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pirated software
copyright Cyber Crime Lawsuits pirated software

Microsoft Sues IP Address for Windows, Office Piracy

Microsoft has filed a lawsuit against an individual IP address that was reportedly attempting to activate a pirated version of Windows and Office. The IP address points to a Comcast office in New Jersey and is accused of trying to activate over 1,000 copies of the software.

It is unclear who the complaint is filed against as the lawsuit mentions “John Does 1-10” and the IP address (73.21.204.220).

The full complaint can be seen below.

“During the software activation process, Defendants contacted Microsoft activation servers in Washington over 2800 times from December 2014 to July 2017, and transmitted detailed information to those servers in order to activate the software,” Microsoft claims in the complaint.

Microsoft is suing for both copyright and trademark infringement and has asked the court to seize all copies of the unlicensed software.

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Morgan Stanley considers Bitcoin to be of no value

Cryptocurrencies dominated the financial news space in 2017, with bitcoin rising more 13 times this year, as per Coindesk, even as prices have remained very volatile. The cryptocurrency’s worth continued to fluctuate wildly this week, bouncing back to nearly £12,000 on Wednesday after plummeting to around £8,000 last week.

But a top financial services firm is making the case that, despite soaring stock prices, the popular digital currency Bitcoin may actually be worth nothing at all.

Jamie Dimon, the erstwhile CEO of JP Morgan Chase Bank, was quoted in an interview in New Delhi saying that ‘cryptocurrencies to me are worth nothing’. Morgan Stanley top analyst James Faucette sent out a paper to his group’s clients, titled 'Bitcoin Decrypted' devaluing the already volatile cryptocurrency. The memo suggested that the true value of Bitcoin was $0.00. Faucette said Bitcoin had 'virtually no acceptance, and shrinking'.
Faucette’s team of analysts argue that not only is Bitcoin hard to equate to real-world money, less online retailers are accepting the cryptocurrency as payment. It operates as a payment network but there are very few places that actually accept it.

According to the report, the number of top 500 eCommerce merchants who accept Bitcoin has dropped from five in 2016 to three in 2017.

Bitcoin can’t be considered a 'real currency' like the U.S. dollar, because the cryptocurrency doesn’t have an interest rate associated with it, i.e. it has no cash flow, Faucette said.

In the report, Faucette opined that Bitcoin's price is largely driven by the supply and demand for the digital currency, the same way in which investor attribute a high value to gold which makes it a worthwhile investment option.

“Unlike buying digital gold, Bitcoin doesn't have any intrinsic use like gold has in electronics or jewellery, but investors appear to be ascribing some value to it."
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Hacker’s can guess smartphone security pin using sensor data

The data collected from different sensors on your smartphone can reveal PINs and passwords to hackers and allow them to unlock your mobile devices, researchers at the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore announced on Tuesday (Dec 26). This, they said, highlights a "significant flaw" in smartphone security, as using the sensors within the phones require no permissions to be given by the phone user and are openly available for all apps to access.

While a malicious application may not be able to correctly guess a PIN immediately after installation, using machine learning, it could collect data from thousands of users over time from each of their phones to learn their PIN entry pattern.

According to their study published in Cryptology ePrint Archive, using a combination of information gathered from six different sensors found in smartphones and machine learning and deep learning algorithms, the researchers succeeded in unlocking Android smartphones with a 99.5 percent accuracy within only three tries, when tackling a phone that had one of the 50 most common PIN numbers.
Led by Indian-origin NTU senior research scientist, Shivam Bhasin, the researchers used sensors in a smartphone to model which number had been pressed by its users, based on how the phone was tilted and how much light is blocked by the thumb or fingers.

The team of researchers took Android phones and installed a custom application which collected data from six sensors: accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer, proximity sensor, barometer and ambient light sensor."When you hold your phone and key in the PIN, the way the phone moves when you press 1, 5 or 9, is very different. Likewise, pressing 1 with your right thumb will block more light than if you pressed 9," Bhasin said.

The previous best phone-cracking success rate was 74 percent for the 50 most common pin numbers, but NTU’s technique can be used to guess all 10,000 possible combinations of four-digit PINs.
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tatkal tickets
CBI cryptocurrency Cyber Crime railway scam tatkal tickets

Tatkal Ticket Scam Uncovered, CBI Official Arrested

Ajay Garg, an assistant programmer at the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), has been arrested by his own agency for developing a software that exploits the vulnerabilities of the IRCTC railway ticketing system to book over 1000 Tatkal tickets at a time.

Ajay joined CBI in 2012 and had been working with IRCTC previously for five years (2007-2011).

Rather than reporting the vulnerabilities found by him, Garg instead used them for his own gain and amassed a huge wealth by making his software available to travel agents through his accomplice Anil Gupta, who can then easily book Tatkal tickets for clients for a fee using the software.

As seats are limited, by the time the users fill in their details, the Tatkal quota is already booked. So the users turn to travel agents who can book these tickets using the software. These tickets are genuine and the payments of the tickets go to the railways, according to officials.

However, in addition to the cost of the software, there is a charge on every ticket booked using the software, which is paid to Garg using a complex system of Indian and foreign servers, online masking, and cryptocurrencies like bitcoin.

“Use of such software is illegal as per rules and regulations of IRCTC and also under the Railways Act,” Abhishek Dayal, CBI spokesperson, said.

Garg and Gupta, along with 13 others including Garg’s family members and travel agents, have been arrested.

According to Dayal, the CBI has carried out searches at 14 locations in Delhi, Mumbai, and Jaunpur during which it recovered Rs 89.42 lakh in cash, gold jewellery valued at Rs 61.29 lakh, 15 laptops, 15 hard disks, 52 mobile phones, 24 SIM cards, 10 notebooks, 6 routers, 4 dongles, and 19 pen drives.

Both Garg and Gupta have been sent to a five-day CBI custody by a court.

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PDF files new resort for Cyber criminals

Beware. Some spoofed emails might strike terror at you sooner or later. These emails with attachments might come from your common devices of Epson, HP and Canon printer-scanner which is more or less a nefarious intention to stymie the entire system. 

 The attempt in question is not an old one--originated in November only as the cybercriminals started issuing biased emails. Millions of users received emails where the users in the subject lines were asked to read Scanned from Canon, Scanned from HP, Scanned from Epson and what not. This was what simply Barracuda researchers revealed.

PDF files, usually, are used in this infamous deal since PDF files are a common system to rush mails and materials from a network printer.

The cybercriminals often keep modifying file names to get rid of the cybersecurity dragnets which helps them remain unseen with the malware. The moment you open the attachment in question, the cybercriminals get to know the entire network system.

Cybersecurity experts who have been minutely following cybercriminal activities say that the initial strike took place in November to be followed umpteen number of attacks with the help of these malicious devices.

But why these hackers take resort to the attachments? It helps these criminal elements get access to your computing device at ease. As you click on the attached PDF file, the malware gets activated to infect the system which starts behaving as the hackers want. Cybersecurity experts have been devising a mechanism to effectively deal with the menace.
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Social Media.
Cyber Attacks Economy Elections Social Media.

The United States failed to establish deterrence in the aftermath of Russia’s interference

The United States of America has yet again neglected to build up deterrence in the consequence of Russia's interference in the 2016 election. And there is no surprise as to why it failed to do so. Which it did in light of the fact that Russia proceeded to forcefully employ the most noteworthy part of its 2016 toolbox: the utilization of social media as a platform to disseminate propaganda intended to debilitate or in simpler words weaken their country.

Former CIA Director Michael Morell and former Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Michigan, said that Russia has continued its cyber-attacks against the United States. Both of them serve on the advisory council for the Alliance for Securing Democracy, say that the U.S. has neglected to prevent Russia from utilizing social networking to "disseminate propaganda designed to weaken their nation”.

"There is a perception among the media and the general public that Russia ended its social-media operations following last year's election and that we need worry only about future elections. But that perception is wrong. Russia's information operations in the United States continued after the election and they continue to this day," they wrote on Tuesday for The Washington Post.
As reported by them, the Russian government is as yet sending viable and effective tactics that focus on particular gatherings and politicians, much as they did earlier by controlling social media in the race to the 2016 election.

As per Rogers and Morell, Russian-influenced Twitter accounts were leading members in November's #BoycottKuerig movement via social media. The boycott started to dissent the coffee-maker organization pulling its advertisements for Sean Hannity's Fox News show.

"This was a Russian attack on a U.S. company and on our economy," Morell and Rogers said.

Morell and Rogers warn that Russia's utilization of web-based social networking as a "political weapon" that will continue pushing ahead in the future, with more nations expected that would stick to this same pattern, unless and until the U.S. intervenes.

"The sanctions that the Obama administration and Congress put in place in the aftermath of the 2016 election are steps in the right direction, but they were not significant enough to check Russian President Vladimir Putin," Morell and Rogers suggest.


Additionally included saying that true deterrence requires arrangements or such policies that keep adversaries from accomplishing their targets all the while imposing noteworthy expenses on their regimes, out of which they have done neither.
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Edward Snowden launches Spy App

Edward Snowden has launched a new security Android app that can help citizens who would like to monitor their belonging when they aren't around.

The app, Haven was released in partnership with The Guardian Project. It uses the sensor, accelerometer,  of your smartphone's to detect the movement of the device  and surrounding vibrations, camera to track movements of objects in view, microphones to track noises in the environment, ambient light sensors to track changes in the lights and power to check if the phone was unplugged or the power cut.

“Haven detects changes in the environment using the sensors in a typical smartphone—the camera, microphone, gyroscope, accelerometer, ambient light, USB power—to alert you if anyone enters your space or attempts to tamper with your devices while you aren’t there,” said the Freedom of the Press Foundation.

The software is not designed to be installed on your main Android phone, but install this on a burner phone with a SIM card. It then configures to log all the information and send notifications to a number, over a secure channel like Signal or Tor with end-to-end encryption.

Haven turns any Android phone into a motion, sound, vibration and light detector, watching for unexpected guests and unwanted intruders,” said the Guardian Project.

“You can position the device’s camera to capture visible motion, or set your phone somewhere discreet to just listen for noises. Get secure notifications of intrusion events instantly and access the logs remotely or any time later.”

This app is currently only available for Android devices, but they will soon launch an iOS version of the app in the future.

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youth crime
Cyber Crime Gang youth crime

₹79 lakh online fraud to withdraw ₹49 in over 1.5 lakh transactions

A gang from Jharkhand, responsible for fraud of over ₹79 lakh, was busted on Friday for hacking over 2,020 accounts of State Bank of Mysore (SBM) customers last year.

The gang was led by a 19-year-old school dropout. Suraj Mohali, the accused perpetrator, has now been arrested along with three others for hacking and withdrawing ₹49 from the savings bank accounts and Mastercard holders of SBM in Bengaluru, Sringeri, Mangaluru, and Tirthahalli.

The gang made as much as 1.56 lakh transactions, withdrawing over ₹79 lakh in a few hours.

Then they diverted this money into different bank accounts using fake documents and used some of the cash to recharge mobile phones, which led to the cyber police tracking them down and arresting them.

The gang is allegedly a part of a much larger network operating in Jharkhand.

The mastermind behind this network is yet to be identified, but would allegedly give them the details of various bank accounts and instruct them to withdraw only ₹49 from each account.

The Inspector-General of Police, Chandrashekhar said, “We cracked the case after tracking the accused for over a year. We are questioning them to know more about the racket.” The accused and his accomplices have been brought to Bengaluru for questioning.

It has reportedly been found during the investigation that many youths from Jharkhand are trained and involved in online fraud throughout the country.
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Hacked.
App vulnerability Bitcoin malware cryptocurrency. Facebook Hacked.

Facebook messenger falls victim to an anonymous crypto cousin of Bitcoin


With the booming value of digital currency, numerous hackers are rolling out schemes to unwittingly trap or trick more likely, the regular web users into mining for them. The most recent scheme to hoodwink people into mining cryptographic money is exploiting Facebook Messenger by means of some shrewd malware.The malware being distributed by means of Messenger is mining Monero, a contrasting option to the wildly important and volatile Bitcoin. The software is a type of a modified version of the open source mining program XMRig which the bot sets to start automatically.


The bot was detected by cyber security firm Trend Micro, which says "Digimine" is intended to resemble a video file. Security researchers likewise said that "Digmine" is focusing on as many machines as could be allowed, with a specific end goal to earn monero (the alternative to bitcoin) for its makers.

It is spread via a fake video that seems to have been sent from somebody from within the victim's friend list. Once opened the 'video' installs a malevolent code which then proceeds to compromise the desktop version of Facebook Messenger when used with Google Chrome.The hackers at that point gain an off the record access into the users Facebook account where they can get to the contacts lists to additionally spread the malware. The profits made from this illegal computer jacking are sent to the attacker's encrypted Monero wallet.


"If the user’s Facebook account is set to log in automatically, Digmine will manipulate Facebook Messenger in order to send a link to the file to the account’s friends," the researchers said. "The abuse of Facebook is limited to propagation for now, but it wouldn’t be implausible for attackers to hijack the Facebook account itself down the line."

 However this isn't the first or last time mining malware has been utilized to exploit systems, back in October a malignant program called Coinhive was installed into various compromised applications on Google Play.

In a time where on one hand hackers are constantly hijacking devices to mine cryptographic money and are becoming increasingly regular as there is a rapid increase in the value of the digital currencies in the present market, extra caution is thoroughly recommended for the heavy users of social media.


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Top hoax stories of 2017

As we prepare to bid our adieu to 2017, let’s have a look back at the year’s trending news points that took the globe by storm but were actually fake.

This year, lots of fake news was widely shared across social media platforms right from Twitter to Facebook and WhatsApp.

1. Akash Ambani’s viral ‘wedding card worth Rs 1.5 lakh made of gold’

A clip showing an elaborate wedding card, allegedly made with pure gold plating, was doing the rounds of various social media platforms, with rumour mills buzzing that this invite could be that of Mukesh and Nita Ambani’s eldest son, Akash Ambani. However, Reliance Industries Ltd quashed the news saying: “We would like to clarify that this video is completely untrue and contains hoax content designed purely for sensationalism.”

2. The Angelina Jolie lookalike ‘after 50 surgeries’

19-year-old Sahar Tabar’s pictures splashed all over the Internet with the claim that she underwent 50 plastic surgeries to look like her Hollywood idol Angelina Jolie. Later, it came to light after an interview with Sputnik, that the claims of Tabar were actually wrong, and the results were due to technology.

3. South Africa president Jacob Zuma’s ‘in the beginning’ video

A video was modified to show that the South African President, Jacob Zuma cannot pronounce the word ‘beginning’. However, later people started posting the original video to reveal the truth behind it.

4. The claim that Swami Vivekananda’s statue was beheaded by Muslims

A photo of Swami Vivekananda’s beheaded statue surfaced on social media. Later, a website named Akhand Bharat reported that the anti-social element who damaged the statue was subsequently arrested. However, it was turned into a communal fight when a tweet claiming that Muslims beheaded it went viral, which was actually a hoax.

5. Astronaut shared lit-up pic of India, but it was not from Diwali

A breathtaking picture of ‘India during Diwali as seen from the cosmos’ had gone viral on social media. The picture was shared by astronaut Paolo Nespoli (@astro_paolo). There was only one problem with the picture that it was not from a Diwali night. A Twitter user dug out and tweeted that the photograph was originally shared by the astronaut on his Flickr account on September 29, 2017, nearly a month before Diwali.

6. The Rs 2000-note car viral pic, and the ‘lover who was arrested’

Around Valentine’s Day this year, photos of a car covered in Rs 2,000 notes went viral, wherein a Mumbai-based man had apparently decorated the car thus to impress his girlfriend. It was also reported that the man was arrested as well which was not true. These were just some of the top hoax stories that went viral. There’s still a never-ending list of many such stories where people create fake stories and others without questioning readily accept the forwarded news.
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Power of Haven

Its the tale of an app. Courtesy Freedom of the Press Foundation and the Guardian Project. An extra Android phone is what you need if something goes wrong with the laptop at home even after a camera in place not to speak of motion sensors, trip wires, booby traps and what not.

Herein lies the importance of an app that can act as a computer in your sensor-dense pocket. The brain behind the app is none other than Edward Snowden.

Popularly known as Haven, the app is a joint effort of the Freedom of the Press Foundation and the Guardian Project.  Your phone turns into a multifaceted tripwire as you apply Haven to hear it the noise on a microphone. Then the phone would start moving operating the trip on the accelerometer. Wait a little bit: the room brightness would be visible to keep something moving inside the room with its camera. This would be followed by the stoppage in the charging as it would get unplugged. In the next step only, the app starts sending encrypted notifications with sounds, pictures to the phone holder.

The moment somebody roaming around you to doctor your computer or laptop you will get to learn with a message at your spot to avoid your device from being tempered.

Experts in this field say the app is a capable device for the parents and their teenagers who are worried about each other or if your children are worried about their teammates.  It could also give you an immense benefit to get rid of the hackers. To top it all, Haven has every might to ensure the safety of the system in use.
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