Information Security Blog | Cyber Security Blog

Sreejith C

Information Security Blog | Cyber Security Blog
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This time its TWITTER CEO's account

Monday, 11 July 2016 05:30

Now a day’s nothing seems to be inevitable for hackers, even the CEO of Twitter can’t escape from becoming a prey of these invaders. Jack Dorsey joins the expanding list of High profile CEO’s whose social networking accounts are hacked.

A group of hackers under the name OurMine had hacked Dorsey’s Twitter account and posted few benign videos. The hacker tweeted “Hey, it’s OurMine, we are testing your security” from Jack’s account. It all happened at 2:50 AM ET and they linked the tweet to their website.

Twitter was quick to react and deleted those tweets within a short time. The attackers actually posted these messages via Dorsey’s Vine account which they have used a source to get access to the Twitter account.

Jack Dorsey probably had an old/shared password on his Vine account which may link it to another service that was compromised. Another reason for this incident can be Dorsey is using the same Vine’s password for a long time.

It had given a way for intruders to get into the company’s CEO account. It’s the same technique that OurMine had followed in its previous hacks of other famous people.

Whatever may be the reason Hackers proved that even high profiled people’s social networking accounts are not 100% secured.

This issue seems to be growing and is increasing user’s privacy concerns. Social networking platforms should find a permanent solution to these type of problems. On user’s part, everyone should follow some basic steps to prevent these hacks. Make sure you’re using a different password for every site, if you are unable to do you can use password managers like 1Password or LastPass.

Frequently update passwords of all your accounts and most importantly turn on two-factor authentication for services that have it. This authentication method sends a pin number via text message to your linked mobile number.

The same group named as OurMine were behind the hacks of social media accounts of Google and Facebook’s CEOs.

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IBM brings up Qunatum computing

Wednesday, 06 July 2016 05:30

Charles King, central investigator at Pund-IT, Inc. says quantum PCs are unique in relation to traditional PCs in a few vital ways.

“For one, while traditional frameworks are outlined on parallel standards (where opening/shutting semiconductor entryways speaks to on/off, or 0/1) quantum frameworks use “qubits’ which can be on, off or both on and off. In principle, that will permit coming about frameworks to perform capacities on information using wonders from quantum mechanics, for example, superposition and snare,” King disclosed to TechCrunch in an email.

IBM has made its own quantum chip running at 5 qubits. Chow evaluates that it could take a machine running somewhere around 50 and 100 qubits to surpass the abilities of today’s speediest super PCs. We have an approaches to go here, yet this is a decent beginning stage.

However, arriving is harder than basically taking after Moore’s Law with advanced PCs on silicon chips. While IBM is as yet utilizing silicon, there are two or three gigantic obstacles required in getting more steady utilization. As a matter of first importance there is building the PC and second making sense of how to program it, Earl Joseph, who covers superior computing for IDC clarified in an email.

“This test gives the chance to an expansive gathering of individuals to begin to figure out how to program quantum PCs, which will create approaches to utilize this new kind of innovation,” Joseph composed.

He brings up there are other such tests in advancement. “NASA Ames and Google are doing some exceptionally intriguing work. The vast grand slam will be from a more broadly useful and huge size quantum PC. I think it will be a transformative procedure, with more applications going ahead line like clockwork.”

The trust is that by offering this instrument, it will push intrigue and comprehension of quantum computing and make a group of intrigued people, foundations and specialists who can cooperate to propel information about these PCs in the coming years.

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A team of anonymous hackers has claimed a $1 million (£648,000) bounty for remotely jailbreaking Apple's latest mobile operating system, iOS9.

Jailbreaking is the practice of removing Apple's restrictions on their devices, allowing users to install a range of unauthorised apps and tweaks on their phones and tablets.

Jailbreaking is often done willingly by people looking to customise their device, but since it bypasses the security restrictions, jailbreaking can also be a technique used by hackers to break into phones and install spyware.

The hefty prize was offered by cybersecurity company Zerodium, who offered $1 million to any person or team who could come up with a browser-based untethered jailbreak for iOS9 in September this year.

The conditions of the competition required that the hacking process "should be achieveable remotely, reliably, silently and without requiring any user interaction except visiting a web page or reading a SMS/MMS."

In other words, the winning team found a way to remotely install an app on phones running iOS9 simply by getting the the user to open a certain webpage or read a text message.

The terms required that the break-in would have to be truly remote - any solutions that involved the iPhone being plugged in to a computer, or being accessed through Bluetooth or NFC did not qualify.

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China's Tianhe-2 supercomputer has retained its position as the world's most powerful system for the sixth consecutive time, according to a biannual Top500 list of supercomputers released Monday.

Tianhe-2, or Milky Way­2, with a performance of 33.86 petaflops per second (Pflop/s), was developed by China's National University of Defense Technology and deployed at the National Supercomputer Center in Guangzhou. It has held the title since June 2013.

The Chinese system is almost twice as fast as the next on the list, Titan of the US Department of Energy, which has a performance of 17.59 Pflop/s.

In fact, there has been no change among the ranking of the world's top5 supercomputers since June 2013 in the latest edition of the closely watched list.

"The top five computers are very powerful and expensive," Jack Dongarra, professor of the University of Tennessee and editor of the report, said in an email. "It will take perhaps another year before a new system enters the top five."

Among the significant changes to this list from July 2015's list is the sharp decline in the number of systems in the United States, now at 201.

"This is down from 231 in July and is the lowest number of systems installed in the US since the list was started in 1993," the statement said.

In contrast, China made "a great leap" to 109 systems.

"China received a big boost from Sugon, Lenovo and Inspur," said Dongarra. "The large number of submissions came from Sugon."

According to the Top500 statement, Sugon has overtaken IBM in the system category with 49 systems, while Lenovo, which acquired IBM's x86 server business last year, has 25 systems in the list, up from just three systems on the July 2015 list.

In addition, some systems that were previously listed as IBM are now labeled as both IBM/Lenovo and Lenovo/IBM.

Inspur, the third vendor from China, now has 15 systems on the list.

"China is ... carving out a bigger share as a manufacturer of high performance computers with multiple Chinese manufacturers becoming more active in this field," the statement concluded.

Overall, HP leads the list with 156 systems followed by Cray with 69 systems and China's Sugon with 49 systems. IBM ranks fourth with 45 systems. Lenovo ranked sixth while Inspur ranked eighth on the list.

The Top500 list is considered one of the most authoritative rankings of the world's supercomputers. It is compiled on the basis of the machines' performance on the Linpack benchmark by experts from the United States and Germany.