Editor's News

The visit by the Prime Minister to Washington to discuss global security issues with President Obama saw a number of UK security firms attend and brief David Cameron.   With cyber security high on the discussion agenda and in a bid to win more British business for the growing sector, 12 UK cyber security firms travelled to Washington to meet a host of US businesses.   Those companies involved were: RepKnight, Digital Shadows, DarkTrace, Cambridge...

The current process of mortgage applications has been described as a “train wreck of an opportunity” for an identity thief. Speaking to IT Security Guru, Egress CEO Tony Pepper said that when you’re applying for a mortgage, you’re expected to submit large quantities of highly sensitive personal information to your lender, such as copies of your passport, pay checks and bank statements. “However, in the overwhelming majority of cases, lenders do not provide you with...

David Cameron and Barack Obama have announced plans to implement a rolling programme of ‘war game’ cyber attacks on each other.   The attacks, which will be conducted by GCHQ, MI5 and the FBI, will target critical national infrastructure, and the first test will hit the financial sector later this year. During this exercise, the Bank of England and commercial banks in the City of London and Wall Street will be targeted in a bid...

A man has been arrested as part of the investigation into the denial of service attacks of Sony PlayStation and Microsoft Xbox systems last Christmas.   Officers from the South East Regional Organised Crime Unit (SEROCU) Cyber Crime Unit, supported by Titan ROCU (North West Regional Organised Crime Unit), have arrested a man as part of an investigation into ‘swatting’ and computer hacking offences.   ‘Swatting’ is a term used to describe criminal activity by...

Majority of companies feel that their board is fully on cyber issues, but a third deem it a “top risk”.   According to research of the FTSE 350 by PwC, and results of the FTSE 350 ‘Cyber Governance Health Check’, 88 per cent of companies say that cyber security is on the board’s agenda. Despite an increasing number of breaches in 2014, only 29 per cent of companies thought cyber was a “top risk”.  ...

Recent attacks have seen the AdSense network infected and Google Adwords manipulated by attackers, to create a new type of malvertising attack.   According to a blog by Sucuri senior malware researcher Denis Sinegubko, requests were made to the company to scan websites for malware as some randomly redirected to magazine websites, and in all cases, the symptoms were the same.   “Some users randomly got redirected when they clicked on links or loaded new...

Crayon company Crayola has offered “sincere apologies” to its Facebook community after inappropriate and offensive posts were made on its Facebook page. In a message, the company said that the official Crayola page has been restored. On Sunday 11th January, Crayola acknowledged that its official Facebook page had been taken over posting a status that it was “making every effort to stop the unauthorised posts”. It also said: “We don't condone the inappropriate & offensive...

Prime Minister David Cameron is to lobby US President Barack Obama to pressure internet firms to do more to cooperate with Britain’s intelligence agencies.   According to the Guardian, Cameron will seek to win Obama’s support for his plans to secure a new legal framework to deny terrorists a “safe space” and demand that US internet companies store – and then be prepared to hand over – data and content needed by the intelligence agencies...

Applications will not have to over keys to secure communications, as keys are generated on the device.   Talking to IT Security Guru, Brian Spector, CEO of CertiVox, said that if it is not physically possible to hand over the keys, then it’s not physically possible for Government to demand access to secure communications.   Earlier this week, Prime Minister David Cameron said that he would stop the use of methods of communication that cannot...

Microsoft released nine patches last night, with one rated as critical.   After the company announced that is to not give advance notifications to anyone but premium customers, the announcement came as a surprise to many. Ross Barrett, senior manager of security engineering at Rapid7, said this “marks the start of a new era”.   He said: “It seems that Microsoft’s trend towards openness in security has reversed and the company that was formerly doing...