Editor's News

Alert Logic has dismissed criticism of its research into the Linux bug it named grinch.   Last week, Alert Logic said that grinch exists in the new authorisation system that allows privilege escalation through Wheel, bypassing it by using the existing polkit authentication.   “Wheel users have access to all system commands including the ability to install any package or code,” Stephen Coty, chief security evangelist at Alert Logic said. “We can abuse the user’s...

Santa Claus has landed himself in hot water, following the release of “selfie” photos.   Believed to have been caught up in the Apple iCloud unauthorised access incident from this summer, where an attacker used brute force password tools to access the accounts and leak photos, including revealing photos of a number of actresses, St Nicholas is the latest victim of the access.   In this latest development, selfies of Santa have been the latest...

The FBI has officially named North Korea as the aggressor behind the Sony Pictures attack.   Despite many members of the information security community now believing that North Korea was not responsible for the attack, including Marc Rogers from Cloudflare, whose blog listed ten reasons why North Korea was not to blame, saying “my money is on a disgruntled (possibly ex) employee of Sony”, an FBI statement concluded that there are three reasons why North...

Guardians of Peace, the hackers who have terrorised Sony Pictures, have halted their actions after the cinema release of The Interview was suspended.   According to CNN, the hackers sent an email to executives at the company, crediting them for a "very wise" decision to cancel the Christmas day release of the film. The company believes the email is legitimate as it followed a pattern of previous messages, sent to a list of particular executives...

Three-quarters of consumers are aware of the risks of visiting a website, but only a third look for the green address bar.   According to research of 6,000 consumers by GlobalSign, 20 per cent of those surveyed think that the internet is a completely unsafe place, but do take into account other factors to assess the trustworthiness of a website, such as how quickly the site loads and works (43 per cent), whether the site...

The Sony Pictures hackers reportedly gained access to Sony’s systems by obtaining the login credentials of a high-level systems administrator.   According to CNN, an anonymous US official who was reportedly privy to government briefings on the topic of the Sony hack, said that once they got these credentials, they were granted the “keys to the entire building”   Trey Ford, global security strategist at Rapid7 noted that when the attack was first reported, it was...

Accumuli Security has completed the acquisition of RandomStorm for £8.9 million.   Accumuli, a specialist in IT security and risk management has acquired the west Yorkshire-based integrated information security specialist, to compliment and strengthen Accumuli’s solutions and services framework.   Gavin Lyons, CEO of Accumuli, said: “RandomStorm is a business which has excelled in providing market leading integrated information security solutions and services to help its customers manage IT risk and implement security best practice. Their expertise...

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has admitted that a spear phishing attack hit its centralised zone data system (CZDS).   In an update, ICANN said that the attacker obtained administrative access to all files in the CZDS, including copies of the zone files in the system, information entered by users such as name, postal address, email address, fax and telephone numbers, usernames and password.   “Although the passwords were stored as...

Sony Pictures has said that there will be no theatrical release for The Interview, as the US has claimed that North Korea was “centrally involved” in the hacking of Sony Pictures computers.   According to a statement issued to Variety, Sony Pictures said that it has decided not to move forward with the planned December 25th theatrical release of the film, after a number of cinemas decided not to show the film The Interview on safety...

Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel has said that he is “definitely angry” and “definitely devastated” after details of a business deal between the mobile app and Sony were revealed.   Leaked emails revealed that Snapchat had acquired a company focused on wearable tech similar to Google Glass and a QR code-scanning company, and there was some insight into Snapchat's rejection of Facebook’s reported $3 billion failed acquisition.   In an open letter, Siegel said: “Keeping secrets means coming home...