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The latest developments in IT security: your rights online, securing your systems via timely patching, updates on anti-malware tools, and relevant stories on hacking and system vulnerabilities.
Weekend tech reading: LulzSec disbands after 50 days of mayhem
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Love them or loathe them, LulzSec, the mysterious group of hackers who got near-celebrity status with their showy cyber attacks on PBS, Sony and the CIA, have called it a day.Saturday marked 50 days since the group started causing mayhem online...
90% of businesses say they were hacked in the last year
- 90 percent of businesses say they have fallen victim to a cyber security breach at least once in the past 12 months. That percentage isn't based on a small number either: 583 US companies participated in the questionnaire.
FBI takes down $74 million scareware operation
- The Department of Justice, the FBI, and multiple international law enforcement partners, announced this week they have indicted two individuals from Latvia and seized more than 40 computers, servers, and bank accounts. Part of Operation Trident Tribunal, which targets international…
Dropbox bug let users access accounts without a password
- Dropbox yesterday announced the discovery of a bug that disabled the company's authentication mechanism. The flaw was introduced in a software update issued over the weekend and allowed accounts to be accessed with any string of text for a password.…
LulzSec, Anonymous launch 'Operation Anti-Security'
- LulzSec issued a statement yesterday avowing its partnership with the hacker collective Anonymous in an open declaration of war against the "freedom-snatching moderators of 2011." Dubbed Operation Anti-Security (#AntiSec), LulzSec called for like-minded individuals to open fire against any government…
Citigroup breached simply by changing a portion of the URL
- Thousands of Citigroup's credit card customers saw their account information compromised last week, and all it took was a browser and changing a few numbers in the URL string after logging into a valid account. That's according to an unnamed…
LulzSec attacks Minecraft, Eve Online, League of Legends, others
- Ever persistent in their hunt for "lulz," the crew behind Lulz Security struck again today, bombarding no less than five separate companies with distributed denial of service attacks. Celebrating "Titanic Takeover Tuesday," the group boasted of its antics on Twitter…
Bethesda and US Senate sites hacked, data published
- Bethesda is encouraging users to reset their passwords following a weekend security breach on the company's servers. In a blog post today, the developer explained that although no personal financial information or credit card data was stolen, the hackers have…
Russian ATM uses voice analysis to detect when you're lying
- Sberbank, Russia's biggest retail bank and whose majority owner is the Russian government, is testing an automated teller machine (ATM) with a built-in lie detector intended to prevent consumer credit fraud. Consumers with no previous relationship with the bank can…
Anonymous to NATO: do not challenge us
- The hacker group Anonymous has warned the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) not to challenge it. NATO may have more resources than Anonymous, but the "hacktivist" group clearly believes it would come out victorious in a fight.
Citigroup says customers' credit card data was hacked
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Citigroup has acknowledged that a security breach last month gave hackers access to the account information of hundreds of thousands of its credit card customers. The breach, which affected around 1% of Citi's U.S. customers, is the latest in a string of high profile attacks against big companies.
25% of US hackers work with the US government
- The FBI and Secret Service have successfully infiltrated the underground world of computer hackers in the US: 25 percent are secretly informing the government about their peers for fear of a long prison sentence. In fact, the community is riddled…
Anonymous hacks Iranian government, steals 10,000 emails
- The hacker group Anonymous has hacked into Iranian government servers, specifically targeting the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The group managed to steal 10,365 email messages and post them on The Pirate Bay as a 63MB file. Anonymous members even sent…
Shocker: Sony hacked again, over a million accounts compromised
- It's time for another installment in the never-ending saga of Sony's security blunders. Hackers have reportedly infiltrated the company's movie site, accessing the sensitive information of more than a million accounts. The group, known as LulzSec, claims to have breached…
Google accuses China of hacking more Gmail accounts
- Google revealed Wednesday that hackers compromised hundreds of Gmail accounts, including those of government officials in the US and several Asian countries, military personnel, journalists and Chinese political activists. Before you panic, the search giant stressed that its internal systems…
China admits it has a commando unit of 30 cyberwarriors
- For the first time ever, China has admitted that it has poured tens of millions into the formation of a commando unit of 30 cyberwarriors called The Blue Army. The team is reportedly trained to improve the security of the…
Russian security firm cracks iOS 4's hardware encryption
- A Russian security firm has announced the first commercially available toolkit capable of cracking the encryption and passwords on Apple's latest mobile devices. ElcomSoft says its software can bypass the security that protects data such as SMS messages, pictures, emails,…
Sony: PSN security breach cleanup to cost $171 million
- It's been a dire year for Sony with the combined disruption from the Japanese earthquake and the damage caused by the PSN hack. The company is due to release a financial report on Thursday, but on a preliminary financial update…
Sony hacked again, this time for phishing purposes
- Sony has been hacked once again, although this time is not as serious. Security firm F-Secure has discovered that a Web server belonging to Sony is hosting a phishing site that targets customers of the Italian credit card company Carta…
US: if you hack us, we may use military action
- The US this week revealed its "International Strategy for Cyberspace" with the subtitle of "Prosperity, Security, and Openness in a Networked World" (via Ars Technica). The 30-page PDF document praises cyberspace and generally says nothing too exciting. It does, however,…
Kaspersky: we need an Internet Interpol
- Yevgeny Kaspersky recently spoke at the Australian Computer Emergency Response Team (AusCERT) 2011 conference, which takes place between May 15, 2011 and May 20, 2011. He said the last five years were the "Golden Age" of cybercrime, with the criminal…
Google issues patch to fix Android's ClientLogin data leaks
- Google has announced it's starting to roll out a server-side patch for a security vulnerability in 99% of Android phones that could have allowed someone to snoop on an unencrypted Wi-Fi network and access calendar and contact data. The fix…
Microsoft: 1 out of every 14 downloaded programs is malware
- Microsoft has revealed that 1 out of every 14 downloaded programs is later confirmed as malware. The data comes from the software giant's SmartScreen Filter team.
Sony PlayStation Network logins exploited again
- Update: Sony has fixed the flaw. "We temporarily took down the PSN and Qriocity password reset page," a Sony spokesperson said in a statement. "Contrary to some reports, there was no hack involved. In the process of resetting of passwords…
99.7% of Android phones leak user account credentials
- According to a report by German researchers, some 99.7% of Android devices in circulation are vulnerable to an attack that could compromise sensitive data transmitted over a wireless network connection. The hole reportedly stems from a flaw in Google's ClientLogin…
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