Top 10 Stories

An Arizona man was arrested on Wednesday on charges that he hacked into over 1,000 email accounts for students and others at two universities, including Pace University in New York, and tried to do the same at 75 other higher-education institutions. Jonathan Powell, a 29-year-old Phoenix resident, was arrested based on a criminal complaint filed in federal court in Manhattan charging him with fraud in connection with computers, according to prosecutors. View full story ORIGINAL...

Unsurprisingly, the Q3 2016 ThreatMetrix report shows a sharp increase in the number and complexity of cyber attacks. During what is traditionally a slow quarter, researchers analyzed nearly 5 billion transactions, and stopped approximately 130 million attacks in real time – a 40 percent increase over 2015. View full story ORIGINAL SOURCE: Help Net Security

A remote code execution vulnerability in popular website backend performance tool Memcached has been found and squashed. Cisco penetration tester Aleksandar Nikolich reported three remote code execution holes in the tool used by big name sites including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Reddit to help decrease database burdens and increase performance. Nikolich says the flaws can compromise the many sites that expose Memcache servers to the internet. View full story ORIGINAL SOURCE: The Register

On Oct. 31, Google's Threat Analysis Group revealed a vulnerability in most versions of Windows that is actively being exploited by malware attacks. Today, Terry Myerson, executive vice president of Microsoft's Windows and Devices group, acknowledged the exploit was being used actively by a sophisticated threat group—the same threat group involved in the hacks that led to the breach of data from the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign. And while a patch is on...

Attackers are already exploiting a dangerous privileged account creation hole in the Joomla! content management system attempting, with attempts made on about 30,000 sites in the days days after a patch for the flaw landed. The vulnerability, which allows anyone to create privileged accounts on Joomla! sites, was first flagged in a scant Joomla! pre-release notice warning administrators to prepare for a then un-described but critical patch. At the time The Register warned the then...

If you’re one of the 47 thousand members of the New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO) whose names and email addresses were accidentally disclosed to a criminal third party, you might be wondering what you can do about it. The first thing you need to do is to try and understand what happened and what the risks are to you. The NZNO yesterday notified our Office – as we would expect – that it had fallen victim to...

An engineer has shown how you can sneak a tiny cellphone base station into an innocuous office printer. The idea is the brainchild of New Zealand's Julian Oliver, who was inspired by the Stingray cellphone snooping technology now in widespread use by the cops and FBI. He was looking to see how such tech could be hidden and what better to do this in than the humble office printer. View full story ORIGINAL SOURCE: The...

Automatic defences to stop hackers hijacking websites or spoofing official domains will get a boost from a £1.9bn government cybersecurity strategy. Chancellor Philip Hammond will give details of the plans in a speech later. Other defences that intercept booby-trapped emails or shut down thieves impersonating bank websites will also be expanded. The strategy will also help enlarge specialist police units that tackle organised online gangs. Some cash will go towards education and training of cybersecurity...

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer was sent a letter from a watchdog group overseeing privacy regulators in the European Union seeking answers on the affect of a massive breach the company experienced, according to telecompaper. The Article 29 Working Party, a group consisting of representatives from the data protection authority of each EU member state, enquired about details of the data exposed and what the repercussions of the exposure mean. The group also seeks further details...

In an ideal world, users will only install software from, usually a single, blessed source, like a repository or app store, containing only trustworthy and quality software. But we don’t live in an ideal world and even with app stores like Google Play or iTunes, some questionable apps still manage to get through the cracks. In an attempt to protect the integrity and image of its Play Store, Google has announced new security measures to...