Malware

SPOTLIGHT ON SECURITY

Swipes, Taps and Cursor Movements Can Foil Cyberthieves

Swipes, taps, cursor movements and other ways of interacting with electronic devices can be used to protect online merchants from Net fraudsters. Many people are familiar with biometric authenticators like irises, fingerprints and voices, but it turns out that how we behave with our machines can be ...

A highly sophisticated group of hackers who use cutting-edge techniques to shield their attacks from detection has been bedeviling corporations around the world for several years. The group, which Symantec dubbed "Morpho" and Kaspersky Lab calls "Wild Neutron," has hit multibillion-dollar corporatio...

The United States' National Security Agency and the UK's Government Communications Headquarters reportedly have been attacking antivirus and other security software since at least 2008. The aim is to infiltrate networks and track users. The agencies apparently have reverse-engineered security and an...

SPOTLIGHT ON SECURITY

Routers Becoming Juicy Targets for Hackers

Most consumers pay as much attention to routers as they do to doorknobs. That's not the case with Net marauders. They're finding the devices ripe targets for mischief. "We've seen a big increase in malware designed for home routers," said Incapsula researcher Ofer Gayer. "Every week, we see a new vu...

SPOTLIGHT ON SECURITY

No Wrongdoing at NCIS, Says Defense Watchdog

The U.S. Department of Defense's Inspector General has rejected allegations that the Naval Criminal Investigative Service engaged in questionable domestic intelligence activity. The finding concluded a DoD IG probe spurred by allegations that NCIS was making available to military intelligence agenci...

The United States and its leading Western allies, known as the "Five Eyes," reportedly planned to hack into smartphones through their links to Google and Samsung's app stores. They wanted to infect apps with spyware and find ways to send misinformation to targets, according to documents released ...

SPOTLIGHT ON SECURITY

Venom Less Toxic Than Heartbleed

It was a little over a year ago that the Heartbleed bug shocked the Internet with its potential for mischief. Now another flaw in open source code has sent network administrators into damage control mode. The bug, called "Venom" for "Virtualized Environment Neglected Operations Manipulation," allows...

FireEye and Microsoft have scotched a scheme by a group of cybercriminals based in China to use an IT pro forum to hide malicious activity, according to a report released Thursday. The Chinese gang known as "APT17" devised the scheme, which uses forum pages and profiles on Microsoft's TechNet, to co...

Drive-by attacks on the Internet are a particularly pernicious form of online threat, especially for individual Web surfers. On the corporate level, though, a company with good endpoint protection software can foil the malicious practice. A drive-by occurs when an infected website automatically down...

A flaw in iOS 8 allows hackers essentially to crash apps that perform SSL communications whenever they like. Skycure reported the bug at the RSA security conference held last week, advising owners of iOS devices to upgrade to iOS 8.3. Apple this week confirmed that iOS 8.3 addresses the vulnerabilit...

SPOTLIGHT ON SECURITY

Apple Watch Could Be a Password Alternative

With password tolerance levels at an all time low, alternatives to the pesky and insecure authenticators are beginning to abound. One of those alternatives could be the Apple Watch. Even before Apple's latest gadget began shipping last week, MicroStrategy announced it was extending its Usher enterpr...

Have you ever heard of the Cullinan diamond? If you haven't, it was the largest diamond ever discovered: a 3106 carat diamond found in 1905 in South Africa. What's interesting about the Cullinan diamond isn't so much the discovery of the stone itself but what happened afterward: specifically, the cu...

China has a new censorship tool that is causing alarm. It's known as the "Great Cannon." The University of Toronto's Citizen Lab identified the tool in a report released last week. The Great Cannon was first used in March, to launch a large-scale DDoS attack on GitHub and GreatFire.org, Citizen Lab ...

SPOTLIGHT ON SECURITY

Heartbleed Threat Won’t Fade Away

This week marks the first anniversary of the Heartbleed vulnerability that caused a panic across the Internet last year. While the flaw appears to have faded from the recollections of Net denizens, it still poses danger at many sites in cyberspace. Heartbleed was discovered in April 2014 in an ope...

The United States' Central Intelligence Agency for years has been working to break iOS security, according to a report published Tuesday. The allegations are based on documents provided by NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden. Researchers working with the CIA have presented their tactics and achievemen...

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