News

HappyHotel.jp is a website that operates similarly to Booking.com, but lets registered users search and book rooms in love hotels across Japan. In a message posted on its website, Almex, the company behind the service, said it detected unauthorized access to its servers on December 22, last year. The security incident is as bad as it gets, and hackers appear to have gotten their hands on a wealth of sensitive user information. Source: ZD Net

A London regimental association is on alert after email scammers posing as the group’s president tried to fool veterans into sending cash. The First Hussars Association, representing about 140 retired members of the London-based regiment, saw its members targeted by two fraudulent emails in a week, president Lt.-Col. Joe Murray said. Source: The Sudbury Star

Tim Mackey, Principal Security Strategist for the Synopsys CyRC (Cybersecurity Research Centre): Politicians, be weary of digital assistants Cyber-attacks on 2020 candidates will become more brazen. While attacks on campaign websites have already occurred in past election cycles, targeted attacks on a candidate’s digital identity and personal devices will mount. With digital assistants operating in an “always listening” mode, an embarrassing “live mic” recording of a public figure will emerge. This recording may not be...

The Poloniex cryptocurrency trading platform has reset some of their user's passwords after a list of alleged username and password combinations was found circulating on Twitter. On December 30th, 2019, users began receiving an email from Poloniex stating that their user name and password for the trading site may have been included in a data leak circulating on Twitter.

A U.S. district court issued an order enabling Microsoft to take over 50 domains used by a North Korea-based cybercrime gang to conduct spear phishing campaigns. Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit and the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center took down the domains controlled by a group it named Thallium after researching the malicious actors activity and filing a report with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, said Tom Burt, Microsoft’s corporate vice president,...

The U.S. Army this week has banned TikTok from government-owned devices as scrutiny over the platform’s relationship with China grows. With backlash swelling around TikTok’s relationship with China, the United States Army this week announced that U.S. soldiers can no longer have the social media app on government-owned phones. TikTok, a social media app used to create and share short form videos, is owned by Beijing-based parent company ByteDance. Despite its popularity with users and...

As of January 1st, 2020, Python 2.7 has officially reached the end of life and will no longer receive security updates, bug fixes, or other improvements going forward. Released in 2000, Python 2.7 has been used by developers, administrators, and security professionals for 20 years.  While Python 3 was released in 2006, due to the number of users continuing to use 2.7, the Python team decided to support both development branches. Originally slated to be retired...

The U.S. Coast Guard last month issued a safety bulletin following a ransomware attack that impaired both the IT systems and industrial control systems of a facility regulated by the Maritime Transportation Security Act (MTSA), and prompted a 30-hour operational shutdown. The ransomware program, identified as Ryuk, was delivered via a phishing email containing a malicious link that was clicked by an employee. According to the alert, the ransomware encrypted critical network files, then “further burrowed into...

One misstep from developers at Starbucks left exposed an API key that could be used by an attacker to access internal systems and manipulate the list of authorized users. The severity rating of the vulnerability was set to critical as the key allowed access to a Starbucks JumpCloud API. Source: Bleeping Computer

Sextortion scammers have started to utilize new tactics to bypass spam filters and secure email gateways so that their scam emails are delivered to their intended recipients. Sextortion scams are emails that pretend to be from an attacker who has hacked your PC and installed malware that can monitor what sites you visit and create videos using your webcam. These emails go on to state that they have created a video of you while watching...