Information Technology Security

By Bill Toulas,  Bleeping Computer A malicious campaign targeting Android devices worldwide utilizes thousands of Telegram bots to infect devices with SMS-stealing malware and steal one-time 2FA passwords (OTPs) for over 600 services. Zimperium researchers discovered the operation and have been tracking it since February 2022. They report finding at least 107,000 distinct malware samples associated with the campaign. The cybercriminals are motivated by financial gain, most likely using infected devices as authentication and anonymization relays. Telegram entrapment The SMS stealer is distributed either through malvertising or Telegram bots that automate communications with the victim. In the first case, victims are led to pages mimicking Google Play, reporting inflated download counts to add legitimacy and create a false sense of trust. On Telegram, the bots promise to give the user a pirated application for the Android platform, asking for their phone number before they share the ...

In the meantime, at least five major VPN players have decided to remove their physical VPN servers from the country. By Michael Kan, PC Magazine India’s new policy that requires VPN services to log and potentially turn over data on their customers was supposed to go into effect on Monday, but the country has decided to push back the date by three months.  The policy is now set to go into effect on Sept. 25. The Indian government settled on the new date, citing requests from companies asking for an extension.  “Further, additional time has been sought for implementation of mechanism for validation of subscribers/customers by Data Centres, Virtual Private Server (VPS) providers, Cloud Service providers and Virtual Private Network Service (VPN Service) providers,” Indian authorities announced on Tuesday.  India introduced the policy back in May with the goal of helping the country fight cybercrime. Soon, all internet and cloud service providers will need to maintain logs of ...

The Thane city police commissionerates website was allegedly hacked on Tuesday, with a message appearing on it apparently directed towards the Indian government and demanding an apology to Muslims all over the world. A senior police official here confirmed that the website has been hacked. We have contacted the agencies concerned for necessary action. The Thane city police commissionerate's website was allegedly hacked on Tuesday, with a message appearing on it apparently directed towards the Indian government and demanding an apology to ''Muslims all over the world''. A senior police official here confirmed that the website has been hacked. ''We have contacted the agencies concerned for necessary action. Thane cyber crime team is working on it,'' he said. On opening the website, the message on the screen stated: "Hacked by one hat cyber team" It further said, ''Hello Indian Government, Hello everyone. Again and again you make troub...

The Indian government is doing so to address gaps in responding to cybersecurity incidents, but the new regulations undermine a main selling point to having a VPN. By Michael Kan, PC Mag In an effort to fight cybercrime, India is enacting a new policy that’ll require VPN providers to collect and turn over user data, including the IP addresses assigned to customers.  The policy is meant to bolster the powers of the country’s national agency, the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), which deals with cybersecurity incidents.  “During the course of handling cyber incidents and interactions with the constituency, CERT-In has identified certain gaps causing hindrance in incident analysis,” India’s government said in adopting the new policy last week . The new regulations call for VPN providers to log and store the following information from customers for at least five years:  Name, email address and phone number The customer’s purpose for using the VPN service The...

Other providers are signaling they'll oppose the new policy in India, which will require VPN providers to collect and turn over data on customers. By Michael Kan, PC Mag India’s new policy requiring VPN services to collect and hand over data on customers is prompting NordVPN to consider pulling its servers from the country.  “We are committed to protecting the privacy of our customers; therefore, we may remove our servers from India if no other options are left,” NordVPN told us. India is implementing the new policy to help it fight cybercrime. But the data-collection requirement also undermines the whole point of installing a VPN, which are often designed to protect a user's privacy.  Under the new policy, VPN providers would need to log data on which IP addresses their customers are using and store the information for at least five years. As a result, the data could be used to map out customers' web activities if it’s ever turned over to Indian authorities.  NordVPN sa...

By  KrebsOnSecurity When KrebsOnSecurity recently explored how cybercriminals were using hacked email accounts at police departments worldwide to obtain warrantless Emergency Data Requests (EDRs) from social media firms and technology providers, many security experts called it a fundamentally unfixable problem. But don’t tell that to Matt Donahue, a former FBI agent who recently quit the agency to launch a startup that aims to help tech companies do a better job screening out phony law enforcement data requests — in part by assigning trustworthiness or “credit ratings” to law enforcement authorities worldwide. A sample Kodex dashboard Image: Kodex.us Donahue is co-founder of Kodex , a company formed in February 2021 that builds security portals designed to help tech companies “manage information requests from government agencies who contact them, and to securely transfer data & collaborate against abuses on their platform.” The 30-year-old Donahue said he left the FBI in April ...