Articles about Hacking

All eyes may be on the meteoric rise of Bitcoin at the moment, but it's far from being the only cryptocurrency on the block. Startup Tether issued a critical announcement after it was discovered that "malicious action by an external attacker" had led to the theft of nearly $31 million worth of tokens.

Tether is a dollar-pegged cryptocurrency formerly known as Realcoin, and it says that $30,950,010 was stolen from a treasury wallet. The company says it is doing what it can to ensure exchanges do not process these tokens, including temporarily suspending its backend wallet service.

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Over the past several years we have seen a multitude of security problems plague major retail stores around the world. Breaches have come in many forms and have frequently targeted credit card information, though in some cases personal data has been part of the haul.

Now we find ourselves looking at yet another incident. Retail chain Forever 21, which is wildly popular among young people in the United States -- you can barely find a mall that doesn't have one -- has officially announced that its systems were compromised.

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Following on from its Vault 7 series of leaks relating to CIA hacking tools, WikiLeaks has kicked off a new series -- Vault 8. The purpose of this latest series is to reveal the source code of previously exposed hacking and surveillance tools, and the first release relates to Hive.

The tool itself is interesting enough, serving as backbone to the CIA's malware operations, but there's more. What's intriguing about the first leak in the Vault 8 series is that it seems to show the agency impersonating Kaspersky, by making use of a fake certificate for the anti-virus company.

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Researchers at threat prevention specialist Check Point have uncovered a vulnerability which could allow hackers to gain control of the LG Hom-Bot robot vacuum cleaner's video camera.

The camera normally sends live video to the associated LG SmartThinQ app as part of its HomeGuard Security feature. Once in control of a specific user's LG account, any LG device or appliance associated with that account could be controlled by the attacker -- including the robot vacuum cleaner, refrigerators, ovens, dishwashers, washing machines and dryers, and air conditioners.

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Earlier in the month, news emerged that Kaspersky software had been used by Russian hackers to identify and steal sensitive NSA files from a US computer. Following the revelation, Kaspersky Lab started an investigation, and now the company has published its findings.

Kaspersky concedes that its software had indeed identified classified NSA data -- specifically a hacking tool -- but says that it was unintentional. The unearthed source code was attributed to the Equation Group, and company head Eugene Kaspersky ordered the code be destroyed when the matter was reported to him.

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UK consumer group Which? is calling on the government to make an amendment to the Data Protection Bill that's currently being debated in Parliament. The group is looking for a change in the law that would make it easier for organizations to seek redress for groups of people in the event of a data breach.

Research by Which? suggests that there is confusion surrounding who is responsible for safeguarding data, and little knowledge among consumers about how to go about obtaining compensation.

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Google has announced that it is teaming up with HackerOne to bring a bug bounty program to the Play Store. Seeking to weed out problems with Android apps, the Google Play Security Reward Program pays out $1,000 for reported issues that meet certain criteria.

The program is a little different to other bug bounty programs as Google will pay out for problems that are found in third party apps, not just its own. At the moment there are a very small number of apps that are taking part, but Google is inviting developers to opt their apps into the program.

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We Heart It -- the image sharing service used by at least 40 million teenagers -- suffered a "possible security breach" several years ago. The breach affects more than 8 million accounts that were created between 2008 and November 2013.

Although this is a historic data breach, in which information from the user account database was leaked, We Heart It was only notified about it on October 11. The company says that email addresses, usernames, and encrypted passwords were accessed, and it recommends that users now change their passwords as they are not secure.

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Four and a half years ago, an internal bug-tracking database at Microsoft was breached by a "highly sophisticated hacking group," according to five former employees of the company. The hack of the secret database was never made public.

It is believed that this is only the second time such a corporate database has been breached. US officials were alarmed to learn of the hack which could have exposed software vulnerabilities to the attackers, reports Reuters.

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A severe security warning has been issued after Belgium researchers managed to exploit a serious vulnerability in the WPA2 wireless protocol.

Known as KRACK (Key Reinstallation Attacks), the vulnerability makes it possible to eavesdrop on Wi-Fi traffic. Millions and millions of devices are at risk -- Windows, Linux, Android and more -- but it is not known whether there is an active exploit in the wild yet. Details about the vulnerability were due to be released at 8:00AM ET (1:00PM BST), but the research paper has now been published early after someone leaked a draft version.

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Things have not been good for Equifax -- or its customers -- recently. Following a huge data breach earlier in the year, the credit reporting company has now suffered a new blow after it was discovered one of its support pages was redirecting to malware masquerading as Flash updates.

Just last month, Equifax revealed a security breach from May that exposed the personal details of around 145.5 million Americans and 15.2 million people from the UK. Now the company site has been found delivering fake Flash updates, and the offending page has been taken down.

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Cyber-security experts are warning that criminals are hacking into other people's machines to mine cryptocurrencies for them.

According to a Trend Micro report, school, charity and file-sharing websites have been found infected with a particular code that makes the visitor's machine mine cryptocurrency.

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Sales and marketing. ROI. Quarterly performance statements. Reports to investors. And, salaries, bonuses, expense accounts, and petty cash for employee birthday parties. It's all part of the day-to-day running of a business -- any business, including those in the hacking industry. And a big industry it is: Hacking "companies" can be worth many millions, and a good hacker can earn as much as $80,000 a month -- nearly a cool million in a year! -- if they've got the skills.

To pay out that kind of money, a hacker "company" needs financial backing -- it needs investors who will front the cash to pay experts, who in turn will deliver the goods. You could imagine what a "Bad Guy Hackers Inc." board of directors meeting looks like: "Guys, we got a big contract to get the medical records of the clients of X insurance company. The client wants it done by Y date, and they'll pay us a bonus if we deliver early. The project is going to cost Z dollars, do we have that, or do we have to go out and raise it?"

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So, Disqus has been hacked. Yeah, it is what we at BetaNews -- plus many other websites -- use for commenting. Should you be worried? Probably not. You see, this hack happened all the way back in July of 2012. If you joined Disqus after that, you have nothing to worry about. Even if you are using the same login credentials from 5+ years ago, the hackers have only obtained hashed passwords. In other words, they probably haven't decrypted your password.

But OK, even though it is unlikely that your password has been exposed, Disqus is forcing a password reset for all impacted users. Heck, even if you signed up after the hack, it can't hurt to manually change your password, y'all. After all, Disqus didn't even discover the hack on its own, which is worrying. The company was alerted to the breach by the great security researcher Troy Hunt, who found the database floating around the dark web. If you aren't familiar with Hunt, he maintains the excellent haveibeenpwned.com.

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A report by the Wall Street Journal suggests that Russian hackers used Kaspersky software to identify sensitive NSA files -- which they then stole.

The security breach dates back to 2015, and it was made possible when a National Security Agency contractor copied sensitive files to his own computer. Hackers were then able to identify these files because of the contractor's use of Kaspersky software.

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