Top 10 Stories

The ability of an adversary to manipulate the content of data stored on networks is an "emerging art of war in cyberspace," former National Security Agency director and retired Gen. Keith Alexander told FCW Oct. 22. "You can think of it as stealth radar or making planes disappear or appear," Alexander said in an interview. "And, theoretically, you can do that."  The former joint leader of NSA and U.S. Cyber Command said altering health records...

Cloud-based accounting service Xero has told its customers to reset their passwords after a "small number" of users had their accounts compromised. At the time of writing there was no obvious advisory on Xero's website, blog or Twitter account, but news of the security warning was sent out to customers in an email. The email claims that Xero has seen an increase in phishing attacks exploiting the firm's brand, and that a "small number of customers have had...

GitHub, the code-sharing website, says it is investigating what appears to be a distributed denial of service (DDoS) cyberattack from an unknown source, months after it was hit by a similar attack that was linked to the Chinese government. GitHub, which is based in San Francisco, updated its status page Thursday morning at 10 a.m. IST to say: "We're investigating what appears to be a DDoS attack." A subsequent update at 10:31 a.m.  IST revealed that systems put...

It is slowly becoming common knowledge that connected devices that are under-protected, just waiting to be compromised by any half-competent hacker. The most common reason is that typically products are rushed to market so they can be first on the scene, and not much consideration is invested in giving the device security by design. As a result IoT botnets are now gaining popularity with hackers, with CCTV botnets reported to be among the most common....

Credit card and bank account details could have been stolen in a "significant and sustained" attack on the TalkTalk website. The firm said customers' names, dates of birth, addresses and phone numbers may also have been accessed. The Metropolitan Police's Cyber Crime Unit has launched an investigation and "leading" specialists are on the case.The attack happened on Wednesday morning and TalkTalk say they had their website shut down by lunchtime. Sky's Technology Correspondent Tom Cheshire...

China has agreed not to use cyber-espionage to steal commercial secrets from the UK and its president spoke positively about improving human rights, following talks with David Cameron on the second day of the state visit. Appearing side-by-side with Xi in Downing Street, the prime minister used a short press conference to brush aside concerns about working so closely with an undemocratic nation to announce unprecedented cooperation on sensitive issues of security. “I’m clear that...

Apple has fixed 49 separate security vulnerabilities in iOS 9.1. The company, which released the software on Wednesday for iPhones and iPads, detailed the flaws in its updated security documentation.  Two of the fixes were credited to PanguTeam, a well-known jailbreak team based out of China, which earlier this month released the first jailbreak tool for devices running iOS 9. View full story ORIGINAL SOURCE: Zack Whittaker, ZDNet

Department of Homeland Security officials on Wednesday told Congress that they won't get a warrant to use secret cellphone-scanning technology in cases where agents are protecting the president. The officials, appearing before a House subcommittee, said, alongside the extensive security at presidential events, one level of unseen security is the use of cell-site simulators—often called “stingrays” or “dirtboxes”—to look for phones linked to potential criminal suspects. View full story ORIGINAL SOURCE: Devlin Barrett, Wall Street...

We already know BlackBerry is placing a huge emphasis on privacy with its upcoming Priv handset (the name alone is short for privacy), but the company wants you to know it's not making any security trade-offs by switching to Android. BlackBerry's Director of Security Alex Manea took to the company's blog to detail some of the security protections in the new handset, including default full disk encryption and verification for every layer of the device —...

Your mobile device could soon be able to defend itself against thieves by taking a photo of the miscreants, thanks to a new release from security company Bitdefender. The firm’s updated Bitdefender Mobile Security & Antivirus product now comes with a new ‘Snap Photo’ feature which automatically captures a photo of anybody trying to access a device without the PIN number, as well as the time and date of the failed access. View full story...