Articles about Hacking

With the incredible miniaturization of portable SSD storage, you can carry several libraries worth of data in your pocket. But the mix of increased capacity and pocketable form factor creates security risks equally important.

VISA is now aware of a potential attack on the payment system (card reader) that several gas stations utilize across North America.The main objective of the malicious attack by a cybercrime group is to gain access to the merchant’s network on these gas stations.Once they get access to the network – they can use it to collect card details of the customers.Of course, this is a dangerous exploit that should […]

Capital One has confirmed a massive data breach which has impacted over 100 million people in the United States and Canada. It wasn’t likely that an investigation wouldn’t be launched into the breach. While the bank has carried out its own investigation, the New York Attorney General’s Office will be looking into this breach as well.

There has been a lot of talk about foreign interference in the previous presidential election. A heavily redacted report has been released this week in which the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee has concluded that election systems in all 50 states were targeted by hackers that were believed to have links to the Russian government.

Some of you will recall that credit agency Equifax suffered a major data breach in 2017. The incident went through a long investigation while federal authorities worked to figure out if the company would be required to pay a fine. The Federal Trade Commission has ruled that it does need to pay a fine and Equifax will now be required to pay up to $700 million as part of a […]

Hackers are increasingly launching ransomware attacks in order to make a quick buck. They lock down the target’s computer systems and then demand a ransom to decrypt the data. That same thing has happened with New York City’s Monroe College which has been hit by a ransomware attack. The hackers are now demanding $2 million to allow the college to access its computer systems once again.

You’d wonder why someone would need a Bluetooth-enabled hair straightener of all things but one does exist. Glamoriser, a company based in the United Kingdom, sells what it claims to be the “world’s first Bluetooth hair straightener.” Users can link the device to an app in order to set heat and style settings. It can also be used to switch off the straighteners within Bluetooth range remotely. Turns out, it’s […]

7-Eleven Japan recently launched a mobile payments feature on its 7Pay app which enabled customers to simply scan a barcode in the app and charge a linked credit or debit card. Merely a week after this was announced, the feature has been pulled after a vulnerability in the app allowed hackers to steal $500,000 from users through bogus charges.

Hackers have increasingly been targeting cities in the United States with ransomware. They comprise the city’s systems and hold their data hostage. In most cases, the cities decide to pay up because it becomes difficult for them to function without their data. Another Florida town has now paid $500,000 in ransom to hackers.

Ransomware gangs have increasingly been going after cities with less than perfect data security protections. They hack the city’s systems and hold its data hostage. A ransom is then demanded which most cities end up paying because it becomes very difficult for them to operate without access to the data. The same has happened to a Florida city which paid $600,000 to a ransomware gang just to get its files […]

Florida Senator Marco Rubio has revealed in an interview that Russian hackers were “in a position” to alter voting records in a Florida county. They were able to breach one county’s voting systems during the Presidential Election back in 2016. Rubio said that not only were the hackers able to access the systems, they even had the ability to change voter roll data.

Check Point Research has put out a new report which reveals that several U.S. embassies in different countries have been targeted by Russian hackers. Emails with malicious attachments that were disguised as official State Department documents were sent to officials in these embassies. They were mainly Excel sheets with malicious macros which appeared to have come from the State Department.

Microsoft has revealed that hackers were able to access some Outlook.com accounts for a few months earlier this year. The company discovered that the credentials for an Outlook.com support agent had been compromised which provided unauthorized access to some accounts from January 1st through March 28th, 2019.

Used your card at a Planet Hollywood, Buca di Beppo or Mixology location? You may want to continue reading. The parent company of these restaurants has confirmed a security breach after researchers found over two million stolen credit card numbers being sold on the internet. Malware was used on the point-of-sale systems to lift this information from restaurant locations in 40 states across the country.

A new report reveals how “hundreds of thousands” of Asus computer owners have been affected by a backdoored software update tool from the company’s own servers. The hackers were able to digitally sign the Asus Live Update tool with one of the company’s own code-signing certificates before sending it to Asus’ download servers. The servers hosted the compromised tool for several months in 2018, the report says.

A ransomware infection locks down systems and does not allow access until the ransom is paid. Such attacks are not uncommon and can often prove to be very costly, as one Georgia county can attest. Jackson County, Georgia officials paid $400,000 to cyber criminals in order to regain access after their IT systems were infected with ransomware.

Global hotel chain Marriott has now started allowing people to check if they were a victim of the massive Starwood hack. The company has put up a service which lets guests look up individual passport numbers to see if they were included in the set of unencrypted passport numbers that were leaked last year.

Dailymotion, a widely used video sharing platform, has confirmed over the weekend that it was hit by a credential stuffing attack. This is a form of cyberattack where hackers use combinations of usernames and passwords that have leaked in earlier breaches and try to gain access through them on other websites.

It’s always a good idea to check Have I Been Pwned, an online service that lets you check if your credentials were compromised in a data breach. Troy Hunt, the researcher who runs this service, broke the news about a massive data breach today. More than 773 million emails and 21 million passwords are included in this list.

It may not feel ethically right for some to search for other jobs on a work computer, but little did a Redbanc employee know that his job search would lead to North Korean hackers gaining access to Chile’s entire ATM network. The hackers had set up a Skype interview for a fake job in order to compromise his computer. Redbanc is the company the handles the entire ATM network in […]