Editor's News

Bristol bus timetable website has been attacked by a group calling itself “Darkshadow”.   The “Arab Security Team” attacked TravelWest’s website on New Year’s Day and the website, controlled by four councils including Bristol, South Gloucestershire and North Somerset, has managed to regain control today.   Julia Dean, communication officer for WEP, told the Bristol Post that it is “working on getting the website fixed as quickly as possible”. The website was replaced with a...

Two members of the hacker group “Lizard Squad” have been arrested following a crippling attack on the PlayStation and Xbox online gaming networks over the holiday period.   Vinnie Omari was arrested in London by police investigating PayPal thefts and cyber-fraud offences over the past two years. According to The Hacker News, law enforcement officials reportedly seized phones, laptops and an Xbox from his home.   Thames Valley police said in a statement that a...

Facebook has introduced a new website to advise users on its complex privacy settings.   In an email to users, it said: “Over the past year, we’ve introduced new features and controls to help you get more out of Facebook, and listened to people who have asked us to better explain how we get and use information.” The page “Privacy Basics”, offers users a guide to “taking charge of your experience on Facebook”.   Ahead...

The United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) has issued a warning about a Server Message Block (SMB) Worm Tool.   Although the ongoing situation regarding the attack on Sony Pictures and attribution pointed at North Korea by the USA was not mentioned directly, it did say that SMB was used “to conduct cyber exploitation activities recently targeting a major entertainment company”.   The tool is equipped with a listening implant, lightweight backdoor, proxy tool,...

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...