The site that leaked Colin Powell's stolen emails has also allegedly obtained a scan of Michelle Obama's passport. On Thursday, the site DCLeaks began circulating the passport image on Twitter and leaking it to the press. The image includes the U.S. First Lady's alleged passport number. The site tweeted out the scan after obtaining stolen emails it claims are from a White House aide named Ian Mellul. The files, which are posted on DCLeaks, appear to come from Mellul's Gmail account and date back to February 2015.Although DCLeaks claims to be the work of "American hacktivists," some security experts suspect that the site is a front for Russian state-sponsored hackers. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Following reports that Yahoo will confirm a data breach that affects hundreds of millions of accounts, some users reported Thursday on Twitter and elsewhere that they were prompted to change their email password when trying to log in.Yahoo launched an investigation into a possible breach in early August after someone offered to sell a data dump of over 200 million Yahoo accounts on an underground market, including usernames, easy-to-crack password hashes, dates of birth and backup email addresses.The company has since determined that the breach is real and that it's even worse than initially believed, news website Recode reported Thursday, citing unnamed sources familiar with the investigation.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
One of the biggest mistakes companies make when responding to a cybersecurity incident is taking well-meaning steps to “clean up the mess” that actually ruin the digital evidence needed to investigate and prosecute the case.Learning to securely preserve that forensic evidence is key to a successful legal case. In partnership with IDG Enterprise, training company Logical Operations Inc. presents a free online course on this timely topic: Investigating Cybersecurity Incidents.In three video sessions, you’ll learn skills such as how to plan the forensic investigation; collect, protect and analyze the evidence; write an investigation report; work with law enforcement; comply with relevant laws; and prepare for case for court.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
A U.S. lawmaker has introduced two bills to protect voting systems from hacking, amid fears that Russian cyber spies may be interfering with this year's presidential election.Representative Hank Johnson, a Democrat serving Georgia, is proposing a moratorium on state purchases of electronic voting machines that don't produce a paper trail. His Election Integrity Act, introduced Wednesday, would also prohibit voting systems from being connected to the internet as a way to prevent online tampering.The high-profile hack of the Democratic National Committee publicized in June has citizens worried that U.S. election systems may be vulnerable, Johnson said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Did you know that over 75 million tourists visit the United States every year? Or that the Transport Security Administration (TSA) screens over 2 million people daily?The TSA processes 150 passengers per security lane. Imagine the public outrage if it took 20 minutes to screen a passenger and the process publicly disclosed personal information. That’s the average time and result of installing an IoT device today.What lessons can be applied from security screenings to accelerate IoT device adoption? How can the authentication and installation of new IoT devices be streamlined?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Spam is back in a big way – levels that have not been seen since 201o in fact. That’s according to a blog post today form Cisco Talos that stated the main culprit of the increase is largely the handiwork of the Necurs botnet, stated the blog’s author Jaeson Schultz.+More on Network World: The weirdest, wackiest and coolest sci/tech stories of 2016 (so far!)+“Many of the host IPs sending Necurs' spam have been infected for more than two years. To help keep the full scope of the botnet hidden, Necurs will only send spam from a subset of its minions. An infected host might be used for two to three days, and then sometimes not again for two to three weeks. This greatly complicates the job of security personnel who respond to spam attacks, because while they may believe the offending host was subsequently found and cleaned up, the reality is that the miscreants behind Necurs are just biding their time, and suddenly the spam starts all over again. At Talos, we see this pattern over, and over again for many Necurs-affiliated IPs,” he wrote.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
More than 840,000 Cisco networking devices from around the world are exposed to a vulnerability that's similar to one exploited by a hacking group believed to be linked to the U.S. National Security Agency.The vulnerability was announced by Cisco last week and it affects the IOS, IOS XE, and IOS XR software that powers many of its networking devices. The flaw allows hackers to remotely extract the contents of a device's memory, which can lead to the exposure of sensitive information.The vulnerability stems from how the OS processes IKEv1 (Internet Key Exchange version 1) requests. This key exchange protocol is used for VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) and other features that are popular in enterprise environments.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Be careful with what you torrent. A new tool on the black market is helping hackers distribute malware through torrent files in exchange for a fee.On Tuesday, security researchers at InfoArmor said they discovered the so-called "RAUM" tool in underground forums.It leverages torrenting -- a popular file-sharing method associated with piracy -- to spread the malware. Popular torrent files, especially games, are packaged with malicious coding and then uploaded for unsuspecting users to download.Using torrents to infect computers is nothing new. But the makers of the RAUM tool have streamlined the whole process with a "Pay-Per-Install" model, according to InfoArmor.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
It should surprise no one that ransomware is on the rise, but it may be news that education -- not healthcare -- is outstripping other industries for rate of infection, according to a study by security ratings firm BitSight.Organizations in education had the highest rate of infection, with at least one in 10 experiencing ransomware on their networks, according to “The Rising Face of Cyber Crime: Ransomware” report.The study looks at businesses in finance, retail, healthcare, energy/utilities, government and education, which are listed in order from best to worst for ransomware infection rate. Education’s score is far behind that of the others, more than double that for government. The rate ranges from 13% of those in education down to 1.5% for those in finance.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Apple launched its newest operating system, macOS Sierra 10.12, on Tuesday and aside from new and interesting features, it has a large number of important security fixes.The new OS patches 65 vulnerabilities in various core and third-party components. Some of these vulnerabilities are critical and can result in arbitrary code execution with kernel privileges.Flaws that allow local applications to execute malicious code with kernel or system privileges were fixed in Apple's HSSPI support component, AppleEFIRuntime, AppleMobileFileIntegrity, AppleUUC, the Bluetooth stack, DiskArbitration, the Intel Graphics Driver, the IOAcceleratorFamily and IOThunderboltFamily, the S2 Camera, the Security service and the kernel itself.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
If cops are going to do something shady, something as unethical and illegal as violating a citizen’s First Amendment rights to free speech and his Fourth Amendment rights against warrantless seizure, then they definitely don’t want their actions being recorded. Yet that is exactly what happened when Connecticut State Police troopers seized a camera belonging to a protestor and the camera continued to film while they conspired on which bogus charges to level against him.In September 2015, Michael Picard was protesting near a DUI checkpoint in West Hartford by holding up a big handwritten sign that read “Cops Ahead: Keep Calm and Remain Silent.” Picard, who was lawfully carrying a handgun, also had a camera that he was using to film the police—public employees on a public street.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Computerworld, CSO and CIO surveyed 287 business and IT leaders on the state of security in their organization. Here's what they had to say (it ain't always pretty...).
Russia has tried to influence U.S. elections since the 1960s during the Cold War, U.S. Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper said Tuesday.
It's not clear whether the interference, which has a long history, aims to influence the outcome of the election or tries to sow seeds of doubt about the sanctity of the process, Clapper said in an interview to The Washington Post.
The remarks are the closest the U.S. spy chief has come to suggesting that Russia could be involved in recent hacks of Democratic party organizations.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
If you’re worried that your data might end up in the hands of a hacker, one site is offering a free service that can give you a head’s up.Baltimore-based Terbium Labs has come up with a product called Matchlight, which crawls the dark recesses of the internet, looking for stolen data that’s circulating on the black market.On Tuesday, Terbium Labs opened the product to the public. That means any user can sign up to have five of their personal records monitored for free.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Summer 2016 was not a good time for data breaches.First, news broke that the Democratic National Committee was hacked, leading to the resignation of DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and driving a wedge between Democratic Party members.Later, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) announced that Russian hackers had illegally accessed its Anti-Doping Administration and Management System (ADAMS) database, leaking confidential medical information for U.S. athletes, including Simone Biles and Serena Williams.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Website security and performance vendor CloudFlare has made the newest version of the TLS secure communications protocol available to all of its customers.The TLS (Transport Layer Security) 1.3 specification is yet to be finalized by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the body that develops internet standards. However, the protocol is already supported in beta versions of Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox, and it's being hailed as an important step forward in securing internet communications.TLS 1.3 removes some cryptographic algorithms present in TLS 1.2 that are known to be vulnerable. This makes it easier for server administrators to deploy secure-by-default HTTPS configurations. HTTPS (HTTP Secure) is a mix between HTTP and TLS.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A site that's been warning the public about data breaches might actually be doing more harm than good.Enter LeakedSource, a giant repository online that can potentially make hacking easier. Your email address and the associated Internet accounts -- including the passwords -- is probably in it.In fact, the giant repository is made up of stolen databases taken from LinkedIn, Myspace, Dropbox, and thousands of other sites. It bills itself as a data breach monitoring site and for months now, it's been collecting details on hacks, both old and new, and alerting the media about them.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Tesla Motors is considered one of the most cybersecurity-conscious car manufacturers in the world -- among other things, it has a bug bounty program. But that doesn't mean the software in its cars is free of security flaws.Researchers from Chinese technology company Tencent found a series of vulnerabilities that, when combined, allowed them to remotely take over a Tesla Model S car and control its sunroof, central display, door locks and even the breaking system. The attack allowed the researchers to access the car’s controller area network (CAN) bus, which lets the vehicle’s specialized computers communicate with each other."As far as we know, this is the first case of remote attack which compromises CAN Bus to achieve remote controls on Tesla cars," the researchers from Tencent's Keen Security Lab said in a blog post Monday. "We have verified the attack vector on multiple varieties of Tesla Model S. It is reasonable to assume that other Tesla models are affected."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Chinese researchers from Keen Security Lab of Tencent announced that they could chain multiple vulnerabilities together, which allowed them to remotely hack the Tesla Model S P85 and 75D from as far as 12 miles away.The researchers said:
As far as we know, this is the first case of remote attack which compromises CAN Bus to achieve remote controls on Tesla cars. We have verified the attack vector on multiple varieties of Tesla Model S. It is reasonable to assume that other Tesla models are affected.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Gimme all your moneyImage by ThinkstockIn a world where ransomware hackers are expected to extort $1 billion in damages throughout 2016 in the US alone, businesses and individuals are being forced to be on high-alert when it comes to digital security. Carbonite’s customer support team has handled over 7,300 ransomware-related calls just since January 2015 (365/month), encountering breaches occurring through everything from Xerox scans to fake Microsoft IT representatives.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here