News

Five French cafe and bar owners have been arrested for breaking a 2006 law which states that those who proved internet access must maintain access logs for those using the WiFi for at least a year. The arrests took place in the city of Grenoble, with the owners taken into custody last week after they have been discovered to be running open WiFi networks in their cafes and not maintaining a log of past users....

A cybercriminal managed to infiltrate a commercial transaction, hiding long enough to get the final amount of $15 million. The fraudster carefully executed an email compromise that lasted for 2 months. When they gained access to the email chain they placed themselves in the transaction to diverted the money. Investigators have linked the hack to a single person but they have also found a long list of other companies on their hit list, including those...

Darktrace has potentially been experienced the dumbest hack of all time, where the criminal purposely left their fingerprints at the crime scene. The AI company had installed fingerprint scanners at their warehouse to reduce the risk of attacks like these. The hacker began to delete fingerprints on the system in order to add theirs in so they could gain access. However, when the scanners began to act up, the security team became aware of the...

eResearch Technology, a company that sells software that is widely used in clinical trials, was hit by ransomware. This attack has resulted in the slowing of some clinical trials testing COVID-19 vaccines. Two of the main companies hit were IQVIA, who is helping manage AstraZeneca's vaccine trial as well as Bristol Myers Squibb which is heading a group of companies in developing a quick test for the virus. It is still unclear as to who...

A French security researcher, Wassime Bouimadaghene, has discovered a critical vulnerability in Grindr, which enables hackers to easily highjack users accounts by using the victim's email. The vulnerability takes advantage of the 'forgotten password' feature on the app. This token allows hackers to easily change the password of an account and highjack it.  This method is “one of the most basic account takeover techniques” according to one of the researchers who discovered the vulnerability. Wassime...

The Facebook security team have revealed more information about one of the most advanced malware attacks on the social media site at the Virus Bulletin 2020 security conference yesterday. The malware gang, known as SilentFade are based in China and were active between late 2018 and February 2019, when Facebook put an end to their attacks. Despite their intervention, the gang still managed to defraud users of over $4 million. The group used a combination...

In an oversight report published yesterday, investigators at the UK Huawei Cyber Security Evaluation Centre (HCSEC) found a significant vulnerability that would have national implications. These issues were so severe that they were withheld from the company. These vulnerabilities are typically design-related failures that would allow certain actors, such as the Chinese government to carry out a cyberattack. The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has stated that it doesn't believe these vulnerabilities are a result...

The health insurance company behind Blue Cross-Blue Shield, Anthem, will pay almost $40 million in order to settle a cyberattack from 2015 which compromised the personal information of around 79 million people, according to officials. On Wednesday the health insurance company announced that they have agreed to pay $39.5 million in order to settle an investigation by a number of state attorneys general. This was the last open investigation into the cybersecurity attack from 2015....

Microsoft Outlook was down for four hours worldwide, with Outlook.com, as well as the Outlook desktop and mobile applications all being affected. The outage began at 2 AM ET, with some users still struggling to load or access their emails worldwide. Microsoft published a support update which said, “we’re collecting additional data from the affected infrastructure to aid in our investigation to determine the cause of impact.” It appears that the outage may be due...

Amazon has announced the launch of their new payment system, Amazon One, for use in shops which processes secure payments through the wave of a hand. The scanners work by registering an image of a user's palm when they hover their hand in-mid air for a few seconds. The scanners will be trialled in two of Amazon's physical Seattle stores where Amazon already use a check-out free system. Amazon is already in conversation with other...