News

Visa believes the payment industry can move away from passwords in the next five years thanks to advancements in authentication and anti-fraud technologies that are already making "static" cardholder verification (CVM) methods such as signature and PINs optional. With the ability of financial institutions and merchants to share 10 times more data with each other than ever before, and the growing sophistication of artificial intelligence (AI) that is making fraud detection faster and more accurate,...

Researchers have found a way to successfully hack connected hair straighteners to turn them on and increase the heating element up to its maximum temperature—causing a serious fire hazard for unsuspecting owners. Pen Test Partners decided to put the Glamoriser hair straightener through its security paces, given that it has Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) embedded for connecting to a mobile app. The app allows a user to remotely change the temperature and set a time...

Hackers are increasingly launching ransomware attacks in order to make a quick buck. They lock down the target’s computer systems and then demand a ransom to decrypt the data. That same thing has happened with New York City’s Monroe College which has been hit by a ransomware attack. The hackers are now demanding $2 million to allow the college to access its computer systems once again. This attack has locked down Monroe College’s computer systems at campuses...

A health care provider in Maine is warning patients of a potential data breach. The Bangor Daily News reports that a Penobscot Community Health Care spokesman says a third-party collection agency may have exposed the personal and credit card information of some patients. The provider has a contract with American Medical Collection Agency, which reported an unauthorized person may have accessed its systems between August and March. The agency collected on overdue patient bills but...

The number of whistleblower reports to the information commissioner over data breaches have jumped 175 per cent since GDPR came in, according to research. People have become more vigilant about the handling of personal data, and more likely to report potential breaches, since the regulations were introduced in May 2018 according to law firm RPC. Whistleblower reports in the year ending May 31 2018 numbered just 138, compared to 379 the following year. Source: City...

Only 9% of people would prefer to undergo surgery carried out by a robot surgeon compared to a human, despite recent advances in technology that have led to a rise in the use of robotics in a medical setting. This is according to a new survey, conducted by specialist distributor of industrial components Northern Connectors, which found 51% of people would still favour a human surgeon, as opposed to a robotic device. The survey, which...

30% of people say that typing in a password is still their preferred method of logging in to their online accounts according to a survey of 1,050 people in the UK carried out by email services company GMX. Compared to a similar GMX survey in 2016, this number has almost halved from 61%. Despite this, alternative login methods have not yet become widely accepted. The most favoured biometric authentication method in 2019, fingerprint recognition, is...

Cloud infrastructure presents new risks, new systems, and less control for security teams that are already overwhelmed by security alerts, manual processes and siloed security tools that complicate decision-making and the hand-off of remediation to IT counterparts. To help solve this challenge, ServiceNow, the digital workflow company that creates great experiences and unlocks productivity, has extended its security operations portfolio with the release today of two integrations with AWS Security Hub. ServiceNow is aligned with AWS’s strategy...

Multiple antivirus companies are now explicitly flagging in their products an app that Chinese authorities were planting onto the phones of tourists at the country's border. Tuesday, a collaboration between Motherboard, Süddeutsche Zeitung, the Guardian, the New York Times, and the German public broadcaster NDR revealed Chinese authorities are installing the malware—called BXAQ or Fengcai—onto travelers' Android devices at a border crossing into Xinjiang, a Western part of China. https://www.vice.com/en_in/article/neayxd/anti-virus-companies-now-flag-malware-china-installs-on-tourists-phones-xinjiang

A 23-year-old man from Utah was sentenced this week to 27 months in prison for a series of DDoS attacks that took down online gaming service providers like Sony's PlayStation Network, Valve's Steam, Microsoft's Xbox, EA, Riot Games, Nintendo, Quake Live, DOTA2, and League of Legends servers, along with many others. Named Austin Thompson, but known online as DerpTrolling, the man is the first hacker who started a trend among other hackers and hacking crews...