Top 10 Stories

Imagine you've got a meeting with a client, and shortly before you leave, they send you over a confirmation and a map with directions to where you're planning to meet. It all looks normal — but the entire message was actually written by a piece of smart malware mimicking the client's email mannerisms, with a virus attached to the map. It sounds pretty far out — and it is, for now. But that's the direction...

A credit card with a digital display that randomly generates a security code is being launched as a way of combating fraud. Oberthur Technologies is currently in discussions with UK banks about rolling out the technology and will have cards "in the hands" of consumers in France by the end of the year. Credit card fraud costs banks millions of pounds each year. One expert said a different design for credit cards was overdue. View...

The European Commission is readying a push to get companies to produce labels that reveal the security baked into internet-of-things things. The labelling effort is part of a broader push to drive companies to better handle security controls and privacy data in the notoriously insecure and leaky devices. Deputy head of cabinet Thibault Kleiner told Euractiv the Commission may push companies to develop labelling for secure internet-of-things devices. View full story ORIGINAL SOURCE: The Register

Patrick Wardle, an ex-NSA hacker with a penchant for finding novel Apple Mac hacks, has proposed a new way snoops might spy on people via their webcams. As Macs make their camera sharable to multiple apps at the same time for perfectly legitimate reasons, it’s possible to create a malicious app that asks to use the webcam. Unlike with currentMac malware strains – like Eleanor and Crisis - the app wouldn’t just start using the camera, as the LED light would...

Spotify has apologized to its subscribers after it served up malicious adverts that attempted to infect listeners' computers. The problem occurred with Spotify Free, which lets people to stream music gratis in exchange for being played and shown adverts. One advertiser sneakily embedded nasty software code into its Spotify ads that hijacked browsers on macOS and Linux systems. We're told the ads caused the computers' default browsers to open up dodgy websites that then attempted to install...

Relentless cybersecurity warnings have given people "security fatigue" that stops them keeping themselves safe, suggests a study. Many ignored warnings they received, found the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Others were worn out by software updates and by the number of passwords they had to remember, NIST found. This "risky behaviour" might make people more susceptible to attack, it warned. View full story ORIGINAL SOURCE: BBC

Android users, beware. Ransomware for your smartphone is picking up – it's now the main threat in the US, UK, Germany, Denmark and Australia, in the first half of 2016. These are the figures from security organisation BitDefender, whose report claims the Android SLocker ransomware family accounts for almost half of all mobile malware reported by infected devices in the first half of 2016 in Denmark. In Germany, it's at 25 per cent, in Australia 21.54 per...

From routers to DVRs, default passwords are found widely among household devices – and these credentials were used to carry out what’s been called the largest DDoS attack on record. It has been revealed that the Mirai botnet, one of two networks involved in the recent cyberattacks, used 61 username and password combinations to attempt ‘brute-force’ hacks into thousands of devices around the world. And, the botnet’s author has released the source code along with instructions...

The Information Commissioner’s Office issues its largest ever data protection fine after more than 150,000 customers had their data exposed by TalkTalk breach. TalkTalk has been hit with a record £400,000 fine for the cyber attack in 2015 that exposed personal details of more than 150,000 customers. The new information commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, said the telecoms provider had failed to apply “the most basic cyber security measures”, leaving its database vulnerable to a attack after failing to apply...

Yahoo!, the company that recently became victim to the largest publicly disclosed cyber-attack in history, is facing a class action lawsuit for its mishandling of personal data. The leaked data included the names, emails and unencrypted security questions (and answers) of some 500 million Yahoo users. No payment card data or bank account information was breached. The company has been criticised for lax security processes and for taking too long to detect and confirm the...