News

Hackers and cybercrime prevention

• September 24, 2020 24 Sep'20

  ‘Not unjust’ to extradite WilkiLeaks founder Julian Assange, court hears

  Nigel Blackwood, NHS consultant psychiatrist, told the Old Bailey court that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange had ‘moderate depression’ and autistic traits, but said they did not prevent his extradition

• September 24, 2020 24 Sep'20

  Third-party code bug left Instagram users at risk of account takeover

  A critical vulnerability in Instagram’s image processing could have allowed attackers to take over not just their victim’s account, but their entire device

• September 24, 2020 24 Sep'20

  Race to patch as Microsoft confirms Zerologon attacks in the wild

  Don’t be the organisation that made the headlines because it failed to patch. Microsoft says it is seeing cyber attacks ramping up around the Zerologon CVE-2020-1472 bug

• September 23, 2020 23 Sep'20

  WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has Asperger syndrome and depression, court hears

  Julian Assange is on the autistic spectrum and has a history of depression that would put him at risk of suicide if he is extradited to a US prison, psychiatrists tell the court

• September 23, 2020 23 Sep'20

  Public admires security professionals, but doesn’t want their jobs

  (ISC)² research finds attitudes towards security roles are increasingly positive, but not many people fancy joining the fight against cyber crime

• September 23, 2020 23 Sep'20

  Video gamers barraged with cyber attacks

  From credential stuffing to SQL injection and DDoS, video game producers and players are seeing massive volumes of cyber attacks

• September 23, 2020 23 Sep'20

  US agencies warn of election disinformation and cyber attacks

  Federal agencies are warning of heightened disinformation as the crucial 2020 presidential election nears

• September 22, 2020 22 Sep'20

  Activision shoots down data breach claims

  Gaming company denies there has been any data breach after up to 500,000 accounts appeared to have been compromised, but evidence mounts that credential stuffing attacks are to blame

• September 22, 2020 22 Sep'20

  Scam mobile apps spreading via rogue TikTok accounts

  Malicious TikTok accounts are promoting a number of adware scam mobile apps

• September 22, 2020 22 Sep'20

  WikiLeaks published unredacted cables after password was disclosed in book

  WikiLeaks published a cache of unredacted government cables after the publication of a book containing the password led to their publication on other parts of the internet, court told

• September 21, 2020 21 Sep'20

  Trump implicated in plans to prosecute Assange over war leaks

  US journalist and Trump supporter, Cassandra Fairbanks, said she was given advanced details of US plans to oust Wikileaks founder Julian Assange from the Ecuadorian Embassy and to arrest him for over documents leaked by former soldier Chelsea Manning

• September 21, 2020 21 Sep'20

  WikiLeaks cables showed US interfered in German torture investigation

  Khalid El-Masri, a German citizen who was kidnapped and tortured by the CIA in a case of mistaken identity, told a court that disclosures by WikiLeaks showed that the US had intervened in a German judicial investigation into his treatment

• September 21, 2020 21 Sep'20

  WikiLeaks video ‘electrified’ public to civilian war deaths, court hears

  New Zealand investigative journalist and author Nicky Hager said that WikiLeaks’ publication of a video showing a US helicopter firing on civilians, along with the publication of secret war logs, ‘electrified’ the world to civilian deaths

• September 18, 2020 18 Sep'20

  Ex-NCSC boss Ciaran Martin joins cyber venture capital outfit

  Outgoing NCSC CEO Ciaran Martin is to take up a new role guiding new investments in cyber security

• September 18, 2020 18 Sep'20

  Outgoing NCSC CEO: Ransomware threat kept us up at night

  Former NCSC CEO Ciaran Martin sheds some light on some of the biggest cyber threats currently facing the UK

• September 18, 2020 18 Sep'20

  Congressman offered Julian Assange a ‘win-win’ deal that would help President Trump

  Details have emerged of US congressman Dana Rohrabacher’s offer of a pardon to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in a ‘win-win deal that would benefit US President Donald Trump

• September 18, 2020 18 Sep'20

  German authorities probe ransomware hospital death

  Hackers failed to extort a ransom from University Hospital Düsseldorf, but indirectly caused the death of a patient

• September 18, 2020 18 Sep'20

  Rampant Kitten spent six years hacking Iranian dissidents

  Details emerge of an ongoing campaign by Tehran-backed threat actors targeting dissidents and activists

• September 17, 2020 17 Sep'20

  Maze ransomware borrows Ragnar Locker tactics to sneak past defences

  New research from the Sophos threat response team has found the Maze ransomware gang has adopted techniques pioneered by the cyber criminals behind Ragnar Locker

• September 17, 2020 17 Sep'20

  Saudi Arabia sees cyber security boom as coronavirus bites

  Saudi Arabian CIOs have been forced to increase their security posture as the Covid-19 pandemic transforms working methods

• September 17, 2020 17 Sep'20

  Seven charged in connection with Chinese state-backed cyber attacks

  Attacks by APT41, or Wicked Panda, targeted hundreds of organisations, including the UK government

• September 17, 2020 17 Sep'20

  Assange revelations among most important in US history, says Daniel Ellsberg

  Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked highly classified documents that changed the course of the Vietnam War in the 1970s, says WikiLeaks exposed a serious pattern of US war crimes

• September 16, 2020 16 Sep'20

  NCSC steps up ransomware support for schools and universities

  New alert and updated guidance comes after several academic institutions were targeted in ransomware attacks

• September 16, 2020 16 Sep'20

  Julian Assange held back 15,000 documents to prevent harm to US government

  Investigative journalist John Goetz said today that WikiLeaks held back publication of thousands of documents that could harm individuals

• September 16, 2020 16 Sep'20

  Retailers urged to get to grips with Magento as attacks spike

  A huge spike in online retailers being hacked with Magecart credit card skimmers is being blamed on unsupported versions of Adobe Magento

• September 16, 2020 16 Sep'20

  Banks report surge in impersonation scams

  Fraudsters are using the Covid-19 crisis to trick people into transferring money to them

• September 16, 2020 16 Sep'20

  Lorca security scaleups to get Splunk data expertise

  Lorca inducts Splunk onto its co-marketing programme, giving security scaleups access to new data expertise

• September 16, 2020 16 Sep'20

  Western Australia government goes all-in on Microsoft

  State agencies in Western Australia will be able to tap Azure cloud services and cloud applications through a new Microsoft agreement

• September 15, 2020 15 Sep'20

  MEPs denied access as observers to Julian Assange extradition hearing

  MEPs and NGOs say they have been denied access to observe extradition proceedings against WikiLeaks founder in Central Criminal Court

• September 14, 2020 14 Sep'20

  Julian Assange faces solitary confinement if extradited, court hears

  WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will be held under special administrative measures if extradited to the US, said Eric Lewis, a US legal expert, effectively placing him in solitary confinement

• September 11, 2020 11 Sep'20

  Travel industry websites are laughably insecure, claims Which?

  The travel industry is failing to take the data security of its customers seriously, according to a Which? investigation

• September 11, 2020 11 Sep'20

  Zoom adds two-factor authentication for all users

  Latest enhancements to Zoom security make it easier for organisations to protect users and prevent breaches and unauthorised meeting access

• September 11, 2020 11 Sep'20

  Russian interference in US elections ramps up on schedule

  With the critical US 2020 presidential election looming, Russian-state backed hackers are once again after organisations directly involved in political elections, launching thousands of targeted attacks

• September 10, 2020 10 Sep'20

  Cyber security is next frontier for open source

  Open security will facilitate the interoperability and capabilities of cyber security tools while alleviating vendor lock-in for enterprises, says IBM

• September 10, 2020 10 Sep'20

  Lorca security scaleups hit funding milestone

  £153m of investment has been raised by Lorca cohort companies in just two years, almost four times the original target

• September 10, 2020 10 Sep'20

  Datacentre firm Equinix investigating ransomware attack

  A number of internal systems at cloud and datacentre firm Equinix have been affected by a ransomware attack

• September 10, 2020 10 Sep'20

  Government launches £500k healthcare security plan

  A £500,000 funding pot from the government aims to help support small and mid-sized healthcare firms during the pandemic

• September 10, 2020 10 Sep'20

  Assange prosecution would put journalists around the world at risk

  Trevor Timm, co-founder of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, tells a court that if the US prosecutes WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, every reporter who receives a secret document will be criminalised

• September 09, 2020 09 Sep'20

  Branch-based anti-fraud scheme to be expanded to online banking

  A successful branch-based anti-fraud scheme will be expanded by banks to include online and telephone banking

• September 09, 2020 09 Sep'20

  September’s Patch Tuesday heavy on RCE vulnerabilities

  Microsoft’s September update contains patches for 129 common vulnerabilities and exposures, including a high number of remote code execution issues

• September 09, 2020 09 Sep'20

  US conspiracy charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange ‘politically motivated’

  US journalism historian and investigative journalist Mark Feldstein tells a UK court that use of the Espionage Act against Assange will have wide implications for the press

• September 08, 2020 08 Sep'20

  Julian Assange warned against interrupting witnesses in extradition hearing

  On the second day of his extradition hearing at the Old Bailey, judge informs the WikiLeaks founder he could be removed and potentially banned from court for interrupting witnesses

• September 07, 2020 07 Sep'20

  Court rejects request to exclude ‘11th hour’ US evidence against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange

  Lawyers for Julian Assange say the US has introduced an 11th hour indictment against the WikiLeaks founder that provides additional grounds for his extradition

• September 06, 2020 06 Sep'20

  Why predictive threat intelligence is key

  Threat intelligence startup Cyfirma is using virtual agents to gather intelligence on potential cyber attacks that are being coordinated in underground forums before they occur

• September 04, 2020 04 Sep'20

  Lockdown sees increase in girls applying for GCHQ cyber courses

  The shift to online learning saw an increase in participants for its CyberFirst cyber security training programme, GCHQ found

• September 03, 2020 03 Sep'20

  Phishing scam targets Lloyds Bank customers

  Bank customers warned of emails and SMS messages that direct them to a fraudulent site and then request account log-in details

• September 03, 2020 03 Sep'20

  Only 10% of tech talent have cyber skills to fill skills gap

  The UK has a growing need for cyber skills as a result of the pandemic, but few IT professionals have the skills firms actually need

• September 03, 2020 03 Sep'20

  One actor behind Magecart skimmer kit

  RiskIQ has identified that variations in software tools used for Magecart ecommerce site attacks are based on kits from the same group

• September 03, 2020 03 Sep'20

  UK businesses hardest hit financially by fallout from cyber attacks, research shows

  Latest edition of Hiscox’s annual cyber readiness report suggests UK businesses are among those worst affected by the financial fallout from cyber attacks

• September 02, 2020 02 Sep'20

  Northumbria University suffers major disruption after cyber attack

  Some exams cancelled as university appoints external specialists to investigate incident