Posted by: Masroor on January 8, 2009 at 7:46 PM
Whenever we hear a word “Hacker”, by default we get a negative impact in our minds. At the same time, we need to know that there is a better side of (ethical) hacking we can in fact relate (ethical) hacking for debugging in our information systems.
An Ethical Hacker is an expert, which are normally hired by corporations to attempt to retrieve their network and computer systems the same way a hacker would. Ethical Hackers use the same techniques and tactics as those used by illegal hackers to breach corporate security systems. Resultantly, these ethical hackers figure out those breaches and security flaws with-in information systems and enhances company’s ability to prevent an intrusion before it ever occurs.
A company can’t know if their security system is solid unless they test it. It’s hard, though, for a company’s IT team to thoroughly ring out the system. Try as they might, the techs can’t go at the system with all the malicious or mischievous motives of a true illegal hacker. To thoroughly uncover vulnerabilities, the theory goes; you must examine your security system through the eyes of an illegal hacker.
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Posted by: Aamir Attaa on January 6, 2009 at 9:47 AM
New in the series, this time PTCL’s SMART TV’s website: www.ptcl.net got hacked.
This is PTCL’s IPTV portal… Google’s cached page is available here or here
Note: Website has been down for more than 12 hours, and apparently PTCL guys are still thinking to take any action!
Update: www.ptcl.net is not being pinged.
Credit: Latif Shah for notifying me about this!
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Posted by: Muhammad Ali Raza on January 5, 2009 at 3:05 PM
Before getting started with discussion, lets pull gears with defining what actually “Scareware” is
“A Scareware is designed to literally scare the computer/internet user through the use of unanticipated shocking images, sounds or video”
The first ever scareware program is generally credited to be “NightMare”, a program distributed on the Fish Disks for the Amiga computer in 1991. When executed, NightMare used to stay idle (doing nothing) for a long (and random) period of time, finally changing the entire screen of the computer to an image of a skull while playing a horrifying voices on the computer speakers.
As scarewares have evolved, they are incorporating new features and designs to increase shock intensity. Recently trends are evolving where scarewares are designed for focused games, in which user gets too much involved in the game and then all of a sudden a horrifying image with sound shock appears. Such a sudden shock can be dangerous enough to halt the users’ heart.
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Posted by: Aamir Attaa on January 2, 2009 at 12:45 PM
Federal Investigation Agency ’s Cyber Crime Wing has arrested an international gang that had been robbing people by collecting “processing fees” after declaring them winners of non-existent lotteries, jobs and businesses, reported Dawn Paper today.
Dawn while citing Mr. Ammar Jaffery confirmed that FIA arrested two Nigerians and one Pakistani after finding them guilty.
After it arrested the two foreigners, the wing’s Rawalpindi Zone office received a call from a man pretending to be a police officer. “We traced the caller and arrested him. He turned out to be a member of the gang,” the FIA official said.
“We are in search of around 400 other Pakistanis involved in serious online financial offences,” he said.
It merits mentioning here that Pakistanis internet users receive these fraudulent emails on daily basis, which claim them winners of high paying lotteries, job and bank loans etc. When the innocent people reply back these emails, attackers ask them for processing fee. However, they never appear once they receive payments from targets.
Mr Jaffery said the gang which his wing busted had been working in a very organised manner. It was unearthed when a gang member was arrested red-handed receiving a fat “processing fee” from the winner of a fake lottery. Euros 8,600 and $3,000 were recovered from the arrested man.
Investigations conducted by the FIA revealed that most of the cyber financial frauds originated in Africa or countries where cyber laws are ineffective.
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Posted by: Muhammad Ali Raza on December 26, 2008 at 3:53 PM
Editor’s Note: We are deliberately not disclosing bank’s name to secure it from competitive disadvantage, also this hack incident is not related in any case with previous hacking posts published on ProPakistani.com
A leading bank of Pakistan got hacked with complete compromise over its services and server, earlier this month. This compromise, as per very reliable sources resulted into financial loss as well.
In the said incident, that took place a month ago, hackers got complete control of bank’s website and its database. We were further updated by our sources that bank’s website remained down for couple of days, before it was restored. During this financial loss was also reported.
It was also reported that same bank got attacked at least twice earlier this year, if not thrice.
When contacted the concerned official of the bank for comment over the attack, head of Remote Banking Channels, ruled out total compromise of the web server, however, he confirmed that Bank’s front end was compromised to some extent due to phishing attacks. He further said that this compromise didn’t affect the bank accounts neither there was any financial loss reported during this.
He said, that these Phishing attacks are a routine activity now, as the banking sector is going online (on internet) and we expect them grow in Pakistan in coming days.
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Posted by: Muhammad Ali Raza on December 5, 2008 at 7:29 AM
“What we loose with a less secure website?” I am asked this question by many people, today, in this article I will try to cover those core reasons, which make it essential for everyone to secure his/her web server. We will try to measure necessary security threats for all scale of websites, ranging from personal blogs to community websites, small sized company website to corporations’ websites.
Blog Sites
Let’s start with bloggers, and why securing web server is important to them. Normally blogger are of the view that why the hell should I spend money or energy to this so-called security; while I have no sensitive data on my blog, neither I am in serious conflict with anyone? And even if some looser gets into my blog, I will simply change my server and will restore with the backup that I take on daily basis. So not a bid deal at all.
Well, I am afraid, but it is not exactly the same! Let’s peek into those incentives that a blogger offers to a website hacker. First thing that comes in is the show off, and probably it is the most enjoyable target for hackers. Normally, it is observed that blogs are not that secure when compared to corporate websites, hence they are easy to get in.
So hackers, especially the beginners start their careers with hacking blog sites.
It is matter of fact that hackers don’t attack blogs for fun only, there can be financial aspect with hacking a blog as well, such as many hackers attack blogs to gain its data for instance, names, emails, IPs and latter on they re-sell it (for hefty value).
Another very dangerous thing can be, what if a hacker comes in and change your google ad sense code and changes it to his/her code, even in that case, a blogger can be in deep trouble. Continue Reading This Story
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Posted by: Muhammad Ali Raza on November 30, 2008 at 5:31 PM
I am glad that my previous post about Cyber War between India and Pakistan got tremendous response, not only through fellow commenter’s, but it was escalated in main stream media, and was carried by Geo TV, Dawn TV, Express TV, Daily Jang, The News and others, but at the same time, some people took the whole story in wrong sense. I was just reporting on inside activities, however, few fellows thought that I was promoting the negative stories by publicizing them.
While I was aware of the impact that my story could make, at the same time, being a part of ProPakistani.com it was my core duty to update my readers regarding happenings in web security domain of Pakistan.
Since my previous, I had been researching on the hacking activities going on between Pakistan and India. Meanwhile, the occurrence of Mumbai incident further increased the chances of massive defacement from both sides; which could cost heavy losses to both the countries.
During all this disappointment, I got this invitation from PCA group for a group chat where all other top groups including Pakbugs Z-company, PCA and some other old school hackers were participating.
These Pakistani groups chatted for 2 hours before they allowed me to step in. As soon as I joined, ICW2 and HMG also joined this group chat, which meant that these groups are now negotiating and want to quit Cyber War. Continue Reading This Story
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Posted by: Muhammad Ali Raza on November 24, 2008 at 8:03 PM
I got this email from PCA (Pakistan Cyber Army, who recently hacked http://www.ongcindia.com/ - Indian Oil and Natural Gas website) about how they hacked Indian website and what exactly made them hack it. Email is pasted below
Note: I am displaying this email as it is, without any editing.
okay now everybody listen
First of all why were Indian sites defaced by us?
HMG has been playing around with Pakistani communities and websites for a long time now and on the top of that they are thinking that Pakistanis can’t do anything?
LOL dude get a life. These defacement’s were not dedicated for the fame of our group name PCA. Pakistan Cyber Army this group name was created right 5 minutes before we defaced these websites. This means we don’t have any intention to spread our names nor we need to show our skill levels. This is just a matter of our nation Pakistan.
We cant stop HMG from defacing our websites … all rite go deface some more..don’t come in forums and say we are crying and can’t do anything..we don’t have time for this **** seriously.. and yea … back off.. otherwise we really need to take out some time.. and as we said before ..smoke your doors off till u burn to ashes. (no offense )
OH the defaced websites got fixed?
All the people who think that anyone can control a website permanently if you break into it.. they are wrong.. there is no such way you can control a website completely. You can put your page for a period of time , until the owner of that website sees it and because he has the hosting control he is the only real owner no matter how deep you can go into it. So it has to get back to normal page anyways. that’s why screen shots are used
HMG RE HACKED??
LOL all the Pakistani’s should really be proud of this. First of all ..instead of bringing the site to the normal page, they are putting their messages on their own Indian websites HAHAHAHA lol anyways never mind ..
hacking a website again is not a big thing, anyone can do this if you are sure about the existence of a vulnerability in a website.
HMG hacked our oil and gas website.. that was a random act..
Our attack was planned , and dedicated to their OIL AND GAS website which makes sense plus it shows we Pakistanis can do it.
see we are white hats, don’t force us to show our black hat sides , that be really bad.
PCA
Regards,
Disclaimer: This post is not intended to propagate the hatred or otherwise feelings for anyone or any cause. This email was sent to us directly; comments may not reflect ProPakistani’s content policy.
Furthermore, ProPakistani is neither responsible for the reported computer crimes nor it is directly or indirectly involved in them.
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