Top 10 Stories

America’s people centric and globally popular emergency helpline number 911 has been found to be easily vulnerable to Distributed Denial of Service or DDoS attacks. Mordechai Guri, Yisroel Mirsky, Yuval Elovici, researchers at the Cyber Security Research Centre of Ben Gurion University have revealed the threat in thoroughly researched paper which was published on 9th September, 2016. Interestingly, the threat of attack has previously been issued by Department of Homeland Security as well as the FBI....

Servers belonging to the Project on Crowdsourced Imagery Analysis (PCIA), hosting data about nuclear tests, have been the subject of DDoS attacks just two days before North Korea's most recent nuclear tests. The attack, which took place on Wednesday, forced PCIA to take down its "geoserver," a database hosting satellite imagery from various nuclear test bases and nuclear facilities from around the globe. PCIA officials didn't formally accuse any nation, but the attack's timing is...

Cloud hosting outfit Linode has again come under significant denial of service (DoS) attack. The attacks aren't as bad as the epic events that all-but-took Linode down in January 2016, but they are coming in thick and fast. The company's reported DoS attacks on September 2nd, September 4th and then a series of attacks on September 5th. Another round struck on Saturday, September 10th. Some of the attacks lasted up to eight hours. View full...

US president Barack Obama has named the nation's first ever Chief Information Security Officer (CISO). Brigadier General (retired) Gregory J. Touhill has accepted the gig. He previously served as deputy assistant secretary for Cybersecurity and Communications in the Office of Cybersecurity and Communications at the Department of Homeland Security, where it was his job to work on “development and implementation of operational programs designed to protect our government networks and critical infrastructure.” Along the way...

NHS Digital is set to start expanding the range of cybersecurity services available to UK hospitals and clinics. CareCERT (Care Computer Emergency Response Team) launched in November 2015, offering a national service that helps health and care organisations to improve their cybersecurity defences by providing proactive advice and guidance about the latest threats and security best practices. View full story ORIGINAL SOURCE: The Register

As smart, connected cars get more ubiquitous, they are often the only option you get when renting a car from a rental agency. With all the reports about car hacking, you might be worried whether someone could manipulate the vehicle you’re renting, but in the real world, that danger still seems far off. View full story ORIGINAL SOURCE:

USB ports have been around for a while and it is arguably the most accepted type of input for any data types. It is also very common for us to spot a USB port in a laptop, airlines, photo booths, televisions and the list just goes on. The USB ports usually come laced with software protection but when it comes to hardware there is very little of it. View full story ORIGINAL SOURCE: TechPP

A new trojan coded in Rust is targeting Linux-based platforms and adding them to a botnet controlled through an IRC channel, according to a recent discovery by Dr.Web, a Russian antivirus maker. Initial analysis of this trojan, detected as Linux.BackDoor.Irc.16, reveals this may be only a proof-of-concept or a testing version in advance to a fully weaponized version. View full story ORIGINAL SOURCE: Softpedia

The Internet of Things is exactly as bad a security nightmare as pessimists think it is, according to Bitdefender's Bogdan Botezatu. The senior threat analyst at the Romanian security software company called by to chat to Vulture South while in Australia (we were, I suspect, meant to discuss the company's 2017 launches, but conversation digressed from the start, and there's plenty of time between now and the end of the year). View full story ORIGINAL...

The attacks were aimed at the Vienna International Airport, which the hackers targeted with DDoS attacks on Saturday, September 3. Austrian authorities claim the attacks failed, and they only managed to bring down the website for a short moment, while the airport's internal systems were never affected. View full story ORIGINAL SOURCE: