Robert Lemos

The court battle between Apple and the Federal Bureau of Investigation has reignited the debate over privacy and surveillance, going far beyond a one-time request by law enforcement to unlock the iPhone used by the perpetrator the Dec. 2 mass shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., according to security and legal experts. On Feb. 25, Apple […]

The communications between hundreds of millions of wireless mice and keyboards and the systems to which they are connected could be exploited to allow an attacker to take control of a targeted laptop or desktop PC, researchers from communications security firm Bastille said on Feb. 23. The attack, dubbed “MouseJacking,” exploits the weak security of […]

Every snowflake may be unique, but now, so is nearly every piece of malware, according to the latest report by security firm Webroot. Last year, 97 percent of malware encountered by potential victims was a unique variant, the culmination of a trend that started more than a half decade ago, the company stated in its […]

Cyber-criminals increasingly used customized malware, software development expertise and knowledge of the financial system to make 2015 an extremely profitable year—a trend that will continue in 2016, according to IBM’s annual threat report, published on Feb. 22. Using three families of malware—Dyre, Dridex and Carbanak—cyber-criminals have stolen hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars. Over two […]

In late January, Oracle announced that the company would stop supporting its ubiquitous Java plug-in, which would be, in developer terminology, “deprecated” in the next version of the Java software development kit, slated for release in 2017. The announcement comes not as a surprise but a recognition of a trend among browser developers toward removing […]

A ransomware attack that had left a southern California hospital unable to access its electronic medical records was solved by paying the attackers nearly $17,000, the CEO of the hospital said in a statement on Feb. 17. The attack was first noticed by the staff of Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center on Feb. 5, when doctors […]

While phishing attacks have a reputation for being poorly written and fairly obvious in their attempts to con users, the attacks continue to be a problem for most companies, according to a security threat report published by Cloudmark on Feb. 11. Ninety-one percent of companies encountered phishing attacks in 2015, with the lion’s share—84 percent—of […]

President Barack Obama on Feb. 9 proposed spending more than $19 billion over the next year on cyber-security initiatives as part of a new plan to better protect the computers, networks and data of U.S. citizens, businesses and government agencies. The initiatives, which the administration wove together in its 2016 budget proposal as the Cybersecurity […]

The oil glut has increased tensions between various oil producers, resulting in an increase in hacking and cyber-espionage among nations such as Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern nations, according to CrowdStrike, which released its annual threat report on Feb. 3. Calling the drop in global oil prices the “most impactful force” driving […]

Distributed denial-of-service attacks used to be reserved as the not-so-subtle tool of vandals and hacktivists. Increasingly, however, other actors are using DDoS attacks for a variety of ends. Criminals clog networks to demonstrate their capabilities and extort money from companies. Rogue gamers attack rivals to gain advantage in online arenas. In fact, criminal and online […]

On Dec. 23, a blackout hit the western part of Ukraine, affecting a region served by three power-generation centers. As the two power companies affected by the outage recovered, their support centers were inundated with fake phone calls, blocking legitimate customers from reaching the companies’s staff. Within hours, officials for the power companies concluded that […]

Every year or so, the Internet rediscovers that unsecured webcams are out there, leaking ready-to-watch videos of babies, pets, bank customers and even the offices of the webcam makers. This month, the ability of the Shodan port-scanning service to easily find webcams set off a kerfuffle in the media. Yet, the criticism is missing the […]