Top 10 Stories

Krebs on security: Last week, Target told reporters at The Wall Street Journal and Reuters that the initial intrusion into its systems was traced back to network credentials that were stolen from a third party vendor. Sources now tell KrebsOnSecurity that the vendor in question was a refrigeration, heating and air conditioning subcontractor that has worked at a number of locations at Target and other top retailers.

USA Today - The disclosure of consumer data breaches at certain Marriott, Holiday Inn, Sheraton and other major hotels managed by White Lodging Hotels comes as Congress is getting briefed about how cybercriminals are taking advantage of flaws in systems that collect and store sensitive data

Help Net Security: The European Cybercrime Centre at Europol published its Threat Assessment on "Police Ransomware – a class of computer". The disclosure of consumer data breaches at certain Marriott, Holiday Inn, Sheraton and other major hotels managed by White Lodging Hotels comes as Congress is getting briefed about how cybercriminals are taking advantage of flaws in systems that collect and store sensitive data.

The Hacker News : "We think developing Chrome extensions securely is relatively easy, but given that extensions like Hangouts and GMail are widely used, we want to make sure efforts to keep them secure are rewarded accordingly." Google said in a blog post.

Mashable: Just days after the widely acknowledged 10th anniversary of Facebook, the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) took to Twitter to announce the hacking of the company’s website.

The Next Web: Last month, Yahoo enabled default HTTPS for all users of its Yahoo Mail service — and now, to support the move, the company announced that it has also enabled HTTPS access to Yahoo Contacts and Profile APIs.

Security Week: St. Joseph Health System (SJHS), a Bryan, Texas-based not-for-profit health care provider, said on Tuesday that between Dec. 16 and Dec. 18, 2013, the organization experienced a data security attack which exposed patient and employee data stored on server. According to the provider of health services, attacker(s) hacked into a server and accessed patient and employee data files from St. Joseph Regional Health Center, Burleson St. Joseph Health Center, Madison St. Joseph Health...

SC Magazine: Contrary to reports, famed Belgian cryptography professor Jean-Jacques Quisquater is questioning whether the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Britain's GCHQ compromised his PC and extracted encrypted data. Earlier this week Belgian newspaper De Standaard reported that as a result of an investigation launched into the cyber attack on Belgium telecom company, Belgacom, malware was found on the professor's machine  

CHICAGO CBS: In the wake of the massive theft of information from Target customers, U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) has proposed tougher federal penalties for computer hackers who steal credit card numbers. WBBM Newsradio’s Regine Schlesinger reports Kirk’s proposal would create mandatory sentences for defendants convicted of hacking, and any hacker found guilty of stealing more than 1 million credit card numbers would go to prison for at least 25 years.

Naked Security: A few hours ago Mrs. W was looking to install a fresh copy of iTunes on her PC and performed a quick Google search. Above the first (and correct) result was an ad. Nothing unusual about that, except that this particular ad screamed "SCAM!"