Fahmida Y. Rashid

Instead of just launching distributed denial-of-service attacks, cyber-attackers have started hijacking domain names and redirecting traffic from legitimate sites to malicious ones. The hacker group Anonymous recently managed to hijack the Domain Name System record for CBS.com and redirected all traffic to another Web server that displayed an empty directory structure. It appeared as if […]

The European Commission on Jan. 25 unveiled its proposed changes to existing data privacy laws that would force Internet companies to better protect user information or face fines. The European Commission introduced new rules to update the 17-year-old data privacy laws to better protect Internet users on Jan. 25. The laws are intended to improve […]

Government officials initially believed railway signal disruptions in December were tied to a cyber-attack against a Northwest rail company in December, Nextgov reported. But government and railway officials later denied that a U.S. railroad had actually been hit by a cyber-attack. “There was no targeted computer-based attack on a railroad,” said Holly Arthur, a spokeswoman […]

HP’s TippingPoint Zero Day Initiative unveiled a new format for its popular Pwn2Own contest at the upcoming CanSecWest conference with new prizes and scoring system. During Pwn2Own, contestants try to compromise fully-patched and up-to-date versions of Web browsers across various operating systems, including Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome running on Mac OS X or Windows […]

Companies operating in the European Union may be required to disclose data breaches within 24 hours if proposed new rules are approved. The European Commission will propose several changes to the data protection and privacy rules to protect individual rights and ensure a high level of data protection on Jan. 25. The proposed changes will […]

Twitter has acquired security company Dasient, making its second security deal in three months. Twitter acquired the company “effective immediately,” and the team will join Twitter’s revenue engineering team, Neil Daswani, co-founder and CTO of Dasient, wrote on the company blog Jan. 23. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but it was a big […]

The Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit has identified one of the perpetrators behind the Kelihos botnet, which was neutralized last September. Additional information has surfaced identifying the suspect as the former employee of a Russian security software development company. The defendant, Andrey N. Sabelnikov, coded the malware that was used to infect thousands of computers and […]

Investing in multiple layers of security to protect endpoints and the data stored on them tend to pay off in mitigating cyber-attacks and reducing downtime, according to a recent Symantec suvey. However, if there are security gaps, the breach can be quite costly. Organizations that invested in stronger defenses and trained its employees to be […]

Mobile device owners are encouraged to download apps from official sources, such as Apple’s App Store. However, they should still exercise caution as malicious apps can still slip through. The latest culprit posed as the popular Camera+ app and had the description “The Most Amazing Camera+ Version Yet.” Unlike the popular Camera+ app, which is […]

Anonymous has a new tool in its arsenal that transforms casual Web surfers into unwitting participants in a distributed denial of service attack, according to security experts.The loosely knit group of activist hackers has embedded JavaScript into specially crafted Websites to redirect site visitors to the targeted site, Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, […]

Coming on the heels of the Zappos.com breach, hosting provider DreamHost has reset its customer accounts because of a data breach.Unknown attackers breached a database server belonging to Web hosting provider DreamHost, the company said Jan. 20. FTP and shell access passwords of some customers may have been compromised.The company was not specific about exactly […]

Despite weeks of intense lobbying by technology companies and consumer advocates, the controversial anti-piracy bills seemed on track to pass in Congress. Then Wikipedia took a stand this week, declaring a 24-hour blackout on Jan. 18 during which its English language edition that only displayed a statement saying the site had gone dark to protest […]