VARINDIA IT MAGAZINE

Bengaluru's e-procurement site hacked and funds stolen:  One of six hard disks recovered from laptops belonging to hacker   Srikrishna Ramesh alias Sriki . who is at the centre of an alleged Bitcoin-for-bribes controversy that has hit Karnataka politics in recent weeks, has revealed data of a hack carried out at the   e-procurement cell of the state government   where Rs 11.5 crore was stolen by a hacker gang in 2019.   According to the cyber forensics report, one hard disk “marked 01” recovered from a Macbook belonging to Srikrishna contains “hacking data” for the alleged hacking of the  eproc.karnataka.gov  site of the e-governance cell of the Karnataka government and other sites.   Srikrishna has claimed that he and his associates were trying to steal Rs 46 crore from the e-procurement cell – in three tranches - but managed to get only Rs 11.5 crore before officials got wind of the crime. The details of the analysis are enclosed as a repor...

Google, Microsoft plan to spend billions on cybersecurity:  The whole globe is struggling into the issue of   Cyber security   and   cyber crime.   The White House hosted a cybersecurity summit Wednesday with CEOs in sectors ranging from tech to insurance. Technology giants including Google,   Microsoft   and   IBM   committed to spending billions on cybersecurity following the meeting, they are going to strengthen cybersecurity defences and to train skilled workers, the White House has announced, following President Joe Biden's private meeting with top executives. The gathering on Wednesday during a relentless stretch of ransomware attacks that have targeted critical infrastructure, in some cases with the attackers extorting multimillion-dollar payments from major corporations, as well as other illicit cyber operations that US authorities have linked to foreign hackers.... Read More

Hackers steal more than $600m in Ethereum and other Cryptocurrencies:  Hackers   were able to breach the blockchain-based platform   Poly Network   and extracted more than $600 million in   cryptocurrencies   on Tuesday, the company announced on Twitter, marking the biggest hack ever in the decentralized finance space that’s heating up among investors. About $267million of Ether currency has been taken, $252m of Binance coins and roughly $85 million in USDC tokens. Poly tweeted, disclosing that hackers had transferred hundreds of millions of dollars to separate cryptocurrency wallets.   Tether froze more than $30 million in response to the hack; Tether Chief Technology Officer Paul Adroino tweeted.   Poly Network is a cross-chain protocol for swapping tokens across various blockchains. The founder of  Chinese blockchain project Neo  launched Poly Network in partnership with Ontology and Switcheo. Poly Network has asked digital asset exch...

FIRE SALE IS A CYBER SECURITY PANDEMIC; UNSEEN, ALL PERVASIVE AND FATAL:  Fire Sale is an all-out cyberwarfare attack   that performs a three-stage systematic attack on a nation's computer infrastructure. Just because something has never happened does not mean that it would never happen. Commercial aircrafts being used as missiles hitting Twin Towers in a suicide attack is as weird as it can get. This was nearly twenty years back. The manner the digital technology has paced up in its negative avatar, can beat even the best of the sci-fi movies hollow. Whatever might be the enterprise we are in, we can afford to be oblivious of this fact, only at our own peril. 10 power assets, Mumbai, Tamil Nadu ports came under RedEcho cyberattack, should be taken as a timely warning for things which can go awry. The recent SolarWinds attack in the US on the government, its high profile agencies and several other private companies is a clear indication of the same trend.   A bit of a his...

IndiGo CEO Ronojoy Dutta on Hackers trying to open communication channel with them:  IndiGo   reported on December 31st that some of its servers were subject to a hacking incident earlier that month. The airline said that it was able to restore the systems within a short span of time with minimal impact. Though it alerted the stakeholders on New Year's Eve that some segments of data servers were breached, and hence, there is a possibility that some internal documents may get uploaded by the hackers on public websites and platforms.   IndiGo's CEO Ronojoy Dutta  says that it's hard to know what kind of data may have been extracted by the hackers, and the airline is in the wait-and-watch mode. "I don't know what the hackers got exactly. We tried to find out but it's hard to exactly pinpoint what might have gone, and what might not have gone. Honestly, we don't know at this point. There has been almost zero impact. We got an early warning, and people jumped on...

On Friday government woke up as 74% of the cash dispensers are processing on outdated software and are prone to fraud and lack basic security features. The automated teller machines (ATMs) run by public sector banks may be easily accessible to frauds as they are running on outdated software by leaving it vulnerable to cyber attacks.The government, however, did not disclose details of such ATMs that were run by private sector lenders. Most ATMs in India Are Easy Targets for Hackers & Malware Attacks. A question arises on why do people wait for such attacks to happen to bring about a change? A huge number of machines in the country are operated by public sector players, state run-banks control close to 70% of the business, comprising lending and deposits, and the report says, government telling Parliament that close to 89% of the ATMs belong to this category. The development came at a point when several ATM fraud incidents have been reported in different parts of the countr...

Instagram crashes again and your account could be of 6,000,000 hacked ? Users around the world vent their frustration on Twitter after service goes down for the second time in a week and with this hundreds of Instagram users reported they could not access the service's app. The fact is hackers were able to exploit a bug that opened details when a user was asked to reset their password. They intercepted email addresses and phone numbers after sending false password reset requests and with this hackers could have accessed six million accounts and created a database of details on the dark web.  Mike Krieger is co-founder and chief technology officer of photo-sharing application and service, Instagram, which was acquired by Facebook Inc., in April 2012, Instagram, believes above 5% users are in India and India as one of the high growth markets. Mike said: ‘We quickly fixed the bug, and have been working with law enforcement on the matter. Although we cannot determine which spec...

Hackers have been using automated tools to dramatically multiply sophisticated cyber-attacks on critical national infrastructure, public & private sectors and governments and the cyber-crime syndicates are also turning to automated tools because they make it easier to cover their tracks and reduce traceability.There is a new opportunity has emerged and is of great demand and that is ‘Crimeware-as-a-Service’ Fuelling Cyber-Attacks on a Global Scale . Modern tools and pervasive "crimeware-as-a-service" infrastructure allow cyber-attackers to operate on a global scale at light speed,” said Rajesh Maurya, Regional Vice President, India & SAARC, Fortinet. Cybercriminals are now using highly advanced automation tools to deploy malware with much greater speed and scale. CISOs in India can no longer rely on a manual approach in cyber defense as cyber-attacks have become automated, riding on escalating infrastructure trends in cloud adoption and encryption.... Read M...