Beware! Fireball Malware Infects Nearly 250 Million Computers Worldwide

Beware! Fireball Malware Infects Nearly 250 Million Computers Worldwide

Security researchers have discovered a massive malware campaign that has already infected more than 250 million computers across the world, including Windows and Mac OS.

Dubbed Fireball, the malware is an adware package that takes complete control of victim's web browsers and turns them into zombies, potentially allowing attackers to spy on victim's web traffic and potentially steal their data.

Check Point researchers, who discovered this massive malware campaign, linked the operation to Rafotech, a Chinese company which claims to offer digital marketing and game apps to 300 million customers.

While the company is currently using Fireball for generating revenue by injecting advertisements onto the browsers, the malware can be quickly turned into a massive destroyer to cause a significant cyber security incident worldwide.

Fireball comes bundled with other free software programs that you download off of the Internet. Once installed, the malware installs browser plugins to manipulate the victim's web browser configurations to replace their default search engines and home pages with fake search engines (trotux.com).

"It's important to remember that when a user installs freeware, additional malware isn't necessarily dropped at the same time." researchers said. "Furthermore, it is likely that Rafotech is using additional distribution methods, such as spreading freeware under fake names, spam, or even buying installs from threat actors."

The fake search engine simply redirects the victim's queries to either Yahoo.com or Google.com and includes tracking pixels that collect the victim's information.

Far from legitimate purpose, Fireball has the ability to spy on victim's web traffic, execute any malicious code on the infected computers, install plug-ins, and even perform efficient malware dropping, which creates a massive security hole in targeted systems and networks.

"From a technical perspective, Fireball displays great sophistication and quality evasion techniques, including anti-detection capabilities, multi-layer structure, and a flexible C&C– it is not inferior to a typical malware," researchers said.

At the current, Fireball adware is hijacking users' web traffic to boost its advertisements and gain revenue, but at the same time, the adware has the capability to distribute additional malware.

"Based on our estimated infection rate, in such a scenario, one out of five corporations worldwide will be susceptible to a major breach," researchers added.

According to researchers, over 250 million computers are infected worldwide, 20 percent of them are corporate networks:

• 25.3 million infections in India (10.1%)
• 24.1 million in Brazil (9.6%)
• 16.1 million in Mexico (6.4%)
• 13.1 million in Indonesia (5.2%)
• 5.5 million In US (2.2%)

"How severe is it? Try to imagine a pesticide armed with a nuclear bomb. Yes, it can do the job, but it can also do much more," researchers warned. "Many threat actors would like to have even a fraction of Rafotech's power."

Warning Signs that Your Computer is Fireball-Infected

If the answer to any of the following questions is "NO," that means your computer is infected with Fireball or a similar adware.

Open your web browser and check:

1. Did you set your homepage?
2. Are you able to modify your browser's homepage?
3. Are you familiar with your default search engine and can modify that as well?
4. Do you remember installing all of your browser extensions?

To remove the adware, just uninstall the respective application from your computer (or use an adware cleaner software) and then restore/reset your browser configurations to default settings.

The primary way to prevent such infections is to be very careful when you agree to install.

You should always pay attention when installing software, as software installers usually include optional installs. Opt for custom installation and then de-select anything that is unnecessary or unfamiliar.

Read More

Subtitle Hack: 200 Million Devices Are Vulnerable, Download Fix For VLC, Kodi, Etc.

A simple but malicious subtitle file can be used to gain control of your PC, TV or smartphone. Check Point researchers have spotted vulnerabilities in VLC, Kodi, Stremio, and Popcorn Time in the way these media players handle subtitle files. As of now, fixes have been released for the media players.

According to a blog post published by Check Point security, a subtitle file could be modified to create a new attack vector and compromise the devices such as PCs, mobile devices, TVs, etc running vulnerable media players. Once compromised, the attacker can perform remote code execution, steal data, use the device as a pawn in a DDoS attack, and more.The researchers say, delivering a cyber attack when subtitles are loaded onto a media players is a “completely overlooked technique”.Most of the people download subtitles files from repositories on the web without giving a second thought, treating them as no more than innocent text files.The researchers say that attackers can upload a malicious subtitle on a repository and manipulate the rankings to put their results on the top. This could result in an increase in manual download counts and automatic download counts (by media players).They also note that subtitles aren’t considered as a threat in comparison to traditional attack vectors which are well-known to security companies and users. That’s the reason a malicious code hiding in a subtitle file could easily sneak through filters deployed by antivirus software.The actual vulnerability lies in the way the media players handle subtitle files. One aspect that contributes to the complexity of the whole thing is a large number of subtitle formats each having its own set of features. Currently, there are around 25 subtitle formats in circulation.Different media players have their own method of parsing and combining different subtitle formats in order to enhance user experience. As a result, the researchers were able to find distinct vulnerabilities in affected media players.The list of affected media players includes VLC, XBMC Kodi, Popcorn Time, and Stremio. However, the researchers don’t exclude the possibility of the exploit existing on other media players. 

The researchers haven’t published further details as the developers are currently investigating the vulnerability.Each of the affected media players has millions of users with VLC topping the list. The last release of VLC (June 5, 2016) has been downloaded more than 170 million times. In total, the researchers estimated that around 200 million devices running the affected media players are exposed to the attack.

Download Subtitle Hack Fix:

Check Point researchers contacted the developers of the affected media players in April 2017. Thankfully, the security patches have been released.

In the case of VLC, the attacker can leverage memory corruption bug. The media player had four vulnerabilities (CVE-2017-8310, CVE-2017-8311, CVE-2017-8312 and CVE-2017-8313) which have been fixed by VideoLan.

A fix for VLC is available as the latest version 2.2.5.1 which is present on the VideoLan’s website. The same is the case of Stremio.

The developers of Popcorn Time and Kodi have created a fix, but it’s not released for public yet. For Popcorn Time, you can download the fix manually using this link provided by the researchers. Head over to GitHub where you can find a source code fix for XBMC Kodi.

Read More

Home lighting latest technology.

Home lighting the latest technology to go wireless:

Melbourne-based technology startup LIFX has the not-so-humble goal of reinventing the light bulb.

Founded by 40-year-old Australian inventor Phil Bosua, the company sells a $129 multi-colour LED light bulb that’s almost as easy to install as a regular bulb. It screws into existing light sockets, but rather than being turned on and off at a light switch, it’s wirelessly controlled from an iPhone or Android phone.

Far from the traditional white or yellow hues of a regular light bulb, the LIFX has access to a palette of more than 16 million colours. From the free app, users can manage each LIFX light bulb in the house, set the colour and brightness of bulbs individually or as a group, and set up lighting effects such as music visualisation (where the light pulses in time to music) and candle flicker.

ess than a week after it made its debut on the crowdfunding site Kickstarter in September 2012, it had raised $1.3 million – well above its original $100,000 target – making it one of the most successful Kickstarter projects to date.

Since then, the company has shipped more than 100,000 bulbs to about 70 countries, and its goods can be purchased online as well as through retail partners such as Best Buy in the US and Harvey Norman in Australia.

As with many great ideas, Bosua first came up with it while he was drinking beer with a friend.

‘‘A friend of mine told me he was renovating his house and needed to put a light switch in without having to cut up bricks and run a wire down the wall,’’ Bosua says.

‘‘He said, ‘You’re the inventive type – do you know any way you can turn your lights on and off wirelessly?’’’

Bosua’s first thought was that it could be done with a smartphone, but when he did some research he discovered there was nothing on the market. This, he says, was literally his light-bulb moment.

Technology analyst firm Telsyte forecasts that the smart lighting market in Australia will exceed $100 million by 2017. Over the next three to four years, it’s expected to reach mainstream status, driven by falling prices and centralised management platforms that leverage iOS and Android.

‘‘In the past, if you wanted to do home automation, it would be very expensive. You’d have to put in cabling, you’d have to rip out walls,’’ says Telsyte managing director Foad Fadaghi. ‘‘Today, the cost effectiveness of wireless and cheap Wi-Fi components has made it a lot easier to adopt home automation systems. What we’re seeing now is the democratisation of smart home technology.’’

LIFX has stiff competition from larger players in the smart home technology category. Multi-national technology company Philips released the Hue smart LED bulb one month after the LIFX hit Kickstarter, and beat the Melbourne start-up to the market by more than a year. At $249.95 for the starter pack (which includes three light bulbs and a bridge that needs to be plugged into a Wi-Fi router) and individual light bulbs for $69.95 each, the Hue is also cheaper than the LIFX.

Belkin, one of the leading providers of do-it-yourself smart home automation gadgets, will soon be releasing an even cheaper smart LED light bulb that hooks into the company’s WeMo ecosystem of smart power switches, motion sensors and webcams. The starter pack will cost $169.95 and include two smart light bulbs and a bridge to plug into the Wi-Fi router. Additional light bulbs will be available for $49.95 each.

But Bosua isn’t sweating his competitors. At the recent international 2014 Edison Awards, LIFX beat the Philips Hue to win the gold medal for smart systems in the consumer goods category.

Last week LIFX also secured $12 million in Series A funding, bringing the company’s total funding to $16.6 million.

‘‘We’re thinking within the next two to three months all of the features we originally promised on the Kickstarter project, such as timer scheduling and auto-increasing and dimming lights, will be completely built, and then we’ll be able to start rolling out some of the other really cool things that we’re working on,’’ said Bosua. ‘‘We’re also going to release different form factors, and we’re really far down the prototype stage of a LIFX light switch.’’

Read More

Intel’s Anniversary Pentium

Intel’s Anniversary Pentium may be the ultimate budget gaming CPU......

BY usama.asif on july 11,2014 at 3:35 pm...

Earlier this year, Intel announced that it would bring two new enthusiast overclocking processors to market — the Core i7-4790K (Devil’s Canyon) at the top end, and the low-end Pentium G3258. We’ve reviewed theCore i7-4790K recently, and found it wanting; the chip’s overclocking performance is only slightly higher than the Core i7-4770K’s, even if its thermals are much better — but the dual-core Pentium G3258 had more potential. With fewer cores under the heat spreader, there’s less of a chance of a hot spot choking the die’s performance.

According to the Tech Report, the G3258 has exactly the kind of legs that folks were hoping for. The chip proved capable of pushing from its 3.2GHz stock speed all the way to 4.8GHz with a final temperature of just 64C. That’s a 50% clock boost — not bad for a chip with a retail price of $72 (TR snagged it for $60 on sale).

Single-Thread superiority

One of the topics that comes up with great regularity in CPU reviews is whether or not single-thread performance remains important in the modern age. It’s not uncommon for an AMD fan to show up and declare that no, thanks to multi-threading and HSA, single-thread performance is utterly dead (or will be in the near future). There’s no doubt that multi-threading can provide a significant performance boost in many applications — indeed, in some tests, AMD remains competitive for precisely this reason.

What people forget, however, is that adding more threads only improves performance from your single-threaded baseline. In several of the applications TR tests, the Pentium G3258 punches far above its weight-class, beating past the quad-core AMD processors when both solutions are overclocked. In Crysis 3, this situation persisted — not only did the G3258 outperform the FX-8350 when overclocked to 4.8GHz, it nearly kept pace with Intel’s entire stable of Core i7 processors.

What’s most interesting for gaming is how the G3258 spends far less time above 33.3ms than any AMD solution, even the FX-8350 — and what an enormous difference the overclocking makes. Clearly, the chip’s high clock speed is compensating for its low core count — improving the clock speed by 50% cuts its time spent above 33.3ms by a factor of five. It’s not clear why this is happening — presumably, the dual-core CPU is running fast enough to handle multiple threads without a major performance penalty. If CryTek targeted a relatively low performance threshold (say, four Intel cores clocked at 2.4GHz), that would explain the difference.

The G3258 isn’t going to be a chip for everyone. While TR has promised a more thorough investigation, there are obviously going to be multi-threaded titles and applications where more cores trump higher clock speeds, particularly since both AMD and Intel have chips with eight threads on the market. AMD may also have a new core of its own available in the not-too-distant future — the current $99 option is the Athlon X4 750K, a Trinity-based chip from 2012.

If the G3258 keeps hitting these clocks, however, it has a real chance of cementing its status as a great budget option. Fast dual cores aren’t going to be an ideal match for every workload — but for $72? That’s a pretty sweet deal.

Read More

IBM plows and ‘post-silicon’ computer technology...

IBM plows $3 billion into 7nm chip research and ‘post-silicon’ computer technology......

by usama.asif on july 11,2014 at 4:35 pm...

IBM has announced that it’s plowing $3 billion into two R&D programs that will hopefully make it the authority on 7-nanometer-and-beyond chip technologies. One R&D project will look at pushing conventional silicon chips as far as they will go (around 7nm), and the other will be tasked with finding new materials and techniques that can take us even further (quantum computing, carbon nanotubes, graphene, III-V). IBM also took the opportunity to remind everyone that it’s already the biggest player in 7nm-and-beyond technology, with over 500 applicable patents (more than double the nearest competitor). While most major chip makers (Intel, TSMC, GloFo, IBM) seem confident that they can take standard silicon CMOS chips down to 10nm, they are a little bit nervous about the prospect of 7nm and beyond. At around 7nm, the current building blocks of silicon transistors just won’t behave in the same way; when the gate is just a few atoms across, classical physics goes out the door and quantum physics (which behaves rather differently) takes over. While different transistor designs (such as 3D) allow us to take silicon a little further, the laws of physics will eventually catch up.

An IBM Research 3D chip stack (concept). It is alternate approaches like this, rather than brute-forcing smaller transistors, that are the likely future of computer.

serious effort to actually get silicon down to 7nm — and more importantly, to develop processes that can make 14nm, 10nm, and 7nm chips economically. As we covered last month, making silicon transistors smaller isn’t inherently all that difficult — but doing it without breaking the bank on expensive equipment is. IBM wants to develop new tools and techniques that will help silicon scale down to 7nm, and potentially beyond.

A wafer of graphene chips, being tested at IBM Research..

The second approach is potentially more exciting, at least as far as ExtremeTech is concerned. Rather than pushing silicon indefinitely, this second research project will look at other materials and techniques that might more easily take us to 7nm and beyond. Materials such as III-V semiconductors (notably gallium arsenide, GaAs) have around 10 times the electron mobility of silicon, allowing for smaller transistors with much higher performance and lower power consumption. Likewise, IBM is looking into graphene and carbon nanotubes, both of which have incredibly high electron mobility and can (theoretically) be fashioned into very small structures. IBM has already created a carbon nanotube transistor with a 10nm channel that showed no sign of performance degradation due to its diminutive size (CNTs are just single layers of carbon/graphene rolled up into a tube, and are thus very, very small).

Seb at IBM Research, checking out one of IBM’s cryogenically cooled quantum computers. “Whoa. Cool.”

But beyond better materials and the ever-shrinking transistor, IBM is also looking into different methods of computation entirely, such as neuromorphic computing (brain-like chips), quantum computing, and silicon photonics/optoelectronics (optical tech built into electronic chips). These methods won’t necessarily provide more gigahertz or consume less power, but they could offer wildly more capable computers that can process much more data than a conventional computer in the same amount of time. Finally, it’s important to note that IBM is already working on all of these technologies, and in many cases has been for years. The announcement of an additional $3 billion in expenditure is exciting, but it’s pennies in the grand scheme of computing R&D. IBM already spends roughly $6 billion per year on R&D, and companies like Intel, Samsung, HP, Microsoft, and Google are all around that mark. I would be surprised if IBM wasn’t already spending billions per year on the materials and techniques outlined in this story. Ultimately, this announcement feels like an exercise in marketing to reassure both customers and stock holders that IBM still very much wants to be a leader in bleeding-edge computing.

Read More

Dell Inspiron 15 Core i7 touchscreen laptop

ET deals: Dell Inspiron 15 Core i7 touchscreen laptop for $700.

By usama.asif on july 11,2014 at 4:35 pm.

DESCRIPTION

A Core i7 processor in a laptop can be enough to push the price up to $700 pretty much by itself, so we were pretty excited to spot today’s deal from Dell. You can pick up a well outfitted Inspiron 15, sporting both a Core i7 processor and a touchscreen, for just $700 after a limited time coupon code is applied.

This laptop features a Core i7-4510U CPU, a low voltage processor that will work to maximize your battery life while still delivering premium performance. In addition to the powerful processor, you’re also getting a 15.6-inch 10-finger capacitive touch screen, which will let you tap, pinch and swipe your way through everything Windows 8 has to offer. Both in terms of touch-friendliness and power, this is a computer that has the chops to handle your needs for years to come.

Dell has also included plenty of memory on this notebook. A 1TB hard drive provides plenty of storage for your media, and the included 8GB RAM will make multitasking easy. One thing to note is that there’s no DVD-RW drive here, a sacrifice made to trim down the size and price.

On the connectivity side you’re getting strong Wireless-AC 3160 WiFi, as well as Bluetooth 4.0. There are three USB ports (two USB 3.0) as well as HDMI 1.4a and a card reader for your physical connections, giving you plenty of options when it comes to hooking up and accessing your peripherals.

You’re also getting some nice extras here, like a backlit keyboard and a full year of McAfee LiveSafe preloaded. Dell covers this with a 1 year warranty plus 90 days of premium phone support to get you started.

Grab this deal today and save a huge 44% while it’s here.

Dell Inspiron 15 (5000-series) Core i7 touchscreen laptop for $699.99. Apply coupon code 0GJHSKM3CG$C1H to get full $540 savings.

Read More