Brian Prince

HSBC experienced a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack Oct. 18 that disrupted a number of its Websites as hackers continue their cyber-attack campaign against financial institutions. According to reports, the attack is apparently linked to hacktivists associated with Anonymous. In a Pastebin post, U.K.-based Fawkes Security took responsibility for the attack. “As some of you may […]

The White House is denying a media report that an investigation into corporations supplying U.S. telecommunications companies with equipment found no proof Huawei Technologies was involved in espionage on behalf of China. Citing anonymous sources, Reuters reported that an 18-month examination of Huawei’s communications equipment revealed the products contained security vulnerabilities that could be exploited […]

Security firm Kaspersky Lab is working on a secure operating system for critical-infrastructure companies to use to run industrial control systems. “We’re developing a secure operating system for protecting key information systems (industrial control systems (ICS)) used in industry/infrastructure,” company CEO Eugene Kaspersky confirmed in a blog post. “Quite a few rumors about this project […]

A British man accused of hacking U.S. government computer systems finally won a long-running legal battle against extradition. Gary McKinnon, 46, had been fighting extradition to the United States for 10 years, going back to his arrest in London in 2002 for hacking Pentagon and NASA computers. British Home Secretary Theresa May said she considered […]

A data breach has turned scores of Northwest Florida State College (NWFSC) employees into victims of identity theft in the aftermath of a massive data breach affecting nearly 300,000 people, including current and former students. The employee data was breached between May 21 and Sept. 24 after one or more hackers accessed a folder on […]

Google and Yahoo’s Irish iterations were temporarily knocked offline Oct. 9 after their domain name server records were changed due to a security breach. The incident occurred when the DNS name server records of both domains were changed after a registrar’s account was accessed without authorization, according to the IE Domain Registry (IEDR). The registrar […]

Protecting Operations According to Symantec and the Online Trust Alliance (OTA), CAs should ensure the correct and secure operation of CA information processing facilities, minimize the risk of systems failure and infection by malware, and develop incident reporting and response procedures. In addition, steps should be taken to protect media from theft, loss or damage […]

The update is rated “critical” by Adobe, and was given the highest deployment priority rating for Windows users. Adobe is not aware of any exploits targeting the vulnerabilities, which impact Adobe Flash Player 11.4.402.278 and earlier for Windows, version 11.4.402.265 and earlier for Macs and version 11.2.202.238 and earlier for Linux. The update also impacts […]

Security researchers are warning Skype users about an ongoing attack that dupes people into loading a link that spreads malware According to Trend Micro, the attack has resulted in infected users spamming their contact lists with messages in both English and German. The English version of the message states: “lol is this your new profile […]

Researchers at security firm Trusteer have observed a new form of man-in-the-browser attack that makes stealing credit cards and other information easier for cyber-criminals. The firm has dubbed the attack “universal man-in-the-browser” (uMitB). Its draw is that it enables hackers to collect data submitted to all Websites without the need for post-processing. “Traditional MitB attacks […]

The board of directors of the Association of National Advertisers is objecting to Microsoft’s plans to ship Internet Explorer 10 (IE 10) with the “Do Not Track” setting turned on by default. In a letter to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, the board, which is composed of representatives from companies such as Intel and AT&T, said […]

An ongoing cyber-attack has affected millions of Internet users’ computers in Brazil by exploiting vulnerabilities in their DSL modems, a security researcher said. Kaspersky Lab researcher Fabio Assolini detailed the attack last week at the Virus Bulletin conference which was held Sept. 26 to 28 in Dallas. According to Assolini, attacks have been underway since […]