Cybersecurity

Iran, which for decades has locked horns with the U.S., is emerging as a cyberwarfare power that's threatening the world, Cylance warned in its Operation Cleaver report, released Tuesday. Cylance has been tracking one team of roughly 20 hackers called "Tarh Andishan," which means "thinkers" or "inno...

Cyberspies will flourish and hackers will target Apple devices more often in 2015. Until now, Russia, China and the United States have dominated the cyberespionage scene, but their success will start to attract new players to the practice. "We can expect some of the developing economies -- countri...

A sophisticated malware program called "Regin" has been used in systematic spying campaigns against a range of international targets since at least 2008, Symantec reported. Regin is a backdoor-type Trojan with a structure that displays a degree of technical competence rarely seen in malware, accordi...

SPOTLIGHT ON SECURITY

Wristband Heads Off Password Headaches

Has software glut got you down? Do you reuse passwords because creating unique ones for all your online accounts would cause a memory overload? If your answer to those questions is yes, you may be interested in a bit of jewelry called the "Everykey," by a startup with the same name. Everykey is a wr...

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has announced a nonprofit organization that will aim to secure the entire Web. Let's Encrypt, starting in summer 2015, will offer free server certificates to help websites transition from HTTP to the more secure HTTPS protocol. EFF is partnering with Akamai, Mozill...

Cybercriminals are using a new version of the dangerous Citadel Trojan, which has been employed to attack the financial and petrochemical industries, to compromise password and authentication solutions, IBM Trusteer has reported. The new version begins capturing keystrokes, or keylogging, when some ...

A Russian website has been posting live video streams from unprotected webcams in homes and businesses around the globe, Britain's Information Commissioner's Office warned on Thursday. The website has gained access to the webcams using the cameras' default login credentials, which are freely availab...

WhatsApp has added end-to-end encryption and enabled it by default in the latest version of its Android messaging application, partner Open Whisper Systems announced Tuesday. The new feature taps Open Whisper's open source TextSecure encryption protocol to ensure that only a conversation's participa...

SPOTLIGHT ON SECURITY

China Suspected in Attacks on USPS, NOAA

The U.S. Postal Service and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration last week confirmed that their computer systems were targeted in months-long cyberattacks that appear to have originated in China. The attack on USPS compromised information of an estimated 800,000 employees. Data at risk in...

The United States Marshals Service reportedly is grabbing data from thousands, if not millions, of Americans' cellphones using high-tech devices deployed on five Cessnas. The aircraft operate out of at least five metro-area airports and apparently can cover most of the U.S. population. They are equi...

Researchers at FireEye on Monday made public the existence of the Masque Attack, which threatens iOS and Mac OS X operating systems. Masque Attack exploits a flaw in Apple's OSes that allows the replacement of one app by another so long as both apps use the same bundle identifier. All apps, except t...

Hackers siphoned off data from United States Postal Service servers for more than eight months before being detected, the USPS said. Personal data -- including names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, addresses, beginning and end dates of employment, and emergency contact information -- was s...

SPOTLIGHT ON SECURITY

New Tool Alerts Etailers to Suspicious Characters

As thoughtful as mobile phone makers are when they design their products, there are always punters who want something that isn't there and are willing to hack a device to get it. In the Android world such a hack is called "rooting" a phone; in the iOS world, it's called "jailbreaking." Either can tu...

Palo Alto Networks on Wednesday reported that more than 400 apps infected with a malicious program it calls "WireLurker" have been downloaded 356,104 times by Chinese Mac owners from Maiyadi, an online app store unaffiliated with Apple. The malware does no harm to the Macs it infects but when the co...

SPOTLIGHT ON SECURITY

Russian Cyberspies Caught With Mittens in Cyber Cookie Jar

Russian cyberspies have a reputation for stealth, so it's unusual when two digital espionage operations linked to the Kremlin come to light in a week. FireEye early last week released a report detailing how hackers working for the Russian government have been using sophisticated techniques over a se...

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