Melissa Locker reports: In 2012, 24 million Zappos customers found out that hackers had accessed their personal information. Since then, customers have fought to sue Zappos, Amazon’s online shoe retailer, over the data breach. Now, the U.S. Supreme Court has rejected an appeal, meaning they can move forward with a class-action lawsuit against the company for…
Category: Of Note
Hackers Hijacked ASUS Software Updates to Install Backdoors on Thousands of Computers
Kim Zetter reports: Researchers at cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab say that ASUS, one of the world’s largest computer makers, was used to unwittingly install a malicious backdoor on thousands of its customers’ computers last year after attackers compromised a server for the company’s live software update tool. The malicious file was signed with legitimate ASUS…
AU: Prize backs UQ physicist’s data security quest
A University of Queensland physicist will use her share of a $1 million prize to advance the development of revolutionary data privacy systems. The Westpac Scholars Trust today announced Dr Jacqui Romero as one of two 2019 Westpac Research Fellows. Dr Romero and health researcher Dr Meru Sheel from Australian National University will share $1…
A family tracking app was leaking real-time location data
Zack Whittaker reports: A popular family tracking app was leaking the real-time locations of more than 238,000 users for weeks after the developer left a server exposed without a password. The app, Family Locator, built by Australia-based software house React Apps, allows families to track each other in real-time, such as spouses or parents wanting…
Man paid hacker to get nude photos from UCF student’s Snapchat account, police say
I missed this one when it first appeared, but it’s worth posting so that parents can once again remind their kids about online safety. Read the full news story on this one as it provides a lot of details about the hacker convincing the victim to give him the login credentials to her account, and…
This Spyware Data Leak Is So Bad We Can’t Even Tell You About It
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai reports: This story is part of When Spies Come Home, a Motherboard series about powerful surveillance software ordinary people use to spy on their loved ones. A company that sells consumer-grade software that lets customers spy on other people’s calls, messages, and anything they do on their cell phones left more than 95,000…