cyberattack

Payment Processor Breach May Be Largest Ever

A data breach last year at Princeton, N.J., payment processor Heartland Payment Systems may have led to the theft of more than 100 million credit and debit card accounts, the company said today. If accurate, such figures may make the Heartland incident one of the largest data breaches ever reported. Robert Baldwin, Heartland's president and chief financial officer, said the company, which processes payments for more than 250,000 businesses, began receiving fraudulent activity reports late last year from MasterCard and Visa on cards that had all been used at merchants which rely on Heartland to process payments. [WashPost] ›
CyberTHREATS

'Cyber attack on US banking system more dangerous than 9/11'

A top US intelligence official has said that a cyber attack on the US banking system could be several times more damaging to the country's economy than Twin-Tower attack by terrorists on September 11, 2001. "If instead of attacking the Twin Towers al-Qaeda had taken down a major bank, the economic consequences wo ›
CyberSECURITY

Mumbai police wardriving against terrorism

After November’s terrorist attacks in Mumbai, blame was flying thick and fast and some of it landed on Google Maps. That was embarassing, but now the understandably jumpy residents are worrying about a new threat: open wi-fi networks. When it was revealed that terrorists had hacked a tourist’s computer in order to send an email shortly before the attack ›
CyberATTACK

Phishing without bait: The in-session password theft attack

Skilled identity thieves can pilfer user names, passwords and other sensitive data for banking sites without using e-mail lures and other other social engineering tactics. According to a security advisory from Trusteer, hackers can launch what is described as “in-session phishing attacks” using pop-up messages during an active browser session. The att ›
CyberATTACK

Computer systems aboard British Royal Navy warships get a virus

A few weeks ago, we read about how the British Royal Navy would be installing Windows XP on some of its submarines. Oh boy, did we all share some laughs! "Control-Alt-Drown," said one commenter; "Beware the blue cruise missile of death!" said another. We ROFL’d and LOL’d all the live-long day. Well in a somewhat related story, it appears that computers ›
CyberTHREATS

Dangerous new sleeper virus exposes millions of Windows PCs to hijack; Macintosh unaffected

"A new sleeper virus that could allow hackers to steal financial and personal information has now spread to more than eight million computers in what industry analysts say is one of the most serious infections they have ever seen," Barry Neild reports for CNN. "The Downadup or Conficker worm exploits a bug in Mic ›
CyberSECURITY

The Continuing "Myth" of RFID Security

The most recent issue of MIT's Technology Review raises a point that has been discussed by many senior executives in the authentication industry. Despite all of the hype and publicity, just how secure are the new Radio Frequency Identity chips that are supposed to be safeguarding, not only cargo being transported through our ports and cities, but our very i ›
CyberATTACK

China's Yeepay.com Suffers Internet Payment Hacker Attack

Chinese Internet payment platform Yeepay.com says starting at 16:20 on January 14, 2009, the company's official website experienced large-scale hacker attacks. A spokesperson from Yeepay.com has confirmed to local media that these are organized hacker attacks targeted at Yeepay.com's official website and payment servers and the attack traffic at one point o ›
CyberSECURITY

U.S. plots major upgrade to Internet router security

The U.S. federal government is accelerating its efforts to secure the Internet's routing system, with plans this year for the Department of Homeland Security to quadruple its investment in research aimed at adding digital signatures to router communications. DHS says its routing security effort will prevent routing hijack attacks as well as accidental misco ›
CyberTHREATS

Storm Botnet Makes A Comeback

It's official: Storm is back. The notorious botnet that ballooned into one of the biggest botnets ever and then basically disappeared for months last year is rebuilding -- with all-new malware and a more sustainable architecture less likely to be infiltrated and shut down. Researchers during the past weeks have been speculating about similarities between the new Waledac, ›
CyberATTACK

Paris Hilton’s official web site serving malware

The official web site of Paris Hilton (parishilton.com) has been embedded with a malicious iFrame, automatically exposing visitors to client-side vulnerabilities and banker malware, according to researchers from ScanSafe. Upon closer analysis, it appears that the site has been infected on the 8th of January, Thursday, becoming the very latest legitimate site ›
CyberSECURITY

Microsoft, Oracle Issue Patches, While Zero-Day Exploits Surface

Following a frantic December that featured an emergency patch for Internet Explorer, Windows administrators may be looking forward to a month with fewer security worries. And it might appear that they're getting a break: Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) on its Patch Tuesday released its January Security Bulletin featuring only one bulletin that addresses three vulner ›
CyberTHREATS

Emerging markets face higher cyberthreat risk

Emerging markets such as the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) economies are at higher risk of being exposed to cyberthreats, according to a new report from security vendor MessageLabs. Released Wednesday, the MessageLabs Intelligence: 2008 Annual Security Report noted that Brazil had the world's biggest share of global bots, at nearly 10 percent. Turk ›