Editor's News

Cyber Ark is offering a free trial of a new tool that can identify and map exposed password hashes and vulnerable machines on a network. According to the company, CyberArk DNS (discovery and audit) is a patent-pending, lightweight, stand-alone tool that exposes the magnitude of privileged account security risks by enabling organisations to easily identify and analyse all privileged accounts across their network. CyberArk DNA v4 free trial licenses are currently available to all businesses...

Identity fraud figures demonstrate continued danger says CIFAS Analysis of the fraud figures recorded during 2013 by organisations that share confirmed fraud data through CIFAS – the UK's Fraud Prevention Service demonstrates that identity fraud remains the biggest fraud challenge facing the UK. While overall fraud levels decreased in 2013 by 11%, there were still over 108,500 confirmed identity frauds: which represents almost 1 in 2 of all frauds (49%). Old favourite is the new...

FC Barcelona’s Twitter account was hijacked by the Syrian Electronic Army last night, who sent messages to more than 11 million followers. While the team won 2-0 away at Manchester City, the army took control of the team’s official account, urging the management of the team not to accept Qatari money, and later said “special hi” to rivals Real Madrid. Barca previously refused to wear any corporate sponsorship on their kit, but signed a £123...

The NHS has announced plans to delay its Care.data scheme by six months after concerns were raised about patient privacy.   The decision was made by the Royal College of General Practitioners (RGCP), the British Medical Association (BMA) and Healthwatch who were concerned about sharing patient records through a central database and called for improved public awareness of the implications of the plan.   According to Computer Weekly, the Care.data scheme proposes to upload all patient records...

AlienVault has announced new partners to its open threat exchange (OTX) program.   Added are Cegeka, GoGrid, Netflow Logic, Onsight, Risk I/O and ThreatStop, while Spiceworks has already integrated the OTX into its service for the benefit of 100,000 users with over 1.4 million threat alerts in January alone. The OTX partner member program provides access to the world’s largest crowd-sourced and collaborative threat exchange, enabling partners to utilise the AlienVault OTX API and gain...

More than 300,000 user credentials were published on Pastebin over the past year, with an average leak containing 1,000 user credentials.   According to research by High-Tech Bridge, Pastebin is commonly used to share text online and is often used by programmers sharing software code, while administrators are often removing records containing stolen information as fast as they are put on the site.   Of what is posted on Pastebin, 40 per cent is email details...

WikiLeaks has accused the NSA and GCHQ of spying on it and its readers.   In a statement, WikiLeaks publisher and founder Julian Assange said that he “strongly condemns the reckless and unlawful behaviour of the National Security Agency” and called on the US Government to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the extent of the NSA’s criminal activity against the media.   According to documents released by whistleblower Edward Snowden, Assange was added to...

A method to control 70 per cent of Android devices has been revealed.   According to Rapid7 security researcher Joe Vennix, a browser exploit can control Android devices via a Web page or app. He claimed that this “gives the attacker the keys to your mobile device” and affects anyone using any Android version before 4.2.1, which is apparently about 70 per cent of Android devices.   It works by exploiting a vulnerability which was...

The NHS has admitted that its new medical records database could be vulnerable to hackers or could be used to identify patients maliciously.   According to the Telegraph, the database will include information about past illnesses, medication, weight and blood pressure; information that will be taken from medical files next month and put into a central database. Those behind it said that it will improve healthcare and help medical research, as well as allow access...

Crowd-funding website Kickstarter has suffered a security breach that saw some user information including names, encrypted passwords, mailing addresses and phone numbers potentially revealed.   While it said that older passwords were uniquely salted and digested with SHA-1 multiple times, more recent passwords are hashed with bcrypt and credit card information was not accessed during the breach.   In a statement by CEO Yancey Strickler, he said that he was contacted by law enforcement officials last...