Top 10 Stories

British police have joined forces with their United States counterparts in the most significant joint attack in the fight against cybercrime. Money seized from criminals in America will fund the biggest intelligence-sharing initiative of its kind, offering new strategies to companies to combat common types of online fraud like phishing to access personal data. The Global Cyber Alliance (GCA), a non-profit organisation involving the New York county district attorney, City of London police and the...

The head of the Association of British Insurers has called on the government to create a database where companies would have to record details of cyber attacks. Cyber threats are a growing worry for UK business, and demand for insurance to cover the costs is rising. But some insurers are nervous about offering cover because of a lack of information about the attacks that are taking place.  “We have 350 years of fire data and...

Security consultant Arne Swinnen says Instagram has shuttered brute force authentication holes that allowed hijacking of some 20 million accounts. The NVISO infosec man says an absent authentication control coupled with an insecure direct object reference vulnerability meant attackers could commandeer some four percent of accounts held in a temporary lock state. Instagram owner Facebook paid Swinnen (@arneswinnen) $US5000 for reporting the holes, slinging a patch within 10 days of the disclosure earlier this month....

Carders have made off with US$12.7 million (£8.7 million, A$17.5 million) ripping through 1400 ATMs in a mere two hours last week. The attackers netted ¥1.4 billion in cash from ATMs located in convenience stores across the country using counterfeit credit cards. Sources told local media the 1600 credit cards used in the attacks contained account information from an unnamed South African bank. Tokyo is working with South African police through INTERPOL to investigate the...

The US Navy is deploying a "tactical cloud" network that will tie together targeting data acquired from a range of sources in the sea, sky and space to form a lethal "kill web," the U.S. Naval Institute reports this week. The network will essentially allow any aircraft, ship or submarine to draw targeting information from any other instrument in the cloud and extend their own range when launching weapons against surface targets. View full story...

In a surprising turn of events, the people who created TeslaCrypt, a kind of computer Trojan virus that locked certain Windows game files, and demanded money to restore them have closed up shop. More than that, when a security researcher from ESET, a maker of antivirus software, asked them if they would release the key so anyone infected by their malware could unlock their files, they agreed. They also announced "project closed" and apologized, reports the...

New details have come to light regarding the 2012 incident where a hacker was able to steal travel vouchers from the United Airlines website, then turn around and sell them for a profit. Ammon Cunningham from Saratoga Springs, Utah, is believed to be the culprit. The case affidavit claims that Cunningham emailed United Airlines telling them of a "massive hole" in the website and would discuss it in detail with the company's security team for...

Shortly after 7 p.m. on January 12, 2015, a message from a secure computer terminal at Banco del Austro (BDA) in Ecuador instructed San Francisco-based Wells Fargo to transfer money to bank accounts in Hong Kong. Wells Fargo complied. Over 10 days, Wells approved a total of at least 12 transfers of BDA funds requested over the secure SWIFT system. The SWIFT network - which allows banks to process billions of dollars in transfers each...

Encouraging companies to be honest about data breaches isn't enough, it seems. Some companies need more ... persuasion. Cabcharge has a problem. It's not just this week's discovery of a significant data breach, although it relates to that. But let's start with the data breach. Risk Based Security (RBS) is an information security intelligence, analysis, and vulnerability assessment firm headquartered in Richmond, Virginia. On Monday, RBS blogged about their discovery, two weeks earlier, of an...

A LinkedIn data breach could have widespread implications, with the private details of around millions of users at risk, a security expert has warned. The professional-focused social network has today told members data from some 100 million users stolen in a 2012 hack had been leaked online, and recommended a change in passwords. View full story ORIGINAL SOURCE: ABC