Top 10 Stories

Project Zero researcher Tavis Ormandy has identified several vulnerabilities in Palo Alto Networks’ PAN-OS operating system. An attacker can combine the flaws to execute arbitrary code with root privileges. View full story ORIGINAL SOURCE: Security Week

People’s reliance on the internet in their everyday lives is such that good cybersecurity is not only about what individuals and organisations do to protect themselves, but what governments must do to ensure that national critical infrastructure is well protected. View full story ORIGINAL SOURCE: The Guardian

A recent study performed by IBM's Resilient and the Ponemon Institute found that 66% of organizations would be unable to recover from a cyberattack. The results of the 2016 Cyber Resilient Organization study were released Wednesday, and show a decline in organizational resilience against cyberattacks. Of the respondents, 32% of IT and security professionals ranked their resilience as high. That same number was 35% in 2015, marking a drop over the past 12 months. A press...

Nearly four in ten Americans would rather be abstinent for a year than risk being hacked, according to the results of survey published Thursday. Harris Poll interviewed more than 2,000 adults last month on the topic of cybersecurity, and found Americans aren’t entirely unwilling to skip a years’ worth of sex if it means keeping their internet account and private information protected from hackers. View full story ORIGINAL SOURCE: Washington Times

Russia has blocked the social network LinkedIn after a court in the country found it to have violated data storage laws. The communications regulator in Russia, Roskomnadzor, said the Microsoft-owned site would not be available for the next 24 hours as a result of the court's decision. More than six million people use the network in Russia, where new laws were introduced two years ago to store personal data on their citizens. View full story ORIGINAL SOURCE: Digital...

Three men have been arrested after a data breach at the Three mobile network allowed fraudsters to steal phones. The company said fraudsters had accessed personal data, including names and addresses, by using authorised logins to its database of customers eligible for an upgraded handset. They are then understood to have used the information to arrange for upgraded phones, believed to include iPhone and Samsung handsets, to be sent to eight customers before intercepting them....

The Canadian armed forces recruitment website was hacked on Thursday, redirecting would-be recruits to the Chinese government's main page instead, a military spokeswoman said. Visitors to the forces.ca/en/home page found themselves on the www.gov.cn site instead, CTV television reported. The armed forces quickly took down the page. View full story ORIGINAL SOURCE: Reuters

President-elect Donald Trump's transition team has not announced a point person dedicated to cyber security policy or staffing in his administration, an omission that could make the United States more vulnerable to threats and worsen a government cyber talent shortfall, current and former national security officials said. They and multiple sources involved with the Trump transition organization said they were unaware of any person in the Trump orbit who is dealing specifically with cyber security, and that...

A serial hacker has come up with a little USB device that can hack into any computer, even one that is password protected, with little or no effort. Called PoisonTap, the $5 (£4) USB stick is reportedly able to hack into even a locked PC in just one minute. Created by Samy Kamkar, the fully automated, proof-of-concept device works by opening up a web-based backdoor onto victims' PCs, which allows hackers to gain access to online accounts and their routers....

Despite all the news being generated by the change of power underway in Washington, there is one story this week that deserves top priority: Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. On Tuesday, the director of the National Security Agency, Admiral Michael Rogers, was asked about the WikiLeaks release of hacked information during the campaign, and he said, "This was a conscious effort by a nation-state to attempt to achieve a specific effect." He added, "This was...