Top 10 Stories

An unclassified email system used by the Pentagon was compromised by Russian hackers in 2015, forcing security teams to take the entire network down in order to fix the breach. Martin Dempsey, who was at that time Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, told CBS that he was informed of the breach by the Director of the National Security Agency, Admiral Mike Rogers, revealing that in approximately one hour, hackers seized control of the entire email system. View...

British intelligence agencies have been urged to ramp up cybersecurity to help protect the financial sector from escalating cybercrime. The parliament's Treasury Committee has expressed concerns over GCHQ's focus on terrorism-related and state-sponsored cyberattacks. Conservative Party lawmaker Andrew Tyrie said that the committee was concerned about the "opaque lines of accountability", especially between intelligence agencies and regulators. View full story ORIGINAL SOURCE: International Business Times

Lynda.com, the training arm of LinkedIn, on Saturday issued email notices to about 55,000 members whose data it says has been perused by an “unauthorized third party.” The letter sent to members, two of whom thoughtfully forwarded it to El Reg, reads as follows: We recently became aware that an unauthorized third party breached a database that included some of your Lynda.com learning data, such as contact information and courses viewed. We are informing you of this issue...

Schools are currently sharing the census records of up to 1,500 pupils per month as part of an attempt by the Home Office to crack down on illegal immigrants. The agreement has been in place since June 2015 under a memorandum of understanding with the Department for Education (DfE). The information came to light after it was released under a Freedom of Information request to privacy group Defend Digital Me seen by The Register. View full...

Cybercriminal gangs have found a new way to serve malicious ads in such a way so it is hard to get rid of them – infect your internet router rather than your web browser by silently making requests to your computer without your knowledge. US security firm Proofpoint has discovered a new exploit kit called DNSChanger EK that aims to serve an endless series of malicious ads on every single website the user visits (known as a...

Russian hackers reportedly launched a targeted cyberattack on Pentagon in August 2015, which saw the unclassified email system used by the Joint Chiefs of Staff hijacked, leaving data of nearly 3,500 military personnel and civilians vulnerable to exposure. The attack's aim is believed to have been to cripple the Pentagon's systems, instead of a cyberespionage campaign, according to a report. View full story ORIGINAL SOURCE: International Business Times

The FBI is investigating the recently disclosed massive 2013 data breach at Yahoo that compromised the personal data of at least one billion user accounts, the White House said on Thursday (15 December). During a daily White House press briefing, spokesman Josh Earnest said he could not address the potential scale of the attack and user data that may have been compromised in the cyberattack. View full story ORIGINAL SOURCE: International Business Times

More security players have joined the No More Ransom initiative, which should make life hard for the cretins who create ransomware. More than 30 security research firms and law enforcement agencies have joined the initiative to unify their efforts to free victims from ransomware extortion. More than 6,000 users have used the project's work to recover data without paying ransoms. View full story ORIGINAL SOURCE: The Register

Yahoo has said more than one billion user accounts may have been affected in a hacking attack dating back to 2013. The internet giant said it appeared separate from a 2014 breach disclosed in September, when Yahoo revealed 500 million accounts had been accessed. Yahoo said names, phone numbers, passwords and email addresses were stolen, but not bank and payment data. View full story ORIGINAL SOURCE: BBC

Microsoft has warned busy holiday shoppers to watch out for a new phishing campaign that uses fake credit card reports to infect devices with the deadly Cerber ransomware. Microsoft security researchers published a new post on the Malware Protection Center blog warning users that scam emails have been doing the rounds that claim to be notifying customers about fake pending charges on their credit cards. View full story ORIGINAL SOURCE: International Business Times