Hacker makes millions, still lives with his mother
Hacking into newswire services can land you a 20-year prison sentence, in case you didn’t know. And this is exactly what 28-year-old Ukrainian hacker Vadym Iermolovych is facing.
The hacker pleaded guilty in a federal court in Newark, New Jersey, on Monday, on the case of making $30 million by trading non-public information about corporate earnings.
IT pros too confident about detecting ongoing cyber-attacks
Endpoint detection and response company Tripwire and Dimensional Research conducted a research, and asked 763 IT professionals from various industries about their security practices, and if they felt confident they could detect an ongoing cyber-attack.
The two companies announced that the majority of IT experts felt overconfident in their abilities to detect an ongoing threat and remove an unauthorized device from their network.
Businesses open to hiring ex-hackers to beef up security
The Hollywood scenario where people hire ex criminals to do their bidding, as no one else seems to have the necessary skills, has been replicated in real life, according to a new report by cyber-security service provider SecureData.
SecureData says more than a third of businesses (34 percent) would have no problems hiring an ex hacker to compensate for the lack of in-house cyber-security skills. I just wonder how you classify someone as an "ex hacker".
Anonymous teams up with GhostSquad to attack major banks
Anonymous has joined forces with GhostSquad to launch successful cyberattacks on eight international banks that were forced to shut down their websites.
The hacktivist collective alongside the hacker group GhostSquad have launched a new operation called Op Icarus which aims to punish corrupt banks and individuals in the financial sector.
India has mobile forensic tools to hack into iPhones
The case of the FBI seeking to force Apple to provide backdoor access to the San Bernardino shooter's iPhone focused attention on security and encryption once again. The agency may have been able to gain access to the phone with help from a third party, but the Indian government has gone one better.
Communications Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has revealed that the government has a tool that can be used to gain access to, among other devices, Apple's iPhone. This is not to say that a tool has been created that bypasses encryption, rather that a method for getting past the lockscreen has been developed.
Five ways to take your passwords to the next level
World Password Day is apparently a day for “taking our passwords to the next level”, so here are five traditions the crooks and password crackers really, really don’t want us to start.
In 2007, Dinei Florencio and Cormac Herley at Microsoft Research looked into the password habits of half a million users in their large-scale study of website password habits. They found that the average user needed about 25 distinct passwords but only had about six.
LAPD hacks iPhone 5s, but how?
The iPhone 5c belonging to San Bernadino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook is not the only iPhone that the US authorities have managed to hack this year. According to a report by Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles Police Department has "bypassed the security features" of an iPhone 5s.
The iPhone 5s in question was used by April Jace, the wife of The Shield actor Michael Jace, who is facing murder charges, being accused of killing his partner on May 19, 2014. And, according to court documents reviewed by the publication, on March 18 the LAPD claimed to have found a "forensic cellphone expert" who could hack the device, which is believed to hold important evidence in the trial.
Hackers now targeting victims with country and culture-specific malware
Hackers are targeting specific countries with their malware now, new research from security firm Sophos shows.
The security firm analyzed millions of devices worldwide and has come up with the conclusion that it seems to be more lucrative if the malware is specifically designed to target certain cultures or countries.
Hacker creates reality TV with users' webcams
The webcam debuted long ago and has become integrated into many computer systems. People use it for any number of things, and products like Skype utilize this functionality. But the innovation has a darker side. It turns out this little add-on can be hacked, allowing the perpetrator to view the user.
A hacker in Russia took this to a higher level by not only accessing people's cameras, but broadcasting the video online, right on YouTube.
Waze vulnerability allows hackers to track you
Users of Google’s navigation app Waze seem to be at risk of being followed, as a vulnerability in the app could allow hackers to stalk the users of the app in real-time, a group of researchers from the University of California has found.
The researchers reverse-engineered Waze’s server code and discovered that thousands of "ghost drivers" could be created on Waze’s systems, which can monitor the real drivers around them. Hackers could even create virtual traffic jams, an exploit to track Waze users in real-time.
Malware compromises Swift system -- patch available
The Swift (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) system has apparently fallen victim to the same sophisticated hacking scheme that was used to disrupt the Bangladesh central bank last month.
The cyberattack in Bangladesh resulted in a loss of $951 million from the central bank's account at the Federal Reserve in New York and it now seems likely, thanks to new research from BAE systems, that Swift was also compromised during the attack.
Why ATMs are easy to hack
Security researchers claim ATM machines are usually not that difficult for hackers to penetrate. Once they’re inside, they can steal money, or banking details from unsuspecting victims.
Now, researchers from Kaspersky Lab have investigated what makes ATMs such an easy target for hackers, and came to two conclusions: both software and hardware are easy to access and temper with.
Hacker finds Facebook backdoor leaking usernames and passwords
The use of bounty programs to track down security vulnerabilities in websites and software is increasingly common these days, and it's a tactic employed by Facebook. One bounty hunter -- or penetration tester -- hacked his (or her… they are anonymous) way into the social network and made the shocking discovery that someone had already installed a backdoor.
Orange Tsai managed to compromise a Linux-based staff server and found there was already a piece of malware in place syphoning off usernames and passwords. These account details were being transmitted to a remote computer, and after revealing this to Facebook, Tsia pocketed $10,000 as a reward.
It cost HOW MUCH to crack the San Bernardino iPhone?!
There are a lot of questions still to be answered about the San Bernardino iPhone that saw the FBI and Apple go head to head. After something of a battle, the FBI found someone to crack the iPhone. But who exactly did it? How did they do it? Will Apple be told how to do it in private? But one question that has also been lurking in the background is just how much it cost to hack into a single iPhone.
Now we know the answer. Not precisely, but we have a pretty good idea. Perhaps unsurprisingly, cracking the iPhone at the center of one of the most interesting technology cases in recent history, was not cheap. In a somewhat roundabout way, FBI Director James Comey revealed that the cost was more than $1.34 million.
Cyber-criminals run things like a business
This cyber-crime thing has gotten to a point where we now really need a digital Batman to fix everything. Security firm Symantec has recently released its Internet Security Threat Report, revealing that cyber-criminals are almost as good as state-sponsored attackers.
They’re highly skilled, well-organized and structured like a business. Here’s what Kevin Haley, director at Symantec Security Response says:
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