been victim of the hack. The actress took to Twitter to react to having her images exposed.
ANONYMOUS HACKER RESPONDED
The anonymous 4Chan user confirmed that the current privacy breach was a conspiracy which involved more than one individual and “the result of several months of long and hard work.”
“Guys, just to let you know I didn't do this by myself,” wrote the anonymous hacker in the post thread just after midnight on Monday. “There are several other people who were in on it and I needed to count on to make this happened (sic). This is the result of several months of long and hard work by all involved. We appreciate your donations and applaud your excitement. I will soon be moving to another location from which I will continue to post.”
FBI BEGAN INVESTIGATION
In a statement issued on Monday afternoon, the FBI said that it had begun investigating the whole matter.
“The FBI is aware of the allegations concerning computer intrusions and the unlawful release of material involving high profile individuals, and is addressing the matter. Any further comment would be inappropriate at this time.”
HOW PHOTOGRAPHS WERE OBTAINED
It is believed that the leaked photographs of high-profile celebs were apparently obtained by the hackers via a massive hack of Apple's iCloud. The nude images then posted on 4chan websites by its users offering more explicit material in exchange for bitcoin payments.

The hacker on 4chan is also claiming to have over 60 nude selfies and an explicit sex film of the Oscar-winning actress, Jennifer Lawrence, which is available for a fee in Bitcoins.

NO RESPONSE FROM APPLE
Apple has declined to comment. It has not yet confirmed that its iCloud service was involved in the alleged leak.

The encryption of Apple on general data is considered to be robust, but access to it could be gained if an attacker is able to guess a users' passwords, which can be have obtained by using ‘brute force’ attack or ‘social engineering’ trick.

An account can alternatively be easily accessed by resetting a user's account by finding their email address and then answering traditional ‘security questions.’

Friday, 24 August 2018

Microsoft Detects More Russian Cyber Attacks Ahead of Mid-Term Election

 

Microsoft claims to have uncovered another new Russian hacking attempts targeting United States' Senate and conservative think tanks ahead of the 2018 midterm elections.

The tech giant said Tuesday that the APT28 hacking group—also known as Strontium, Fancy Bear, Sofacy, Sednit, and Pawn Storm, which is believed to be tied to the Russian government—created at least six fake websites related to US Senate and conservative organizations to trick its visitors and hack into their computers.

Three fake web domains were intended to look as if they belonged to the U.S. Senate, while one non-political website spoofed Microsoft's own online products.

The two other phony websites were designed to mimic two U.S. conservative organizations:

  1. The Hudson Institute — a conservative Washington think tank hosting extended discussions on topics including cybersecurity, among other important activities.
  2. The International Republican Institute (IRI) — a nonprofit group that promotes democracy worldwide and whose board includes prominent Republican figures like Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and former Republican National Committee Chairman Frank Fahrenkopf.

Although there is no sign of hackers successful in getting any visitor to click on the fake websites, Microsoft said the fake sites were created over the past several months and registered with major web-hosting companies.
Microsoft did not go into more details, saying "To be clear, we currently have no evidence these domains were used in any successful attacks before the DCU transferred control of them, nor do we have evidence to indicate the identity of the ultimate targets of any planned attack involving these domains."

Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit disabled the fake websites, after obtaining court approval last year, which was executed just last week, effectively allowing the company to seize the fake domains created by APT28 before they were "used in any successful attacks."

The tech giant has so far used the courts a dozen times since 2016 to shut down 84 fake websites created by APT28.

While speaking at the Aspen Security Forum last month, Microsoft VP Tom Burt said the company also took down a fake domain registered by APT28, after discovering that it was established for phishing attacks against at least three congressional candidates.


Active since at least 2007, the notorious hacking group has publicly been linked to the GRU (General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate), Russian secret military intelligence agency, and also been accused of a series of hacks in recent years, including the 2016 presidential election hack.

In a memorandum filed early in the case, Microsoft said APT28 sought to "establish a command and control infrastructure by which means Defendants conduct illegal activities, including attacks on computers and networks, monitoring of the activities of users, and the theft of information."

The revelation by Microsoft comes almost a month after US special counsel and former FBI director Robert Mueller filed charges against 12 Russian intelligence officers tied to the cyber attacks on the Democratic National Committee (DNC) during the 2016 election campaign.

Saturday, 18 August 2018

16 YEARS OLD AUSTRALIAN BOY HACKED APPLE'S NETWORK MULTIPLE TIMES, ACCESSED 90GB WORTH OF FILES

 

16 years old hacker from Australia allegedly broke into the almighty Apple's computer system and may have downloaded some internal files.

The Age newspaper reports that the teenager stored the documents in a folder called "hacky hack hack".
Apple insists that no customer data was compromised, but the Age reports that the boy has accessed customers accounts.

In a statement to the BBC, Apple said: "We vigilantly protect our networks and have dedicated teams of information security professionals that work to detect and respond to threats. In this case, our teams discovered the unauthorized access, contained it, and reported the incident to law enforcement. We regard the data security of our users as one of our greatest responsibilities and want to assure our customers that at no point during this incident was their personal data compromised."

The identity of the 16 years old hacker remains unknown.

READ ALSO: Microsoft quietly cuts off Win7 support for older Intel computers.

Monday, 9 July 2018

Windows by the numbers: Windows 10 gains ground but still trails Windows 7

 

Windows 10 last month for the first time passed the 40% milestone, but adoption still lagged behind the venerable Windows 7, which refused to budge from its dominant spot.
According to California-based analytics vendor Net Applications, Windows 10 added a full percentage point in June, accounting for 35.7% of the user share of all personal computers and 40.4% of all those running Windows last month. (The second number is larger than the first because Windows powered 87.9% of all PCs, not 100%.)
The 40.4% represented an estimated 606 million Windows personal computers, calculated using Microsoft's oft-cited number of 1.5 billion Windows PCs worldwide. Microsoft's most recent claim for Windows 10 was that the operating system was on nearly "700 million ... connected devices," a statistic it touted in early May. However, Microsoft counts not just PCs, but also Xbox gaming consoles, tablets and a small number of Windows-powered smartphones, which run Windows 10.
Even the 700 million figure, give or take a few million, fell short of the target Microsoft set itself in May 2015, months before Windows 10's debut, when then-head of Windows, Terry Myerson, said, "Our goal is that within two to three years of Windows 10's release there will be one billion devices running Windows 10."


Little more than a year later, however, Microsoft disavowed the 1 billionfigure and blamed the expected shortfall on the in-serious-decline Windows 10 smartphone business. But industry analysts pointed to other factors that made the billion-or-bust target unachievable, including a long decline in global PC shipments.
While Windows 10 posted an impressive gain in June — the largest since January — contrary to expectations, Windows 7 lost little. The 2009 OS dropped half a tenth of a percentage point last month, ending with a user share of 41.7% of all personal computers and 47.3% of all those running Windows.
By Net Applications' numbers, the growth of Windows 10 came at the expense of Windows 8 and 8.1 (which contracted by four-tenths of a point) and the ancient Windows XP (which fell by nearly a full percentage point).


So, while the increase in Windows 10 was good news for Microsoft, the stubbornness of Windows 7 was not. As the end of support for Windows 7 approaches — it is now 18 months away — the forecast remains cloudy. Computerworld currently predicts that, based on Windows' past 12 months, Windows 7 will account for more than 36% of all active Windows editions in January 2020. At that time, Windows 10 should power nearly 60% of all Windows laptop and desktop PCs.
Net Applications' latest numbers placed the crossover point for Windows 10 — when the newer OS will run a larger percentage of all Windows PCs than the older edition — in November. The trend lines for Windows 10 and Windows 7 signal that for January 2019, just 12 months from Windows 7's retirement, Windows 10 will run 47.7% of all Windows systems, while Windows 7 will power 43.7%.
Microsoft's own Windows 10 claims show an adoption acceleration, although with so few data points, that conclusion is on shaky ground. According to the Redmond, Wash. company, it took 159 days to push Windows 10 from 600 million to 700 million, or 44 fewer days than it took Windows 10 to go from 500 million to 600 million. (The shift from 500 million to 600 million took just 23 fewer days than from 400 million to 500 million.)
For Microsoft, the demise of Windows 7 can't come soon enough. The company has issued several edicts to cajole and convince customers to drop it for Windows 10, including declining to support it on newer silicon and a failed attempt to cut off support to some users two and a half years early.
Microsoft's stated motivations for such decisions — that Windows 7 is no longer good enough, secure enough, fast enough, to work on today's hardware or solve today's problems — may not be the whole story. For instance, Microsoft's long-term strategy emphasizes subscriptions to monetize its products and services; Windows 10, unlike its forerunners (including Windows 7) was designed for frequent updating, a key component of the appeal of software-by-subscription.
Nor does Microsoft want to be embarrassed by large-scale attacks against Windows 7 once it halts security updates to all but those who fork over money for an extension. If the firm had a say, there would be no PCs running Windows 7 after January 14, 2020, the support cut-off. That's not going to happen. From all evidence available today, Windows 7 will, in fact, be more widely in use at its retirement than was Windows XP, which powered 29% of all Windows personal computers at its April 2014 end-of-support.
Elsewhere in Net Applications' data, the user share of Windows overall dropped by approximately half a percentage point to 87.9%, while the combined share of all macOS and OS X editions accounted for 9.7%, an increase of seven-tenths of a point. Linux, whose loyalists have aggressively touted the open-source OS for decades as a desktop alternative to Windows, recorded a one-tenth percentage point loss in June to 1.9%, returning the OS to the underside of the 2% bar.
Net Applications calculates user share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers people use to visit its clients' websites. It then tallies the visitor sessions — which are effectively visits to the site, with multiple sessions possible daily — rather than count users, as it once did. Net Applications thus measures activity, although differently than rival metrics sources that focus on page views.

Wednesday, 20 June 2018

Microsoft quietly cuts off Win7 support for older Intel computers

 

If your PC doesn’t run Streaming Single Instructions Multiple Data (SIMD) Extensions 2, you apparently won’t be getting any more Win7 patches. At least, that’s what I infer from some clandestine Knowledge Base documentation changes made in the past few days.
Even though Microsoft says it’s supporting Win7 until January 14, 2020, if you have an older machine — including any Pentium III — you’ve been blocked, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Here’s how it happened. Back in March, the Win7 Monthly Rollup, KB 4088875, included a warning about SSE2 problems:

Read more: https://www.computerworld.com/article/3282066/microsoft-windows/microsoft-quietly-cuts-off-win7-support-for-older-intel-computers.html

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