How to Hack Someone's Facebook Account Just by Knowing their Phone Numbers

How to Hack Someone's Facebook Account Just by Knowing their Phone Numbers 


Update: If you think this technique is old and can not be used to hack your social media, bank or any online accounts, then you are mistaken. A real-world SS7 attack has been spotted this month when some unknown hackers exploited the design flaws in the Signaling System 7 (SS7) to drain victims' bank accounts.

Hacking Facebook account is one of the major queries on the Internet today. It's hard to find — how to hack Facebook account, but researchers have just proven by taking control of a Facebook account with only the target's phone number and some hacking skills.

Yes, your Facebook account can be hacked, no matter how strong your password is or how much extra security measures you have taken. No joke!

Hackers with skills to exploit the SS7 network can hack your Facebook account. All they need is your phone number.

The weaknesses in the part of global telecom network SS7 not only let hackers and spy agencies listen to personal phone calls and intercept SMSes on a potentially massive scale but also let them hijack social media accounts to which you have provided your phone number.
SS7 or Signalling System Number 7 is a telephony signaling protocol that is being used by more than 800 telecommunication operators worldwide to exchange information with one another, cross-carrier billing, enabling roaming, and other features.

However, an issue with the SS7 network is that it trusts text messages sent over it regardless of their origin. So, malicious hackers could trick SS7 into diverting text messages as well as calls to their own devices.

All they need is the target’s phone number and some details of the target’s device to initiate the silent snooping.

The researchers from Positive Technologies, who recently showed how they could hijack WhatsApp and Telegram accounts, now gave the demonstration of the Facebook hack using similar tricks, Forbes reported.

SS7 has long been known to be vulnerable, despite the most advanced encryption used by cellular networks. The designing flaws in SS7 have been in circulation since 2014 when the team of researchers at German Security Research Labs alerted the world to it.

Here's How to Hack Any Facebook Account:

The attacker first needs to click on the "Forgot account?" link on the Facebook.com homepage. Now, when asked for a phone number or email address linked to the target account, the hacker needs to provide the legitimate phone number.

The attacker then diverts the SMS containing a one-time passcode (OTP) to their own computer or phone, and can login to the target’s Facebook account.
The issue affects all Facebook users who have registered a phone number with Facebook and have authorized Facebook Texts.

Besides Facebook, researchers' work shows that any service, including Gmail and Twitter, that uses SMS to verify its user accounts has left open doors for hackers to target its customers.

Although the network operators are unable to patch the hole sometime soon, there is little the smartphone users can do.

• Do not link your phone number to social media sites, rather rely solely on emails to recover your Facebook or other social media accounts.
• Use two-factor authentication that does not use SMS texts for receiving codes.
• Use communication apps that offer "end-to-end encryption" to encrypt your data before it leaves your smartphone over your phone's standard calling feature.

Update: However, the important thing to note is that the issue has actually nothing to do with Facebook security or other website's security, instead it is the weakness in the telecom network. 

"Because this technique [SSL exploitation] requires significant technical and financial investment, it is a very low risk for most people," Facebook spokesperson told The Hacker News. 

"As an added precaution, we recommend turning on two-factor authentication, called Login Approvals, in your Facebook security settings. Doing this will disable recovery via SMS on your account so even if someone has your phone number, they'll still need your password to access your account."

Read More

Hackers can spy on your calls and track location, using just your phone number

Hackers can spy on your calls and track location, using just your phone number 

 IN BRIEF

The famous ‘60 Minutes’ television show shocked some viewers Sunday evening when a team of German hackers demonstrated how they spied on an iPhone used by U.S. Congressman, then recorded his phone calls and tracked his movement through Los Angeles.

Hackers leverage a security flaw in SS7 (Signalling System Seven) protocol that allows hackers to track phone locations, listen in on calls and text messages.

The global telecom network SS7 is still vulnerable to several security flaws that could let hackers and spy agencies listen to personal phone calls and intercept SMSes on a potentially massive scale, despite the most advanced encryption used by cellular networks.

All one need is the target's phone number to track him/her anywhere on the planet and even eavesdrop on the conversations.

SS7 or Signalling System Number 7 is a telephony signaling protocol used by more than 800 telecommunication operators around the world to exchange information with one another, cross-carrier billing, enabling roaming, and other features.

Hackers Spied on US Congressman's Smartphone

With US Congressman Ted Lieu's permission for a piece broadcast Sunday night by 60 Minutes, Karsten Nohl of German Security Research Labs was able to intercept his iPhone, record phone call made from his phone to a reporter, and track his precise location in real-time.

During the phone call about the cell phone network hacking, Lieu said: "First, it's really creepy, and second, it makes me angry."

"Last year, the President of the United States called me on my phone, and we discussed some issues," he added. "So if hackers were listening in, they'd know that phone conversation, and that is immensely troubling."

What's more awful is that the designing flaws in SS7 have been in circulation since 2014, when the same German researchers' team alerted the world to it. Some flaws were patched, but few apparently remain or intentionally left, as some observers argue, for governments to snoop on its targets.

The major problem with SS7 is that if any one of the telecom operators is hacked or employs a rogue admin, a large scale of information, including voice calls, text messages, billing information, relaying metadata and subscriber data, is wide open to interception.

The weakness affects all phones, whether it's iOS, Android, or whatever, and is a major security issue. Although the network operators are unwilling or unable to patch the hole, there is little the smartphone users can do.

How Can You Avoid this Hack?

The best mitigation is to use communication apps – that offers "end-to-end encryption" to encrypt your data before it leaves your smartphone – over your phone's standard calling feature.

Lieu, who sits on House subcommittees for information technology and national security, also argues for Strong Encryption that, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), make it harder to solve crimes.

Lieu strongly criticized the United States agencies, if any, that may have ignored such serious vulnerabilities that affect Billions of cellular customers.

"The people who knew about this flaw [or flaws] should be fired," Lieu said on the show. "You can't have 300-some Million Americans—and really, right, the global citizenry — be at risk of having their phone conversations intercepted with a known flaw, simply because some intelligence agencies might get some data."

Few of such apps that are popular and offers end-to-end encryption are Signal, WhatsApp, and Apple's iMessage service that keep users communications safe from prying eyes and ears.

Read More

Here's the Facebook Hacking Tool that Can Really Hack Accounts, But

Here's the Facebook Hacking Tool that Can Really Hack Accounts, But...

Yes, you heard me right.

A newly discovered Facebook hacking tool actually has the capability to hack Facebook account, but YOURS, and not the one you desire to hack.

How to Hack Facebook account? How to Hack my Girlfriends Facebook account? My boyfriend is cheating on me, How do I hack his Facebook Account?

These are the queries that most of the Internet users search on Google.

But Beware! If you come across any Facebook hacking tool that promises you to help you hack your friends Facebook accounts, you may end up downloading a hacking tool that could hack you, instead of them.

Facebook  Hacking Tool that Can Really Hack, But Your Accounts

Dubbed Remtasu, the tool is marketing itself as a Facebook hacking tool but actually is a Windows-based Trojan that has accelerated globally over the past year, and has now capability to disguise itself as an app for accessing people's Facebook account credentials.

The tool contains a Keylogger that can capture all your keystrokes and store them in a file that is subsequently sent to the attacker's server.

The malicious Facebook hacking tool is exploiting "the constant desire of a lot of users to take control of accounts from this well-known social network," according to a Monday blog post by IT security company ESET.

How Remtasu Works:

The malicious tool is delivered via direct download websites.

Once a user visits one of these websites, the dangerous Win32/Remtasu.Y malware automatically gets downloaded and executed on victim's machine and hide itself among other files.

Remtasu has capability to:

• Open and obtain information from the clipboard.
• Capture keystrokes.
• Store all the data in a file which is subsequently sent to an FTP server.

The worst part is yet to come:

The malware remains on the infected computer even when the victim reboots their system or attempts to find the malware threat in the list of active processes.

"In this case, the malware replicates itself, saving the copy in a folder that it also creates within the system32 folder," reads the post. "The new InstallDir folder remains hidden inside the system files, making it difficult for users to access."

Most affected parts of the world include Colombia, Turkey, Thailand and elsewhere. In past, Remtasu was distributed through malicious files attached to phishing emails purporting to be from legitimate government or businesses organisations.

Read More

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

Critical 'Port Fail' Vulnerability Reveals Real IP Addresses of VPN Users

A newly discovered flaw affecting all VPN protocols and operating systems has the capability to reveal the real IP-addresses of users' computers, including BitTorrent users, with relative ease.

The vulnerability, dubbed Port Fail by VPN provider Perfect Privacy (PP) who discovered the issue, is a simple port forwarding trick and affects those services that:

• Allow port forwarding

• Have no protection against this specific attack

Port Forwarding trick means if an attacker uses the same VPN (Virtual Private Network) as the victim, then the real IP-address of the victim can be exposed by forwarding Internet traffic to a specific port.

"The crucial issue here is that a VPN user connecting to his own VPN server will use his default route with his real IP address, as this is required for the VPN connection to work," Perfect Privacy wrote in a blog post on Thursday.

Port Fail affects all VPN protocols including…

• OpenVPN
• IPSec

…as well as applies to all operating systems, posing a huge privacy risk.

How Does 'Port Fail' Work?

A successful IP address leak attack requires an attacker to be on the same VPN network as the victim and to know the victim's VPN exit IP address, which could be discovered by tricking a victim into visiting a website control controlled by the attacker.

For example, an attacker with port forwarding enabled can see the request from the victim's actual IP addresses by tricking the victim into opening an image file.

The same attack is possible for BitTorrent users, but, in this case, there is no need for the attacker to redirect the victim to their page.

In this case, the attacker only with the activated port forwarding for the default BitTorrent port, can expose the real IP-address of a VPN user on the same network.

Affected VPN Providers

The flaw affected various large VPN providers. Perfect Privacy tested nine VPN providers out of which five were found to be vulnerable to this flaw and were alerted last week.

VPN providers including Private Internet Access (PIA), Ovpn.to and nVPN have fixed the issue before publication.

However, the company warned, "other VPN providers may be vulnerable to this attack as we could not possibly test all."

Read More

Make It Harder for People to Find You on Facebook

With close to one-and-a-half billion people currently on Facebook, keeping a low profile can be tricky. It's in the site's best interest to make it easy for you to make connections with family, friends, and acquaintances. However, if you want to make it more difficult for people to track you down, there are ways to do it.

From the desktop website, dive into the Settings entry from the toolbar menu, then click through on the Privacyheading on the left. Under the Who can look me up? section you'll find three options that are of use to us here. By clicking on the Edit links to the right, it's possible to stop people who aren't already your friends looking you up via your email or phone number.

There's also the option to hide yourself from public search engines. Turn this off, and your Facebook profile won't appear the next time someone Googles or Bings your name on the open web-unfortunately you can't hide yourself from the search tools inside Facebook, unless you use an alternative or abbreviated name or something like that.

What you can do is limit the information Facebook has on you. Click the Update Info button on your profile, and remove references to workplaces, educational establishments, and places you've lived. This will make it harder for someone to locate you on Facebook, particularly if you've got a common name and are likely to get lost in a long list of search results.

Finally you can go back to the Privacy page and turn off the option that allows anyone with a Facebook account to contact you. Limit this to Friends of friends, and you won't have to pretend to ignore that old classmate of yours who's bombarding you with messages. He or she won't be able to reach you in the first place.

Read More