Top 10 Stories

Hackers may have just wiped John Podesta's iPhone and iPad after gaining access to his iCloud account, along with his Gmail inbox and Twitter account. Podesta, who serves as Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, had his private emails dumped online by WikiLeaks on October 13. As evidence points out, the WikiLeaks staff failed once again to remove personal details from the leaked documents, which has happened quite often in the past months, even drawing criticism from Edward Snowden...

US telecoms firm Verizon says Yahoo's massive data breach could have a "material" impact on its deal to buy the internet firm. It agreed to purchase the main parts of the business in July for $4.8bn (£4bn). But since then Yahoo has revealed that hackers stole the data of about 500 million users in what could be the largest publicly disclosed cyber-breach in history. Verizon could seek to reduce the price or walk away from...

Fears of a campaign of cyber attacks on leading airlines have grown after a “systems issue” delayed dozens of United Airlines flights worldwide. A spokesman for United told The Independent: “We are aware of an issue with our systems that is resulting in flight delays. We are working to resolve the issue and get customers to their destinations as soon as possible. We apologise for the inconvenience.” United is the world’s third-biggest airline, after Delta...

Is Blockchain a possible solution for securing weapons data for the US military, including its nuclear capabilities?The US Department of Defence’s DARPA research unit is investigating whether it can use blockchain technology to help secure its weapon data.The thinking is that blockchain could have applications in a range of weapon platforms including military satellites and nuclear weapons. Blockchain is already being actively encouraged by some notable technology vendors. At the moment Blockchain is perhaps best known as the...

Akamai’s Threat Research team has identified a recent spate of SSHowDowN Proxy attacks whereby attackers are using Internet of Things (IoT) devices to remotely generate attack traffic by using a 12-year old vulnerability in OpenSSH. The research and subsequent advisory does not introduce a new type of vulnerability or attack technique, but rather a continued weakness in many default configurations of Internet-connected devices. These devices are now actively being exploited in mass scale attack campaigns....

Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta's Twitter account has been hacked just days after allegedly stolen emails from his personal email account were released by whistleblowing site WikiLeaks. On Wednesday night (12 October), his account sent out a tweet saying: "I've switched teams. Vote Trump 2016. Hi pol." The tweet was quickly deleted. It is still unclear who was responsible for the breach and subsequent errant tweet. The Clinton campaign later confirmed that Podesta's social...

Yahoo has filed a patent for a type of smart billboard that would collect people's information and use it to deliver targeted ad content in real-time. Using a combination of sensors, including microphones and cameras located either on the billboard or on drones nearby, it would watch and listen to people near the billboard to get a sense of who they were and how they were reacting, which would help it to tailor what it showed...

Endgame details 'Instegogram' and Apple Mac OS X flaw with Instagram images. Researchers have developed a proof-of-concept attack that uses steganography to establish highly covert malware command and control channels on the Instagram social media network. In researching a way to demonstrate the PoC, the researchers at security firm Endgame also stumbled upon a separate weakness in Apple’s Mac OS X that would expose some users running version 10.11.5-6 of the operating system to malicious attacks just by...

A malware called Eko has been landing in Facebook Messenger inboxes since last week. Eko subjects users to unwanted advertisements, and can spy on users, collecting their personal data, including bank account details. So far the scourge is limited to French users, who have complained about malicious spam landing in their private message (PM) inboxes, purporting to be from network contacts. Essentially, the threat makes itself appear to be a video about the recipient from...

According to Visa’s 2016 Digital Payments Study, the number of consumers regularly using contactless mobile payments  – whether via a smartphone, tablet or wearable – has tripled in the past year. Currently, 54% of consumers surveyed regularly use a mobile device to make payments for a range of activities, compared to just 18% who were asked whether they used mobile payments to pay for everyday goods and services when the same study was conducted last year....