Top 10 Stories

Researchers observed the Vonteera adware family using system certificates to disable both anti-malware and anti-virus software, according to a Nov. 20 Malwarebytes blog post. The post said researchers witnessed the installer for the adware blacklisting the certificates of Avast Software, AVG Technologies, Avira, Baidu, Bitdefender, ESET, ESS Distribution, Lavasoft, Malwarebytes, McAfee, Panda Security, Trend Micro and ThreatTrack Security by automatically filing them as “Untrusted Certificates” in a user's system causing it to refuse to run...

It was one of the largest cyber attacks ever carried out against the U.S. government: At least 21.5 million military, civilian and contractor personnel had their sensitive data stolen, and an estimated 5.6 million had their fingerprints compromised. Now, four months later, Americans are still dealing with the consequences of July’s massive cyberbreach. View full story ORIGINAL SOURCE: WND

Amazon has forced an unknown number of account holders to change passwords that may have been compromised, just as it heads into one of the busied shopping days of the year. Tech news site ZDNet first noted the issue after multiple readers reported receiving an e-mail saying that the online retailer had set their passwords. They were also notified of the change through the site's account message center, ZDNet reported, which confirmed their legitimacy. View full story ORIGINAL SOURCE:...

A second root certificate has been found in new Dell laptops days after the first backdoor was revealed. The DSDTestProvider certificate was first discovered by Laptopmag. It is installed through Dell System Detect into the Trusted Root Certificate Store on new Windows laptops along with the private key. Dell has been contacted for comment. The Texas tech titan has called the first certificate gaffe an "unintended security vulnerability" in boilerplate media statements. View full story...

US hotel chain Hilton Worldwide which owns 4,500 hotels around the world, has become the latest victim of a cyber attack with hackers obtaining sensitive credit card information of former guests. The company has not disclosed how many of its hotels could be affected by the hack but has asked all previous customers who used their credit cards to take precautions. View full story ORIGINAL SOURCE: International Business Times

A security researcher has claimed that United Airlines failed to fix a severe bug in its mobile app even though he reported it to them five months ago. United Airlines launched its Bug Bounty programme six months ago to much media fanfare with the promise of paying bug finders in air miles rather than cold, hard cash. Two months after launching the scheme, the airline announced it had awarded one million air miles for one bug to security researcher...

Three-quarters of consumers would reconsider using a company if it failed to keep their personal data safe from cyber criminals and hackers, research by professional services firm Deloitte has warned. The release of the report comes shortly after the cyber attack against internet service provider TalkTalk, which resulted in some customers wishing to tear up their contracts and move to a new ISP. According to the newly released 'Consumer data under attack: the growing threat of cyber...

Just like Lenovo did at the beginning of the year, Dell has included a root certificate on some of its laptops that can be extracted by malicious actors and used for MitM (man-in-the-middle) attacks, passing dangerous content as legitimate. Digital certificates are files used to sign software as coming from a legitimate source. Root certificates are high-privilege digital certificates that are used to sign entire hierarchies of certificate structures and are usually issued by CAs...

Three quarters of companies (75%) have fallen victim to a fraud incident in the past year, a rise of 14 percentage points in just three years, according to Kroll. The findings reveal the biggest fraud threat to companies comes from within. Of those companies where fraud occurred and the perpetrator was identified, four in five (81%) suffered at the hands of at least one insider, up from 72% in the previous survey. More than one...

Former Defence Secretary Lord Browne has told the BBC that the UK's nuclear weapon system, Trident, could be rendered obsolete by hackers. The ex-Labour minister, who was Defence Secretary between 2006 and 2008, said "weak spots" in Trident need to be addressed — otherwise Prime Minister David Cameron won't be able to rely on the nuclear deterrent "when he needs to reach for it." Trident, the UK's nuclear programme, consists of four Vanguard-class submarines armed with Trident II...