Archive

Google Clamps Down on Ads for Spyware, Stalkerware

Advertising for software and hardware designed to stalk and spy on people will soon be banned on Google. Promotion of products or services that are marketed or targeted with the express purpose of tracking or monitoring another person or their activities without their authorization will be prohibite...

Study Reveals E-Commerce Shopping Patterns That Hint at New Normal

Consumers and companies worldwide have ramped up online ordering for software products and digital goods as they struggle to improve productivity and security while working remotely and spending more time at home. The sharp spike in online commerce aligns with the timing of the current global pandem...

SentinelOne Debuts Unified OS Threat Protection

SentinelOne this week announced a partnership with Microsoft to bolster threat protection for mixed platform users, making computing safer for Linux machines in a multiplatform workplace. SentinelOne will integrate its Endpoint Protection Platform with Microsoft's Windows Defender Advanced Threat Pr...

Report: Russian Hackers Penetrated Elite NSA Hacking Division

Russian hackers reportedly exploited a vulnerability in Kaspersky Lab's software to steal sensitive cyberdefense data from a National Security Agency contractor. The incident, which occurred in 2015, involved a contractor who loaded classified information onto his personal computer in order to work ...

Petya’s Ransomware Cloaking Device

Recent ransomware threats have escalated into a global crisis, and cybersecurity experts and government authorities have redoubled their investigative efforts. Of grave concern is the possibility that the recent Petya attack had more sinister motives than typical ransomware operations, and that stat...

Kaspersky to US: Check Our Source Code

Cybersecurity expert Eugene Kaspersky reportedly has volunteered to turn over his company's software source code to allay fears about possible ties with the Russian government. Kaspersky made the offer public at CeBIT Australia last week. Some U.S. officials have expressed concerns that Kaspersky La...

British Hospitals, FedEx Among Thousands Hit by Ransomware

Authorities are investigating a massive ransomware attack that reportedly hit more than 45,000 computers in 74 countries worldwide, including the UK's NHS England national health service, international delivery service FedEx, and Spanish telecom firm Telefonica. Security experts have linked the expl...

Google Clamps Down on Sneaky Malicious Sites

Sites that repeatedly violate Google's safe browsing policies will be classified as repeat offenders, the company said. A small number of websites take corrective actions after Google displays alerts on their landing pages warning visitors that they're harmful. However, they typically revert to viol...

Dropbox Drops Other Shoe in Years-Old Data Breach

Dropbox last week confirmed that more than 68 million emails and passwords have been compromised from a hack that originally was disclosed in 2012. Exposure from the breach was limited to email addresses, Dropbox originally claimed. However, based on the latest revelations, the hackers actually stol...

Edward Snowden Sheds Light on Shadow Brokers

NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden on Tuesday injected himself into an escalating cyberstruggle that could affect the U.S. presidential election. The reported hack of The Equation Group might have been a warning shot from Russia, Snowden claimed. The group, which is widely believed to be a front oper...

Super-Sophisticated Spyware Spotted After 5-Year Run

Symantec and Kaspersky Lab last week separately announced the discovery of a highly sophisticated advanced persistent threat that had eluded security researchers for at least five years. A previously unknown group called "Strider" has been using Remsec, an advanced tool that seems to be designed pri...

Linux Botnets on a Rampage

Linux-operated botnet Distributed Denial of Service attacks surged in this year's second quarter, due to growing interest in targeting Chinese servers, according to a Kaspersky Lab report released this week. South Korea kept its top ranking for having the most command-and-control servers. Brazil, It...

SPOTLIGHT ON SECURITY

Mobile Ransomware Has Mushroomed: Report

The number of mobile ransomware victims across the globe has increased fourfold compared to a year ago, suggests a Kaspersky Lab report released last week. Kaspersky software protected 136,532 users targeted by ransomware from April 2015 to March 2016 -- up from 35,413 in the year-ago period, the co...

Ransomware Plague Spreads to Macs

Security researchers at Palo Alto Networks last week announced that they had found the first ransomware in the wild aimed at Macintosh computers, but Apple and one of its developers quickly neutered it. The ransomware was embedded in software for installing an OS X app for sharing files on BitTorren...

LinuxInsider Channels