News

IT security

• July 14, 2020 14 Jul'20

  Australian enterprises facing more cyber attacks

  The volume of cyber attacks in Australia jumped from 90% in October 2019 and 81% in February 2019, underscoring the worsening threat landscape in the country

• July 13, 2020 13 Jul'20

  NCSC launches pen testing service for remote workers

  An expansion to the successful Exercise in a Box toolkit will enable SMEs to probe the cyber security defences of remote workers

• July 13, 2020 13 Jul'20

  Zoom zero-day a reminder to stop using Windows 7

  Researchers have disclosed a newly discovered zero-day vulnerability to videoconferencing service Zoom, which only affects users of Windows 7 systems

• July 09, 2020 09 Jul'20

  HSBC customers targeted in new smishing scam

  SMS phishing scam is targeting HSBC customers in the UK to trick them into handing over their bank account details

• July 09, 2020 09 Jul'20

  Majority of security pros fed up with alert fatigue

  A vast majority of security professionals say they experience alert fatigue, and 88% are facing challenges with their current SIEM setup, according to a report

• July 09, 2020 09 Jul'20

  NHS trust uses case management software to deliver time savings

  To deal with inefficient and unreliable processes, East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Trust has implemented a case management system specifically designed for HR practitioners

• July 09, 2020 09 Jul'20

  Dutch banking’s transaction monitoring utility gets green light

  Plans for a shared utility to monitor financial transactions in the Netherlands have been given the go-ahead after six months of proving the concept

• July 09, 2020 09 Jul'20

  Clearview AI faces ICO investigation over facial recognition

  Controversial company that scraped data from the public internet to build its facial recognition algorithm faces a joint UK-Australian investigation into its practices

• July 09, 2020 09 Jul'20

  Most finance firms are multicloud, but many are unprepared for public cloud cyber attacks

  Financial services firms are moving to the cloud at pace, but many are uncertain whether they could cope with an attack on an application based in the public cloud

• July 09, 2020 09 Jul'20

  More Joker malware apps chucked off Google Play Store

  Infamous Joker billing fraud malware continues to sneak past Google’s security controls

• July 09, 2020 09 Jul'20

  Pubs and restaurants failing on cyber fraud protection

  Virtually all of the UK’s most popular restaurant and pub brands are failing to proactively block fraudulent emails from reaching their targets

• July 09, 2020 09 Jul'20

  Tencent Cloud teams up with ADBC on banking services

  Singapore’s Asia Digital Bank Corporation could leverage Tencent Cloud’s financial cloud platform to provide banking services to small businesses

• July 08, 2020 08 Jul'20

  Oracle ups ante in cloud wars with dedicated customer regions

  Oracle’s Dedicated Region Cloud at Customer will let enterprises run an entire cloud region in their own datacentres in a potentially game-changing move

• July 08, 2020 08 Jul'20

  Political awareness needed to ethically handle migration data, panel claims

  Understanding the political, social and economic relationships between different groups in society is needed to ensure location data is not used in ways that further endanger already vulnerable people on the move

• July 08, 2020 08 Jul'20

  Use of spyware apps linked to domestic abuse soars in lockdown

  The rise in domestic violence during the pandemic has been linked to increase use of stalkerware apps by abusers

• July 08, 2020 08 Jul'20

  Cosmic Lynx cyber crime group takes BEC to new heights

  Newly identified Russian threat group targets large organisations with increasingly dangerous business email compromise attacks

• July 08, 2020 08 Jul'20

  Over 15 billion credentials for sale on dark web

  Research by Digital Shadows reveals the scale of the security threat facing consumers as it uncovers 15 billion usernames and passwords stolen in more than 100,000 different data breaches

• July 08, 2020 08 Jul'20

  Security funding soars despite Covid-19 slump, but problems lie ahead

  The overall cyber security funding ecosystem in the UK is healthier than ever despite Covid-19, but the figures mask stark and concerning disparities in where the money is going

• July 07, 2020 07 Jul'20

  Cyber4Summer scheme to divert young people from cyber crime

  Cyber4Summer platform will offer 100 different tracks covering a range of security skills to divert them from falling into a life of cyber crime

• July 07, 2020 07 Jul'20

  MSP Xchanging attacked in ransomware incident

  Specialist managed services provider is restoring customer access to systems after an unspecified ransomware incident

• July 07, 2020 07 Jul'20

  Australian government foreshadows ‘sovereign data’ classification

  The Australian government will examine if certain government datasets should be declared sovereign and only be hosted in the country

• July 06, 2020 06 Jul'20

  Lorca scale-ups bring diverse security to the fore

  London Office for Rapid Cybersecurity Advancement announces the cyber security scale-ups that will make up its fifth cohort

• July 06, 2020 06 Jul'20

  Need to secure industrial IoT more acute than ever

  A report from the Lloyd’s Register Foundation is calling for urgent action to secure industrial infrastructure, as the IoT leaves it increasingly exposed

• July 06, 2020 06 Jul'20

  North Korea behind spate of Magecart attacks

  The Magecart credit card skimmer found on the website of retailer Claire’s Accessories was likely put there by the Lazarus or Hidden Cobra North Korean APT group, reports Sansec

• July 06, 2020 06 Jul'20

  CIO interview: David Allison, global head of IT, First Quantum Minerals

  For his first global CIO role, the IT chief had to tackle unusual challenges such as reliable networking and IT use in inhospitable mining environments in developing countries

• July 03, 2020 03 Jul'20

  Chinese law may require companies to disclose cyber-security preparations outside China

  Companies with Chinese operations may have to disclose information about the security of their networks in other countries under China’s draft data security law

• July 02, 2020 02 Jul'20

  Cops take out encrypted comms to disrupt organised crime

  The UK’s National Crime Agency, alongside other law enforcement agencies in France and the Netherlands, have busted illicit arms and drugs rings after disabling an encrypted comms platform

• July 02, 2020 02 Jul'20

  Locked-down teens flock to NCSC CyberFirst training scheme

  A record number of 14 to 17-year-olds have signed up to the National Cyber Security Centre’s CyberFirst summer school

• July 02, 2020 02 Jul'20

  Police secrecy over ‘IMSI-catcher’ mass surveillance of mobile phones

  Following a tribunal ruling, constabularies in England and Wales can refuse to confirm or deny whether they use mass surveillance devices, known as IMSI-catchers to monitor people’s location, phone calls and text messages

• July 02, 2020 02 Jul'20

  Sodinokibi gang begins dark web celebrity data auctions

  Group claims to be auctioning confidential legal data on pop stars Mariah Carey, Nicki Minaj and basketball player LeBron James

• July 01, 2020 01 Jul'20

  UK’s unsung cyber security heroes sought

  Nominations have opened for the fifth annual Security Serious Unsung Heroes Awards

• July 01, 2020 01 Jul'20

  Zoom making progress on cyber security and privacy, says CEO

  Three months after being hit by a spate of security incidents, Zoom’s CEO, Eric Yuan, has been discussing progress towards a more secure product

• July 01, 2020 01 Jul'20

  Remote workers more aware of security, but still flout the rules

  Almost three-quarters of remote workers reckon they have gained in cyber security awareness during lockdown, but don’t seem to be especially bothered about keeping themselves safe

• July 01, 2020 01 Jul'20

  Mysterious EvilQuest macOS ransomware spreads through torrents

  A new strain of ransomware, dubbed EvilQuest, is threatening Apple Mac environments, and seems to behave quite oddly

• July 01, 2020 01 Jul'20

  FCA estimates about 2.6 million Brits have bought cryptocurrency

  UK financial services regulator says there has been a significant increase in ownership of cryptocurrencies in the UK

• July 01, 2020 01 Jul'20

  FakeSpy Android malware targets Royal Mail app users

  The FakeSpy malware was first identified in October 2017 but is now significantly more powerful and dangerous

• June 30, 2020 30 Jun'20

  Australia to invest a record A$1.35bn in cyber security

  The Australian government is making its largest ever investment in cyber security over the next decade to identify cyber threats, disrupt foreign cyber criminals and build new capabilities

• June 30, 2020 30 Jun'20

  ReversingLabs makes over 100 Yara rules publicly available

  Threat intelligence specialist is making its IP available on GitHub to support malware hunters in their work

• June 30, 2020 30 Jun'20

  BNP Paribas uses biometrics to increase contactless payment limit

  French bank BNP Paribas is enabling customers to make higher value contactless payments through fingerprint-recognition technology

• June 30, 2020 30 Jun'20

  The Security Interviews: What CISOs can learn from Covid-19

  Mike Lloyd, CTO at Redseal, holds 21 cyber security patents and a PhD in stochastic epidemic modelling from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, so is probably the man to talk to when it comes to cyber security in the world of Covid-19

• June 30, 2020 30 Jun'20

  Complex security estates hinder incident response

  The more disparate security tools in use in an organisation, the harder it becomes to mount an effective incident response

• June 29, 2020 29 Jun'20

  Lawyers learn of fresh US allegations against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from press reports

  The US has filed an updated indictment against Julian Assange alleging that he conspired with hacking groups to obtain information for WikiLeaks. Defence and prosecution lawyers learned about it from press reports

• June 29, 2020 29 Jun'20

  Phishing back in vogue as ransomware vector

  Researchers have observed an increase in phishing as a means to deliver ransomware payloads – and organisations don’t appear to be prepared

• June 29, 2020 29 Jun'20

  Evil Corp’s latest ransomware project spreading fast

  A new ransomware strain dubbed WastedLocker is spreading rapidly and targeting major corporations

• June 29, 2020 29 Jun'20

  Post-pandemic security market still set for growth, but slower

  Frost & Sullivan report says the global security industry will withstand the economic crash caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, but growth will be slower for a few years

• June 29, 2020 29 Jun'20

  GCHQ launches Manchester accelerator programme to help firms leverage tech for citizen well-being

  Innovation Co-Lab will mentor companies to grow, prevent crime and improve online safety

• June 29, 2020 29 Jun'20

  Making the case for cloud-based security

  Cloud-based security tools can hasten threat detection and response, but adoption will depend on where an enterprise is on the cloud readiness scale

• June 29, 2020 29 Jun'20

  Out of date security laws leave UK plc at risk during pandemic

  The CyberUp coalition has written to Boris Johnson to urge him to reform the UK’s 30 year-old cyber crime laws

• June 29, 2020 29 Jun'20

  Airports deploy thermal cameras to control Covid-19, science suggests it’s merely ‘safety theatre’

  UK airports are rolling out thermal surveillance cameras to identify people who may have coronavirus, but science says the technology is ineffective at detecting and preventing the spread of the disease

• June 26, 2020 26 Jun'20

  Coronavirus: Cyber crime landscape evolving as lockdown eases

  As some countries begin to gradually ease Covid-19 lockdown measures, cyber criminals’ tactics are changing, but the pandemic remains a tempting lure

• June 25, 2020 25 Jun'20

  Pub ‘check-in’ apps provoke fresh privacy concerns

  With pubs and restaurants required to collect customer data for contact tracing when they reopen, data privacy risks will be heightened

• June 25, 2020 25 Jun'20

  CBI: Digital economy needs joined-up regulations and gigabit broadband

  The coronavirus pandemic has shown the need for fast, reliable networking across the UK. The CBI is urging the government to do more

• June 25, 2020 25 Jun'20

  Veeam bullish on growth in APAC

  Veeam’s top executive in Asia-Pacific expects the company’s growth momentum in the region to continue despite the Covid-19 pandemic, and is setting sights on growth areas such as container backups

• June 24, 2020 24 Jun'20

  NCSC catches a million phishes in its nets

  The NCSC has racked up a million suspicious email reports from the public just two months after launching a reporting service, but the lucky sender won’t be receiving a grand prize

• June 24, 2020 24 Jun'20

  EU judges GDPR an overall success, but changes still needed

  Two years after its implementation, an EU report says that the GDPR is achieving what it set out to do, with a few reservations

• June 24, 2020 24 Jun'20

  Political parties harvest personal data to create profiles on voters, most of it wrong

  The UK’s three main political parties are collecting personal data on voters, but much of it is wrong and its use may fall foul of data protection laws

• June 24, 2020 24 Jun'20

  Brits will sell their personal data for pennies

  Surprising findings from an Okta report on digital identity suggest Brits would be willing to part with valuable personal data for a surprisingly low amount

• June 23, 2020 23 Jun'20

  Neurodiversity on the rise among career hackers

  More diverse hackers enhance the ability of both traditional and cutting-edge cyber security solutions to find and fix vulnerabilities, according to a new report from Bugcrowd

• June 23, 2020 23 Jun'20

  Twitter contacts business users over data exposure

  Issue relates to how web browsers cached confidential data entered in Twitter’s ads and analytics services, but is unlikely to have resulted in compromise

• June 23, 2020 23 Jun'20

  SoftIron aims at data too valuable for commodity storage

  UK array maker hopes to be the storage provider of choice for those that really value their data, with highly optimised Ceph-powered hardware aimed at HPC users and enterprises

• June 23, 2020 23 Jun'20

  Flash-based MacOS malware hides in plain sight

  By masquerading as a legitimate Adobe web application, the new malware strains can trick Mac users into bypassing their on-board defences

• June 23, 2020 23 Jun'20

  Concern over digital risk falls dramatically during pandemic

  Brits are understandably more worried about the NHS than personal cyber security

• June 23, 2020 23 Jun'20

  Huawei to invest S$5m in Singapore to boost tech ecosystem

  Huawei is pumping in S$5m this year to develop joint partner offerings in Singapore with a focus on artificial intelligence

• June 21, 2020 21 Jun'20

  APAC still hotbed for cyber attacks

  Individuals and organisations in APAC are encountering malware more frequently than the rest of the world, study finds

• June 19, 2020 19 Jun'20

  Online shopping fraud hits £16m during lockdown

  A quarter of victims were aged between 18 and 26, says Action Fraud

• June 19, 2020 19 Jun'20

  Eurostar to roll out facial recognition for ‘passport-free’ travel to Europe

  Facial recognition will make passports on the Eurotunnel an option rather than a necessity, but privacy campaigners have questioned whether gathering biometric data on passengers is necessary

• June 19, 2020 19 Jun'20

  Australian prime minister confirms country is suffering repeated nation-state cyber attacks

  Concern over critical national infrastructure as cyber attackers repeatedly try to gain access to network of organisations operating in multiple sectors

• June 19, 2020 19 Jun'20

  AI bias and privacy issues require more than clever tech

  The new AI Barometer report from the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation has assessed the threats and opportunities of artificial intelligence in the UK

• June 19, 2020 19 Jun'20

  Facebook allows US users to disable political ads

  Users of the social media platform will soon be able to opt out of seeing politically motivated posts

• June 18, 2020 18 Jun'20

  US pulls out of talks with Europe for global digital tax

  Despite the US’s resistance to an international digital services tax, the UK and other European countries plan to continue pushing for a global solution to taxing technology giants

• June 18, 2020 18 Jun'20

  Data protection watchdog calls for controls on police mobile phone stop-and-searches

  Information commissioner wants new safeguards on the use of police powers to download sensitive personal data from the mobile phones of suspects and crime victims

• June 18, 2020 18 Jun'20

  Cisco patches dangerous Webex vulnerability

  CVE-2020-3347 bug enables cyber criminals to steal meeting records from within Cisco’s Webex service

• June 18, 2020 18 Jun'20

  Check Point uncovers targeted Microsoft Office 365 phishing campaign

  Organised criminal campaign exploited Adobe, Oxford University and Samsung web domains to trick users into giving up their passwords

• June 18, 2020 18 Jun'20

  Zoom U-turns on end-to-end encryption

  Embattled video-conferencing provider Zoom backtracks on previous refusals to provide end-to-end encryption to free users

• June 17, 2020 17 Jun'20

  Cosmetics company Avon offline after cyber attack

  Representatives left unable to place orders after company’s back-end systems went offline over a week ago

• June 17, 2020 17 Jun'20

  Amnesty identifies most privacy-invasive Covid-19 contact-tracing apps

  Bahrain’s ‘BeAware Bahrain’, Kuwait’s ‘Shlonik’ and Norway’s ‘Smittestopp’ are the most privacy-invasive contact-tracing apps, reveals Amnesty International study

• June 17, 2020 17 Jun'20

  Coronavirus: Cyber security spend to slow in 2020

  Analysts revise down previous growth targets for security technology as the Covid-19 pandemic bites

• June 17, 2020 17 Jun'20

  Coronavirus: 50% of security pros had no pandemic contingency plan

  A survey of security professionals conducted on behalf of Bitdefender reveals the lack of forward planning for events such as the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic

• June 17, 2020 17 Jun'20

  Malaysia’s telco industry on edge amid new developments, appointments

  Spotlight trained on newly appointed key regulatory personnel that could see a change in Malaysia’s telco policy, including a deferment of 5G roll-out

• June 17, 2020 17 Jun'20

  Macquarie eyes government contracts with new Canberra datacentre

  New Macquarie datacentre in the Australian capital designed to achieve Tier 4 datacentre standards will deliver 1.5MW of capacity by December 2020

• June 16, 2020 16 Jun'20

  UK-US data deal puts Brexit data adequacy pact at risk

  European Data Protection Board writes to MEPs saying the UK is at risk of failing to strike a post-Brexit data adequacy accord if its data protection agreements with the US don’t strike the right note

• June 16, 2020 16 Jun'20

  Activists call on Zoom to implement encryption for all

  A coalition of tech organisations and nonprofits have urged Zoom CEO Eric Yuan to make end-to-end encryption available to all users

• June 16, 2020 16 Jun'20

  Norway’s contact-tracing app suspended over privacy concerns

  Norway has been given until 23 June to justify the location tracking of citizens who download its contract-tracing app

• June 15, 2020 15 Jun'20

  Banking trojans roar back to prominence in May

  Check Point sees an upswing in malicious activity around a number of classic banking trojan malware variants

• June 15, 2020 15 Jun'20

  NatWest develops behavioural biometrics as additional authentication

  Bank is working with Visa to develop behavioural biometrics technology as an extra layer of invisible authentication

• June 15, 2020 15 Jun'20

  Accessories store Claire’s hit by Magecart credit card fraudsters

  Attackers gained access to retailer’s website as long ago as March

• June 14, 2020 14 Jun'20

  Coronavirus: Enterprise VPN adoption in India set to rise

  Advancement in cloud technologies and secured remote access to applications will significantly contribute to the overall growth of India’s VPN market, says GlobalData

• June 12, 2020 12 Jun'20

  Hospital uses thermal surveillance cameras to protect patients against second wave of Covid-19

  A North Midlands NHS trust claims to be the first NHS trust to deploy thermal surveillance cameras to protect patients and staff against the coronavirus

• June 12, 2020 12 Jun'20

  NHS email service users ensnared in phishing attack

  More than 100 accounts on the NHSmail service were affected by attack, but health service says no patient data was accessed

• June 12, 2020 12 Jun'20

  Fake contact-tracing apps delivering banking trojans

  Spoof government coronavirus apps are popping up all over the world, says the Anomali Threat Research team

• June 12, 2020 12 Jun'20

  100,000 cheap wireless cameras vulnerable to hacking

  Active devices built by Chinese firm HiChip have been sold in the UK as webcams and connected baby monitors

• June 12, 2020 12 Jun'20

  UN secretary general calls for global digital cooperation

  Antonio Guterres launches roadmap for digital cooperation and calls for world leaders to come together to “connect, respect and protect people in the digital age”

• June 12, 2020 12 Jun'20

  Twitter kills thousands of misinformation accounts

  The accounts were linked to the governments of China, Russia and Turkey, and engaged in systematic operations against pro-democracy activists, political opponents and dissidents

• June 11, 2020 11 Jun'20

  Coronavirus: Bungled British response leads to rise in security risks

  Covid-19 cyber security threats are evolving over the course of the pandemic, becoming more targeted to virus hotspots such as the UK

• June 11, 2020 11 Jun'20

  CISOs buying into unified security proposition

  The time is right for all-in-one security solutions, according to a report

• June 10, 2020 10 Jun'20

  Government to fund nine advanced security projects

  Nine academic projects have been selected to receive a share of a £10m funding pot as they develop advanced cyber security solutions using prototype chipsets

• June 10, 2020 10 Jun'20

  Decade-old vulnerability among 129 Patch Tuesday fixes

  A 10 year-old bug in Windows Group Policies could easily enable attackers to gain highly privileged user status on target systems, opening the doors to a wave of cyber attacks

• June 10, 2020 10 Jun'20

  Unsecured Elasticsearch server breached in eight hours flat

  Comparitech’s Bob Diachenko wanted to find out how long it would take for hackers to find and attack an unsecured, public internet-facing database, so he set up a honeypot

• June 10, 2020 10 Jun'20

  Virtual GP practice accidentally exposes patient video calls

  A small number of users of Babylon’s GP at Hand service were briefly able to view other patients’ video GP consultations thanks to a bug in a new software feature

• June 10, 2020 10 Jun'20

  Nasty surprises lurking in furloughed employees’ inboxes

  Research conducted by KnowBe4 points to a looming email security problem as furloughed employees head back to work