Russian firm Elcomsoft unveils tool to crack BlackBerry encryption security

          A Russian security company has upgraded a phone-password cracking suite with the ability to figure out the master device password for Research in Motion's BlackBerry devices. Elcomsoft said that before it developed the product, it was believed that there was no way to figure out a device password on a BlackBerry smartphone or PlayBook tablet. BlackBerry smartphones are configured to wipe all data on the phone if a password is typed incorrectly 10 times in a row, the company said.

"ElcomSoft Phone Password Breaker" does exactly what it says, enabling its users to recover plain-text passwords governing encrypted backups for BlackBerry smartphones and PlayBook tablets. (The password-breaking tool also works on Apple devices running iOS, such as iPhones and iPads.) The new feature is wrapped into Elcomsoft's Phone Password Breaker. It costs £79 ($123) for the home edition and £199 for the full-featured suite, which can also recover plain text passwords used to access encrypted backup files for Apple's iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch devices. To crack those passwords, a user does need to have the Apple device in hand.

The backup files contain sensitive data including call logs, SMS archives, calendars, photos, email account settings, a person's Web browsing history and more.Elcomsoft reserves some of its password-cracking software strictly to vetted law enforcement, such as its iOS Forensic Toolkit, which can extract passwords and decrypt a device's file system.

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Thailand Prime Minister Twitter, Facebook accounts Hacked

   Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra's personal Twitter account was hacked yesterday in what officials said was possibly part of a conspiracy to embarrass the government. The false tweets accused her of cronyism and various failures. The final post read: "If she can't even protect her own Twitter account, how can she protect the country?"

          Authorities vowed to prosecute the guilty parties. Information and Communication Technology Minister Anudith Nakornthap said an investigation found the hacker used a prepaid phone card and an iPhone to access the accounts. He denied a report that an arrest was imminent, but said details from the investigation would be announced today.Ms. Yingluck won a clear victory in July, but is accused by her critics of being a puppet of her brother, former Premier Thaksin Shinawatra who was thrown out of office in a 2006 military coup.

           "This country is a business. We work for our allies, not for the Thai people. We work for those who support us, not those who differ with us," another read.

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QR codes - Next way for Android Malware!!

          Once a user scans the QR code, the code redirects them to a site that will install a Trojan on their Android smart phones. Kaspersky's SecureList blog has a report of a malicious QR code on a web site which when scanned directs the user to a URL; the linked site doesn't have a file matching the name in the URL, but it does redirect the browser to another site where the file jimm.apk is downloaded. The file is a trojanised version of the Jimm mobile ICQ client, infected with Trojan-SMS.AndroidOS.Jifake.f which sends a number of SMS messages to a $6 a message premium rate service.

           Once installed, the Trojan will send a number of SMS messages to premium-rate numbers, which will end up costing the victim some money, depending on how quickly she is able to find and remove the Trojan.

           Kaspersky’s Denis Maslennikov reports that the malware itself is a Trojanized Jimm application (mobile ICQ client) which sends several SMS messages to premium rate number 2476 (US$6.00 each).

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