Kmart has a blue light special on malware -- system breach exposes credit card numbers
As someone who grew up in a lower middle class family in the suburbs known as Long Island, there were two places I spent a lot of time shopping with my mom -- Cheap Johns and Kmart. While the former has since gone out of business, the latter still stands. Actually, the fact that it is still operating is surprising -- don't get me wrong, it is an OK store, but Walmart has lower prices and better selection, even if the overall experience is poor. Once Walmart opened in my area, many people ditched Kmart -- the store famous for its "blue light specials". Heck, if someone wants to step up to a nicer store than Walmart, they'll likely head to Target nowadays -- sorry, Kmart.
Unfortunately for Kmart, it now shares something other than low-prices with Target -- malware and data breaches. Yes, today Kmart announces that its payment systems were breached, and debit and credit card numbers have been stolen. Should we be worried?
Ransomware is an increasing security concern for IT professionals
There are always plenty of security concerns causing furrowed brows of IT professionals, but a survey shows that it is ransomware that is causing the biggest headaches at the moment. A survey carried out by Spiceworks and published by Webroot found that 88 percent of professionals had concerns about ransomware, while one third of those questioned had dealt with a ransomware attack first hand. By far the most common strategy for dealing with a device that has been maliciously encrypted is to simply wipe it.
Two-thirds expect the number of attacks to increase in the next year which is particularly concerning when you consider that two thirds of IT professionals know someone who has been affected by ransomware. Despite the threat and attempts to thwart the flow of ransomware with filtering, firewalls, and email scanning, just 44 percent believe their current security setup is "somewhat effective".
UK web users are the most likely targets for phishing scams in the world
Phishing scams are a problem around the world -- and it's likely that one or more was at least partly responsible for the Fappening -- but it seems that it is more of a problem in some places than others.
Just about all of us have received emails that contain malicious links, but analysis by Proofpoint found that web users in the UK are more than two and a half times as likely to receive phishing mail as those in the US. Germany fairs much better, receiving just a fifth of the number of scam emails as the UK. But these numbers are not the whole story -- phishing emails account for just a portion of unwanted emails.