Priya Anand reports: More than 100 companies, including targets from big banks to brokerages in the financial sector, have received distributed denial of service threats since about April, says Richard Jacobs, assistant special agency in charge of the cyber branch at the FBI’s New York office. With these types of attacks, known as DDoS, criminals…
Category: Commentaries and Analyses
A third of workers admit they’d leak sensitive biz data for peanuts
John Leyden reports: A third of employees would sell information on company patents, financial records and customer credit card details if the price was right. A poll of 4,000 employees in the UK, Germany, USA and Australia found that for £5,000, a quarter would flog off sensitive data, potentially risking both their job and criminal…
A Chinese hacking group by any other name? “Black Vine”
Symantec has released a paper on a Chinese cyberespionage group that they call “Black Vine.” I’m not sure how the Chinese would feel about that name, but in any event, Symantec writes: In early 2014, Anthem was a victim of an attack that exposed 80 million patient records. The breach, which came to light in…
A reminder to google your name and email addresses occasionally
In reading news yesterday morning, I stumbled across a question posted on StackExchange: I found my user details on already old, leaked account information list I came across an old (>3 years) accounts information list which has been leaked to the web. The list included thousands (>10.000) of account details from a service or services. Apparently…
43 million South Koreans had their medical information leaked
Over the weekend on PogoWasRight.org, I linked to an editorial from The Korea Herald about the sale of medical information of 43 million people (nearly 90% of the Korean population). The editorial began: A company specializing in developing medical fees settlement programs used by hospitals and the Korea Pharmaceutical Information Center — which distributed free pharmacy…
Researchers Hack Air-Gapped Computer With Simple Cell Phone
And another security bubble or delusion bursts. Kim Zetter reports: The most sensitive work environments, like nuclear power plants, demand the strictest security. Usually this is achieved by air-gapping computers from the Internet and preventing workers from inserting USB sticks into computers. When the work is classified or involves sensitive trade secrets, companies often also institute…