Archive for 2016

Nuclear Power Plant Attacked

Monday, October 17th, 2016

Since the Chernobyl incident, everyone has known the dangers of a malfunctioning nuclear power plant.  With the rise of cyberattacks, experts have warned whoever would listen about potential vulnerabilities with nuke plants.  It turns out that such worries were well founded. The International Atomic Energy Agency announced that a nuclear power plant has already been […]

Cyberattack Supply and Demand

Thursday, October 13th, 2016

Everyone knows the law of supply and demand: when a resource is scarce, the price is high.  When the market is glutted, the price falls.  The internet black market is no different. It appears that cybercriminals have flooded the market with Electronic Health Records (EHR) and have forced their value down to the degree that […]

Aetna Sets Pace for Healthcare Cybersecurity

Thursday, October 13th, 2016

Whenever there’s a big data dump, the security experts at Aetna jump on it and use analytics to scan and identify any credentials that are the same as those of a current user. A match means there’s an opportunity for hackers to take advantage of those credentials. The team immediately forces a password reset and […]

Yahoo’s Price Drop

Thursday, October 13th, 2016

It appears that Verizon is looking to get at least a $1 billion discount on its acquisition of Yahoo. Originally they were hoping to buy the company and merge it with AOL to compete with Google and Facebook, but the recent revelations involving hacking and spying have Verizon wary. Two week ago Yahoo admitted that […]

Mac Webcam Spyware

Wednesday, October 12th, 2016

Unfortunately for Mac users that believe their computers to be safer than one running Windows there a new piece of malware that is adding to the mounting evidence that that is no longer true. This particular program allows hackers to monitor and record video or audio using the built in camera and microphone without the […]

Romanian Hacker Stole $2 Million from ATMs

Wednesday, October 12th, 2016

A Romanian man has been arrested in that country by City of London Police working on the London Regional Fraud Team. The man, Emanual Leahu, has been charged for his participation in a campaign involving ATM malware. Authorities believe Leahu to be part of a European hacking gang. The thieves broke into ATMs and installed […]

Government Infiltrated Yahoo

Tuesday, October 11th, 2016

According to reports, Yahoo developed software in order to scan the emails of hundreds of millions of its users on behalf of US intelligence services. Additionally, installing this software appears to be the result of a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court order. The program was originally designed to scan for child pornography and emails […]

Turkey Censoring Google, Microsoft and More

Monday, October 10th, 2016

Turkey’s reputation is less than sterling when it comes to censorship.  Their latest foray into censorship targets cloud storage services and information hosting services including Dropbox, GitHub, Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive. Most of the affected sites were returning SSL errors, which points to traffic being intercepted one some macro level, such as the national level. […]

Russia Didn’t Only Hack the DNC

Monday, October 10th, 2016

Last week, the United States formally accused Russia for cyberattacks involving the Democratic Party.  It looks like the hack was actually much deeper than that, involving Republicans as well, and targeting people whose work the Russian government considers strategically important, and it’s been going on for longer than initially suspected. The hacking appears to mostly […]

Formal Accusation: Russia Cyberattacked US

Saturday, October 8th, 2016

The US government has formally accused Russia of recent cyberattacks.  The Obama administration claims confidence that the Russian government was behind the attacks that targeted the Democratic Party, which may have been an attempt to interfere in the upcoming presidential election.  Russia has denied the claims. The statement was released by the Department of Homeland […]

How to Protect Your Router

Saturday, October 8th, 2016

Think about how integral a router is to a modern home.  It provides internet for your computers, wifi for your mobile devices and, increasingly, helps control thermostats, refrigerators, security cameras, lights and just about anything else electrical.  You can even order products you’re low on by pushing a button, all from the internet-magic of your […]

Data on 6,700 Health Workers Vulnerable

Saturday, October 8th, 2016

It looks like there could have been another hack of federal employee records.  This time the Health and Human Services Department is checking into the possibility of a hack compromising the data of 6,700 doctors, nurses and other health workers under the Surgeon General. A problem was discovered in the system on September 20.  It’s been fixed, […]

Is Your Clients’ Confidential Data Secure?

Thursday, October 6th, 2016

From Progressive Law Practice: Since legal matters necessarily involve the client sharing sensitive financial and personal information with their lawyer and support staff, the attorney should ensure the client understands: Who from the firm may communicate with the client to obtain the information Appropriate methods for disseminating information to the law firm The steps the […]

Snowden Part II

Thursday, October 6th, 2016

Everyone has heard of Edward Snowden, the NSA contractor who leaked documents detailing NSA secrets.  Some hail him as a hero, some call him a traitor.  And now, the NSA has arrested another contractor for data theft. Harold Thomas Martin was contracted to the NSA through Booz Allen Hamilton, the same firm that employed Snowden.  Martin […]

Free Download: 68 Million Dropbox Accounts!

Wednesday, October 5th, 2016

You may remember a few months ago when we reported that 68,680,741 Dropbox accounts had been compromised.  You could buy all that information for $1200 as of last month, but now you can get it for free. The password information was uploaded to a website run by Thomas White, who goes by the handle Cthulhu.  He […]

Send a Password Through Your Body

Tuesday, October 4th, 2016

Every now and then an idea comes along and you think, “Wow, that’s really, really cool.” Here’s the problem: when you send a password through wifi, that signal can be picked up by anybody.  That means hackers can potentially capture your password and like that, your account is compromised. A team at Washington University recently […]

Wells Fargo Might Not be the Only One Opening Fake Accounts

Monday, October 3rd, 2016

Last month, the world found out that employees at Wells Fargo created millions of credit cards and bank accounts in their customers’ names without their knowledge in order to get bonuses.  As a result, thousands of employees were fired, CEO John Stumpf resigned and the bank was hit with $185 million in fines. We should […]

Credit Card Theft Coverup at Trump Hotels

Monday, September 26th, 2016

It’s known that Trump Hotel Collection suffered a data breach and credit card theft last year.  Generally, when a company suffers such a breach, they redouble their cybersecurity efforts.  Not so in this case, and because of the carelessness, it’s happened again. Owned by Donald Trump, real estate mogul and Republican presidential nominee, Trump Hotel Collections […]

Massive Yahoo Hack

Thursday, September 22nd, 2016

When’s the last time you changed your Yahoo password?  If you haven’t done it since 2012, now is the time to do it. Yahoo is expected to confirm a massive hack that’s been rumored to have happened since August, when a hacker known as Peace claimed to have hacked them back in 2012.  The data […]

Problems with the State of Cybersecurity

Thursday, September 22nd, 2016

In the war between cybercriminals and cybersecurity, the good guys are losing, and it’s not even close. In 2015, over $3 billion was sunk into startups with the aim of battling hackers in one way or another.  The European Union is investing $2 billion in cybersecurity.  The United States is going to spend a whopping […]