Beware! Fake Spectre & Meltdown Patches Are Infecting PCs With “Smoke Loader” Malware

One of the most common tactics employed by notorious cybercriminals involves taking advantage of the popular trends and creating fraudulent websites/apps to trick users. It looks like some of the players have tried to exploit the confusion surrounding Meltdown and Sprectre CPU bugs.
Forget buggy updates which are causing numerous problems to the users, Malwarebytes has spotted a fake update package that installs malware on your computer. The firm has identified a new domain that’s full of material on how Meltdown and Spectre affect CPUs.


The website appears to have content from the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI). However, the website is fraudulent and it hosts a ZIP archive link, which is a piece of malware. The fake file in the archive is Intel-AMD-SecurityPatch-10-1-v1.exe.
In case the user downloads the file and attempts to install it, Smoke Loader malware infects the PC. It further downloads more payloads by connecting to various domains and send encrypted traffic.
The website was also spotted sending fake phishing emails. Here’s a screenshot:



Malwarebytes has already contacted CloudFlare and Comodo regarding this abuse and the site isn’t resolving anymore. But, it doesn’t mean that hackers aren’t trying to exploit such publicized events.
The end-users are advised to always remain cautious and download updates from the dependable sources only. In case you’re getting direct emails or calls from vendors, take them with a grain of salt.

Raspberry Pi Zero WH Hacker Board Launched With Pre-Soldered GPIO Header

The Raspberry Pi Foundation is here with a new (not exactly) hacker board that would be surely loved by tinkerers and makers. Named Raspberry Pi Zero WH, it’s a new variant of existing Zero W.

H in Zero WH stands for “header.” This makes sense as it comes with a professionally soldered header. It would be useful for the people who don’t own a soldering iron or who want to get that work done by somebody else.

With this new variant, the users can use Foundation’s GPIO expander software to access a Pi Zero’s GPIO pins from your computer running Debian Stretch or Mac. With this tool, you don’t need to use SSH while taking advantage of computer’s processing power.
This decreases the overall setup costs and provides great accessibility everywhere. It goes without saying that it’s just a single use case.
“You may want the header for prototyping before you commit to soldering wires directly to a board. Or you may have a temporary build in mind for your Zero W, in which case you won’t want to commit to soldering wires to the board at all,” as per the announcement post.
While your applications might differ, Raspberry Pi Zero WH is surely a sweet addition to the Pi family. The product is available with limited availability at the moment. You can find it on PiHut.com, at 13.40 UK Pounds ($18.40).
Is there any specific Raspberry Pi project that you find interesting? Do share your views and start building something new today.

Microsoft’s OneDrive Files Restore Feature Will Make Ransomware Recovery Easier

Microsoft is soon about to add a new feature to their cloud storage service called OneDrive. Known as Files Restore, the said feature would allow users to rollback their OneDrive storage to any point back in time and recover files they might have accidentally deleted or encrypt by some ransomware.
The details about the upcoming OneDrive files restore feature were dropped during a SharePoint Saturday San Diego presentation by Stephen L Rose, OneDrive for Business Senior Product Manager.

Files Restore could arrive in the next couple of weeks, but it’s not known whether it would be available for the users of OneDrive for Business only or all OneDrive users.


It appears very similar to how System Restore in Windows can be used to rollback a PC to an earlier system state to recover system settings and installed applications. The difference is that Microsoft is doing it for the files stored on OneDrive.


Certainly, users having the facility to recover files easily will motivate them to increase their use of cloud-based storage options. Although it might not be specifically intended, Files Restore could lessen the effects of ransomware attacks which prevent users from accessing their files until they agree to pay the ransom amount. However, users will have to enable cloud sync every time so that new files are regularly added to their cloud storage.