Security

by Paul Ducklin No more facial recognition on Facebook! Is it a publicity stunt? Is it an admission that it simply doesn’t work very well? Or is it a genuine attempt to disavow the sort of technology that gives both privacy advocates and cybersecurity experts the heebie-jeebies? As Facebook, or more precisely the new holding

A company that handles the membership data of Britain’s Labour Party has been affected by a “cyber-incident.” Labour said that the event at the third-party firm has rendered “a significant quantity” of party data “inaccessible on their systems.” The incident has been reported to the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), National Crime Agency (NCA),

by Paul Ducklin This is the third in our collection of Naked Security Podcast minisodes for Week 4 of Cybersecurity Awareness month. To access all four presentations on one page, please go to:https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/tag/sos-2021 This time, we talk to Dr Jason Nurse, Associate Professor in Cybersecurity at the University of Kent, about the controversial topic of

New research published today by Javelin Strategy & Research puts the annual cost of child identity theft and fraud in the United States at nearly $1bn. The 2021 Child Identity Fraud study authored by Tracy Kitten, director of fraud & security at Javelin Strategy & Research, analyzed factors that put children at the highest risk of identity theft and

by Paul Ducklin Here’s the second in our series of Naked Security Podcast minisodes for Week 4 of Cybersecurity Awareness month. To access all four presentations on one page, please go to:https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/tag/sos-2021 This article is an interview with Sophos expert Chester Wisniewski, Principal Research Scientist at Sophos, and it’s full of useful and actionable advice

Cyber-criminals may have accessed the protected health information (PHI) of hundreds of thousands of patients of a network of community health centers based in California. Nonprofit Community Medical Centers (CMC), which is headquartered in the city of Stockton, primarily serves low-income patients, migrants, and homeless people in the Northern California counties of San Joaquin, Solano,

by Paul Ducklin [00’29”] Don’t miss our cybersecurity podcast minisodes! [01’46”] Bliss is a hill in wine country. [03’37”] Lessons from a cryptotrading hamster. [08’46”] Ransomware gang hacked back. [20’27”] Docusign phishers go after 2FA codes. [30’23”] Oh! No! Sleep mode considered harmful. With Paul Ducklin and Doug Aamoth. Intro and outro music by Edith

Law enforcement agencies in the United States have searched the Florida premises of a Chinese payment-terminal provider. A warehouse and offices belonging to multinational Pax Technology were scoured by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Homeland Security, and other agencies on Tuesday after concerns were reportedly raised over the company’s security. The FBI said that

by Paul Ducklin When we wrote about Apple’s latest security patches earlier this week, we noted that: There are 37 listed fixes covering everything from AppKit to zsh. 15 of these were of the “malicious application may be able to execute arbitrary code” sort, with 9 of those bugs dealing with code execution bugs in

A man from Minnesota has been charged with hacking four major American professional sports leagues and defrauding them of millions of dollars by illegally streaming copyrighted live games. St. Louis Park resident Joshua Streit, who is also known as Josh Brody, allegedly intruded into the computer systems of the National Basketball Association (NBA), the National Football League

by Naked Security writer In an intriguingly worded news statement issued today, Europol has announced police action in both Switzerland and Ukraine against 12 cybercrime suspects. The document doesn’t actually use words such as a “arrested” or “charged with criminal offences”, saying merely that: A total of 12 individuals wreaking havoc across the world with

RED74, a managed security services provider based in New Jersey, has been acquired by cybersecurity consulting and managed services firm Cerberus Cyber Sentinel Corporation. The financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed when the deal was announced on Thursday. RED74 is a privately held company whose clientele are primarily in the financial services and distribution/warehouse management sectors.

by Paul Ducklin We’ve been using Edge on Linux for quite some time, first in Dev Build form, then in its Beta flavour… …but when we went to check Microsoft’s repository tonight, we were surprised to see a build package that had arrived just an hour earlier with the name microsoft-edge-stable-95.0.1020.38-1.x86_64.rpm. So, the Eagle, or

Microsoft has announced plans to fill 250,000 cybersecurity roles by working with community colleges across the United States. As part of the recruitment drive, the American multinational technology corporation said today that it intends to invest millions of dollars in education and teacher training over the next three years. As of January 2021, there were

by Paul Ducklin First thing this morning, just after midnight, we received the latest slew of Apple Security Bulletins by email. As often seems to happen with Cupertino’s patches, the emails were informative and confusing in equal measure, offering an intriguing mix of security update information: The latest macOS 12 Monterey emerges as 12.0.1. We’re

The United States government has launched an appeal against a UK court’s decision to refuse to extradite Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Australian citizen Assange, who is aged 50, was indicted by the US Department of Justice in 2019 over his alleged involvement in the acquisition and publication of thousands of classified US diplomatic and military documents. The

by Paul Ducklin Two weeks ago was Cybersecurity Awareness Month’s “Fight the Phish” week, a theme that the #Cybermonth organisers chose because this age-old cybercrime is still a huge problem. Even though lots of us receive many phishing scams that are obvious when we look at them ourselves… …it’s easy to forget that the “obviousness”

A man from Colorado is facing a maximum prison sentence of 20 years after admitting to falsifying clinical trial data. Duniel Tejeda, formerly of Miami, Florida, acted outside the law while employed as both a project manager and a study coordinator for clinical drug trials at Tellus Clinical Research, a medical clinic based in Miami.

by Paul Ducklin We’ve just entered the last week of Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2021, and this week’s theme is something dear to our hearts here on Naked Security: Cybersecurity First! This is where we remind, urge, cajole, encourage, provoke, enthuse and remind you to put cybersecurity first in any IT project, for the simple reason

A non-profit educational foundation has teamed up with a cybersecurity company to develop a game that reveals what happens in a cyber-attack. The online simulation is the joint effort of Kaspersky and the DiploFoundation, and is based on the Kaspersky Interactive Protection Simulation (KIPS). The game was created with the intention of helping diplomats and professionals who lack

A new Guinness World Record in cybersecurity training has been set by a cloud-based identity and access management (IAM) provider, a security awareness training platform, and a PR firm.  The first-of-its-kind record was for the most views of a virtual cybersecurity lesson in 24 hours, and it was achieved on October 14 through the joint

The first ever person to be convicted of cyber-stalking in the District of Nebraska has been sentenced to federal prison. Dennis Sryniawski, a 48-year-old resident of Bellevue, was charged with intent to extort and cyber-stalking his former girlfriend, Diane Parris, in an attempt to prevent her husband, Jeff Parris, from being elected to the Nebraska

by Paul Ducklin According to Reuters, the REVil ransomware operation was “hacked and forced offline this week by a multi-country operation”. Reuters writes that one of its sources claims the hack-back against this notorious ransomware crew was achieved thanks to the combined efforts of the FBI, the US Cyber Command, the Secret Service “and like-minded

A team of law enforcement officials from South Carolina has seized first place in a nationwide cybersecurity contest. More than 200 teams from across the United States participated in the National Computer Forensics Institute’s (NCFI’s) Training and Cyber Games competition, which took place earlier this month. During the event, teams of NCFI-trained local law enforcement officials

by Paul Ducklin [00’30”] Hook up with our forthcoming Live Malware Demo presentation. [02’02”] How to build your cybersecurity career. [07’24”] Why we think you should celebrate Global Encryption Day. [10’55”] A whole new twist on bogus online “friendships”. [21’01”] How to stop your network cables giving you away. [34’50”] Oh! No! Why superglue is

The United States’ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has awarded two organizations $2m to develop cybersecurity workforce training programs.  Award recipients NPower and CyberWarrior will use the cash injection to bring cybersecurity training to the unemployed and to underemployed communities. CISA announced the awards yesterday to coincide with the third week of its Cybersecurity Summit, organized

by Paul Ducklin Sadly, a lot of the cryptocurrency news that we write about on Naked Security involves cybercriminals getting mixed up in things, often with depressing results. Two months ago, for example, a Japanese company called Liquid found that a cool $100 million had gone missing overnight, in a puff of cryptographic dust. We

A data breach that may have exposed the Social Security numbers of tens of thousands of teachers, administrators, and counselors across Missouri could end up costing the Show-Me State $50m.  The security incident was caused by a flaw in a search tool on a website maintained by the state’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. 

A hacker from Michigan who stole and sold the sensitive data of tens of thousands of University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) employees has been sent to prison.  Former Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) IT specialist Justin Sean Johnson pleaded guilty on May 20 to counts 1 and 39 of a 43-count indictment. The court heard that

by Paul Ducklin The overall motto of #Cybermonth consists of three simple words. Repeat these words (try sitting on your hands while you’re saying them, for extra safety) whenever you’re faced with a cybersecurity risk, instead of rushing straight in and making a possibly expensive mistake: Stop. Think. Connect. Well, in Week 3 of #Cybermonth