Top 10 Stories

A ransomware program known as Chimera has adopted a relatively unknown peer-to-peer messaging system to communicate with the criminals’ command-and-control server, making investigating the infrastructure more difficult, according to security researchers. The messaging system, known at BitMessage, is a communications system that allows messages to be encrypted, prevents spoofing and relieves the user of any need for key management. While the system is intended to help regular people secure their communications, criminals have adapted the software...

More than a fifth of consumers have had personal details stolen and their accounts used to make purchases, according to a survey by Deloitte. Just under half of respondents said they often felt they were being targeted by cyber-criminals. Just under 40% had had personal data stolen or deleted because of a computer virus or malware, up from 26% in 2013. View full story ORIGINAL SOURCE: BBC

Starwood Hotels & Resorts, the international hotel chain that owns and operates hotels under the Westin, Sheraton, W Hotels, St. Regis, and Le Méridien brands, has announced on Friday that point of sale systems at 54 of its hotels in North America have been compromised. "Promptly after discovering the issue, Starwood engaged third-party forensic experts to conduct an extensive investigation to determine the facts. Based on the investigation, malware was detected that affected certain restaurants, gift...

Accounts affiliated with terrorist organization Islamic State reportedly released a target list of US officials 'wanted to be killed', including supposed employees of the FBI and CIA. Vocativ reported Sunday that an ISIS-affiliated Twitter account sent out the names and addresses of people it claims work at the US Defense Intelligence Agency, National Counterterrorism Center and the National Guard. View full story ORIGINAL SOURCE: The Daily Mail

Kaspersky investigation unit boss Ruslan Stoyanov says a Russian cyber scum group of just 20 professional hackers have have made a tidy US$790 million in three years by emptying the world's bank accounts. Stoyanov says some $509 million is thought to have been ripped from the wallets of individuals and businesses from the US, and across the European Union since 2012. The remainder was plundered within former Soviet Union states. View full story ORIGINAL SOURCE: The...

Small to medium businesses (SMBs) are falling prey to cyber attacks as hackers increasingly use point of sale (PoS) malware and sophisticated exploit kits to steal sensitive data, according to a report by security firm Trend Micro. The report, titled Hazards Ahead: Current Vulnerabilities Prelude Impending Attacks, found that weak SMB security standards were heavily exploited in Q3 2015, and Trend Micro predicts that this pattern is likely to continue into the next year. A lack of resources...

Further security and privacy risks to users of Siri, Apple's personal assistant, have been revealed that could allow anyone to gain entry to personal data on someone else's iOS device. Further security and privacy risks to users of Siri , Apple's personal assistant, have been revealed that could allow anyone to gain entry to personal data on someone else's Siri-enabled iOS device, regardless if the device is locked. A new blog post from Trend Micro details how anyone can...

Applying for jobs can be painful, but at least your interactions with “human resources” don’t put you at risk of anything worse than dashed hopes. Actually, that’s not the case for those applying for a role at Chipotle. Until recently, the giant Mexican fast food restaurant chain was putting its job applicants at risk of identity theft and phishing attacks. That’s because Chipotle was sending emails to new job applicants from an email address using a domain – chipotlehr.com – it...

The United States should think about allowing US companies to "hack back" if data is stolen by Chinese hackers. Data lost in such attacks could be recovered or wiped, suggests a new report from the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission. It says lost sales and fixing hacking damage have cost US firms tens of billions of dollars, with trade secrets being given to Chinese companies. The commission is typically very critical of the Chinese...

Security bod Bernardo Rodrigues has found a backdoor-within-a-backdoor affecting some 600,000 Arris cable modems. The broadband kit company said, in a statement to El Reg, that it is working "around the clock" to fix the problems. Rodrigues (@bernardomr), a vulnerability tester with Brazil's Globo television network, reported the undocumented library in three Arris cable modems. The Shodan exposed device search engine reveals some 600,000 are affected, he says. The initial backdoor - an admin password based...