The Edward Snowden revelations have faded a bit from public view in light of other, more recent political activities, but a new report regarding the NSA and Yahoo has people talking about it once more. Reportedly, the United States government threatened to fine Yahoo a quarter of a million dollars <i>per...
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At some point, you have to wonder if any database that can be hacked will be hacked. With so much of the world's precious information stored on drives in the forms of 1s and 0s, what's to stop ill-willed individuals from doing to every other company what they did last year to Target, for example? Clearly, not much, as...
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Sure, you may feel like you're ready to take on the world after a good night's rest -- after all, you stayed at a Holiday Inn. Or perhaps you crashed at a Motel 6 where they leave the light on for you (yes, we watch too much television). Regardless of where you plan to spend the night during your travels, you should be aware that crooks are
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Even when the government conducts secret activities, those ventures have to be funded, and a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives last night took a swipe at the NSA’s domestic spying practices by cutting some of its funding. According to Ars Technica, Representatives James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), Zoe Lofgren...
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The takeaway from a new survey is short and alarming: Hackers are winning the war. In a survey co-sponsored by PwC, the U.S. Secret Service, the CERT Division of Carnegie Mellon University's Software Engineering Institute, and CSO security news magazine, it was found that cybercriminals are more relentless than ever...
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Although Microsoft has stopped supporting Windows XP, many people haven’t bothered to update from the legendary and now terribly aged operating system (you guys, seriously, just do it already). However, in what is the most perfect XP-related real-life joke ever, someone discovered that there’s a hacky...
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The United States Justice Department has brought forth criminal charges against several members of Unit 61398 of the Chinese military, alleging that these members hacked into computer systems of six American businesses, including Alcoa Inc., United States Steel Crop, Allegheny Technologies Inc, Westinghouse Electric...
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Senate democrats introduced new legislation called the Smartphone Theft Prevention Act (senate bill 2032), which would mandate a killswitch option on all smartphones. The big four wireless carriers as well as the CTIA are all on record as being against such measures, but if the bill passes, they won’t have much...
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Following an eight-year stint as the man in charge of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), Army General Keith Alexander has decided to step down effective next March or April. So will his civilian deputy, John "Chris" Inglis, who is planning to retire by the end of the year. The NSA came under heavy media and public scrutiny after former...
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The U.S. government has stated that it’s concerned about China-based Huawei and its ties to the Chinese government and military, and the UK shares that concern. After Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) issued a report stating that a great deal more oversight was needed regarding foreign...
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Ubisoft announced that it was hacked, and some user account information including usernames, passwords (even encrypted ones), and email addresses were compromised. “We recently found that one of our Web sites was exploited to gain unauthorized access to some of our online systems,” wrote the company in a...
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Following rumors that hacktivist collective Anonymous had breached the US Federal Reserve servers this past weekend comes word from the Fed itself to acknowledge that it did in fact happen. Despite the fact that Anonymous managed to leak information on some 4,000 banking executives, the Federal Reserve is down-playing...
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Think your week was rough? Trying running security for a U.S. bank, many of which were hammered with non-stop cyberattacks for more than seven days. According to reports, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and around half a dozen banks in all saw significant traffic surges and suffered disruptions in service...
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Well, this is some news that is sure to frustrate gamers: Ubisoft has decided that it will continue implementing its special constant-connection anti-piracy measures because, to nobody's surprise, it works. The company's restrictive digital rights management (DRM) system, which was recently announced to be included in upcoming release Driver:...
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BlackBerry smartphones have been the subject of much debate over the years. Some reasons are for good, and some are for bad. Regardless, BlackBerry devices seem to wind up being discussed along with security concerns quite often, and while it took South Korea years to finally accept these always-connected handhelds, the United Arab Emirates...
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The best thing about USB drives is their portability. The worst thing can be the lack of security for your data on there.EncryptStick comes either pre-loaded on a USB flash drive or as software you can download onto the drive yourself and the new Version 4.1 has dual support for Macintosh and Windows operating systems.It's touted as a digital...
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On Tuesday US-CERT, the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team, warned that the instructions given by Microsoft to disable AutoRun, a protective measure to prevent infection by the "Downadup" worm, are ineffective and erroneous. AutoRun, when enabled, tells Windows to automatically run any program specified in the "autorun.inf" on...
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While the article suggests $16 million in losses for unauthorized access and theft for 2006, the actual amount is likely much greater since many violations go unreported. A single violation could easily result in losses of this magnitude when the loss is associated with confidential data from a Fortune 500 company...
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