A top secret presentation by GCHQ at a 2012 NSA conference called SIGDEV shows that the hitherto unknown GCHQ Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group launched a DDoS attack (called Rolling Thunder) on the IRC communications channels used by Anonymous …
PoS Breaches Spread with Thousands Affected at Marriott and Holiday Inn Locations
Target. Neiman Marcus. Michaels. The retail sector continues to crop up with point-of-sale (PoS)-led data breaches. But a new security breach affecting 14 Marriott, Holiday Inn, Westin, Renaissance and Radisson properties demonstrates that hospitality …
Chewbacca Turns Up as Part of 11-Country Malware Campaign Against Retailers
The Chewbacca keylogging malware has been spotted in the wild, and we don’t meet on Yavin 4 or Endor: it’s been uncovered as part of a global point-of-sale (PoS) malware campaign right here on Planet Earth.
Personal Details of 800,000 Orange Users Stolen
But not their passwords. Last Friday a French publication provided details on the data stolen from French mobile operator, Orange. The breach occurred on 16 January, and involved the loss of names, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers and ‘househo…
Chaos Computer Club Files Criminal Complaint Against German Government
Following its involvement in the complaint to the European Court over the UK government’s use of mass surveillance via GCHQ, Germany’s Chaos Computer Club has now filed a complaint with the Federal Prosecutor General’s office against the German federal…
Bell Canada Hacked by NullCrew
Bell Canada announced Sunday that “22,421 user names and passwords and 5 valid credit card numbers of Bell small-business customers were posted on the Internet this weekend.” It claims that it was not directly breached, but that the “posting results fr…
NSA/GCHQ Hacking Gets Personal: Belgian Cryptographer Targeted
Belgian newspaper De Standaard reported Saturday that the federal prosecutor is investigating the hacking of Jean-Jacques Quisquater, a renowned cryptographer and professor at the Université catholique de Louvain, close to Brussels. The hack was discov…
Sex and Violence: Teens’ Risky Online Behavior Increases Cyber-bullying
Most parents worry about their kids’ online behavior, especially as news of Facebook suicide campaigns, sexting and other alarming digital phenomena dominate the headlines.
Honey Encryption joins Honeywords and Honeypots in the Security Lexicon
‘Honey’ is the traditional term used to indicate a ‘decoy’ in computing. Two researchers have now used the epithet to describe their process of hiding a true key within a large number of false keys, making brute forcing stolen databases considerably mo…
Multi-platform Java Bot Provokes DDoS Floods
A new malicious Java application aimed at fomenting widespread distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks is making the rounds: a multi-platform bot capable of running on Windows, Mac OS and Linux.