News

IT security

• October 21, 2020 21 Oct'20

  NSA’s top CVE list a timely reminder to patch

  Many of the CVEs detailed on the NSA’s top 25 chart are golden oldies

• October 21, 2020 21 Oct'20

  Charities warned over ‘Robin Hood’ cyber criminals

  Accepting donations from cyber criminal groups could be deemed as profiting from crime, money laundering or handling stolen goods – so don’t do it

• October 21, 2020 21 Oct'20

  Trump and Biden campaign apps easy targets for cyber criminals

  You don’t need a stellar IQ to exploit the dangerous StrandHogg Android vulnerability, and users of both Donald Trump’s and Joe Biden’s mobile apps are at risk of falling victim to it

• October 21, 2020 21 Oct'20

  Financial services staff want work-from-home policies to continue after Covid

  About half of workers in the finance sector want their employers to retain remote working policies brought in during the pandemic

• October 21, 2020 21 Oct'20

  Customer loyalty accounts in danger from cyber criminals

  Billions of credential stuffing attacks are harvesting valuable customer data for the dark web economy

• October 21, 2020 21 Oct'20

  Retailers get access to new security toolkit

  The British Retail Consortium has worked with the NCSC to develop a new cyber security toolkit pitched at retailers

• October 20, 2020 20 Oct'20

  Hackney Council services to be disrupted ‘for some time’

  Inability to make housing benefit payments is likely to sting some tenants as Hackney cyber attack drags on

• October 20, 2020 20 Oct'20

  Resilient Trickbot down but not yet knocked out

  Global, Microsoft-led effort to disrupt the Trickbot botnet has seen some success, but new command and control servers continue to pop up

• October 20, 2020 20 Oct'20

  Police given access to self-isolation data

  NHS Test and Trace self-isolation data will be made available to police after new guidance changes data-sharing rules

• October 20, 2020 20 Oct'20

  BA breach penalty sets new GDPR precedents

  The 90% reduction in the fine levied on BA over a 2018 data breach has legal experts talking about the ramifications for the future of data protection

• October 20, 2020 20 Oct'20

  Six Russians charged over NotPetya and other attacks

  Six members of the APT group known as Sandworm have been charged in the US over a series of attacks including the destructive NotPetya incident

• October 16, 2020 16 Oct'20

  BA argues ICO data breach fine down to £20m

  Information Commissioner’s Office levies fine of £20m on British Airways for failing to protect the personal data of hundreds of thousands of passengers – a vast reduction on the initial £183m penalty

• October 16, 2020 16 Oct'20

  Spanish court to question witnesses over ‘illegal surveillance’ of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange

  The Spanish National Court in Madrid is to hear evidence from information security expert Andy Müller-Maguhn and two lawyers who were subject to ‘illegal surveillance’  of their meetings with Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London

• October 15, 2020 15 Oct'20

  Cloud data protection keeps the Crick’s medical research Covid-secure

  Cloud data management services from Rubrik gave the Francis Crick Institute a data protection edge and have helped keep its vital work going through the pandemic

• October 15, 2020 15 Oct'20

  Arrests and indictments made in cyber money laundering ring

  The NCA has revealed six men were arrested in the UK as part of an international investigation into a money laundering network which handled transactions for some of the world’s most prolific cyber criminal groups

• October 15, 2020 15 Oct'20

  Hackney services still offline in ongoing cyber attack

  Services remain disrupted two days after council was hit by a serious incident, as residents are warned to be on their guard

• October 14, 2020 14 Oct'20

  Public sector security failings leave UK at risk, says think tank

  Reform report urges adoption of new policies in the next version of the UK’s National Cyber Security Strategy

• October 14, 2020 14 Oct'20

  US Elections: Malicious internet domains spike as campaigns heat up

  Internet domains related to the US presidential election are 56% more likely to be malicious than regular ones

• October 14, 2020 14 Oct'20

  Public data should not be held by US tech giants

  One-off evidence sessions to follow up on the recommendations of the House of Lords AI Committee revisit the data and ethics debate

• October 14, 2020 14 Oct'20

  Fintech ‘unicorn’ Klarna probed over data misuse

  Online bank blames misuse of user data on human error as Information Commissioner’s Office weighs in

• October 14, 2020 14 Oct'20

  Microsoft fixes 87 bugs in October 2020 Patch Tuesday

  Smaller October Patch Tuesday update includes fixes for critical bugs in Windows 10 and Windows Server 2019

• October 13, 2020 13 Oct'20

  Suppliers neglecting virtual appliance security, putting users at risk

  Software suppliers are often distributing their products on virtual appliances that contain known vulnerabilities or are running outdated or unsupported operating systems, according to a report

• October 13, 2020 13 Oct'20

  Hackney Council services offline after ‘serious’ cyber attack

  Services to residents of the London borough of Hackney are being disrupted by a cyber attack

• October 12, 2020 12 Oct'20

  Trickbot forced offline in major cyber security victory

  Coalition led by Microsoft obtained a court order enabling them to take down the infamous Trickbot botnet’s back-end server infrastructure

• October 12, 2020 12 Oct'20

  Five Eyes spy group again demands access to private messages

  Spooks are once again calling for the tech industry to break end-to-end encryption in messaging platforms

• October 12, 2020 12 Oct'20

  Cyber security skills ad branded ‘crass’ by minister

  Security skills campaign advert depicting a ballet dancer comes in for criticism as the arts sector struggles in the pandemic

• October 12, 2020 12 Oct'20

  Software AG caught in double extortion ransomware hit

  Data stolen from prominent German software company by Clop ransomware gang appears on the dark web

• October 12, 2020 12 Oct'20

  Making sense of zero-trust security

  Implementing zero-trust security is not an easy feat, but enterprises can still get it right if they approach it from a process perspective and get a handle on their infrastructure footprint

• October 09, 2020 09 Oct'20

  Magecart strikes website of school payments service Wisepay

  Magecart credit card skimmer harvested financial data of users of Wisepay’s platform over a two-day period

• October 08, 2020 08 Oct'20

  NCSC relaunches SME security guide with home working focus

  The NCSC is issuing an updated version of its guide to security for SMEs, reflecting the long-lasting changes to the world of work seen in 2020

• October 08, 2020 08 Oct'20

  Emotet rated September’s ‘most popular’ malware

  The current resurgence of Emotet is attracting attention as governments issue new warnings and cyber criminals rush to exploit the chaotic US election

• October 08, 2020 08 Oct'20

  Coronavirus face mask spammer fined by ICO

  The director of software company Studios MG spammed members of the public at the height of the pandemic as one of its directors tried to shift a job lot of face masks

• October 08, 2020 08 Oct'20

  Crown Prosecution Service suffers 1,600 data breaches in 12 months

  CPS sees a spike in data security incidents, many of them serious enough to be reported to the Information Commissioner’s Office

• October 08, 2020 08 Oct'20

  Threat of GDPR fines increasingly driving security buying decisions

  Scaring the people who hold the purse strings may be the best option for CISOs who need a little extra budget

• October 07, 2020 07 Oct'20

  5G regulation failures are a threat to UK’s national security

  Defence Committee report on the security of 5G brands existing regulations outdated and unsatisfactory

• October 07, 2020 07 Oct'20

  Department for Education failed to protect data on millions of children, says ICO

  The Department for Education’s National Pupil Database, which contains millions of items of data on the UK’s schoolchildren, was found to be non-compliant with data protection regulations across the board

• October 07, 2020 07 Oct'20

  UK accounts for 45% of Europe’s card fraud as criminals target online transactions

  Payment card fraudsters steal €1.5bn, with card-not-present attacks accounting for three-quarters of this sum

• October 07, 2020 07 Oct'20

  ICO wraps up Cambridge Analytica investigation

  Information Commissioner’s Office concludes its investigation into Cambridge Analytica, saying no additional evidence has come to light that would change its previous assessments

• October 07, 2020 07 Oct'20

  Southeast Asia remains hotspot for cyber attacks

  Geopolitics and Covid-19 have been fodder for cyber criminals to advance their motives in Southeast Asia in 2020

• October 06, 2020 06 Oct'20

  EU’s top court questions legality of UK phone and internet data surveillance

  European Court of Justice rules that the UK and EU member states must comply with EU privacy laws when harvesting people’s sensitive communications data from telecoms and internet companies

• October 06, 2020 06 Oct'20

  Scotland digital identity prototype pilot successful

  Digital Identity Scotland’s 10-week test of its digital identity prototype finds that users understand the concept of two-factor authentication and using the same credentials across services

• October 06, 2020 06 Oct'20

  Ransomware attacks go through the roof

  The volume of ransomware attacks has jumped 50% in the past three months, according to data produced at Check Point

• October 06, 2020 06 Oct'20

  CISOs struggle to keep up with MITRE ATT&CK framework

  Despite its proven benefits for security, the MITRE ATT&CK framework is proving difficult for many, according to a joint study from McAfee and UC Berkeley

• October 06, 2020 06 Oct'20

  John McAfee arrested over cryptocurrency fraud

  Erratic tech baron allegedly promoted initial coin offerings without disclosing he was being paid to do so

• October 05, 2020 05 Oct'20

  MosaicRegressor APT campaign using rare malware variant

  Kaspersky researchers have shared details of a APT campaign utilising a rarely seen and hard-to-stop variety of malware

• October 05, 2020 05 Oct'20

  Fake news tops list of online concerns worldwide

  Receiving false information is a greater worry than other online risks such as cyber bullying and fraud, says the Lloyd’s Register Foundation

• October 05, 2020 05 Oct'20

  HMRC warns locked-down freshers of ‘wave’ of tax scams

  New university intake may be being targeted by cyber criminals amid Covid-19 confusion

• October 05, 2020 05 Oct'20

  FBI seized ‘legally privileged’ material from Ecuador Embassy, claims Julian Assange’s lawyer

  The US struck a secret deal with Ecuador to seize WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s property from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London days before his arrest. The haul included legally privileged documents, says his solicitor

• October 02, 2020 02 Oct'20

  WikiLeaks led the way for newsrooms to use encryption to protect sources, says Italian journalist

  Stefania Maurizi says in written evidence that Julian Assange pioneered the use of encryption by journalists to protect sources. Her work shows that the US put pressure on Italy to stop the extradition and prosecution of CIA officers responsible for...

• October 02, 2020 02 Oct'20

  Honesty is the best policy: Forging a security culture in the NHS

  Clinician and technologist Sam Shah helped set up NHSX in 2019. Now he’s helping advance digital transformation in healthcare from the outside, and a big part of that is addressing security in the sector

• October 02, 2020 02 Oct'20

  Security pros face sanctions if they help ransomware victims pay

  New advisory from the US government warns cyber insurance and incident response specialists that they could be skating on thin ice if they help ransomware victims pay their attackers off

• October 02, 2020 02 Oct'20

  Find and fix your Adobe Flash dependencies, says NCSC

  As Adobe’s Flash Player approaches end-of-life, the National Cyber Security Centre is urging organisations to fix their Flash dependencies

• October 01, 2020 01 Oct'20

  Judge to give verdict on Julian Assange’s extradition after Christmas

  Judge Vanessa Baraitser said today that she would make a ruling in early January on whether WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange should be extradited to the US

• October 01, 2020 01 Oct'20

  WikiLeaks revelations ‘shed light of truth’ on war on terror, court hears

  WikiLeaks disclosures led to ‘revelations of extraordinary journalistic importance’ about detention in Guantamo Bay and civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan

• October 01, 2020 01 Oct'20

  Blackbaud admits hackers stole banking details, passwords

  Software firm paid off a ransomware gang, believed its hackers when they said they had destroyed the data, and has now discovered the cyber criminals accessed even more sensitive information than it thought

• September 30, 2020 30 Sep'20

  GitHub makes code vulnerability scanning feature public

  Code-scanning service is now out of beta and generally available, helping teams to bake security into their code at the development stage

• September 30, 2020 30 Sep'20

  ‘American friends’ spied on Julian Assange in Ecuadorian Embassy, court hears

  Two former employees of UC Global, which provides security services to the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, claim the company shared surveillance footage with the US of the WikiLeaks founder meeting with lawyers and other visitors

• September 29, 2020 29 Sep'20

  Julian Assange would be held with convicted terrorist Abu Hamza in supermax prison, court hears

  WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange would be held alongside convicted terrorist Abu Hamza in a supermax federal prison in Colorado, isolated from other prisoners, if he is extradited to the US, Old Bailey told

• September 29, 2020 29 Sep'20

  Threat actors becoming vastly more sophisticated

  Malicious actors have been busily honing their craft and cyber security incidents are up across the board as a result, according to a Microsoft report

• September 29, 2020 29 Sep'20

  NCSC expands schools programme to north-east England and Northern Ireland

  Following an initial roll-out in Gloucestershire and Wales, the NCSC’s CyberFirst Schools programme is being extended to north-east England and Northern Ireland

• September 29, 2020 29 Sep'20

  NatWest offers online banking customers free security services

  Bank responds to a surge in cyber crime targeting users of online banking services

• September 29, 2020 29 Sep'20

  Ryuk attack downs private health provider in major incident

  Private healthcare provider UHS has been been hit by a major big game hunting cyber attack that infected its systems with the Ryuk ransomware

• September 29, 2020 29 Sep'20

  Organisations locked out by Azure AD crash

  The Azure Active Directory was unavailable for a few hours in the evening of 28 September, preventing many from accessing MS online services

• September 29, 2020 29 Sep'20

  Remote working world reveals cloud/SaaS security concerns

  Research reveals pivotal moment when the cloud is playing a more important role than ever to support mass remote working, with CISO concerns over cloud security remaining stubbornly high

• September 28, 2020 28 Sep'20

  Julian Assange would be held in ‘solitary confinement’ in US jail

  WikiLeaks founder would be held in a cell the size of a parking space for 22 or 23 hours a day without contact with other inmates before trial

• September 28, 2020 28 Sep'20

  Sustrans opens door to NCSC cyber certification via the cloud

  Sustainable transport charity turned to Qualys to help it attain needed certifications to bid for government work

• September 28, 2020 28 Sep'20

  Government updates data ethics framework

  The new data ethics framework was created to better reflect how projects are run in practice after finding there was “little awareness” of the previous framework across the public sector

• September 28, 2020 28 Sep'20

  TikTok ban stayed after last-minute court case

  TikTok’s lawyers have staved off an imminent ban for the time being, after successfully arguing that it infringed rights guaranteed under the Constitution of the United States

• September 28, 2020 28 Sep'20

  Police Scotland to set up new cyber crime centre

  National Centre of Excellence will employ specially trained officers to tackle a vertiginous rise in cyber crime

• September 28, 2020 28 Sep'20

  Security now main driving force behind digital transformation

  Organisations are urgently remodelling their core technology stack in the light of the Covid-19 pandemic, and this is pushing security to the top of the agenda

• September 28, 2020 28 Sep'20

  Airbnb hosts’ account data exposed in internal leak

  Data exposure within Airbnb’s system was the result of a technical issue but was swiftly fixed, says the firm

• September 25, 2020 25 Sep'20

  Forensic expert questions US claims that Julian Assange conspired to crack military password

  Forensic computer expert Patrick Eller told the Old Bailey that US allegations that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange attempted to decrypt a password to help former soldier Chelsea Manning leak sensitive government documents anonymously do not fit ...

• 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

  NHS whistleblower privacy concerns passed on to regulator, but campaigners not holding their breath

  NHS Improvement chair Dido Harding acknowledges receiving concerns raised about the anonymity of whistleblowers, but campaigners have little faith that anything will be done

• September 24, 2020 24 Sep'20

  Coronavirus shows inadequacy of rear-view mirror planning

  Looking at historical data has hampered businesses’ attempts to move forward effectively during the pandemic

• September 24, 2020 24 Sep'20

  Government blasted over ‘reckless’ contact-tracing security

  The Open Rights Group and Big Brother Watch accuse the government of endangering public health with a reckless attitude to contact-tracing data security

• 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 24, 2020 24 Sep'20

  Data deluge grips enterprises amid digitisation

  Two-thirds of respondents in a new Splunk study expect the quantity of data to grow by nearly five times by 2025 as they embrace more emerging technologies

• September 24, 2020 24 Sep'20

  Australians want more control over privacy

  Nearly nine in 10 Australians want more control and choice over the collection and use of their personal information amid declining trust in how organisations handle personal data, survey finds

• 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

  Over half of firms intend to continue US data transfers despite Schrems II

  Survey shows many organisations do not intend to significantly change their data-sharing practices, at least until there is more guidance from regulators or governments

• 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

  GDS reviewing Cloud First policy post-Schrems II

  Review seeks to determine the future of government engagement with cloud hosting services as they relate to cross-border data flows

• 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

  Big questions to be answered over TikTok and WeChat reprieve

  TikTok and WeChat seem to have received a stay of execution, but big questions and contradictions remain

• 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

  US government deplatforms TikTok and WeChat

  The Commerce Department of the US government has banned new downloads of TikTok and WeChat in the US, and announced new prohibitions on doing business with them

• 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