Top 10 Stories

PCI council head Bob Russo is to retire.   According to SC Magazine, Russo, who was appointed as the first general manager of the organisation, will retire at the end of the year.   His replacement will be Stephen W. Orfei, who has held senior positions at security assessments companies, an international telecommunications firm and the military.

Microsoft has begun preparing users for the wind down of Windows 7, just three months after terminating support for XP.   According to IT News, Microsoft has begun to wean customers off the Windows 7 era of products as each approaches end of mainstream support. The software giant last week issued an advisory warning customers that the end of mainstream support - a five-year period where Microsoft offers free patches and fixes - was nearing for the...

A privacy problem has been discovered in Google Drive, which could have resulted in sensitive personal or corporate information stored on the cloud service being accessed by unauthorised parties.   According to Graham Cluley, writing for Collaborista, the security hole, which has now been patched by Google, existed if you stored files that included a clickable URL on your cloud file sharing service and if someone (you have shared permissions with to access the file) opens...

Greek police made two arrests last week in connection with a little-known spamming botnet called “Lecpetex”.   According to PC World, the botnet used hacked computers to mine the Litecoin virtual currency and affected as many as 50,000 Facebook accounts, and as many as 250,000 computers worldwide.   Facebook said the botnet creators taunted Facebook through messages left on servers that were part of its network, and launched at least 20 spam campaigns between December...

The US Senate Intelligence Committee has approved a bill to encourage companies to exchange information with the US Government on cyber security threats.   According to Itnews, the committee voted 12-3 to advance it as it is seen by experts as the best chance for the current Congress to pass some type of legislation to encourage better cooperation between the Government and private companies to boost the cyber defences of critical industries.   The bill would...

Anti-virus vendor Avast has conducted an experiment where it bought second-hand mobile phones and found a virtual goldmine of information.   According to Venture Beat, this included 40,000 photos, 750 emails and texts, 250 names and addresses, one completed loan application, and more. It found only one of the phones had security software loaded on it, but that phone gave up some of the most sensitive information.   The researchers were also able to identify the...

Financial avenue Wall Street is seeking more Federal help to combat cyber attacks.   According to Engadget, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) has proposed that it and the Government join forces in an effort to combat the cyber threat and hired former NSA director Keith Alexander to advise.   According to a document obtained by Bloomberg, the US banks are not confident in their ability to fend off or cope with increasingly destructive...

Accommodation booking website has published an updated message saying it is “permanently closed”.   According to Graham Cluley, after a multitude of privacy and security issues, parent HotelStayUK have decided it was too daunting a task to fix the flaws and have decided to call it quits. A statement from them said: “HotelHippo has shut down and will not reopen. Our investigations showed that just 24 customers were affected by the issues with HotelHippo. This...

Hackers believed to be associated with the Chinese Government, who for years targeted US experts on Asian geopolitical matters, turned their attention to Iraqi experts.   According to CrowdStrike, the group is one of the most sophisticated of the 30 it tracks in China and its operations are better hidden than many attributed to military and other government units, according to Reuters.   CrowdStrike co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch said he has “great confidence” the hackers are affiliated...

Australians flying into the United States will be exempt from strict new security measures implemented by the US transport authority on uncharged devices.   A spokesperson for the Australian Department of Infrastructure told ITnews that the new security arrangements only applied to flights departing from Europe, Africa and the Middle East bound for the US. The spokesperson also said Australia had not been asked to implement the enhanced aviation security restrictions.   Both Qantas and Virgin Australia confirmed...