Top 10 Stories

BTCC is the latest victim of the Bitcoin-for-DDoS extortion scheme, but unfortunately for the attacker, the company was financially capable of implementing better DDoS protection measures and make the attacker go away. The first DDoS attack took place on December 31, as Crypto Currency News reports, and seemed to be quite small in capacity. As soon as the attack ended, the company, a well-known Bitcoin trader, received a ransom email from the (currently unknown) attacker....

Events in the cyberspace are strictly correlated with facts in the real life, in many cases, disputes between countries are associated with numerous cyber events that could be analyzed by intelligence analysts. The recent crisis in Crimea between Russia and Ukraine is just an example, today we will analyze evidence of ongoing dispute between Russia and Turkey following the shooting down of the Russian aircraft in Syria. Russia is accusing the Turkish Government of supporting the ISIS and its dirty affairs with the oil smuggling,...

The group that claimed responsibility for taking down the BBC's global website last week has said the attack was "just the start." On Saturday, a group calling itself New World Hacking also claimed responsibility for an attack that downed Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's campaign website for about an hour. The cause of the attack was a massive distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, which relies on pummeling a web server with so much traffic that it...

A trio of Russian hackers say core flaws in rail networks are opening trains to hijacking and derailment and have published dozens of hardcoded industrial control system credentials to kick vendors into action. Industrial control specialist hackers Sergey Gordeychik, Aleksandr Timorin, and Gleb Gritsai did not describe the bugs in detail, since that would allow others to replicate the attacks nor reveal the names of the affected rail operators. Flaws affect various systems including mobile...

The BlackEnergy APT (Advanced Persistent Threat) group, once thought dormant as of 2014, was found to be still active in 2015, targeting electrical power stations and news outlets in Ukraine. BlackEnergy, a group suspected to be of Russian origin, is a cyber-threat actor that has been active against various politically charged objectives, typical targets in cyber-espionage campaigns. The group, named after the BlackEnergy trojan often used in their attacks, has a knack for attacking industrial control...

According to a secret document, titled "Assessment of intelligence opportunity – Juniper" supplied to The Intercept — a website run by lawyer Glenn Greenwald — by former NSA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden, the British organisation may have been helped in its endeavours by America's key spying body, the National Security Agency. In 2013, based on documents supplied by Snowden, Greenwald revealed that the NSA was conducting mass surveillance of the US population. Several other equally disturbing stories...

A 23-year-old from the Bahamas hacked the email accounts of 130 celebrities, taking unreleased movie scripts, social security numbers and even a few sex tapes, federal prosecutors have alleged. According to the New York Times, the alleged hacking activities of Alonzo Knowles were discovered when he tried to sell some of the material he found for profit.   Original Source: The Guardian View the full story here

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has suffered a “major power outage” that has led it to effectively declare and extended, early, Christmas. “A major power outage at USPTO headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia, occurred Wednesday, Dec. 22,” the agency reports, “resulting in damaged equipment that required the subsequent shutdown of many of our online and IT systems.” Filing, searching, and payment systems are all down, as are the applications used by patent examiners....

Video live streaming platform LiveStream is warning customers that account information, including names, dates of birth, phone numbers, email addresses and encrypted passwords may have been accessed by unauthorised party. In an email sent out to customers, the company explained that it is requiring all users to reset their passwords.   Original Source: Graham Cluley View the full story here

Hyatt, the global hotel chain with 627 properties across more than 50 countries, is the latest in its industry to suffer a cyber security attack. In an announcement devoid of specific information or details, the company revealed that it “recently identified malware on computers that operate the payment processing systems for Hyatt-managed locations.” Upon that discovery, it said, it began an investigation with third-party security experts that remains ongoing.   Original Source: Tech Crunch View the full...