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New 'BotenaGo' Targets Routers and Smart Home Devices in Devastating Attack

Andrew Orr ·

AT&T Alien Labs discovered malware it dubs BotenaGo. It affects millions of routers and Internet of Things devices found with smart homes. The “devastating” part comes from the fact that it uses over 30 separate exploits due to insecure devices.

The BotenaGo malware starts by initializing global infection counters that will be printed to the screen, informing the hacker about total successful infections. It then looks for the ‘dlrs’ folder in which to load shell scripts files. A loaded script will be concatenated as ‘echo -ne %s >> ‘. If the ‘dlrs’ folder is missing, the malware will stop and exit at this point. For the last and most important preparation, the malware calls the function ‘scannerInitExploits’, which initiates the malware attack surface by mapping all offensive functions with its relevant string that represent the targeted system.

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Researchers Uncover Serious Flaws Within DRAM Chips

Andrew Orr ·

ETH Zurich reports that researchers from the Vrije Uni­versiteit Am­s­ter­dam and Qual­comm Tech­no­lo­gies found flaws within DRAM chips. The article I’m linking to is more of an announcement; ETH Zurich tells me the full results will be presented at IEEE in 2022.

It means that by re­peatedly ac­tiv­at­ing – or “ham­mer­ing” – a memory row (the “aggressor”), an at­tacker can in­duce bit er­rors in a neigh­bour­ing row, also called the “victim” row. That bit er­ror can then, in prin­ciple, be ex­ploited to gain ac­cess to re­stric­ted areas in­side the com­puter sys­tem – without re­ly­ing on any soft­ware vul­ner­ab­il­ity.

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Apple TV+ Show Dr. Brain is Big Moment For Company and Korean Content

Charlotte Henry ·

Dr. Brain premiered on Apple TV+ on November 4, the same day the streaming service went live in South Korea. As a new feature from Reuters shows, the move is a significant one, coming at a time when Korean content is more popular, and valuable, than ever.

Apple’s foray into original Korean content comes as the country’s entertainment industry reaches new global popularity, from k-pop superstars such as BTS to the 2020 Oscar-winning South Korean film “Parasite,” and now “Squid Game”, which became Netflix’s (NFLX.O)biggest original series launch. Director Kim Jee-woon said after the consecutive success of such Korean content, global audiences began to understand Korean culture through artistic works and that he had made an extra effort to get the translations right. “I hope Dr. Brain can prove there are diverse works in South Korea that cover a wide variety of genres, sensibilities and materials as much as previous mega hit Korean series,” Kim said.

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FBI Says Data Was Not Compromised After Hackers Took Over Email Server

Andrew Orr ·

Hackers took over an FBI server over the weekend, sending thousands of fake cyberattack warnings. The agency says no personal information or data was affected.

The agency said it has fixed the software vulnerability that allowed the attack.

The fake emails originated from an FBI-operated server, which was dedicated to pushing notifications to the Law Enforcement Enterprise Portal (LEEP), which the FBI uses to communicate with state and local agencies. The compromised server was not part of the FBI’s corporate email service, the FBI added.