Fahmida Y. Rashid

Cyber-attackers hijacked a Fox News Twitter account and posted bogus messages claiming President Obama had been assassinated on Independence Day. A group calling itself the “Script Kiddies” took over the Twitter account owned by Fox News Politics and posted multiple fake messages for at least six hours on July 4. The attack appears to have […]

Anyone angling for a Google Plus invite beware of email invites arriving in the Inbox that may actually be fake pharmaceutical spam. Spammers are sending out bogus Google+ invitations that really direct unsuspecting users to online pharmacies, Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, warned on the NakedSecurity blog July 1. The messages look similar […]

First things first. LulzSec, the group that hacked into the networks and Web sites of government agencies and large companies for retribution and sheer entertainment, has shut down its 50-day cyber-attack spree.The group announced on Pastebin that it will suspend its activities under the Lulz Security name. It appears the members have joined the Anonymous […]

Organizations shouldn’t make replacing compromised RSA Security SecurID tokens their top priority, according to a security consultant at Verizon Business. Corporate IT departments would be better off beefing up defenses to stop spear-phishing attacks and increasing network security rather than rushing to replace compromised tokens, Dave Kennedy, a security analyst with Verizon Business, wrote June […]

Cyber-criminals are switching gears from large spamming operations to more targeted attacks, according to a new report from Cisco Systems. Targeted attacks are turning out to be far more profitable than sending spam indiscriminately, Cisco said during a press and analyst event on June 30. There has been a significant decline in revenues generated from […]

Proving that cyber-criminals will steal practically anything, researchers have recently identified malware designed to steal BitCoins. BitCoins are anonymous decentralized virtual currency commonly used online among people interested in keeping their transactions secret. While the digital currency is not directly connected to any central banking authority or government, the “real world” value of a BitCoin […]

Lawmakers are trying to balance business interests with consumer needs as they grapple with online security and privacy. Federal officials appeared to be in broad agreement over the need for data breach laws at the data security and privacy hearing held by the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee on June 29. The disagreements appeared […]

A federal agency responsible for enforcing security rules for banks enhanced its guidelines in response to recent high-profile security breaches at financial institutions and other organizations. Banks must adopt a layered approach to security in order to combat highly sophisticated cyber-attacks, the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council said in a supplement released June 28. The […]

Researchers have uncovered a sophisticated and decentralized botnet that combines encryption and rootkit capabilities to make it practically invisible to infected machines. The TDL-4 bootkit infects the master boot record on a computer so that it can launch before the operating system even starts, making it invisible to the operating system and antivirus software, Sergey […]

Fox.com The first of its attacks, LulzSec leaked a database of “X-Factor” contestants, attacked the Fox.com Website and obtained several other databases on May 6. The group also defaced 14 LinkedIn accounts belonging to Fox employees. Pointless ATM Information A total of 3,133 individual bank account details were harvested from ATMs in England and posted […]